Athena stands in the corner, afraid, but with her back straight. This is what he will respect: conviction. Luckily, that's what she feels. "Do you hate your people so much that you look for any excuse to kill one?" Obviously not. It's not about hate, it's about love. You pick your side and you stick, otherwise you'll never have anything, no love, no family, no life to call your own. But it starts with love, and with family. With Helo and Hera, and then Adama, and then the Fleet. She's a robot but she's not an asshole, and this is the most robotic thing about her. The only time Athena's ever gotten scary -- I mean head-bashing, face-bleeding, cage-screaming scary -- was the last time anybody threatened her child. It hurt to watch. So did this one. Point being, she's a woman with a list, and she's still enough of a Cylon (and don't tell her I said this) that "Life To Call Your Own" is the last item on it. It's very short and small and she is at a loss as to what she can add to it now, but she's got a list. And her visions are on that list, too, even if you can't see them.

He comes toward her like a mountain: "Or did you deliberately try to sabotage this truce." She's offended: "No sir, of course not." Because -- and here's what's awesome about Athena -- more than anybody, more than Hera, more than Nicky, more than Laura, or Kara and Three, even more than poor fucked-up Caprica, Athena transcends the Shape of Things to Come. It's not the perfect future, it's not even the perfect near-future, she's not a person driven by visions (I mean, except for right now), she's not this Jacob ideal where everybody has tea politely like good citizens and uses their indoor voices and remembers to vote and to floss and to recycle, she's not the series finale of forgiveness and rapture: She is right fucking now.

Athena Agathon, wisdom and goodness, is a grown-ass woman making her own decisions, loving without breaking, who soldiers on with zero damned credit; who sees all around her in the Fleet the million pieces of her heart. Whose imperative is all around her. A woman who turned her coat inside-out and changed her skin for nothing more, or less, than love. She's not a hybrid, not a child of the revolution, she doesn't have collusion and synthesis written on her bones like Hera: she did that herself, because she is awesome. She's Nurture Girl, crossing hate like so much salt: created to love and be loved in return, like us all.