For notes, warnings and disclaimers, see chapter 1.
Chapter 53
(Cottle's POV)
"What the frak were you thinking?" I ask as soon as I walk into my office, glaring at Anders and not happy about the mess we are going to have to clean up now. Starbuck had been doing reasonably well up until now... the problem is that annoying little 'had'.
"I was doing what I thought was best," he growls, glaring right back at me.
"What you thought was best?" I repeat.
"Yes, damn it!"
"And you didn't think maybe you should have talked to me before taking it upon yourself to upend Starbuck's world yet again?"
"No, I didn't. As far as I'm concerned our marriage is none of your business."
"She is my patient and she is still under my care. That makes it my business," I remind him. "We have to present a unified front if we want to help her and you sure as hell can't just spring something like this on her out of nowhere, not without running it by me first. The last thing she needs right now is for us to be working at cross-purposes from each other."
"Yeah, right!" he snorts.
"What the frak is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that you keep talking about presenting a 'unified front' but when it comes down to it, you always end up leaving me out of it," he replies. "She is my wife, damn it, but Apollo had all but moved in with her long before you allowed me as much as a supervised visit... and it's only been a couple of days since I was allowed to spend a few hours with her without a frakking chaperone so don't you dare come to me talking about some gods-damned 'unified front' now!"
"I'm sorry, son, but Starbuck was in no shape to..." I begin but he interrupts me.
"Oh, believe me, I know all too well what kind of shape she was in, I know she didn't want to see me and I also know I messed up. You don't have to remind me of why you banned me from her side but..." he trails off.
"But what?"
"But you could still have warned me," he whispers.
"Warned you?"
"Yes, damn it! I mean I know I'm not military and I sure as hell am not a frakking Adama but she is my wife and if only your 'unified front' would have included something as simple as letting me know what the frak was going on with her then maybe I wouldn't have had to hand her those frakking papers in the first place!"
"Do you really believe it is that simple?" I ask, openly shaking my head at that. Oh, I understand where he is coming from but at the same time I also know that the moment we start blaming each other we'll be in trouble.
"What the frak is that supposed to mean?" he growls, obviously not wanting to face the facts.
"You know what it means."
"I don't know, damn it! I mean, I know I had already screwed up by the time she..." he trails off.
"By the time she tried to kill herself?" I volunteer when it becomes apparent that he is not going to say it.
"Yes... but if I had known then I wouldn't have..." he begins but I interrupt him.
"Let me guess: if you had known you wouldn't have tried to kiss her when she first woke up and then maybe I wouldn't have had to ban you from her side and the two of you would have lived happily ever after, is that it?"
"Maybe, I don't know... I'll never know. That is the frakking point!" he all but yells at me.
"You may be right when you say I should have warned you and you may even have a point when you say that if I had maybe you wouldn't have felt it was necessary for you to hand her those papers today, but do you honestly believe that if you had known the final outcome of this whole thing would have been all that different?"
"I don't know --I'll never know-- but we would at least have had a chance, damn it!" he snaps.
"No, you wouldn't have, and you know it," I say, not willing to take the full blame for this one... even though I know he is not completely wrong when he says that some of my own decisions may well have had something to do with the way in which this whole thing played out... that by letting Apollo in while keeping him out I may well have put the final nail in their marriage's coffin but the thing is that I wouldn't have done it if that hadn't been what she wanted... what she needed.
"What the frak is that supposed to mean?"
"You know what it means."
"No, I dont. Why don't you spell it out for me?" he asks, almost daring me to fill in the blanks.
"How about the fact that your marriage was doomed from the moment the cylons showed up?" I ask, not willing to back down. "You are right, you are not military and you are not an Adama... but you are leaving out the fact that she is Starbuck and that is the real problem here because Starbuck is most definitely military and --even if it is not by blood-- she is alsoan Adama."
"She is my wife, damn it!"
"Yes, but long before she became your wife she was already Starbuck and Starbuck is always going to be one half of Starbuck and Apollo. That is the one thing you can't compete against. Maybe on New Caprica, where she could afford to be just Kara and Apollo was nowhere to be found, the two of you would have stood a chance but here on the Galactica that was never going to be the case. Sooner or later you would have lost her no matter what you did and I think you know it."
Author's notes: Hi guys, thanks for reading (and reviewing... we can't forget the reviewing, even if I'm way behind in replying to those reviews). I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for sticking with me for over a year (YIKES!).
I also wanted to explain a couple of things about this particular chapter, especially to the dedicated Sam-haters among you: there are two reasons why this chapter was included. The first is that it deals with some issues that I felt had to be addressed, though I admit that this was not its original placement. The second has to do with the fact that the next one ends in a cliffhanger and, seeing how I'm going to be moving to a different hemisphere on Thursday, chances are that the next chapter will be delayed by at least a week and I didn't want to leave you hanging. This chapter was self-contained and moving it did make sense plot-wise so I decided to do that.
Okay, that's it for now. Take care and thanks again for reading,
Alec
