For notes, warnings and disclaimers, see chapter 1.

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Chapter 9
(Cottle's POV)

I look at Bill, not liking his compliance at all. Oh, I'm sure he means what he is saying but at the same time I get the feeling that what we have here is still primarily his guilt talking and I seriously doubt that is what Starbuck needs... not to mention that he obviously doesn't have a frakking clue as to what it is that he would probably be walking into.

"Would you be willing to listen --I mean really listen-- if she were to tell you exactly what it was that the cylons did to her and if she were to do it emotionally, not mincing words or trying to present an 'objective' portrayal of her ordeal?" I ask, being deliberately blunt.

"I don't know," he admits, and I am relieved to see him looking pretty horrified at the thought.

"And that is exactly the problem because that may well turn out to be what she needs. Now, the good news is that she is unlikely to ask you to do it... and the bad news is that she is unlikely to ask you to do it."

"Care to run that by me again?"

"I mean that while I understand how hard hearing something like that would be for you and why you would be relieved if that wouldn't happen, the bottom line is that she may well need that kind of relief and she is unlikely to find it elsewhere, not considering what the alternatives are."

"I hardly think I would be her first choice," Bill points out.

"I agree, and that's why I said that the total absence of women in her inner circle is likely to come back to haunt us here, because while you are anything but an ideal choice, there is no one that is better suited to do it either. Simply put, she has no one she can talk to, not openly and candidly. That may well end up forcing her to bottle this up and that in turn would be a recipe for disaster. In other words, chances are that Starbuck is going to need a shoulder to cry on and we all know how fond of crying that girl is to begin with."

"Not exactly her style."

"No, but then again, seeing how one of the first things I am going to have to do here is to take away most of her usual relief mechanisms, I don't think she is going to have much of a choice."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that frakking is probably going to be out of the question, at least for a while, and she is not going to be allowed to drink or fight for a very long time either."

"She is not going to take it well," he says, pointing out the obvious.

"No, but even though the first one of those is going to be up to her, at least as soon as she is a little stronger, the other two... let's just say that she is not going to be in any kind of shape to hit as much as a punching bag for a while and training with a live partner --one that can actually hit back-- is going to be out of the question for at least three months. As for the drinking, considering her current frame of mind, it could easily turn out to be a little too tempting for her under the circumstances and the risk of losing her to the bottle would be too high so I am going to be making that an order. That will leave talking as her only choice, at least for the time being."

"But why do you think that if she does turn to some one it will be to me?" asks Bill, sounding rather perplexed at the thought.

"Because, as I said, I'm afraid that her husband has already screwed things up by pushing her into a sexual relationship when she came back and..."

"And?"

"And even if he hadn't, out of the three of you, I think you are the one she is most likely to perceive as being 'safe'."

"'Safe'?"

"Yes, Anders may be her husband and that means that under normal circumstances he should have been her first choice but, well, the truth is that I'm just not sure that that level of trust was ever really there between the two of them and, even if it was, that trust has probably been too badly damaged by now anyway to be of much use. As for Apollo, he is her... actually I'm not sure how the frak I should describe the relationship between those two but the thing is that, as crazy as it sounds, out of the three of you, you are the one who comes closest to having something that could possibly be described as an uncomplicated, non-sexual relationship with her so --even though you are her CO and that is not likely to help matters-- you are still the one she is most likely to feel safe with," I explain and I can see the disbelief in his eyes, a disbelief that reminds me of the fact that there is an awful lot I still don't know about what is going on here

"I'm not so sure about that," he insists, shaking his head.

"May I ask what the frak happened today?"

"Helo told me some of the things Kara and Saul had been saying in the rec room... how they were basically drinking and second-guessing the rescue, questioning the loyalty of the people who stayed with the battlestars, adding to a tension that was already running pretty high to begin with. I knew that that couldn't be allowed to continue so I challenged them to shoot me and then I told Saul to clean up his act. As for Kara I... I literally kicked her out of her chair, I called her a cancer and told her that she could either shape up or ship out," he reluctantly admits.

"And could I ask you what the frak were you thinking? You should have known better than that!"

"I know, I just... I miscalculated."

"You think? You have known Starbuck for a very long time and you should have realized that something big had to have happened to bring her to that point, especially because that wasn't like her at all and you knew it."

"I guess I just didn't want to see, but the thing is that what you said about her trusting me, that may have been true once but after today there's no way that's going to happen."

"Oh, I'm not so sure about that. True, that will make it less likely --and it was unlikely enough to begin with-- but, as pathetic as this may sound, in spite of everything, out of the three of you you are still the one who has made the least of a mess out of things."

"That is hardly reassuring."

"Yes, and that means that we are going to have our work cut out for us here but we are still going to do it. The odds may be against her but there's no way I'm giving up on that girl, not now," I growl.

"You seem to be taking this rather personally," Bill points out.

"You are damned right I am. I should have taken the time to follow up on her after our return, especially considering how long she had been held by the cylons but I didn't... and I am determined to do whatever I have to do to fix this."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I messed up, just as much as any of you," I admit. "Yes, after we escaped from New Caprica things were crazy in here. Hell, the moment my shuttle landed I was dragged back to sickbay and didn't stop for forty-eight hours straight. As soon as one patient was taken out of surgery another one was immediately wheeled in and it just went on and on. We were swamped and understaffed, not to mention that our teamwork was more than a little rusty. That clearly contributed to her falling through the cracks, but that is no excuse and the bottom line is that I knew how long she had been missing and I should have taken the time to follow up on her case. I didn't."

"But would that really have changed anything?"

"I don't know... I can't know. That is the problem. What I do know is that I have a young woman who damned near succeeded in killing herself because I was too busy to care and I can't stop thinking that if only standard procedures for dealing with former POWs had been followed that probably wouldn't be the case. Of course, at the same time there is no denying that if we were to keep up the psych evaluation requirements before allowing people into the cockpit we would probably have run out of pilots a very long time ago. We are not near our breaking point here, we are way past it --all of us-- and there's not a frakking thing we can do about it but the bottom line is that we still need those pilots and there's no way around that."

"In other words, deciding who is 'fit enough' becomes a matter of degrees in uncharted territory. We keep going until we hit the wall and then we try to deal with the fallout as best we can, is that it?" asks Bill.

"Something like that," I agree. "You have to remember that even during the first cylon war people were rotating in and out of the front-lines, that when they were done fighting they still had something to look forward to, something to go home to, but now..."

"Now there is no such a thing as home to begin with. Our people have no hope left, they have nothing left but the fight itself --especially not after New Caprica-- and earth will only keep them going for so long. I know," he finishes for me, sounding almost defeated.

"I know you do," I say, deeply relieved to see that I am not the only one who is worried about that.