Chapter 28
(Lee's POV)

I can see the doubt in her eyes, no, it's not doubt, it's something deeper than that: it's disbelief. Kara is absolutely convinced that I am about to walk out on her, it is as simple as that. That is the last thing I had been expecting and the truth is that I don't know what the frak it is that I am supposed to be doing here, especially because I get the funny feeling that no matter what I say she is not likely to believe me and that the only thing I could possibly hope to accomplish here would be to dig myself into a deeper hole.

Sure, I knew coming in that this wasn't going to be easy, the old man had already warned me about that, but I hadn't really expected to find myself up against the wall in a matter of minutes either. I guess in a way I had managed to convince myself that somehow I was going to come in here and know what to say, what to do, to make it all better and all of a sudden I am being confronted by the realization that that's just not going to happen, that fixing this is going to take time and patience, that there are no magic words that can make this all better in a matter of minutes and that --as good as our intentions may be-- we can still pretty much count on the fact that Kara is going to fight us every damned step of the way.

I may not want to accept it but what I am up against here is a lifetime of indoctrination that has left her absolutely convinced of the fact that she is a screw-up, and an unlovable screw-up at that, and that is an indoctrination that is going to be hard for me to break. The thing is that even though I find her acceptance of what was done to her to be sickening, I don't think there's any way for me to convey to her that I'm disgusted by what was done to her, not by her... and that even if I could somehow manage to get that point across she would still probably perceive my horror as pity.

Of course, even if I don't want to admit it, the truth is that there really is an element of pity to it. I can't help it but at the same time I don't think that's likely to do me much good, especially because I know Kara's stubborn pride is bound to find that pity offensive.

In other words, I've been here for a little more than ten minutes and I'm already feeling as if I were banging my head against a wall... a wall that looks an awful lot like my best friend. Sure, I know I have to try to set Kara's mind at ease --that is my top priority-- but I also know that that is going to be easier said than done because no matter what I say she is not likely to believe me. That bugs me but I know there is nothing I can do about it so I decide that taking her to the mess may well be my best bet, at least in the short term. After all, that is why I came here in the first place and the bottom line is that if there's no way for me to tell her that I'm not going anywhere --at least not in terms she is likely to understand-- I am going to have no choice but to show her, even though that is bound to take a while.

In a way that is kind of funny. Yesterday I was all but certain that my father was exaggerating when he told us that we were going to have to come up with some sort of strategy to deal with this whole mess. After all, even though we were all more than a little shocked by the day's revelations I figured that when all was said and done we were still talking about Kara and that Kara was a known quantity, now I'm beginning to realize that the old man was probably right, that this is going to be twice as hard and probably take four times as long as I had been expecting it to... and that even that is likely to turn out to be a conservative estimate.

The problem is that while on a rational level I am willing to accept that, there's also a part of me that just wants its best friend back and it wants her back right frakking now. I want us to go back to the way things used to be before this whole thing came out, even though deep down I know that that's never going to happen, that one way or another things have already changed and that there's absolutely nothing I can do to unchange them.

I hate this tension between us and I hate the fact that I don't know just what the frak it is that I'm dealing with here. I hate feeling almost as if Kara were a ticking time bomb... though come to think of it that part is not really all that new. In a way she has always been a ticking time bomb but while up until yesterday my main concern when dealing with that particular bomb was that saying the wrong thing could cause me to find myself on the receiving end of her temper -- not to mention her fists-- now I'm more worried about protecting her, about keeping her safe, about the fact that I could easily end up saying something that could really hurt her and that fear is definitely something new.

I used to think that Kara was pretty much unbreakable, now I'm beginning to realize that not only isn't she unbreakable but in a way she is already broken... and the worst part is that I don't have a clue as to what the frak it is that I am supposed to do with all these little pieces.