Chapter 18
(Laura's POV)

I can see that the magnitude of the task at hand is finally beginning to sink in and I can also see that Bill is on the brink of panicking as a result, not that I blame him. I know he has probably never consider himself to be an ideal candidate to teach a remedial class in 'humanity 101' but that is exactly what he is going to have to do. One way or another he is going to have to help a woman in her late twenties learn things she should have been taught long before she was ten and he is going to have to do it by going against a lifetime of very harsh lessons. That is not going to be easy and the truth is that I'm relieved to see that he is aware of the difficulties he is bound to encounter, or at least of some of them. Of course, even though there's no denying that right now he is somewhat wary of some of the changes I'm suggesting --especially where he fears those changes might end up compromising military discipline-- I suspect that it won't be long before he finds himself embracing most of them. In fact I'm fairly certain that sometime in the next couple of weeks, once that overprotective streak of his kicks into overdrive, I'm going to have to have a friendly talk with him to remind him of the fact that his 'daughter' is perfectly capable of taking care of herself and our species is already on the brink of extinction so we really can't afford to have him tossing anyone he deems to be an unsuitable suitor out an airlock... but the time for that hasn't come, not yet anyway.

"Would you be willing to help me?" he asks after a moment of silence, bringing me back to the present and obviously feeling more than a little overwhelmed at the prospect.

"I can offer some suggestions but I can't get directly involved," I say, knowing that he is not going to be thrilled with that answer.

"Any particular reason? You certainly know more about this than I do," he points out, obviously not willing to back down.

"More than one, actually. First of all, even though it's true that I'm more familiar with the subject than you are, you know Lieutenant Thrace a lot better than I do and she trusts you more than she trusts me. Second, seeing how the one who hurt her was her mother I suspect that the fact that I am a woman would only serve to complicate matters, in fact from what I've seen she seems to relate to men a lot better than she does to other women, and finally because the bottom line is that I'm in no position to become a key player in anyone's support system."

"Why not?"

"Because this is going to take a while and what she needs is someone who can actually be there for her in the long run."

"So?" he insists, obviously not wanting to hear what I'm saying.

"I'm dying, Bill. Without some sort of miracle I have a couple of months at most and you know it," I remind him.

"But..."

"It's okay and that is not what this is about," I interrupt him, shifting the focus back to the subject at hand, knowing that even though we have never really talked about my condition, now is not the time for us to get into it. "This is about Lieutenant Thrace and the fact that if she is going to come to rely on anyone it has to be on someone that is actually going to be around to support her."

"Life has no guarantees, Laura. I should know. I was shot in my own CIC by one of my people, by someone I trusted."

"I know, but you survived and the chances of another such attack are slim."

"We are at war."

"Yes, and this is a battlestar in the front lines of that war. Believe me, I am well aware of that fact but the truth is that if the Galactica were to be destroyed the rest of the fleet would be doomed anyway so that is not really an issue. Right now we have to focus on what Lieutenant Thrace needs and that's not me. Who else knows about this?"

"Cottle, Lee and Helo," he replies.

"And how is your son taking it?"

"As well as can be expected, I guess."

"Meaning that he is having a hard time trying to come to terms with it, right?"

"It's been a shock, for both of us," he admits.

"But not so much for Lieutenant Agathon?"

"I don't think so. I haven't really had a chance to talk to him since we found out but then again he is not my son and I am his commanding officer. That means that he probably won't approach me with his personal concerns about this, though over all I suspect that he never thought of himself as being close enough to Kara to know everything about her in the first place... Lee and I, we thought she trusted us."

"She does, as much as she is capable of trusting anyone," I reassure him.

"And yet she never told us about this," he mutters, apparently still nowhere near ready to let that go.

"I'm sure there are things in your past you haven't told her, things you aren't exactly proud of... in fact there are probably things in your past you haven't even told your own son," I say letting out a sigh, wondering how many more times are we going to have to go over this before it finally sinks in.

"Yes, but..."

"Trusting someone doesn't mean that you tell them everything and you know it," I remind him.

"But this is different..."

"Perhaps, but not in the way you think. You may love that girl like a daughter, you may even have told her that much, but you have to keep in mind that she may not be able to understand what you mean by that. Her mother was the one that hurt her and I don't know where her father was but going by what you've said I assume he was out of the picture. "

"Yes, her parents divorced when she was seven."

"I see. Well, the good news is that if that is the case then she was old enough to actually remember him so the concept of being 'loved like a daughter' may not be completely alien to her," I say, knowing that that's yet another piece of the puzzle but not quite sure of just where it fits in.

"Then why didn't she tell me?"

"I can't tell you that, not really. In fact the best I can offer you is a guess and I am well aware of how you feel about guessing."

"If I'm going to be part of any kind of strategy to deal with this then the first thing I need to know is what 'this' is," he growls, still trying to approach the situation from a military perspective.

"You are not going to like this," I warn him.

"I already don't."

"I suspect that she was afraid and more than a little ashamed."

"Ashamed? Why would she be ashamed?"

"She values your opinion and if on some level she is convinced that she deserved everything she got then it would be only logical for her to be afraid that you would find out what she thinks is the 'truth' about who she is... either that or she never imagined that anyone could possibly care enough about her to get upset at the thought of her being hurt in the first place."

"Well, I care," he growls.

"Then you have to show her that you do, but you also have to be aware of the fact that her reactions will not always be the ones you would expect them to be. When it comes to this you are going to find yourself dealing with someone whose most basic perceptions are totally skewed, someone who has no idea of how to deal with someone who cares, and her responses are likely to reflect that. That means that you could easily end up walking straight into a minefield without even knowing it," I warn him.

"You are forgetting that I do know her," he reminds me.

"And that means that you actually stand a chance here but that doesn't mean that this is going to be easy --for either of you-- or that she isn't going to test you and lash out at you because the bottom line is that she has every reason to be wary and that is something you are just going to have to deal with. You care, I know you do, but getting her to understand that is going to be a challenge," I insist, knowing that that is the one thing Bill has to be fully aware of if he is to succeed in getting past her defenses. "As I said, the idea that someone might be upset at the thought of her being hurt years ago is probably going to be a new one for her. You said that Cottle had identified at least seventeen broken bones, that means that at least some people must have been aware of what was being done to her back then and that they deliberately chose to look the other way and she probably knew it. Even if they had their reasons, even if they didn't say anything because they didn't see how they could help, from her perspective the message was that no one cared enough to do anything about it and chances are that that only served to reinforce her perception that she deserved everything that happened to her."

"You seem to be taking this rather personally," Bill points out, out of nowhere, looking at me as if he were trying to put a puzzle together and I realize that I may have gotten a little carried away.

"Perhaps I am, but I have my reasons," I reply, feeling more than a little exposed in light of that comment and wishing that he would just let it go.

"And are you going to tell me what those reasons are?"

"No," I say, not really wanting to get into it.

"Why not?"

"Let's just say that I owe her and leave it at that."

"You are blaming yourself for what happened to her back on Caprica, aren't you?" he asks.

"Not exactly," I say with a sigh.

"Then why?"

"Would you believe me if I were to tell you that I just want to make amends?"

"Make amends? What for?"

"For looking the other way," I finally admit, thinking back to those children I didn't help when I had the chance because I was afraid, because I had managed to convince myself that the only thing I could possibly hope to accomplish by getting involved would have been to make matters worse for them. Those children are dead now, all of them. They died without knowing that anyone cared and there's nothing I can do to change that but Lieutenant Thrace is still alive. She is still here and that means that I have one final chance to at least try to make this right.