"For now, by the powers granted me by law, I have taken over as President." Giving another sign of his complicity, Jacob calls for a round of applause; they give it, scaring Lee. His father will never accept Zarek as a replacement for his lover, let alone as the leader of the free government. This is a family. We all need our family. Tom was never in the family, and Bill knows how wrong it can go, when you get behind the dark horse candidate. Rights of succession mean nothing: this is a family. We'll see another coup, or worse.

Or is there something else, too, just to the right of the fear, just behind knowing that? Lee Adama has never made a choice in his life, he's never had to weigh his desserts and his qualifications. Why should Zarek just step in like this? Why, when the family is torn apart, and Laura is dying, somewhere far away and cold.

Natalie weeps, in a forest. She sails on the barge with a breeze in her hair; her million sisters welcome her to the shore with kisses. Raven-haired and honey, platinum and gold. A broken New Caprica girl blazes in the light, finally whole; Gina Inviere smiles warmly, and puts strong arms around her: tawny, kissed by the sun. She doesn't shrink from Natalie's touch, or her tears. And beyond them, so much more love: an infinity of brothers and sisters, welcoming her in, applauding her bravery and her strength. Natalie smiles, in a forest. Today was her birthday.

And yet I could look beyond all this,
To a place of infinite beauty;
And I could see the loveliness of her
Who walked in the shade of the trees.
When I gazed,
All was lost
But this place of beauty and her.

THE LITTLE MAN WHO STOOD AGAINST THE MOUNTAINS

Lee stands, bitching on the phone at his poor beleaguered father while the anthill hollers and storms and scatters. Can't Bill see how, with every moment of reticence and arrogance, he's selling Zarek's drama better than the man ever could? "Their suspicions don't concern me." But is this a coup yet? Lee pleads; whether or not Zarek is a shitslice, the Fleet remains, and it needs reassurance, and stability." And since that doesn't really apply here, he qualifies: "Exactly the kind that only its military commander can offer." Bill tells his son to calm the Fleet down his damn self. "That's your job now. You can tell Zarek he can go to hell," he says, and hangs up. One might say that Bill Adama has sort of already lost the plot, but it's a matter of juggling contradictions: who is he, right now? The father of a frightened family? The commander and Admiral of a ruined, limping Fleet? The man who lost his lover before he ever touched her? A father, disappointed as usual in the missteps and mistakes of his children, and the troubles they heap upon his platter: