Chapter 30
(Adama's POV)

Kara is still standing in front of me and I am looking at her and wondering what the frak am I supposed to do next. The truth is that I wasn't expecting something like this, though I probably should have been.

Sure, I knew we had a lot to talk about, that's why I asked her to come see me in the first place, but I hadn't expected the trauma from what she went through on Caprica to be quite so raw... or maybe I just hadn't expected it to take this particular form. I had expected her to be angry and maybe even afraid after what she had seen on the planet she used to call home but I hadn't expected her guilt to override everything else... and that was obviously a mistake.

Even though at times it feels like the attacks happened a very long time ago, the truth is that it's only been a couple of months and, even though she is a soldier, Kara is still young. She may be the best pilot I have ever seen and she may have taken out dozens or even hundreds of raiders but the keyword in that statement is 'pilot'. Up until she went back to Caprica Kara had never encountered the gray areas that can only be experienced on the ground. The closest she had ever come had been that situation on the 'Astral Queen' and I don't think that came even close. Like she said, out here things are usually simple, clear cut... down there it is a very different story. On the ground the lines have a tendency to get blurred and the decision she had to make, without the benefit of a chain of command to help her ease the guilt, is obviously taking its toll on her.

Mercy killings may be a mercy but they are still hell on the ones left to pull the trigger.

Deep down I know what I have to do, it's what I had been meaning to do all along but the problem is that I'm still not sure how to do it. Almost hesitatingly I put my hand on her shoulder and I feel her tense up immediately. She looks up at me, rather startled, and I can see the confusion reflected in her eyes. I can see that she is torn between fighting and fleeing and that she knows she can't really do either. Knowing that taking this slow is not going to help me, that it would only serve to prolong the agony, I decide to bite the bullet and I pull her close.

Not surprisingly, her initial reaction at that is to stiffen and to almost instinctively pull away but I fight the urge to let go of her, knowing that this is a hurdle we have to get past here and that if I were to let go of her now we would just have to do this all over again sooner rather than later. After a couple of seconds she relaxes a little and she even manages to return the hug in her own, rather awkward, way. It's almost as if she didn't even know what it is that she is supposed to be doing with her arms and I am somewhat taken aback by just how right holding her like this actually feels. It is not much but I know it is a first step so we just stay like that in silence for a few seconds but eventually I have no choice but to let go of her.

After leading her to the couch and getting her to sit down next to me I look at her again, trying to gauge just where we stand but the problem is that what we have here is trauma piled upon trauma and I can already see that peeling back the layers is going to take a while.

There is the aftermath of what she did on Caprica plus the trauma of what happened to her there in the first place, to say nothing of her guilt over how she left and what happened as a result... and that doesn't even begin to take into account all this crap about her past that has probably been dragged to the surface in light of the recent revelations. In other words, what worries me is not so much that I don't know what the problem is but rather that I'm not sure which problem I am supposed to tackle first... and I am afraid that trying to tackle them in the wrong order would cause the whole unstable heap to come crashing down.

Well, the good news is that I think so far I'm doing okay... the bad news is that awful feeling of one down, about ten thousand to go I can't quite get rid of. Yes, this hasn't blown up on my face --at least not yet-- but the fact that it hasn't doesn't mean that it won't.

"So, how are you feeling?" I ask, rather awkwardly, not knowing what else to say but trying to get the conversation back on track.

"I'm good," she says, not meeting my eyes.

"I know Caprica was hard and you probably don't want to hear this but... you did good. You were given an almost impossible mission and you managed to pull it off. Against all odds you managed to come home, Kara, and that is more than I had dared to hope for."

"Yeah, and I broke about every damned rule in the book in the process," she mutters.

"Not nearly as many as you think."

"So you are defending me to me now?"

"No, but... I may not have been happy about it at the time but I will acknowledge that you were put in an untenable situation. You were caught between me and the president and that was not your fault. In that regard you did what you had to do and I understand... I won't pretend I wasn't mad at the time, but the truth is that you did what you were supposed to do."

"Sir?"

"The president and I may have an unofficial agreement that says that she is supposed to stay out of military matters --and she did break it by sending you back to Caprica-- but the fact is that she broke it, not you. The President of the Twelve Colonies is the Commander in Chief of all Colonial Forces and even though that Commander in Chief is not supposed to actively command the troops, legally she does outrank me and has the power to countermand me if she wants to. As Commander in Chief the president can make use of all military assets as she sees fit and she certainly has the authority to order a member of the military to go out on a covert, or even a suicide, mission without having to ask for my approval."

"So you are not mad at me?" she asks, sounding incredibly young and I can't help but to smile at that.

"No, at least not any more. I'm just glad to have you back... I don't think I had really told you that before," I say and am somewhat taken aback by the surprise I can see reflected in her eyes.

"Believe me, I'm glad to be back too," she replies, rather awkwardly.

"I can imagine... but that doesn't mean we don't have some things we need to discuss."

"But I thought you said you were not mad at me."

"And I'm not," I reassure her.

"Then why...?"

"I need to know what happened back on Caprica, that's all."

"I jumped back, went to the museum looking for the arrow and that's where I first ran into that blonde bitch. I managed to take her out but not without almost getting myself killed in the process and then Helo was there. I was so happy to see him. He had 'Sharon' with him. That's when I realized that she had to be a cylon but he wouldn't let me shoot her... he told me she was pregnant with his child. We were arguing about it and Sharon took advantage of the opportunity to steal my raider so Helo and I were basically stuck. We managed to make it back to my apartment and, more importantly, to my truck. We were trying to figure out how the frak we were ever going to make it out of that rock when we found ourselves surrounded by what we first thought was a group of cylons, only it turned out that it was a makeshift resistance led by the Caprica Buccaneers instead. We were still trying to come up with some sort of plan to make it back to the Galactica when we were ambushed. I got shot and... well, you already know the rest, sir."

"I'm sorry."

"You didn't ask me to go," she reminds me.

"I may not have ordered you to go, not directly, but I know I played a major role in your decision to do so."

"It wasn't your fault," she insists

"I know," I say, shaking my head at that and more than a little frustrated by Kara's inability to understand that I can be sorry for what she's been through without necessarily being responsible for it. I wonder what is it going to take for me to get her to understand that I'm sorry because I care about her and I don't like to see her hurt... and also wondering how many hundreds of little things like this I have managed to overlook in these past couple of years. Oh, I've known all along that there are two very different sides to her, of course. On the one hand there is the larger than life Starbuck, the one who hits first and asks questions later and on the other there is a gentler side, one I have only glimpsed at in those rare moments when she actually lets her guard down... and the problem is that right now I'm not really sure which one I'm dealing with.