For notes, warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1.

Chapter 10
(Adama's POV)

As I walk past the curtain I can see Kara lying on that bed with her eyes closed and chewing on her lower lip as she struggles to get her breathing under control. It takes her a moment to register my presence and I take advantage of that opportunity to study her but as soon as she looks up at me I find myself wondering what the frak it is that I think I'm doing here. I can tell that she is nervous, in fact she seems to be downright terrified, and the truth is that I don't know what to do about any of this. On the one hand I want to set her mind at ease and tell her that everything is going to be fine but on the other there's no denying that I'm still mad at her. I'm angry because she lied to me, I'm angry because she didn't trust me but that anger vanishes the second I realize that she is wringing her hands, her fingers. That's when it hits me, when Cottle's words suddenly come back to me. He said that every one of those fingers had been deliberately broken. When he said that those were just words to me, they weren't something real, but now that I can see her hands...

I'm still trying to organize my thoughts when I realize that she has noticed what I'm looking at and she is pulling her hands away, trying to hide them under the covers. Knowing that I have to do something I reach out and grab one of them, marveling at how delicate it feels... especially because 'delicate' is most definitely not the first word that comes to my mind when I think of her.

"Don't," I say, not letting go. "Why didn't you tell me?" I ask.

"It never came up," she lies.

"You never brought it up... not unless you were waiting for me to ask about it specifically," I point out, knowing that the opportunity was there, that she should have told me what Leoben had said and she was deliberately avoiding the subject.

"It was nothing," she insists.

"No, it wasn't. What happened?" I ask, still holding on to her hand, still running my thumb over the back of her fingers even though I can see that the fact that I haven't let go is making her more than a little uncomfortable.

"My mom caught me at my dad's piano a few months after he left... she slammed the lid on my hands," she whispers, looking down and for a moment I see red. I remember the decommissioning ceremony, I remember asking why we as a people deserved to be saved. That is something I've asked myself more than once since the attacks and the truth is that I still haven't been able to come up with an answer... especially not when I find myself being confronted with things like this.

"How old were you?" I hear myself ask, even though I know it doesn't really matter, even though I know that the answer won't change anything, that it won't make this right and it certainly won't make it any easier for me to accept.

"Eight."

"I'm sorry," I say, just trying to fill in the silence, though somehow I know those are the wrong words.

"It wasn't your fault, sir," she replies, still refusing to meet my eyes.

"Kara, look at me," I say, being careful to use her name, letting her know that right now I'm not her CO and that that is not an order.

She does so reluctantly.

"You know you can talk to me, don't you?" I ask, well aware of the fact that we still have some fences to mend here, especially after I lied to her and she found out about it. Sure, we did a fair share of rebuilding back on Kobol but that doesn't mean we don't have a long way to go.

She nods but she still doesn't say anything and the truth is that right now I don't know how to reach her but at the same time I'm not willing to let this go.

The thing is that even though I have a million questions I would like to ask her, I know now is not the time for me to do that. Sure, I could order Starbuck to answer them but unfortunately that doesn't mean I can order Kara to trust me. Those are two very different things and I have to be careful because I can see that she is scared and I don't even know why... not really. In fact there is just too much I don't know, too much I don't understand, and that is precisely the problem, that is what is making it all but impossible for me to come up with some sort of strategy to deal with this situation... and there is no denying that this is indeed a situation, one I'm ill equipped to handle.

I love Kara like a daughter --a particularly rebellious, stubborn and independent daughter-- but now I am suddenly beginning to realize that there is a whole side of her past I was totally unaware of, a side that was hinted at by countless little things I had dismissed over the years, things like her response when I first told her to be careful when talking to Leoben. When I warned her that he would probably try to mess with her head she shrugged off my concerns by telling me that her mom had always said that there was nothing in there anyway. At the time I wrote that comment off as nothing more than a joke, as an attempt to lighten the mood only now I'm beginning to realize that there was probably a lot more to it than that, especially because I lost count a long time ago of just how many times I've heard Kara refer to herself as a screw-up, of how many times I've heard her put herself down. I never really gave it much thought, she always seemed too cocky for me to take those words seriously but now I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I should have been paying more attention, if maybe there was more to those words than I was willing to see.

What I do know, however, is that Cottle was right when he warned me that until we have a better idea of just what it is that we are dealing with here we are going to have to be careful or we could easily end up with an even bigger mess in our hands. That is not a chance I'm willing to take, not with Kara's well-being on the line, so I do the only thing I can under the circumstances: I kiss her forehead, tell her that we will talk about it later and I promise her that even though things are not fine, they are going to be and then I reluctantly walk away.

I wish I could stay, I wish there were something I could say or do to make this better but I know there isn't and the truth is that I have too much to think about and that means that right now my best bet is to withdraw, to live to fight another day. The bottom line is that I know that what I need here is a strategy but I also know that coming up with one would require a far cooler head than the one I have now because the truth is that right now I'm having a hard time trying to see anything but my 'daughter' as an eight year-old girl nursing ten broken fingers. Before I can do anything else I have to get my emotions under control, that is a fact, and I also have to come up with some intelligence to at least know what it is that I'm up against.

Of course, the problem is that I know that intelligence is not likely to just walk in the door, that there is no way Kara is going to volunteer that information and that means that I'm going to have to go looking for it elsewhere. In other words I'm going to have to interrogate Cottle as he is the only one I can think of who might have as much as a clue as to how to deal with any of this... unfortunately he is also the only person on this ship I can't order to tell me a damn thing and that means that I have yet another battle in my hands, though this one at least I know how to handle.