The reminder feels ominous at first, just short of dangerous, but the ragged space where the grief was torn out intercepted a few baser impulses, too. Fear, worry, apprehension: all their sharp edges honed by Gaeta's hypervigilance have dulled. He doesn't fight it.

But as Pyotr grasps his throat again, drawing out more of what's congealed inside him for half a decade, he realizes he may need the reminder after all. More grief first: two hundred people are dead because I trusted a Cylon. Anger, then: She betrayed me. Dr. Baltar betrayed me. Adama betrayed us. Despair: Earth is an uninhabitable wasteland. All the attendant tangles of embarrassment, paranoia, guilt, pain lodged in between like scar tissue.

As they all diminish, the want driving Gaeta's choice begins to fade as well. If a desire is powered by desperation, what happens when he coughs up that desperation into Pyotr's waiting hand?

So he does need the reminder eventually. You want him to do this.

He hardly even notices the ache in his throat after a while, as the growing silence inside his head blossoms to exhausted relief.