(Jump.

Laura heads to Sickbay on her own this time, Elosha following. "Why are we doing this again? I don't want to see this again." Elosha explains the Fisher King, how the ancients used to say "a people is only as strong as the body of its leader." Laura wonders if that's why Galactica is empty: "If I follow that thought... Are you saying that humanity died because I died? If you're my subconscious, I've gotta say you're a little full of myself." Classic. Elosha is charmed: "Humanity didn't die because you did. [That was Kara.] The ancients, they got a lot of things wrong: the body of a people is not the same as the body of its leader. But the soul and the spirit might be." Elosha talks very damn fast, which is a shame because she only says very dense things now that she is dead, and is also a shame because it makes Laura talk very damn fast too. "Oh I see, so you're only laying morality at my feet. Well, that's okay," Laura giggles ruefully. Of course it fucking is. "I can take that. I mean, there are a lot of people who have sins far greater than mine." They both laugh, for different reasons. "You're thinking of Gaius Baltar," Elosha says.

Me too. Because one thing that seems really hard to understand, in this forgiveness game, is the absence of a relative morality. It's key to the Iliad, so it's not like this new concept I invented in order to hate Seelix or something, but it goes like this: if there's no relativity to the apocalypse, if Laura's allowed to be afraid about her cancer on the same day the Colonies are destroyed, then it stands to follow that the opposite is true: that there's no relativity to guilt any more than there is to grief. If I slap you, that's a bad thing. If you slap me back, that is... also a bad thing. You are still a person who slapped somebody. There is not anybody keeping score for you: there's just you, giving yourself a pass for being a slapper, because somebody else exists who is a slapper. (Don't call me a slapper.)

It doesn't make it hurt less where I slapped you, even if you slap me a million times it won't sting you less. This is the main area of our blindness, and Seelix's, and the Great Turkey Shoot, and guns in the Temple, and suicide bombs, and everything the Colonials ever did that was cruel and stupid. That's playground logic, right in line with Laura and Gaius above. So again: if Laura's soul is dying in her breast, if her cancer has moved into her heart like Bill always said it would, it does not matter how much of an asshole Gaius Baltar is. She is still a person who is dying inside; she's still a person using someone else's sins for her excuse.