"The Daniel thing is going to be one of the great fiascos of the show… I started picking up all this stuff about how fans were obsessing about Daniel … I started thinking, "Oh shit, slow down people …this was gathering such momentum, I didn't want people to be going into the finale and really be waiting for the Daniel shoe to drop … I kind of feel bad about that."

-Ronald D. Moore

"…Dodath scenn toscen todaig rogarg fiss goibnen aird goibnenn renaird goibnenn, ceingeth ass."

-Harl 5280, the St. Gall Codex

Hadrian's Wall, 138 A.D.

Bone against bone, he never thought he'd get used to that sound. Live long enough, you get used to anything. Except maybe the stench of the battlefield.

Goibniu punched the reddened steel through the corpse's ribcage. Couldn't afford to let a good blade go to waste – especially a Roman Gladius. Goibniu pressed his leathery, scarred finger to the point of the blade. Solid craftsmanship, he observed – this one even had an ivory hilt - but no real art to it, no imagination. Cold and efficient, like all Roman work. Still, one couldn't deny that it did its job. A perfect circle of syrupy red plumed from Goibniu's fingertip. He massaged the sticky warmth over his finger with his thumb.

"Good work, Goibniu. Your blade was true!" The young, tousled tribesman hoisted his Celtic sword in the air and showed off his spoils: a bag of Roman coins, a javelin, two horses, a shield, and a Gallic wench.

"Send me some of your meadowsweet ale later tonight and we'll raise a proper toast and farewell to the Roman Second, Sixth, and Twentieth Legions!" An obnoxious giggle capped off the young man's proclamation. Goibniu nodded. He couldn't help smiling at the brash braggart. Probably be dead within the week.

"I've got something special, with a bit of heather, myrtle, and broom," said Goibniu. "From barley at Skara Brae."

"Bring it and I'll add another tattoo," the boy snorted. His mates cheered their approval.

"You'll run out of room there."

"Why is that?"

"Your arms are too small."

Some of the men howled their appreciation for the snipe, while other stood in shocked silence, anticipating the young soldier's reply. He fumbled a bit, wheels turning in his thick head.

"We can't all be fat like Goibniu!" the boy retorted at last, thumping Goibniu on the back and pulling his red-headed captive in for a kiss. She recoiled and shut her eyes, pushing the soldier away.

"But he forges strong blades for us and gives us even stronger ale," answered Goibniu. "Let the old fat man be." That got a growly laugh from the boys, raising their invisible cups in a mock toast.

"And let her be, too," he said, motioning to the girl.

A silence suddenly fell upon the battlefield. The boy exhaled an uncomfortable laugh, that same high-pitched squeal Goibniu loathed.

"You think my ale comes free, boy?" Goibniu stated in a flat, serious, carefully parsed cadence. "The wench for the beer."

A few moments of tense silence followed as the two men glared at one another in the muck. Finally the young man pushed the woman down into the mud.

"What do I care for her? She's an ugly foreigner, anyway. Take her." He put his finger and face an inch from Goibniu's. "But that ale had better be strong, old man."

Goibniu grimaced and helped the girl up, covering her naked breasts with his armor. He wanted to tell her he was bringing her somewhere safe, but he didn't speak her language. He gently patted her pale shoulders– that's when he saw blood and realized it was coming from his hand. Goibniu wiped his fingers against his pouch. How much blood had he spilled? Those deaths he was directly responsible for, yes, there were so many that he'd lost count centuries ago. Most of those bastards deserved what they got. But desserts aside, how much blood had spasmed from the hearts and necks of those poor boys? Add to that the women, the children… all whose misfortune found them on the business end of one of the thousands of blades he had forged in his fiery furnace.

The Exercitus deserved it, of course, there was no doubting that. They were cutting off the Picti from their own lands, brother from brother, herder from livestock, lover from betrothed. Emperor Hadrian's godsdamned wall, stretching from sea to sea now, from the Tyne to the Firth, or nearly. How had the Picts let it come this far? They'd lost so many good men trying to stop it, and for what? Even today's rare victory was a hollow one. It was too late. The wall was nearly complete.

Goibniu saw one of the bastards still crawling through the muck out of the corner of his eye. He marched in closer to the Legionnaire and readied his sword. Live, die, did it matter? Everyone checked out, eventually.

"Exspecto! Exspecto…"

Even the most handsome and hearty, golden and full of life, brave and beloved by many, turned to dust, condemned to being forever forgotten. How many thousands had he lost and erased from his memory? And this one? He wasn't even handsome. Not worth remembering. Old, bald. Useless.

"Amicus…"

Missing an eye. Disgusting. Goibniu steadied himself. Generation after generation after generation. So many corpses. What was one more?

"Vos teneo mihi!"

So many lovers, friends, brothers, whose faces he could no longer remember, much less their names. Even those he had vowed never to forget. Wiped from his mind just like they had been eraseed from this Earth, forever. He hoisted the blade.

"Chief!"

The old man's voice was weak now, dream-like, but no longer muttering Latin. This was an altogether different language. One that Goibniu had not heard spoken for a long, long time. One that he thought long extinct.

"What's that? What did you say?"

"You're the Chief."

The old man smiled and laughed. It was a hearty, almost maniacal laugh, certainly not the laugh of a dying man.

Goibniu lowered his weapon and dropped suddenly to his knees. He smelled alcohol on the old man's breath. Roman wine. He knew this man. How many centuries had it been? He had stopped counting long ago.

"I thought—"

"You thought you were the only one," said the old one-eyed man. "You thought you were alone."

Goibniu tried to hold back the tears. It was useless.

"To non es solus, Galen," said the old man, patting Goibniu on the forearm and closing his only eye. "Vos nec fuerunt umquam."

That was it. Goibniu's true name, unspoken for countless millennia.

He was still Goibniu of the Pictii, certainly. But he was also something else. He was Galen Tyrol, chief petty officer of the Battlestar Galactica.