Thirteen

Chapter Twenty-Five

Learning The Ropes

Sech Turval did not know why they called Kara Thrace "Starbuck". He knew it was her call sign from her days as a Viper fighter pilot when she was in the Colonial fleet, but he wondered how she had come about that name. He also wondered about how Sharon "Boomer" Valerii and Karl "Helo" Agathon had come about their call signs. Then he shook his head and smiled at himself wool gathering during the meditation session in class. Helo had surprisingly taken to it, as well as Boomer and Samuel Anders, but Starbuck seemed annoyed at the whole exercise.

Long ago, he had noticed the same thing from Marcus Cole, who had been an excellent, if troubled, Ranger. He had not come to the Rangers for the right reasons. Sure, he served the Rangers well and was an outstanding member of the Anla'shok, but he hadn't come to them out of a desire to serve, only as a means of vengeance after the Shadows had killed his brother William, who had been an outstanding Ranger in his own right before he died way too soon.

If he were younger, Turval would have done something similar to bring Starbuck around like he had Marcus, but after witnessing Starbuck beating his old friend Durhan with the denn'bok, he knew he had to find another way. Besides, he got the impression that Starbuck didn't hate the class in principle, just what came up as she meditated.

After the class was over with, he took Starbuck aside and asked her to come see him after her last class, which was a language course in military-caste Minbari. It was essential to all Rangers that they learn all three languages of the castes, but generally they wanted them to have a working knowledge of worker and military caste versions, as the religious dialect was hideously difficult, and only two humans he knew of had been able to master all three of them.

Turval knew that Starbuck usually ran after her last class, and Sech Lorval had sent a message from Starbuck asking for permission to delay their meeting until after she had ran, so she could clear her head. "Some of us must meditate in different ways, I suppose. Very well! Tell her I'll see her a little later on then." Turval observed with some amusement as he led his former student out of his office.

Starbuck had arrived all sweaty into his office, dressed in her old Colonial fatigues. Turval made no issue of it, as he understood the need to maintain a link to her past. He gestured her to sit down in a seat in front of his desk, which had been used by Anla'shok instructors for centuries

"So Ranger Thrace, why do you have such trouble in meditation class?"

Thrace hesitated at first, which prompted Turval to add, "You have my word of honor that whatever you say here shall not leave this room. Now, why are you having such trouble in class?"

Starbuck gulped and said, "Too many bad memories come up when I am in meditation, Sech Turval. I've learned to repress them over the years by concentrating on the moment, but when I am in class, they come back to me."

This troubled Turval, so he asked, "What kinds of memories are you repressing?"

Starbuck hesitated again, but then replied, "I was abused by my mother as a child, sir. It's something I'm not sure you can understand how some human parents are with their children."

"I must confess that, among my kind, we don't have parents abusing children, so this is a foreign concept to me. However, it would not surprise me that we had this back before the time of Valen. Before he came along, our various clans of the warrior caste warred with one another, so much so that a battle was once fought on this city that was so terrible that more than a million Minbari soldiers died fighting that day. It shocked the caste so much that they sought a peaceful solution to their problems, and Tuzinor was decreed a place of peace, healing and prophecy."

Starbuck shook her head, unsure why the impromptu history lesson had to do with the abuse she had suffered at the hands of her mother, and the old teacher saw the look on her face. He added, "We all fight wars, Kara. Most are like yours, within ourselves. A Ranger must overcome all of that and be at peace with themselves before they leave here to serve. In order to become the best Ranger you can be, you must face those repressed memories and deal with them, or otherwise they shall terrorize you for the rest of your life."

Usually, whenever Starbuck had gone into these kind of conversations, she either reacted angrily or extremely emotionally, but, here and now, she saw that Turval was right. "I don't know how to do that, sir. I honestly don't know how to do that."

Turval knew of a way to do it, but he wasn't sure if it was wise. He continued the conversation for a while longer, and seemed to help ease Starbuck's mind a bit about things. When she had left, he traveled over to see Delenn, the current Interstellar Alliance president and an old friend of his.

"The Dreaming is safe for the humans, old friend, but why propose this? Surely there is another way to help her deal with all of this?" Delenn asked.

"We do not have the benefit of time, and irregardless, it seems to be the best way to handle the situation. Besides, if the Cylons consider her to be special, perhaps we could find out why during the Dreaming."

"If she agrees to this, someone will need to be her second."

That brought Turval up short, as if he hadn't thought of that. "Who do you suggest?"

"Me." Delenn said.

Starbuck didn't know Delenn all that well, but knew she was a friendly person, kind, compassionate. When they told her about this, she was hesitant at first, but then realized that, if she was truly to be free of her childhood pain, she had to confront this. They brought her to a Minbari temple, which was so old that Starbuck wondered if it was older than the Colonies themselves.

She drank some kind of tonic that streamed, and a chill ran down her body as it made its way through her digestive system. Delenn took the carafe from her and drank some of the potion as well, then led her through a passageway into an open area and towards a bench…where a vision overtook her.

She saw herself as a child again, in her father's dingy apartment in Delphi. It was hot and stuffy, and the power had been cut again. Her parents were arguing behind her, her mother shouting at her father about something that she couldn't make out. She was eight at the time, and saw herself playing the piano, dressed in a raggedy shirt and torn pants.

"Why are you playing the piano?" Delenn asked.

"To drown out the noise of the argument." Starbuck asked.

Starbucks's parents came down stairs and continued the argument, each getting more and more agitated as it went on. Her mother was a big, blond haired woman who was very muscular. It was in sharp contrast to her father, who was tall, but thin, and his hands seemed like that of an artist. As they spared in the room, young Kara Thrace continued to play the piano, seemingly oblivious to the argument.

Suddenly, the mother walked to the piano, took the cover and slammed it down on her daughter's fingers, yelling, "Will you shut the hell up with that frakking piano!" Delenn cried out, "In Valen's name!" and shook at the sudden act of violence. "I can't believe any mother could ever do that to their own child."

Starbuck's eyes welled with tears, but she stood still, only saying, "She did, and that's not the worst of it." As the young child cried, clutching her fingers, the mother slapped her in the face hard and roared, "Suck it up, you bitch! You're such a wimp!" Her father tried to go to Kara, but her mother manhandled him away from her and continued with the argument.

The visions shocked Delenn, as she saw several more scenes of Kara's mother beating her over very trivial things, and it shook her to the bone. Being a mother herself, the thought of doing any kind of harm to her son David repulsed her. Seeing Kara's mother do it without hesitation cut deep inside her, so much so that it made seeing friends of hers die in front of her seem relatively easy to accept.

When it was over, the two women were sitting on a bench, embracing each other. "Thank you," Starbuck said through a sob, which Delenn would have replied to if not for her own sobbing. They sat there for a while until the doors opened and one of the young acolytes came in to inquire about the two of them. "Yes, we're fine, after a fashion." Delenn said, wiping tears out of her eyes and helping a clearly emotionally drained Starbuck to her feet. Shakily, they walked out of the room and back through the temple.

Turval was there and when he saw the look on their faces, he immediately wondered if he had erred. Starbuck broke loose of Delenn and extended her hand, which Turval shook. "Thank you, Sech Turval. I feel…cleansed…now. Can I go back to my barracks now?"

"Yes, you may. The transport is waiting as we speak." Turval said gently. Starbuck turned back to Delenn and hugged her, the tears resuming in her eyes as she did so, whispering in her ear, "Thank you, Delenn."

"You're welcome, Kara." Delenn replied, who extended her hand in the traditional Minbari sign of departure with a friend. Starbuck did the same and she turned to leave with Turval.

Her son David walked up to her with two Rangers, saying, "There you are, mother! I was wondering where you had gone off to!"

She looked up at her young son, seventeen years old and so very close to adulthood, and smiled, "I'm okay now, son." She hugged him tight, and the intensity of the embrace surprised him, as she hadn't hugged him like that as a child. "What was that for?" he asked.

Delenn looked up at her son, who achingly looked so much like his father, and said, "Just to let you know that I love you! Now come!" She led him and the other Rangers out of the temple and back to her residence.

Boomer always flinched when Starbuck came into their billet. She hadn't known why Starbuck had gone away that day and missed training, but the teachers hadn't made anything of it. Starbuck sat down in front of Boomer and stared at her for a moment. Boomer looked at her, puzzled at the expression on her face. "So how did it go?" she asked hesitantly.

Instead of replying, Starbuck got up and hugged her. Boomer froze up at first, expecting for a split second an attack from her, given everything that had happened, but soon accepted the embrace. "I forgive you!" said Starbuck, who began to cry. "I've been so cruel to you, for no good reason!"

"Why?" Boomer asked, wondering what prompted this display of affection and emotion.

"Because we're as much to blame for what happened as you are. But you've done so much to help us that I can't blind myself to it anymore."

Boomer's eyes teared up as well, and she returned the embrace, and Starbuck realized that she had regained her old friend, even if this wasn't the exact same old Boomer.