Starbuck's Viper explodes, in the pressure, just as Lee sees her Raider for the first time. He screams. And Starbuck's hair, and hands, and wings, and breasts, and legs, and feet, and voice, and smile and mouth, and those eyes, and that brain, are gone faster than the time it takes for them to burn. She's taken apart in the unfolding. Starbuck is gone, shouting at the light, raging as fast as she can forward, into the arms of those heroes that went before: Ellen Tigh, D'Anna Biers, Crashdown, Kat. Socrata Thrace throws her arms and wings around that Kore child, her daughter Kara, all those broken girls made whole, and they finally know peace. In Heaven they have so many cigarettes it's ridiculous, and they're duty-free, and every week is shirtless-Helo week, and that's all I know about Heaven. And Kara can wake up in the morning and not dread what happens next, and the rips in her heart are healed over, and you can barely see the scar. She'll never have to hurt anybody again, because she's got no pain in her: it's all burned off. I love her and I already miss her, but I'm not going to begrudge her that kind of grace, or that glory. Eternal Kara Thrace, dancing in the abyss and storm, forever. Strong, and smart, and wise, and powerful. Just as in life.

Adama shouts at his son to abort and Lee cranks his ship away from the accident. "Lee, do you have her in sight? Can you see her?" He doesn't answer for a bit; Helo and Dee stare at nothing, waiting for the response. Gaeta and Tigh look to the Admiral.

"Negative, she...went in. She went in." Gaeta and Dualla can't believe it: this is just more Starbuck nonsense, the wind and the light of a thousand dawns and returns from the dead and worse. She's just going in for her next trip to the underworld, surely. She'll show up in the Blackbird, or a stolen Raider, or holding her daughter by the hand, like she always does, and Adama will stop making that face again, and everybody will laugh again, and the quadrangle of doom will start over again, and everything will be the same as it always was, because that's what she does: skip to the abyss, dance away again. "We're sending in the search and rescue birds right now," Adama stutters. "We'll find her." Lee's voice is ragged and painful to listen to: "No, Dad, it's no use. Her ship's in" -- his voice breaks horribly, breaks in half, breaks like a bone -- "pieces. Her ship's in pieces. No chute. We lost her."