Chapter 60
(Lee's POV)

A part of me is still trying to figure out the implications of what Kara is saying but it's not so frakking simple. Sure, I understand her words but they just don't seem real. What she is saying is not something I ever imagined and it certainly is not something that can be easily reconciled with the almighty Starbuck but in spite of that I still can't quite quiet the little voice in the back of my mind that keeps telling me that I've failed, that I should have known somehow. She is my best friend, damn it, and yet I never knew. She never told me, she never trusted me and that hurts.

Oh, she has told me more than once since this whole thing began that this is not about trust and it is not about me and I think I am finally beginning to realize what she meant by that. Of course, I also suspect that what she meant is not exactly what she thought she meant.

Yes, I know that when she said this is not about me she was accusing me of being more than a little self-centered --and she may even have been right about that-- but I suspect that that is not the whole truth. I think Kara trusts me about as much as she can trust anyone but deep down she doesn't really know how to trust... and the fact that it's taken me this long to figure that one out does say something about how self-centered I have been. Hell, I knew how much I didn't know about her past all along but I never gave it much thought.

I knew her father had been a musician, I knew he had left when she was little and I knew that her mother was a subject that was strictly off-limits, but I never thought to wonder why and I certainly never pushed the issue.

The thing is that Kara has always been a sort of puzzle, one I have been trying to solve for a very long time and all of a sudden it is as if a bunch of additional pieces had been dumped on top of the ones I was already struggling with. That was unexpected and that has forced me to reevaluate the picture I thought I was putting together but at the same time there is no denying that they fit.

Kara was abused as a child and not just by Jonas. Oddly enough that is the part that is currently throwing me for a loop. Jonas I had been sort of expecting, I had tried to steel myself for what I knew I was going to hear about him but the role Socrata Thrace played in the whole thing is an entirely different matter, even if most of it was left unsaid.

Her mother knew what Jonas was doing and Kara knows she knew --and maybe even encouraged it-- but somehow I don't think that was the extent of it, in fact I know it was not.

Kara said that when Jonas was beating her she knew she could take it because it was not the first time she had been hit like that and she said it as if it were no big deal. For her that was just a passing statement but all of a sudden it was as if a bunch of those pieces that had never quite fit anywhere had clicked into place.

Her defense of my father had never quite made sense to me, not even after she told me about the role she had played in my brother's death. That had always been a point of contention between us, especially before the worlds ended. I remember getting mad at her for mocking my anger, an anger she seemed to think was ridiculous. It hurt, it bothered me... and now all of a sudden I have to admit that she was probably right all along because next to her mother my father has always been a frakking saint.

My childhood may not have been perfect but at least I never doubted the fact that my dad was 'safe'. He may have been away more than he was there and he may have cast a giant shadow but I knew he would never hurt me, not deliberately. Kara had no such certainty. She couldn't go home to look for comfort, she had no real escape and no one to turn to. Her mother was the one that brought Jonas into her life and there was not a frakking thing Kara could do about it. She was at their mercy... and in that regard I may even have been right when I told her that she had no control over the situation back then, just like she had no control with Simon and Leoben.

Frak, no wonder Jonas got mixed in with those bastards and no wonder Kara is such a frakking mess! I mean, back on New Caprica at least she knew there was a chance that someone would eventually get her out of that hell hole, she knew she was a prisoner but where the frak was she supposed to go when she was ten? She was a kid, she was abused in her own home --in her own frakking bed-- while her mother was there! That is the part that is bothering me. Jonas may have been a sick bastard but the bottom line is that he wasn't her father and protecting Kara wasn't supposed to be his responsibility. That duty fell squarely on Socrata Thrace's shoulders but she didn't... and, in a really twisted kind of way, that brings me back to my original problem. Her mother didn't protect her, she didn't keep her safe and as a result Kara learned early on that the only person she could trust was herself... and yet I keep asking her to trust me and getting mad at her when she doesn't.

That is something that is going to have to change... especially because it is not likely to get me anywhere. If I want her to trust me I'm going to have to take the first step and prove to her that I am 'safe'. That is not going to be easy but at least now I know what it is that I am up against ... well, part of it.

There are about a million other problems that we are also going to have to tackle, starting with Simon, Jonas and Leoben but at least now I think I've found one end of this thread... now all that's left for me to do is to try to untangle it.