"You mean you were stranded there, entirely alone?" Baltar asked, obviously shocked at the notion. No wonder there was something so tough about this woman: he'd chalked it up to her being of a completely different culture (and... species?) than he was, but this made even more sense. "How did you survive?" Not that he hadn't heard cases of extraordinary survival stories - even seen some much more firsthand (Captain Thrace included), but still. The world she spoke of sounded so desolate. He imagined that if he had been in her shoes, he wouldn't have come out quite so steeled by the experience.

They might both be survivors, but she struck him as one who had managed to live because she fought to do so. He, on the other hand, had been compared to a cockroach by more than one person on occasion: it just seemed that no matter what he went, events aligned to keep him alive. And there wasn't much he wouldn't do, generally, to keep it that way.

He was more than a little disappointed when she mentioned that their only alcohol was something without much of a kick to it. And then realized it was probably horrible of him to be mourning the loss of ambrosia from the galaxy more than he was mourning individuals who had perished.

It just seemed much harder to grasp that everyone he had ever known had ceased to exist, while ambrosia was something solid to imagine what it would be like to live without.

Arha, meanwhile, was on about something called Jed-Eye, and more of this time-space-dimensional talk that seemed to blow everything he'd ever believed out of the water. He decided to concentrate instead on the simple and pleasant sound of her laugh, and the warmth of her body pressed next to his, instead of letting his scientific brain try to analyze and rationalize what appeared to be completely irrational.

"Peace, yes. That doesn't seem like too much ask, given what we've both -- all," he corrected, "been through."