Red dripping down on her arms, her bedclothes, down her cheek like tears of blood. Kara Thrace paints her vision on the wall of her rack, above her head: The gas giant, the three stars, the speeding comet. Anders enters and before the hatch door slams, he's started in on her. "Kara, what the hell's the matter with you? 'Cause the way you're holing up in here, you're making people wonder." She doesn't turn around, because he's a six-three question mark, but she almost laughs. "Let 'em. Frankly, they're starting to bug me as much as I bug them. Frak 'em." He reminds her that some of the crew actually volunteered, and there's a sneer in her voice as she wonders aloud about that, without turning to look at him. You can't catch her face; she is alien and strange. "Is that what this is about, Sam? You want to know what the deal is with us? With our marriage? Well, it didn't make much sense to begin with, makes even less now."

Sam tears the paintbrush from Kara's hands and calls her a liar. Calls her a coward. He isn't wrong, but maybe she's not wrong to be so afraid. He pushes at her, shoves their wedding tattoos together, begs her to remember: "You remember those? Do you remember when we got 'em? That's what's real. Okay, that is part of who we are. That is a part of who you are, whether you want to admit it or not."

("It started like it always did, with a body. This one was in the river. I could tell she had once been beautiful, but this, a bullet and fast current had taken away from her. All we are, all that we think we are, all that we are certain about is taken away from us... Bitter and sweet, tinged with regret. I'll never be free of her, nor do I want to be. For she is what I am. All that is, should always be.")

It begins with the body. She wrenches her arm again, but finally meets his eyes. "You dumb motherfrakker. I only married you because it was safe and it was easy, Sam." He points at her, raging. Just a boy. "And you were just pathetic enough to go along with it." What would you call someone who stays with a girl after she fraks around, threatens to rake out his eyes, comes back from the dead, threatens to put a bullet in his head for merely being what God made him? Just a boy. "So get the frak out." She jumps up and shoves him, screaming again and again for him to leave. He stands before her fists, teasing her, nearly weeping. Imagine the eyes of something infinite and loving, that could forgive you anything. Not like a hound, not like a pet, but something brilliant, that saw all your angles at once, the dark and bright sides, all the facets, and loved you anyway: that is the gaze of love, and it keeps you in place. Their love was always a little too rough.