Chapter 64
(Adama's POV)

As much as I may not want to admit it, I have to say that Cottle's words do make a disgusting amount of sense... the problem is that I am still struggling to come to terms with what it all means. It has simply been too much, too fast. Less than twenty-four hours ago I was completely oblivious to the details of Kara's past. Two hours ago I had some inklings as to what it was that we were dealing with but absolutely no details. Now I wish I could go back to not knowing, even as I try to figure out how I could possibly have missed something like this... and if I am having a hard time trying to wrap my mind around the implications of this thing, I don't even want to imagine how Lee is doing. Granted, except for a monumentally stupid outburst Lee has managed to keep his tongue in check but that doesn't mean this isn't hitting him and hitting him hard. I can see the anger in his eyes, I know that anger is looking for an outlet and because of that I suspect that his silence is not going to last.

"So we are just going to sit around pretending that that damage isn't there because it 'wasn't inflicted by Leoben'?" he asks before I can even finish that thought.

"No, unfortunately it is not that simple," says Cottle.

"'Unfortunately'?" he repeats.

"Yes."

"Are you crazy?!" he blurts out, with a total disregard for military protocol, however I decide to let it slide. We are here as Kara's family --not as her commanding officers-- so it wouldn't be fair to bring military discipline into this. Besides, Lee is currently the one who is spending the most time with her and the better his understanding of what we are up against is, the less likely he is going to be to make an even bigger mess out of this one. That means that he has to be allowed to ask his own questions.

"No," comes Cottle's rather predictable reply, though I don't think that is going to satisfy Lee... hell, it's not even going to satisfy me.

"Then how the frak can you say that?" growls my son, obviously not happy with that answer.

"Because it is not so simple," he insists before going on. "Yes, most of the damage was inflicted long before Leoben came along but the damage inflicted by that damn skin-job is not separate or self-contained and that means that we are going to have no choice but to address it as well."

"And that's a bad thing?" he asks, still glaring at the doctor.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because, for better or for worse, before New Caprica Starbuck had a coping mechanism, one that enabled her to function. It may not have been pretty and it may not have been healthy but it worked. The problem is that Leoben managed to breach those defenses, leaving the original damage exposed and forcing her to confront it. Yes, she knew all along what Jonas and the others had done to her, she had sort of come to terms with it years ago but chances are that as a child she didn't fully understand what it all meant. These past few months probably changed that and forced her to face it from an adult's perspective. That is what she couldn't take and that is what we are going to have one hell of a time trying to help her come to terms with. It is also what is going to make 'going back to the way things used to be' impossible. If the damage inflicted by Leoben --which is not nearly as extensive as it should have been-- had been self-contained, addressing that damage would have been relatively easy and that would have taken us back to the way things were before New Caprica, unfortunately it is not that simple... which is exactly what I said when you first asked me if we were just going to pretend that that damage wasn't there because it wasn't inflicted by Leoben."

"But if the damage inflicted by Leoben is not self-contained and we are going to have to address the damage inflicted by Jonas and the others anyway, why did you say that the good news is that the damage inflicted by Leoben is minimal?" I ask, seizing up on that apparent contradiction and hoping to find something --anything-- that would allow me to refute Cottle's words.

"Because Leoben didn't break her," he explains.

"He didn't break her? She tried to kill herself, for frak's sake!" Lee exclaims.

"I said that Leoben didn't break her but that doesn't mean she isn't 'broken'. That was precisely the point of my little analogy, in case you didn't notice," replies the doctor, openly rolling his eyes at my son. "Of course, I also said that the damage is not self-contained, that this is a mess and that the damage goes deeper than we had expected it to go but that is not the point. The point is that because he didn't take into account the damage inflicted by Jonas, Leoben made a mistake and that in turn is what is giving us an unexpected opening here."

"Leoben made a mistake?"

"Yes."

"What kind of a mistake?" I jump in, almost as desperate for a glimmer of hope as I suspect Lee is.

"He tried to used sex to convince her that he loved her and she loved him. Granted, his primary purpose was to impregnate her and in that regard sex was not optional, but that was not the extent of it and I think we all know that. The thing is that, given that chances are that Starbuck doesn't see sex as most of us do, Leoben's approach was fundamentally flawed. You see, while most of us associate sex with love, at least to a certain extent, chances are that for her those two things have nothing to do with each other. From her perspective sex can probably be about a lot of things but love is unlikely to be one of them."