For notes, warnings and disclaimers see scene 1

Scene 6: Of Spaces Big and Small
(Age: 10)

Kara was sitting in the back of the school bus, looking out the window and trying desperately to avoid drawing too much attention to herself as she did most of the time, the problem was that the close quarters meant she couldn't exactly get away from all the teasing. That left her with no choice but to try to tune it all out, luckily 'tuning it out' was something she'd gotten pretty good at over the years and she wasn't about to let her classmates ruin the day for her.

It had been a good day, a lot better than she had been hoping for, but at the same time there was no denying that she was more than a little shaken by some of the things she'd seen. That had been unexpected.

She had always enjoyed field trips --especially because it wasn't like her mom ever took her anywhere-- but the truth was that when she'd first heard that they were going to the Space Museum she hadn't really been all that enthused about it. Space had never been one of her favorite things, far from it.

She was familiar with it, of course. After all, before her mom had been discharged from the Marines she had been assigned all over the Twelve Colonies and Kara could still remember having to move from one world to another time and time again... and what she remembered of those moves was anything but pleasant. She knew she would never forget the long hours spent in dark, cold military freighters that had made her feel almost as if she were trapped in an oversized closet. She'd hated those ships with a passion, just like she'd always hated small spaces she couldn't escape... kind of like the bus, though at least the bus had windows. That was certainly more than could be said about those freighters.

The thing was that, because of those experiences, Kara had learned early on to associate outer space with tiny, almost claustrophobic places. She had never really had a chance to look at the stars or the planets before and that was one of the main reasons why the beauty of some of the images prominently displayed all over the museum had caught her so totally off-guard.

The photos were awesome and they'd shown her a side of space that was different from anything she could ever have imagined. For the first time in her life Kara found herself wondering if maybe there was more to space than a big chunk of nothing that served no real purpose other than to give her teachers more useless facts for her to memorize --or fail to memorize-- like the names of all 113 planets orbiting around the suns of the Twelve Colonies and so on.

The photos had been the beginning, the first thing that had caught her attention and made her realize that maybe space was not so bad after all, but the thing that had really turned her world upside down, the thing Kara couldn't get out of her head as the bus made its way back to the school, was the final exhibit: the Vipers display.

She had seen the ships before in movies and so on, just like everyone else, but she had never given them much thought and she'd certainly never actually been able to get close to one of them before. Now that she had she couldn't stop thinking about them... or about the possibility of being out there, alone. That was the key.

The way Kara saw it, Viper pilots flew alone and they also fought alone. That was something she could understand, something she could relate to... maybe it was the only thing she could understand and that was the reason why the idea of being able to fly one of those ships suddenly seemed so appealing. If nothing else at least Viper pilots were in control of their own fates. If they were good enough, if they were fast enough, no one could touch them, not even the Cylons. It was as simple as that.

Of course, even though all of a sudden she couldn't quite stop thinking about flying, about the possibility of actually being in a Viper's cockpit, Kara knew it was never going to happen. She knew there was no way anyone would ever let a screw up like her anywhere near one of those ships for real and she knew that if her mom were to hear that she was even thinking about it she would laugh her ass off but Kara couldn't help it.

As far as she was concerned there had been something almost magical about the Vipers, something that had called out to her like nothing she had ever encountered before, nothing except maybe her father's piano. Of course, that was something she desperately wanted to forget.

The thing was that she had been drawn to the Vipers and even though she knew she would never really have a chance to fly one of them, just the fact that she had actually been able to be in the same room with those ships --even if it was only in a museum-- was something that had touched Kara more deeply than she'd ever thought possible.