Chapter 17
(Adama's POV)

I'm trying to digest what Laura's been telling me but this is not an easy thing for me to come to terms with, far from it.

Sure, on a rational level I know that what she is saying makes sense --perhaps it even makes more sense than I care to contemplate-- but at the same time I don't want to admit what it means as far as Kara is concerned. It's as if in the last couple of hours my whole perception of the woman I love as if she were my daughter had been completely altered and I'm not sure I know what to make out of any of this.

I'm still thinking about that when all of a sudden I remember something else Cottle mentioned: he told me that this required a specialist's touch but that we are fresh out of specialists only --if Laura's words are anything to go by-- that may not be entirely true. Oh, I'm sure a school teacher is not exactly what he had in mind when he said that but I think under the circumstances it is the best we can do. From what I've heard here Laura obviously knows what she is talking about and the bottom line is that I trust her.

In other words, while the resources I have available to me are not exactly the ones I was hoping for, with a little luck they are going to be enough to make do... if nothing else they are certainly a lot closer to what I need than the ones I thought I had at my disposal only a few minutes ago.

"So, what am I supposed to do?" I ask, rather reluctantly, not particularly thrilled at the thought of relinquishing control but knowing that I'm going to have to follow her lead on this one because this is something she is far more familiar with than I am.

"Are you sure you want to do this, Bill? It's not going to be easy, in fact it's going to be harder than you can even imagine, and there can be no turning back," she warns me.

"I don't have a choice. I know and she knows I know, that means that whether I was ready for this or not doesn't really matter because that first step has already been taken and the only thing I can do is to try to move forward."

"Okay but you can't do this as 'The Commander'. If you are going to do this you are going to have to do it as her 'father' and I do mean her full-time father."

"That's going to be a problem," I reply, not even trying to pretend that I don't understand what she is saying but knowing that this is a battlestar and discipline has to be maintained.

"I am aware of that but luckily I don't think you have to worry too much about the possibility of having this spill over to a more public arena or of having Lieutenant Thrace trying to take advantage of the situation. From what I've seen she is a very proud woman and that means that she will almost certainly do everything in her power to keep this quiet."

"I guess I can live with that," I say, knowing that I don't really have much of a choice because, as everyone keeps reminding me, there can be no turning back.

"And you are also going to have to open up to her... and yes, Bill, that does mean that you are going to have to talk about your feelings."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I know you. You are not a demonstrative man by any stretch of the imagination and you like to keep your feelings and emotions to yourself but this time around that's just not going to cut it. You want Lieutenant Thrace to open up and trust you? That's fair enough but you have to keep in mind that from her perspective the whole experience is going to be downright terrifying. You are going to be asking her to do something she has never done before, something she doesn't really know how to do and has every reason to believe is a very bad idea. You are going to have to show her the way and hope that eventually she'll feel safe enough to follow... and it probably wouldn't hurt if you were to pull that girl into a hug every now and then."

"I don't hug and neither does Kara," I say, knowing that I have to draw the line somewhere.

"Believe me, I've noticed, and that's precisely the point," she replies with a rather infuriating smile, obviously not willing to back down.

"What are you getting at?"

"I'm going to be blunt with you here, Bill. From what I've seen I think it's safe to say that there are two kinds of touch that girl understands: sex and violence. Anything else and she feels completely lost ... and I'm not even sure this applies just to touch. In fact I suspect that that is one of the main reasons why she keeps pushing your son's buttons like she does: because she is trying desperately to keep their relationship in terms she knows how to handle but, no matter what she does, their relationship just does not fit within those terms and that terrifies her."

"You seem to be forgetting that she was engaged once," I remind her, almost as a matter of principle, though I can't help but to acknowledge that she does have a point, that Kara does have a tendency to push Lee's buttons every chance she gets, a tendency I had never really been able to understand --at least not until now-- but one that Laura has somehow managed to explain with only a couple of sentences.

"I haven't forgotten and I'm not denying that your younger son may have found a way past her defenses but he is not here now so I can only go by what I've seen and that is a young woman who can barely keep herself from flinching when you get too close, though I suspect that that's not her true nature. Did I ever tell you what happened when your son blew up that tylium refinery?" she asks, seemingly out of nowhere.

"No."

"She was standing next to me at the time, everyone was celebrating and for a moment she forgot herself and hugged me. She let go almost immediately but I pulled her back. Her first reaction at that was to stiffen but eventually she relaxed and even managed to return that hug... in fact for a moment she was almost clinging to me."

"Starbuck?" I ask, rather surprised at that, especially because I remember her reaction in the couple of instances in which I did try to hug her and 'relaxed' is most definitely not the first word that comes to mind which, come to think of it, is pretty much the point Laura has been trying to make all along.

"Yes... and then there was her reaction to your son when she came back from Caprica a few days ago."

"What happened?" I ask, allowing my curiosity to get the best of me.

"He was so relieved to see her more or less in one piece that he forgot himself and kissed her. It wasn't a particularly intimate kiss but I think he poured a little more emotion into it than she knew how to deal with so she tried to defuse the whole situation with some flip remark about how she too was happy to see him. Of course, then we became aware of 'Sharon's' presence and the incident was all but forgotten but it was still telling. The thing is that when you say that Kara doesn't hug you are right but only to a certain extent because the truth is that by nature she is a very physical person. Remember what I said a while ago about how somewhere in there is a little girl who probably still believes that she deserved everything she got?"

"Yes," I say, not entirely sure of what Laura is getting at.

"Well, I suspect that even though 'Starbuck' doesn't hug, that little girl does... or she would if she were to be given half a chance."

"You keep talking about that girl almost as if she were a separate entity," I point out, somewhat puzzled by that fact.

"Believe me, I know she's not, though at times it's almost easier to think about her in those terms. The thing is that the fact that she is not a separate entity is precisely what makes this so tricky because you can't hope to reach her without going through Starbuck first and that is going to be a formidable task. The problem is that for that little girl --Kara for lack of a better name-- actions speak louder than words. That means that telling her that it wasn't her fault is not an option so you are going to have to show her but reaching her without causing Starbuck to bolt in the process is going to be close to impossible."

"Only 'close to impossible'?" I ask, not even trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice at the thought.

"Well, you know her better than I do but I'm fairly certain you can do it."

"I'm not so sure about that," I admit.

"Oh, it's going to be hard and it's also going to be a balancing act, I'm not denying that, but I suspect that you can take advantage of the fact that Kara and Starbuck communicate mostly on different levels, that Starbuck responds to words better than she does to touch and Kara responds to touch better than she does to words, to reach them both."

"Care to explain that a little better?"

"I mean that you can try to address your touch to Kara and your words to Starbuck, at least until you can get Starbuck to accept your touch as being 'normal'."

"I'm still not sure I understand what you are suggesting," I admit, feeling completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of what we're dealing with here. When I talked to Cottle earlier he mentioned something about how which bones were broken and when was the least of our worries but at the time I didn't fully realize what he meant by that. Now I think I'm finally beginning to understand how much deeper the damage that was done to Kara really runs and why this is not so much about bones that were broken years ago or about what I might perceive as a lack of trust and the truth is that it terrifies me.

"I can't tell you what to do, Bill, not exactly, because in the end it all depends on Lieutenant Thrace's reactions but trying to predict what those are going to be like is all but impossible. What I can tell you, however, is that you have to be yourself... you can't do this by trying to pretend that you are someone else."

"But could you at least give me an example, some sort of starting point?" I insist, still trying to figure out what the safest approach would be under the circumstances, knowing that making a mistake is not an option but also almost painfully aware of the fact that this is far from the kind of battle I'm used to fighting.

"Okay, this whole thing came about because Lieutenant Thrace didn't tell you that she was hurt and you were not happy about that, right?" she asks after thinking things over for a moment.

"Yes."

"Well, then maybe the next time you see her you could hug her while you tell her that you are glad to have her back so that you can kill her yourself."

"That doesn't sound particularly reassuring," I point out, though there's no denying that what Laura is suggesting does come pretty close to what I feel like doing anyway, if nothing else it does accurately sum up how I feel about Kara's latest stunt.

"And that's precisely the point. It would be something relatively normal, it would hopefully introduce the element of touch to your relationship in a non-threatening manner and it would serve to set her mind at ease, especially because I suspect that right now what she needs more than anything is to know that you don't think any less of her because of what her mother did to her. She needs to know that you are not going to start treating her any differently as a result of what you have just learned so not going easy on her is probably the best thing you can do and, with a little luck, keeping it in those terms will also make it possible for you to get Starbuck to accept the idea of being hugged without panicking."