Chapter 6
(Kara's POV)

Okay, I'm officially in trouble now. Sure, I knew from the moment Lee and Helo dragged me in here that some things were bound to come out --things I would much rather have kept to myself-- but the truth is that this is even worse than I had been anticipating and it is not over yet, not by a long shot. I can see that the Old Man still has plenty of questions and that is a problem... especially because if he says that we will be discussing the cylons and the fact that I didn't provide him with a description as soon as I came back 'later' then chances are that he has other things he wants to discuss now. In other words, chances are that he is going to ask me about the farm, about what happened there, about what I saw, but I can't go there, not now.

"But getting back to the cylon's activities on Caprica, to the best of your knowledge the farm was destroyed, correct?" he asks, confirming my worst fears as to where this is going.

"Maybe that one," I say, closing my eyes as I feel my control begin to slip and I realize that there's no way I'm going to be able to pull this off.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that according to Sharon there were hundreds if not thousands of women being held in farms all over the frakking colonies so, yes, I think chances are that the resistance was able to take out that particular facility --and even if they didn't the women in it were already dead-- but that doesn't mean a thing. The resistance may have had good intentions but their resources were just too limited. They had only a handful of guns, a few vehicles and gas was not exactly abundant so I don't see how they could possibly have been in a position to do anything about the other farms on Caprica, to say nothing of the other eleven colonies," I snap, knowing that there's nothing I can do, knowing that the cylons have won, that even though I managed to escape that doesn't mean a frakking thing in the grand scheme of things... unless you want to take into account the whole 'you are special' crap they keep throwing at me, of course. I don't really know what they mean by that but the truth is that it scares the hell out of me... especially because my gut is telling me that there's a lot more to it than them frakking with my head.

"It's okay, Kara," says Lee --again-- and I'm deeply grateful for his attempt to offer some sort of reassurance, though it would certainly work a lot better if it weren't because we both know it's nowhere near okay, if we didn't both know that there's no way those women are ever getting out... and that most of them won't even be as lucky as Sue-Shaun to have someone put them out of their misery.

Sure, I understand that from a military perspective the experiments the cylons are conducting are likely to turn out to be extremely important, especially if they succeed, and on a rational level I realize that I should probably have passed that information along as soon as I came back but the thing is that I'll never be able to see this as a military matter, I'll never be able to be 'rational' about it... not after I was held in one of those farms, not after I came so frakking close to spending the rest of my life attached to one of those damned machines, pushing out half-cylon bastards.

I don't think Lee or the Old Man can even begin to understand what it was like. For them the fight is up here and for the most part it is a clean fight. As far as they know we live or we die and the cylons are out to kill us. In fact they are convinced that even if they get us it will all be over reasonably quickly. A handful of nukes and the last remnants of mankind, of what once were the Twelve Colonies, will finally be wiped out. I used to believe that too but now I don't, not any more.

That is the problem. The Commander, the President and even Lee, all of them are still convinced that it is as simple as that, that we are just fighting for our survival. They still believe that when the end comes we won't even feel it and they don't realize that it is much worse than that because the cylons no longer want to kill us... or at least not all of us. Dying I can take.

Hell, I'm a frakking viper pilot!

I may be good, I may be the best, but I know that chances are that it is still just a matter of time before my luck runs out. More than ninety percent of viper pilots in times of war don't get to retire or be promoted out of the cockpit and I know it, just like I know that survival doesn't always have to do with talent or skill... though those things certainly help. The thing is that even though we try to convince ourselves that we do what we do because we are the best of the best and all that crap, the truth is that at the end of the day we are just cheap cannon fodder and if we take a hit chances are we are dead... of course that is not the problem. I made my peace with the fact that I'm going to die a very long time ago but the thing is that --as cliched as it sounds-- there are worse fates than death.

That is what scares the crap out of me and it is also what this is all about.

I try to bring myself back to the present but it's not that easy. I know that allowing my mind to wander is a good way to get myself killed, especially when I'm in the cockpit, but right now I'm not in the cockpit and between the memories, the pain and the fever --to say nothing of the drugs Cottle is pumping into me which are making me queasy-- I'm having a hard time trying to stay focused and I really don't have the energy to try to fight off the Old Man on top of everything else, though I do know better than to let him see that. He may not be my enemy but he is pissed, he has every reason to be, and --even though he seems to have forgiven me for having gone back to Caprica in the first place-- I know things are still far from normal between us.

I'm still struggling to keep myself together, determined to keep trying to fend off the Commander's questions to the best of my ability for as long as I can --not that that is likely to do me much good-- when all of a sudden I get an unexpected reprieve when Cottle says, "that's enough for now," and the truth is that I'm incredibly grateful for the interruption.

Even though I know I'm not off the hook, even though I know there's no way the Old Man is going to let this go any time soon and that at most I'll have a couple of days to regroup --in fact that's more likely to turn out to be only a couple of hours-- right now I'll take any break I can get.

I'm beginning to allow myself to relax, to believe that the worst is behind me --at least for now-- when Helo says, "but there's one thing I still don't understand, Kara: what did Sharon mean when she said that Leoben had told you that you were special, that you have a destiny?"