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Chapter 10
(Lee's POV)

I'm still thinking, trying to figure out how things were ever allowed to get to this point as I try to rewrite the flight schedule when my father walks into my office, looking far worse than he did when I last saw him less than an hour ago.

"Is Kara...?" I ask, not quite daring to voice my concerns.

"She's fine... or at least no worse than she was when you last saw her," he reassures me.

"Then what...?"

"Walk with me," he says and something in his voice is enough to set me on edge, again.

"What happened?" I insist, even as I follow him through the familiar corridors.

"Not here," he says and I know I am not going to get anything else out of him... and that whatever it is that he has to tell me, chances are that I'm not going to like it, not one bit. After a few minutes we find ourselves in the training room. Seeing how it is the middle of the 'night' shift the place is virtually deserted, and as soon as we walk in dad clears it and closes the hatch, something I know is highly unusual.

"Grab some gloves," he orders.

I do as I am told, still not knowing what the frak is going on but having a very bad feeling about the whole thing. Once I'm ready he leads me to a punching bag and holds it for me.

"Start hitting."

"What?"

"I said start hitting."

"Fine, so are you going to tell me what this is about?" I ask, even as I throw a couple of punches and knowing that this is my father, not my CO, speaking.

"I was just talking to Cottle and there is something I think you should know," he begins, looking more than a little uncomfortable, and I know that that is not a good sign.

"What is it?"

"There is no easy way to say this but... he suspects that Kara may have been raped on New Caprica."

"What!?" I ask, not quite believing my ears.

"I said that..."

"I heard you," I interrupt him, not wanting to hear it again. "That's crazy!"

"Is it? We know the cylons are desperately looking for a way to reproduce, we know they had Kara for four months and we know she was singled out for 'special' treatment," he reminds me.

"So?" I ask, still refusing to even think about it.

"So you have to at least consider the possibility," he insists. "What do you think they were trying to accomplish?"

"I don't know," I snap, hitting the bag, hard.

"You know it's true."

"No, I don't," I reply. "As you said, this is just something Cottle suspects might have happened. That doesn't mean it's true."

"And it doesn't mean it's not," he reminds me. "I know you don't want to hear this but... he did find some evidence, some medical evidence."

"What do you mean?" I ask, unable to stop myself, even though I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.

"He found traces of fertility drugs in her bloodstream. Those didn't get there by accident and that, combined with what Sam told us about where he found her, to say nothing of the fact that Leoben had apparently managed to convince her that they were actually a 'family'..."

"Stop! You are wrong, you both are," I say, shaking my head.

"Why? Because you don't want it to be true? That's not how it works and you know it."

"I know but..."

"You are going to have to face this if you want to be able to help her, son," he interrupts me.

"I can't," I reply, not even wanting to think about it.

"You don't get a choice," he points out and something about that statement bothers me.

'Choice,' that word keeps ringing in my ears as I hit the bag time and time again, trying to make some sort of sense out of this whole mess. On the one hand I don't want to believe what my father is saying, I want to yell at him and tell him that he is wrong but on the other... on the other I can't help but to acknowledge that he is probably right and that brings me back to the fact that I don't have a choice, that I have to accept what he is telling me... just like Kara probably had no choice but to endure whatever it was that that frakking toaster did to her back on New Caprica. Just the thought of Kara being alone in a room with Leoben, at his mercy, is enough to make me sick.

No, it is too much and almost instinctively I find myself shaking my head, trying to dispel the image, but the thing is that if I can't bear thinking about it, how the frak did she manage to endure it for four months? What did she have to do to survive and what did surviving do to her? I don't know, I can't even begin to imagine but I know Kara and I know how afraid she is of losing control. That is one of the reasons why she loves her viper so much... not to mention that it is also one of the main reasons why she keeps getting in so much trouble, why she has such a hard time following orders and doing as she is told.

The thing is that if what my father is saying is true then that is exactly what Leoben took away from her: her control over her life, her body and her destiny. Hell, even if my father is wrong that control was still wrestled from her!

That is something I hadn't even allowed myself to consider before. It was easier for me to wrap myself in my anger than to try to see what was right in front of me, especially because deep down I already knew something was very, very wrong, and Kara was the one who ended up paying for my cowardice.

Yes, I knew something was wrong but, seeing how I didn't have a frakking clue as to what the hell I was supposed to do about any of it, I did nothing. I just pretended that the problem wasn't there... and I don't think I was the only one.

"And what about Sam?" I ask, turning my attention back to my father, suddenly realizing that my arms are actually sore.

"Cottle wants to give him a couple of days to see if he manages to put two and two together on his own," he replies.

"Yeah, right," I snort, knowing that there's no way that's going to happen.

"There's nothing we can do, not until she starts coming around, so there's no point in telling him now. He has more than enough with trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his wife actually tried to kill herself," he explains.

"So why are you telling me?"

"Because I know you and you still think that this whole thing was your fault."

"And you think this changes anything?" I growl, glaring at him.

"No, it doesn't but Kara is going to need you and that is the most important thing. In spite of everything she is still our girl and right now she has to be our top priority. We can't let the guilt keep us from doing whatever we have to do to fix this mess. Yes, we pushed her over the edge, there's no denying that and that is something we are both going to have to learn to live with, but the bottom line is that we only pushed her over the edge because the cylons had already brought her to that point in the first place," he reminds me but somehow his words come out sounding rather hollow... and that is when I realize that I'm not the only one who is having a hard time trying to come to terms with this mess. Like he said, Kara is still our girl and we failed her, both of us.