At the age of 18, on September 12th 2011, Kara Prince abandons plans for college and presents herself at her local Marine Corps office with the intention to immediately enlist. Her life prior to that is unremarkable, according to her — lacking stand-out memories of trauma or even excitement. She found Kansas on the whole to be an unremarkable flat spanse of flyover state, even having grown up in a suburb of Kansas City.
Her hands-on nature leads her to gravitate toward a combat support MOS, certifications stacking up. She's trained in the use of a number of vehicles, and makes it her business to know how to keep her craft running smoothly even before her first deployment. She goes on to serve multiple tours in Afghanistan with a brief stint in Iraq, over time growing disillusioned with the 'War on Terror'. Frustrated by the continued expansion of hostilities and the sensation there is no overall endgame, she holds out hope for the best.
Over time, Kara is worn down by losses suffered due to guerilla tactics, internalizing the feeling that something more could and should have been done in certain encounters. While serving, she picks up conversational Farsi, which only helps her humanize the civilian lives endangered by their presence and the growing conflict. Seeing lives of locals as well as her teammates uprooted, endangered, and destroyed with little gain to show for it weighs on her.
Over time, Kara is worn down by losses suffered due to guerilla tactics, internalizing the feeling that something more could and should have been done in certain encounters. While serving, she picks up conversational Farsi, which only helps her humanize the civilian lives endangered by their presence and the growing conflict. Seeing lives of locals as well as her teammates uprooted, endangered, and destroyed with little gain to show for it weighs on her.
Honorably discharged for medical reasons, Kara returned home from Afghanistan with the intent of putting that part of her life behind her. Civilian life and working in the private sector didn't end up working out as anticipated, though. Unwilling to pursue re-enlistment but seeking something more familiar, she slid into a role with Stillwater Solutions as a security guard. She found the work unfulfilling but with a satisfying paycheck, right up until— {static}
When Kara lands in Washington and stumbles away from the car accident, she's able to piece together that Prime isn't the same world she knows and remembers. She hunkers into it regardless, feeling the call of duty to do something right in the face of so much wrong. There's a war on here, and a lot of innocent lives caught in the crossfire — deliberately. She resolves to side with the people, and works with the Ferry to help men, women, and children escape across the border to Canada.
With how surreal the premise of the civil war feels, she privately questions if maybe the whole thing is just her having gone insane — one giant PTSD-induced fever dream — but keeps her shit together and keeps that worry to herself.
Following the end of the war, she remains in the Sedro-Woolley area, having no desire to to go 'home'. The community that forms there is small but stable, with Kara fulfilling a quartermaster role. It takes off to the size it does following the appearance of the Horsemen who solidify the community together.
The arrival of the Horsemen give her relief that her recollections of a very different world are valid after all, even if they can't provide answers as to how she crossed over. She resolves to stick with the others from her once-home. She's detail-oriented and proves it to them, as a general quartermaster of supplies at first before shifting toward munitions in particular as the colony grows in size as well as boldness.
Though at first questioning the broader goal behind transitioning the colony, and irritated about being kept in the dark for as long as she was, Kara's loyalty to the Horsemen sees she goes too out to Providence.
She's still not sure it wasn't a mistake.
Don't get her wrong, there's good days to match the bad, but so much has changed and at times she feels like the solid ground she had gained beneath her has slipped away entirely.
The mission to stop another rift from being opened in space and time at Sunspot fails. After the skies open and chaos breaks loose, the members of the Remnant strike force that limp back to Providence are forced to reckon with that failure, and the question of what to do following it. Kara coasts while waiting to see what direction they head next, and grows concerned by Eileen's adoption of a former Vanguard member from this universe.
She has little time to be concerned about that, as the robot that had appeared during a visit to Staten Island reappeared, with friends, giving everyone something to be on edge about. Then, the worst happens when a neighboring militia figures out what it is that summons the bots, and uses it against the good people of Providence.
Months pass while retaliation is pondered, and Kara finds her circle of acquaintances growing— Yi-Min Yeh doesn't turn out to be that bad of a person to hang around at all, and neither does Byron Wolf. Old faces emerge from the shadows of the West in the forms of Chris, Sophie, Dumortier, and for a time— even though it's nothing she expected— everything seems almost all right.
Except, why had they come all this way when they could have just stayed out West?
The corporate ties the Remnant were beholden to from the shadows wonder the same thing, and after enough time passes following a sabotage which received mixed reviews, they come calling— and leave behind a bloodbath.
Kara loses Yi-Min, and loses herself in the work of protecting the Remnant, including getting revenge for the events at the Old Barn. When a scant two weeks pass before the Praxis leader attempts to make amends for the attack on the Sunken Factory, it's with bitterly swallowed pride that Kara agrees to be party to the parlay— and only because she holds the key to an ambush should things go wrong.
And oh, do they.
In the chaos that erupts, Kara barely has enough time to trigger the ambush by activating a device that serves as a siren for the octopedal robots to come running, though she's not standing long enough to see the results. Knocked by a support beam and nearly broken from it, she spends long, numb days in a haze, healing. Weeks later when she finally wakes, it's to an empty cabin, in an entirely different state.
After a struggle deciding if anyone else survived facing down the Entity that came for Eileen; if there was a Providence worth going back to without all those close to her; and if she still had a place in it if even if she did— Kara Prince resolves to head West back to Sedro-Woolley. She saves, plots, steals to get herself the resources necessary to make it back there safely. The November 8th Itinerant Dawn disaster rushes her plans, instilling in her fear that she'll be found out as not a member of this reality, and she hits the road sooner than expected.
But she never makes it all the way back to Washington, taking one detour after the next.
Kara spends most of December working at Cat's Cradle in the company of Eve Mas and her employees, staunchly avoiding Red Hook Market and the old life she was so close to rediscovering. She rationalizes it's only a matter of time before someone recognizes her, and that she needs to move on. However, on Christmas Eve, Eve's policy of getting everyone in her establishment absolutely blitzed causes Kara to have a moment of clarity in that she needs to verify things in Providence for herself.
Thanks, Eve.
Without that encouragement, she'd never have found out Yi-Min was still alive. That everyone who went with her to the Black Forest was still alive. She had a period of scrutiny to endure after emerging from the shadows that night, but it was worth it, she believed it.
Even so, Kara struggled to find her roots again. The leadership situation in the Remnant had changed since she'd vanished, and even though certain faces accepted her reappearance easily, enough had changed she felt rudderless. Quiet gaps in her memory, likely resulting from her head trauma, that made themselves apparent without warning did nothing to help her feel at home once more. Yi-Min served as the anchor that reassured her and encouraged her, kept her tied down, and brought her to believe that there was some part of this world meant for her, too.
Things were already set in motion, though, that were unable to be undone. Yi-Min's work with Praxis that had brought her back to Providence after being rapidly healed by her employer was coming to a close, and its true purpose was a dark design that plagued her nightmares. Resolving to doublecross her employer for the safety of people like Kara, Yi-Min similarly resolved to leave Providence and hopefully draw ire away from it and beloved ones within it. A valiant attempt was made to dissuade her— or at least an earnest one was— and once again, they parted.
In that aftermath, Kara struggles between continuing to build a place for herself like Yi-Min had beseeched her, or with leaving entirely. Worse, dark thoughts that Kara had dealt with the first time she lost Yi-Min once again begin to creep in, although this time, they're placed by others' hands.
It's Gregory Sharrow rather than Charles who comes to her door, offering her the chance to be More, and in her moment of weakness Kara agrees to give the terrible deed he asks her to commit a passing shot. They agree nothing earns nothing, and Kara heads back to the Safe Zone along with Noah Bennet, who's come to town in search of his missing daughter. Traveling in separate vehicles, Kara splits to investigate the map she's given, and finds, miraculously, a lead.
More than that, when she breaks for breakfast during her search, she finds a fellow traveler from her same, distant shore. When it turns out they're both on the tail of the same unlucky girl, Kara's wavering resolve falls firmly on the side of following through with Sharrow's ask, for the sake of helping February Lancaster.
When the time comes, though, seeing Taylor's fear… she fails to pull the trigger. Instead, she tells Taylor of the danger nipping at her heels if she remains in the Safe Zone, and though she fails to get the girl to accept help, she at least ensures she stays one step ahead for one more day. Both failing to help Taylor and February both, Kara resolves to try and at least fix the latter through alternative means, leveraging her position as a Former Ferry member to reach out to Lynette Rowan and seek assistance.
Little could either of them have known, but Lynette too was a traveler displaced from her own reality, more than willing to help. She passes along a warning, as well, regarding the Sentinel that plague Providence and an offer to help clean house should the time come.
When Noah's hunt for his daughter bears a lead seen on national television of all things, he calls in a favor to ferry a strike team to Detroit to retrieve her. While they never see what happened to Claire Bennet, they witness the aftermath of her miraculous resurrection, and become stranded in Detroit when the city is locked down.
When Kara and her crew from Providence make it back days later, she comes home only to find she's not alone after all. While her reunion with Yi-Min is brief, it brings the promise of an actual future together, her actions taken for the purpose of reuniting them in the future.
And it's the hope that had she needed in order to find her footing again.
Over the spring, gruff mannerisms and all, Kara returns to duty in the community of Providence and within the structure of the Remnant. She openly opposes the influence of the Sentinel within the community when they continue to make their voice known, and while word makes it back to her of Greg Sharrow— of Freyr's displeasure with her stance, nothing else comes of it. Without unified agreement among the Remnant leadership regarding casting them out, theirs is a presence which continues to haunt Providence.
The day of Yi-Min's release, Kara is able to be there thanks to Nicole Miller. Finally, at long last, it seems they'll finally get to building their life together.
What happens, then, on July 6th isn't a bad joke. It's a nightmare.
Waking up alone once more, Kara doesn't even have Nicole to turn to— or her husband in help finding her partner, for they're all missing. It luckily takes a day before word makes it back to her of her partner's safety wellbeing condition, and when she returns to the Safe Zone under SESA's care days later, it's without her ability. It's an unsettling new reality, one that makes Kara cling all the tighter to her for a time, before finally, reluctantly allowing that maybe nothing else terrible will happen and subsequently tear them apart again.
Or at least… she can hope.