A/N: Thank you for all the encouraging words!!! I really appreciate it more than you know! I write for people to read, if people don't want to or don't like reading what I write, then there is no reason to do it! I am thankful that FINALLY the login glitch is fixed so we can all read and review and upload at will! (Just a note, I know crap about the military, I am trying to figure out rank and stuff with the Wikipedia, so if I do something highly improbable/impossible I apologize) Now, onto the story…
The trip to Pegasus was just under an hour long. Once back in the cradling arms of space she could allow her thoughts to wander. She knew it would be expected that she give some sort of speech. Reflecting on the past was something she didn't do often. It raked up too many feelings, too much emotion; nostalgia is what got you into bad situations. At least that's what she told herself regarding the nostalgia she had placed on her and Ander's brief rendezvous on Caprica. That nostalgia is what got her stuck in a shitty marriage to a man she realized she barely knew. Trapped in a marriage with a man who never loved her, but who had loved an idea of her. It had seemed so easy, but things were never as easy as they seemed.
Her and Helo had spent a lot of their younger lives together. It was a life that felt so far away. They had grown up together, and she knew she wouldn't be where she was today without him. He probably would have been fine without her, but without him she'd probably be dead by now.
When Colonel Agathon was transferred to Colonial Fleet Headquarters on Tauron to manage the Marines, he made sure Socrata Thrace was as well. She was promoted to Sergeant Major under the Colonel and she and Kara followed them there. Kara was 14 by then. The move from Gemenon was exciting, although she had to leave the piano behind. It didn't matter she hadn't seen her father in 4 years, and since her fingers had been broken it was too hard for her to play anyways.
By this time Kara was grown enough that Socrata couldn't do much by physical abuse to her anymore. She was no longer forced to wear dresses, that had stopped 2 years earlier when a report was sent home about Kara lifting her dress to the boys in the school yard. From that day on she had no particular Socrata Thrace enforced dress code. But she had sworn that the only way anyone was getting her in a dress was for something damn important or formal.
Socrata's verbal abuse was in overload. Nary had a day gone by where she didn't tear Kara down for something. Kara had learned by then to take the pain and the hurt and all of those kinds of emotions and bottle them up and put them out of her mind. If she didn't, she wouldn't be able to function as a human being. She wasn't one of those old robots her mother had fought in the war. She was a person with feelings, and her mother seemed hell bent on destroying them.
Occasionally Socrata would come at her with a weapon. Most often it was the empty bottle of whatever was the flavor of the night. Once she went after her with a knife, but Kara kept her at bay long enough for the booze to take effect and knock the woman out. If she fell asleep on the couch, she was usually woken up by her mother putting a cigarette out on her arm or any visible flesh. She had also beat Kara while she slept, screaming the entire time that she should be ready for anything at anytime. Belts were the weapon of choice for this, since she could be far enough away that when Kara jumped out of bed she could quickly close the door to avoid the back lash. Kara had started to fight back, which only enraged her mother even more.
The Agathon's had a soft spot for Kara. They even went so far as to give her a key to the house, so that when Socrata was on a bad bender she could flee to their house. Socrata knew where she went, but never went after her. She had too much respect for the ranks, and her abuse never left the confines of her home. Kara had an odd sense of family with them, even though she wasn't one of them. She did always feel safe with them, and in a way loved. Love was something she had never felt from her mother, only from her father, and he was gone.
As children of Marines Kara and Karl got to attend the Military High School. As the kids of "jarheads" they were automatically low on the totem pole. The Fleet kids weren't mean, there was just an observed hierarchy and it was abundantly clear where Marine kids stood, even if your dad was a Colonel. They went through freshman year as they always had, being avoided by others, hanging out all the time, playing an excessive amount of pyramid ball and watching flight training.
The summer before sophomore year Karl shot up to over 6 feet tall. All that baby-fat he had been carrying melted into muscle and he was completely transformed. Kara had stopped growing in the 8th grade, which was fine by her, although she had wished she was a bit taller for an advantage on the Pyramid court. Kara noticed that the girls at school would eye him up, gossiping about the Colonel's hottie son. They never approached him. Kara had never really looked at Karl as good looking before, but she could see what they saw. He had grown into quite the man. From day one Karl and Kara had projected an odd sense of togetherness. No one dared encroach upon their world. While he had been her first kiss 2 years prior, they had never considered themselves to be formally dating. But as you age it becomes a natural assumption by outsiders. Kara was fine with that; she had little interest in guys outside of Karl anyways.
When they tried out for the Pyramid team not only were they the only Marine kids who made the team, they were the only sophomores to make the varsity team in school history. When this happened, they broke the Fleet-Marine barrier somehow, and were welcomed into the secret Fleet club. They did make a few friends on the team, but for the most part were still Kara and Karl.
Part of hanging with the Fleet kids was parties. Nearly every weekend someone's parents were off on a Battlestar somewhere (either the Sagittaron docks, or in orbit), and thus there was an empty house just waiting for some teenagers to frak it up. As a kid Kara had always swore she wouldn't drink, as she saw what it did to her mother. Once she had even dumped out all the booze in the house while her mother was at work, three of her toes ended up broken for that indiscretion. But now, as a teenager, she found herself playing strip triad, and drinking games, smoking cigars and flirting with boys who weren't Karl (she honestly hadn't even realized she could flirt before then). Granted Karl was doing the same things, so it's not like there was judgment. They messed around with other people, and for once in their lives, somehow the two of them, the chubby boy and the broken girl, were popular in their own way.
Junior year they did attend the Colonial Day dance together. The captain of the Pyramid team had a family cabin (resort was more like it, frakking rich kids), the whole team, and their dates, there were only 4 girls on the team and two of them were dating each other, went there after the dance to party. Kara wore a strapless black dress; it was short and tight and drove her mother nuts, it also made Karl's jaw drop when she came down the stairs to meet him. After the dance, and half a bottle of Leonis Sparkling Wine each, they lost their virginity to each other. It was a disaster, but as far as disasters go it was pretty good. Because they had been so close and had done pretty much everything else with each other it wasn't awkward afterwards. They were best friends, and now they were some sort of lovers.
After a while Kara started to really rebel against Socrata's rule. As a child she had placed rubber ants in her mother's closet, only to end up with every finger in her hands slammed and subsequently broken slammed in a door. She dyed her fair hair black; Socrata took away her driver's license. She got "bona fiscalia" (public property) tattooed on her forearm; Socrata took away her wireless, her TV and computer. The more she rebelled the more Socrata took away. There was always one thing she couldn't take away: Helo.
"Pegasus, this is Raptor 1, requesting clearance to land." Skulls announced over the wireless. Kara must have spaced out, because the announcement startled her.
"Raptor one you are clear for landing in Bay 3. We will let the Commander know you have arrived."
Kara could see out of the carriage of the Raptor that they were approaching the Battlestar Pegasus. She had a momentary moment of awe. When you see Battlestars every day, all day, you sort of lose sight of the scope of them. They are massive. Like tiny planet massive. The Pegasus even more so than Galactica. Hell, the Raptor she was in was around as big as her apartment back in Delphi. It wasn't just big, it was a chasm. She missed how tiny a person could feel on board something like this. She missed how she could just feel tiny and insignificant, and like she could disappear.