"You are a harbinger of death, Kara Thrace…"—The Hybrid
"Hera, walk, don't run! Come on sweetie, you're old enough to know better. The Commander just got this place looking nice!"
"Sorry…" Hera mumbled.
"It's okay, Hera," the old man muttered good-naturedly. "I don't think there's anything in here that can break anyhow."
Sharon "Athena" Valerii turned to her husband who had just walked in the door, and shot him a look of arch meaning, "Karl, would you mind taking Hera outside?"
Karl Agathon took the hint and took his daughter's hand, "Come on, babe. Let's leave the adults to talk amongst themselves."
"Sorry about that, Commander."
Commander Adama smiled. "She's got a lot of energy. I guess she has plenty of exploring to make up for, spending the first years of her life cooped up in a ship."
"We didn't feel cooped up Commander," Athena consoled him. "Galactica was home."
"It was no place for a growing child."
"That may be," she conceded. "I worry about her though. Just Karl and me for company. There's going to be a time when she's going to want someone her own age. We can barely keep up with her as it is."
"You haven't aged a day," Adama contradicted, observing her though dusty spectacles.
"Not on the outside," Athena said softly.
"Will you?"
"Age?"
"Do Cylons get old?" Adama wondered aloud. "Will you get stooped and wrinkled like the rest of us? Or will watch us all wither away?"
Athena was quiet for awhile, "Will we live for thousands of years like Ellen and Saul and Galen? I don't know. I suppose we could."
"Seems like a great gift."
"A gift?"
"A great gift," Adama repeated. "Where will we be in another millennia? What great accomplishments will our descendents create? How will we be remembered? Will we be remembered? Will we even survive?"
"You'd want to be alive to see all of that?"
"I'm an old man, Athena," Adama looked out the opening in the far wall that served as a window on his small cabin. "At the end of his life, more is all an old man wants."
"You'd want to live forever? Even if it was alone?" Athena paused. "Even if it meant a lifetime without her? Without Laura?"
Adama smiled sadly, his gaze settled on the rocky grave outside his cabin.
"When I was in the brig, I had a lot of time to read," Athena said.
"Didn't think we allowed literature in lock-up," Adama observed.
"Karl used to sneak in books when he came to visit. I always thought you knew."
"I might have turned a blind eye," he admitted.
"One of the books was something he read as a boy," Athena continued. "I don't remember the name of it. In the story, a exploration ship from Caprica landed on an uncharted world and discovered a new race of men. The Capricans were so in love with the new planet that they never returned to the colonies. They lived in harmony with the other race of men for several years.
"Eventually however, the Capricans became jealous. The men of the new planet were immortal and the Capricans wanted the gift of immortality for themselves. The two races were on the brink of war when one night, the goddess Athena appeared to the commander of the Capricans in a dream. She told him not to be envious, for the Colonists of Kobol had been granted a gift that the men of the new would never have or understand. She told him that the gift was death and that it was something to be envied, for what lay on the other side was something that immortals would never know.
"You're not immortal, Lieutenant Valerii."
"No…" she trailed off, lost in a memory.
"Did you see… the other side of death?" Adama paused. "Before you, came back?"
"I thought you didn't believe in all that, sir," Athena smiled.
"Well," Adama shook his head. "I've seen a lot of things…"
"We all have, sir." Athena followed his gaze out of the window to where her husband were chasing each other. "I'm not immortal, Commander. And I would never want to be."