Chapter 63
(Cottle's POV)

We are waiting for the Admiral to join us and I am taking advantage of the opportunity to at least try to get my thoughts in some semblance of order, something I know I am going to need in the next few minutes. Yes, the situation is bad, it would be foolish not to acknowledge that, but at the same time we may have stumbled onto an unexpected blessing here. Of course, trying to get the Adamas to see it that way is probably going to take a minor miracle and even if I can pull it off... well, let's just say that they are not going to like what I have to say and leave it at that.

I am still thinking about that when Bill finally joins us.

"How is she?" asks Apollo.

"Asleep... or at least that's what she wanted me to believe. Would you mind telling me what the frak were you thinking in there?" he growls.

"I know it was stupid, believe me, but I..."

"But what, hearing about it was more than you could take?" he snaps, glaring at his son.

"I'm sorry, but I... I was having a hard time imagining Kara..."

"I know, son, but she didn't need that sort of outburst... especially not from you."

"I know," he admits.

"So what happens now?" asks the Admiral, turning his attention to me.

"Nothing."

"'Nothing'?" he repeats.

"There is nothing for us to do," I explain.

"How can you say that?" he pushes, obviously not satisfied with that explanation.

"Because it's the truth?" I reply before adding. "This may make it a little easier for us to see what we are dealing with and to understand where she is coming from. That is definitely a good thing but our most pressing concern has to be coping with the consequences of what she's been through in these past few months and in that regard nothing has changed. This information may make a difference in terms of her long term prognosis, that is true, but even that is far from certain."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there is bad news, worse news and even some good news, though the bad news aren't really new, the worse news are something we already suspected and the good news... let's just say that I'm not sure how good those good news are to begin with," I say with a shrug.

"Explain," Bill prompts me, and I know that the fact that he has reverted to one word commands is not a good sign.

"The bad news is that she is a mess. As I said, that's not news. The worse news is that this mess goes deeper than we had originally thought..."

"And the good news?" he prods when I trail off.

"And the good news is where things get more than a little ironic."

"Ironic?"

"To say the least. The good news is that, thanks to what she went through with Jonas and the others, the damage inflicted by Leoben may in fact turn out to be minimal."

"But you just said that the worse news are that this mess goes deeper than you expected it to go, so how can the damage be minimal?"

"Because the fact that it goes deeper may also mean that the damage we have to deal with is less extensive."

"I'm afraid I'm still not following you."

"It's fairly simple, the key to my original statement is 'the damage inflicted by Leoben'. Let me see if I can explain it a little better. Have either of you ever thrown something like a bottle of Ambrosia against a wall?" I ask.

"A couple of times," admits the Admiral, beating his son to it.

"And what happened?" I prod.

"It shattered and its content spilt," comes the rather predictable answer.

"Okay, now assume that instead of that bottle you had thrown a fistful of those resulting shards against the same wall using the same force, would the results have been the same?"

"No, of course not. The bottle would have been broken already and there would have been no contents left to spill, not to mention that shards are harder to break in the first place," he replies, obviously still not seeing what I'm getting at.

"So there would have been no additional damage?" I insist.

"I didn't say that, but the damage would certainly have been less. Some of the shards may have broken into smaller pieces but that would probably have been the extent of it."

"Exactly."

"What are you saying?" he insists, though I suspect that that is due more to the fact that he does not want to see than to his not understanding what I'm trying to tell him. The problem is that either way that means I am going to have to spell it out for him, for them... and the bottom line is that Bill is not the one who is going to have the most trouble coming to terms with that explanation.

"It's fairly simple: Leoben tried to break Starbuck and he obviously managed to do some damage but that damage was mitigated by the fact that what he was trying to break was already broken," I explain before going on. "Now, that doesn't change much in terms of what we are dealing with when it comes to Starbuck's current condition but it may mean that the long term outlook is less dire than we had expected it to be because our focus is on the damage inflicted by Leoben and that damage is in fact minimal."

"Because most of the damage was inflicted by Jonas, long before Leoben came along?" he asks, finally putting the pieces together.

"Pretty much," I reply, though I seriously doubt that that is going to be the end of this.