The state of the union is this: everything important takes place in the gap. Humanity, democracy, love, union itself takes place in the gap. It's the end of a line of poetry with nobody telling you what comes next, with nowhere to stand and no actual reason to be good, or honest, or strong. Just the gap. And that's you doing the work of creating the poem's total meaning for a second, which makes you love the poem even as the next line adjusts your vector, because it's part of you now. It's your life.

Roslin lies on the couch in Adama's office. "I told him I didn't take any satisfaction in seeing his pain, but the truth is I was willing to see him endure a great deal of suffering, in order to get what I wanted. It wasn't some intelligence or some truth. I wanted a genuine admission of guilt." There's a rood screen confessional shadow across her face, by the way, as she's saying this. Just in case you felt like getting slapped by the Catholic guilt with which this episode is infused. Bill shakes his head.

"That's something that you're not gonna get from someone like Baltar. He doesn't see himself that way. It's not who he is. In his eyes he's the victim, not the criminal."

That's everybody, too. She knows he's right; she looks really tired. (But not in a way where she's not luminously beautiful; tired like in her mind.) "It's not too late for him to just disappear," says Bill, still trying to fix her problem, and she sweetly pats him on the arm, smiling sadly. "We can't do that. For all his crimes, he's one of us," she smiles. Halfway there. "So what happens next?" he asks, looking into her eyes, glad all that's over with. William Adama has never seemed so much like a kid as in this episode. I hope he's going to be okay. "We give him his trial," Roslin says, grossed out. He breathes; they sit.

And outside that room, all around them, doing paperwork and writing letters, doing pushups and reading magazines, the tiny lives outside that room, all around them: their people. Their people.