Kara was in a verge of forgetting her painful headache in order to go to the CIC and murder one Karl C. Agathon for even mentioning the subject of her father.
"You know what? Forget it," Lee said immediately. Maybe he should leave it to another time." He wanted to know but he didn't want to trouble her… not now. "It was not my place to ask."
"How much did Karl tell you?" she inquired in a low voice.
"It's okay, Kara," he said. "Let it go."
"Lee, what did he tell you?" she insisted in a higher tone.
"Not much. He just mentioned that you were close and that he died when you were nine," Lee told her. "He refused to tell me more than that. But I had a feeling that there was more about that story than he wanted to show…"
She knew what Helo was doing. Mentioning my dad casually? She thought. I don't think so. He was playing the shrink; he had been doing that for years. Helo would plot, casually make arrangements so she would end up doing what he thought was right. 'Tell him stuff about your past,' he had said. Plus, what annoyed her the most was that things usually turned out well after his interventions and the bastard knew it. He kept trying to fix her and he was damn good at it; that was the reason why she hated him and, at the same time, why she loved him – in a brotherly sort of way.
"I'm sorry, Kara, I shouldn't have brought this up," Lee apologized again, beating himself in the inside for picking that blasted time to shoot such a question. "Just forget I even mentioned this."
Kara looked at him. Should she tell Lee? The story was painful by itself. Deep inside, she considered herself guilty for what had happened to her father. But it was Lee, everything seemed so much easier around him now… On the other hand, what would he think of her after hearing the story?
Then, there was another question. Yes, Lee kept telling her that it was okay if she didn't say anything, but wouldn't it create a gigantic elephant in the room called 'My dad is none of your business, Lee'? They had had a row less than one day before… It is all in the past. Keeping it a secret won't bring dad back or anything, she thought. Not telling Lee would imply that she didn't trust him. That story was just not worth ruining them. So, Kara did what she had to: she started to talk.
"When I was a kid, my dad was the only person who I could say for sure that loved me," she started. Lee looked at her surprised. He didn't expect her to actually tell him what he wanted to know right now. He noticed the internal struggle that the subject caused. "He was great but he also traveled a lot. And when he was away, my mom was the one who reigned in the house. She liked her booze, and had a heavy hand, if you understand me."
He did. Kara's mother beat her. That didn't surprise him; Kara had hinted it in the past.
"I never told my dad about that," she confessed. "I was afraid of what she'd do. But one day my dad came back early from a trip and found out…"
--
Caprica City – Several years ago
Nine-year-old Kara sat on her bed with her back turned to the door. She was icing her fingers. After a fight with her mother, Socrata Thrace grabbed her hands, put them against a door jamb and slammed the door on it, breaking all her fingers. It hurt her like hell but her mother wouldn't let her go to the hospital. She knew she had pushed too hard.
"Surprise!" Someone said, entering her room.
Kara turned around and saw her father by the door. "Dad! You're home!" He was only due to arrive in a month.
"I couldn't miss your birthday tomorrow, could I?" he asked her. "I managed to convince everyone to let me spend the weekend here with you."
She smiled, hiding her hands behind her back so he wouldn't see them.
Her father immediately noticed that something was not right. He knew his daughter too well.
"What's wrong, Kara?" James asked worriedly.
"Nothing," she murmured nervously.
"What are you hiding behind your back?" he insisted.
"It's nothing, Daddy," she lied again.
He approached her and gently pulled one of her arms from behind her back. She didn't resist. She knew it was inevitable that he saw her injuries.
James looked at his daughter's fingers horrified and pulled the other arm, seeing the same type of injuries in the opposite hand. Clearly broken, he thought.
"Kara, what happened to your hands?" he questioned in a troubled tone.
"I fell," she lied.
He gave her a look. "Tell me the truth, Kara. You know you can tell me anything," he said. Then, another thought filled his head. "Wait, why didn't your mother take you to the hospital already?"
Kara was terrified. Should she tell him? Her father was everything to her. She had been able to hide the fact that her mother beat her for years. But something told her that he was going to realize it pretty soon. Maybe that was her way out. "She did it," Kara whispered. "Momma did it."
There were no words to express what James felt at that moment… He knew immediately that his daughter was not lying. He needed to take her out of there. "Sweetie, wait in here while I talk to your mother," he instructed her as he reached for her schoolbag and emptied it.
"No, you can't!" Kara said terrified. "She'll…"
"She won't do anything," he assured her, filling his daughter's bag with clothes taken from one of her drawers.
"We're going away?" she asked, watching her father hurriedly packing her things. At that moment, the only thing she wanted was to run away from there, even though she would be leaving everything behind.
"For now," he simply said, closing the bag and putting on his daughter's back. Then, he left to his own room in order to face his wife. He was planning on keeping Kara with him until he managed to send Socrata to jail.
Kara sat back on her bed, and resumed icing her hands in order to ease the pain.
"How dare you hurt your own daughter like that?" she heard him yelling furiously at her mother.
"She had it coming," Socrata Thrace shot back.
"What did she do that would justify you breaking all her fingers?!" her father shouted. "I'm leaving and taking her with me. Expect a visit from the cops."
"Don't you dare!"
"Oh, yes I will," James told his wife, shutting the bedroom's door behind him.
Then, Kara heard footsteps in her direction and her bedroom door was opened. "Come on," her father told her. "Let's go."
She immediately followed her father out, trying to ignore her mother's threatens. "Where are we going?" Kara asked when they reached his car.
"To the hospital," he told her, taking the schoolbag away and opening the backseat's door, so she could come in. "We need to have those fingers checked."
James drove silently. He didn't know what to say. He just felt stupid for not noticing his daughter's abuse before… "Sweetie, why didn't you tell me before?" he asked her.
"Momma would be mad," Kara simply said. "I'm sorry."
He stopped in a red light and turned to look at her on the backseat. "It was not your fault."
"I provoked her," she pointed out. She had put spiders in her mother shoes, knowing it would cause her to freak out. It had been her own personal revenge for the previous beating.
"That doesn't justify what she did to you," he said, staring the car again. "You're safe now. I won't let her hurt you ever ag…"
He couldn't finish the sentence because at that same moment, a jeep coming from their side crashed into them in full speed, after passing a red light. Then, all Kara could hear was metal scrapping on the floor and glass breaking.
--
Present time
"He bled out before the paramedics arrived," Kara murmured expressionlessly to Lee, remembering these minutes spent watching her father die so clearly…. "I was conscious the whole time. Dislocated my shoulder, suffered a concussion, nothing too serious… and he died," she stated, shaking her head at the irony.
Lee was just looking at her, trying to imagine how she had felt seeing her father bleeding to death right in front of her and not being able to do anything. He just wanted to hug her, tell her it was okay. But, knowing Kara, right now the best thing was to let her cool down.
"If I hadn't told him anything," she murmured through her teeth, "he wouldn't have been in the car to begin with…" Part of her felt weak for not being able to keep her mouth shut about what her mother was doing… Weakness that had killed her father. So, after that day, she had done everything she could in order not to be weak again. She had fought everyone who cared for her… for their own good.
"Don't say that, Kara. You couldn't foresee that some guy would crash into you," Lee told her softly. His brain struggled to find the right words. "Accidents happen all the time."
"Like I've never heard that before," she stated exasperatedly. Helo, his mother, his sisters… basically everyone aware of the accident, except her mother, who blamed her entirely for the loss of her husband, had told her that it wasn't her fault over and over again. "But sometimes I find myself wondering how things would have turned out if I hadn't said anything. Maybe he'd still be alive."
Her way of thinking was starting to piss Lee off. "Or maybe he could have been hit by a bus a week later," he shot back. "Death is the most certain thing every human being has. He could have died a week later, a month later, a year later. Possibly, he could have died in a much painful way. So, Kara, just accept the fact that it was not your fault and that it could have been a lot worse."
"How worse?" she asked. In her mind, she couldn't imagine a feeling much worse.
"You could have died too," Lee said immediately. Gods forbid, he added in his head.
"Sometimes I wish I had," Kara whispered in defeat. All that chat made her think of the aftermath of the accident, how she had wished to die…
Lee's heart almost stopped by hearing that. He couldn't imagine a life without her, how could she wish something like that? "You don't mean that…"
"Yes I do, Lee!" she shouted.
"Then Helo would have lost his best friend, Zak would have never fallen in love and we wouldn't have met at all," he stated. Lee knew nothing would have been the same without her. "You should focus on the good moments you spent with your father instead of beating yourself up by how he died. You loved him and now all you have are the memories. Some people don't even have that. Just think of these moments…"
She smiled slightly as she searched in her mind for a good memory that involved James. She used to sit by her dad's side as he composed on his piano. He said she was his muse. They would spend hours there, just playing. "Gods, I really miss him," she said sadly.
Lee saw she was calmer now, so he moved closer to her and wrapped his arm around her frame silently. He touched her forehead and noticed that the fever was there again. He really should have waited for her to be better…
Kara sighed and rested against his chest exhausted. "You and Karl are a couple of wise asses," she told him, now trying to clear her mind of what they had been talking. "Pushy bastards."
"We only act like that with you," Lee informed her. "Someone needs to put some sense in that blond skull of yours," he joked, now feeling a lot less tense. "Are you okay now?"
"Not really," she said. She would be lying if she said she was okay. A single conversation wouldn't fix a lifetime of issues… "But I'm working on it."
"Okay." That was an acceptable answer, considering the circumstances. "Am I in trouble for touching the subject?" he inquired.
She looked up at him sleepily. "Not in as much trouble as Helo, considering you're the one feeding me and all…" Karl was the mastermind behind all that.
"Sucks to be him," Lee mumbled in relief. He recognized that the conversation they had just shared was a giant step in their relationship because, for the first time in his life, he really felt like he could understand Kara Thrace.
A/N: Not my best, I know... I won't be able to update as often as I used to do with my other fic due to college (college in Portugal sucks, believe me). This fic still had me unsure but your great reviews reassure me. I will try to update this weekend or sooner. Thank you for reading.