Sam keeps saying, "I understand," in a voice like the groan of metal on metal, like he doesn't actually understand but hopes he does, and this has always been the thing about Sam, hasn't it? Black and white like the negatives of all the photographs she never took after the world ended: cylon or not cylon. Married or not married. Understanding or the lack of it, and if he doesn't have one then he must have the other, and he can't stand to not understand her.

(Kara knows that he never has understood her, not totally, not once.)

And the ironic thing is that Lee understands her better than she does herself, some days, but he's the one standing there acting like the world has been turned on its head and he understands nothing. He stares at her as though she's inexplicable, but his eyes are blue like the oceans of a planet that Kara is still trying to convince them that she's seen, and he loves her more than she deserves.

The world is certainly turbulent. Lee is a civilian and Sam is a pilot and if Kara didn't know better she'd think she stepped through a mirror into an inverted world, all her negatives lifted up to the light and viewed from the wrong side.

Married or not married?

Kara steps out of the brig and Lee's hands trace the outline of her tattoo, and Sam watches the both of them carefully, hungrily, as though he is learning to see in shades of grey.