For notes warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1
Additional warning: While absolutely non-descriptive, this chapter could probably be described as deeply disturbing (see author's notes at the end for somewhat spoilerish additional information).

Scene 8: The Other Side of the Wall
(Age: 10)

As soon as Kara got home she heard them. Great! By the sound of things her mom and her man of the month were going at it hard. Well, if nothing else at least the good news was that apparently this time around they weren't in the living room. That was definitely an advantage.

Rolling her eyes, Kara made her way to her room, determined to ignore the sounds coming from the other side of the wall as best she could, though the truth was that --in a freaky kind of way-- those sounds were kind of comforting. In a freaky kind of way those sounds were more than a little reassuring.

Kara really didn't like her mom's current boyfriend but --seeing how she had no say on the matter-- the only thing she could do was to try to stay out of his way... not that that was always possible. Unlike most of the ones that had come before him, the guy her mom was dating didn't just ignore her, sometimes he actually came looking for her and --even though she really didn't like that-- Kara knew all too well that she couldn't fight him off any more than she could fight off her mom.

Besides, deep down she knew that trying to fight back would have been a bad idea. Trying to fight back would only have served to either make him mad --and matters worse-- or to get him to leave. Sure, the idea of him leaving sounded great in theory but the problem with that was that Kara knew that would make her mom really, really mad and that was something she desperately wanted to avoid. It was better just to try to endure and wait for him to get tired and leave on his own.

Of course, the fact that her mom's current boyfriend was one of her least favorite ones didn't mean that the ones that had come before him had been much better. In fact, in the three years since her dad had left, her mom had gone through almost three dozen guys and Kara hadn't liked a single one of them. None of them were exactly what she would have described as 'nice men', not by a long shot. They were all there for one thing and one thing only. For the most part they didn't even bother trying to pretend that they cared, of course --as far as Kara was concerned-- that was definitely a lot better than having any of them trying to play happy families.

The thing was that, no matter how much she despised some of the men her mom had brought into their home, and in spite of the fact that as far as she was concerned they ranged from bad to awful, Kara knew that, for the most part, they were the ones who kept food on the table and clothes on her back. That was the bottom line, especially because she knew her mom was drinking so much that there was no way she could even hope to keep a job for more than a couple of weeks. In fact, ever since she had been discharged from the Marines, her mom had switched jobs more often than she had switched men and that was saying something.

The way Kara saw it they came, they frakked and they left. That was all there was to it... or at least that was all there was to it usually. Unfortunately there were also some exceptions to that rule, exceptions like the man currently frakking her mother in the next room.

Kara knew that as long as her mom kept her boyfriend 'busy' she was safe. She knew that as long as they were frakking neither one of them was going to come looking for her. That meant that, with a little luck, maybe they would leave her alone long enough for her to at least finish her homework. Sure, homework didn't exactly rate near the top of Kara's list of favorite things to do but,seeing how her teacher was on the nosy end of the spectrum, she knew she had to be careful not to give her an excuse to pull her aside for one of her 'talks'. Besides, even if she didn't like doing her homework, it wasn't like she had anything better to do, especially if she didn't want to draw their attention once they were done.

Kara knew it was still pretty early, she knew the day was still far from over and that was not necessarily a good thing, not to mention that she still had a very long night ahead of her but maybe --if she was really, really lucky-- for once her mom's boyfriend would actually get what he wanted from her mom. That was what she was counting on because it would mean that maybe, just maybe, he would have no reason to come looking for her once her mom had passed out.

Author's notes: Hi guys, okay I'm wearing my fire-retardant suit, just to be on the safe side, but before you flame me to a crisp please give me a chance to explain why I decided to include this scene.

First of all, I know there are no explicit references in canon to Kara being sexually abused as a child and I know many would argue that the fact that her mother is depicted as something of a religious fanatic can be seen as evidence against such a thing. The only problem with that theory is that it is based on the assumption that the Colonials' religion shares its core values when it comes to sex with monotheistic earth religions and that is a pretty big stretch (in fact it would seem to contradict most of what we see on-screen in terms of the characters' attitudes toward sex). In other words, while the objection would seem to be a natural one from our perspective, it can't really withstand much scrutiny in the context of the show.

On the other hand, given the fact that I've been going with a scenario in which Kara's mother is an alcoholic who has a hard time holding a regular job, it is not too far-fetched to assume that she would bring a long string of rather unsavory 'boyfriends' into her daughter's life... and the sad fact is that under those circumstances what would have been unusual would have been for Kara not to have been molested at some point.

Either way, this is the only scene in the series dealing with this particular subject.

Thanks for putting up with me and please review!

Alec