Athena is a grownup like you and me, not a kid without choices like Hera and Nicky, making a conscious choice. She is a person who, out of nothing but love, made the jump and stuck with it, across the salt and across the fear, sat in chains for months, took out her heart and looked at it, got commissioned, got married, made ugly choices and suffered uglier choices. She went so far she got boring, frankly, and we forgot what she is and what she means, but the truth is that she's probably the best thing going forward, the anti-Cally in at least the way that she's the ultimately adaptable. I'm embarrassed that I didn't key into this sooner, frankly, because I forgot that boring usually means excellent once you look at it right: Athena is the Shape of Things the Way They Fucking Are.

"Then you tell me why. You make me understand why you did this." Athena flashes back: the corridor, the Opera House. The unspeakable power of vision: take a dream and turn it into words, it always slides back down and away. Every word you speak changes it and destroys it, turns it into story and logos. Turns the Hybrid talk back into gibberish: "They were going to take her. The Six. She was going to take my child." And there are ways, I am sure, that this is true. But you say it out loud and it fades away like water in the desert. Adama shakes his head: "There were too many witnesses. They all said the same thing. Your daughter was lost. The Cylon merely kneeled down, was talking to her." Athena knows: that's what it looked like, but that wasn't what it was. There was more. It was a moment. It was a moment where dreams and reality collided, and the future hit the past and the present and made a Maelstrom, and for a moment the three of them stood in the middle, buffeted by gales. "I know."

Adama scoffs, but Athena tries to explain again: I had a vision, a vision where the Six and Baltar were taking Hera away from me." He turns away, choking on it. Now everybody's getting visions. He's like, "I got a vision of a fucking cheeseburger. You ladies need to cut this shit out. Last time somebody said fucking 'Opera House' my girlfriend blew up."