edge_of_forever | Lost and Found (OPEN)

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Lost and Found (OPEN)

Sept 18, 2012 - 1:26 pm

Newt had spent the last weeks in the ducts. Leaving only to go to the bathroom and eat when she got hungry enough. She had avoided any contact with anyone so far. Maybe they thought she was gone too. Maybe it was better that way.

When Brisco disappeared she'd lay in the bed of his empty room and cried. She was there for days. Everything of him had been stripped away. Including his scent. If she didn't have stills on her communicator it would be as if he never was.

Everybody left.

She'd retreated to the ducts and didn't come out. It was safer there. No one could sneak up on you. No one to see you. No one to care about. If she cared they would be taken.

She had visited her room only to collect Molly, her doll. The white stuffed rabbit Nuada had given her was guarding her bed. It was too bulky to take. She didn't feel like trying to keep clean. Maybe being grimy and smelly would keep people away. She had taken to sleeping most of the time. Dreams were better when they came, then reality. The nightmares only woke her for a little while. Then she'd sleep some more.

Most of the time she didn't feel like eating. Her overalls and tee had become too big on her. It didn't matter. Only Kasumi came and went. Occasionally trying to draw her out.

Then Kasumi stopped coming.

Her room was empty. Her closet as well.

Newt stopped her lessons and didn't even send back the math problems Mr. Baltar sent. He'd be next if she didn't stay away.

Unable to stand the hungry anymore Newt scouted the unoccupied kitchen. She knew there was a replicator there. And considering the few natural foodstuff's around it was unlikely anyone would visit. Even if there were carrots and green onions in the fridge.

She stood before the replicator and asked for a cupcake.

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Steve heard some noise as he walked by the kitchen, and stuck his head in to see who it might be. The kid - he guiltily realized that he hadn't seen her around in a while, and hadn't noticed before. How could he expect to ever do anything about the missing if he didn't even realize when they were?

Not that she was one of them, since she was ordering a cupcake from the replicator.

"Hey, kid," he greeted her, his voice warm and friendly, as he walked into the kitchen. He'd seen her around but never introduced himself, so he did that now. "I'm Steve."

Newt spun around at the sound of a voice. It made her a little dizzy for a few seconds.

"I remember." Her voice was a little rough. Her talking was limited to the replicators for over a month. "You knocked when you got here. Showed me how to get the egg out of the bottle.

Her eyes darted to the open vent plate. near the floor. It was under a table. Easy escape.

"You don't want to be near me," Newt backed up a step. "I'm the reason people disappear."

Now he remembered, and he nodded. Newt, that was her name.

"I think I'll take my chances," Steve assured her confidently, but did not step any closer, not when she looked close to bolting. He stopped where he was, crossed his arms over his chest. "Why do you say that?"

Newt shook her head. Why wouldn't she think that?

"Everyone in my colony was killed but me. All but three of the rescue party were killed. I woke up here alone, without the people who saved me, because I got attached. Tayla was teaching me defense here, then disappeared. Briscoe let me stay with him sometimes, when the nightmares got bad, and he watched out for me, then he disappeared. Kasumi became my friend and then she disappeared. Only two people I like and who seem to care about me are left. Dr. Baltar and Nuada. I'm keeping away from them so they don't go away too."

Really, it was simple math. She hated math. Maybe because her life was all subtractions and divisions.

"I'm bad luck. People die. Everyone goes away eventually. So it's best to stay away. People will live longer."

"That's just bad luck, Newt," Steve told her, still staying where he was for fear that she would bolt. "What's happening here isn't about any one of us, it's bigger than that. I'm sorry you lost so many people," he added, and meant it with all his heart if his tone was any indication. He knew what it felt like, after all. Being ripped out of your time did that to a guy.

"Then bad luck is all I got," Newt's vision blurred, but she wouldn't let the tears fall. She'd cried enough and it didn't change anything. "Doesn't matter, liking people hurts when they leave. My fault or not. The not knowing is even worse than knowing they're dead."

If they were back where they belonged did they remember her? Did they miss her like she missed them? Was disappearing the same as dying, just without a body?

She hadn't been able to help any of them. She wondered if she would have if she could, or if she'd run away like she did as her brother screamed. Not knowing... it was empty.

"I lost everyone I ever knew. They either die really bad or just go away," she didn't know where the anger boiled up from.

Only moment's before coming to the kitchen she just felt hollow , blank. Dead inside. Now she felt violent, wanting to strike out at fate, or luck, or whatever was responsible. Maybe even sock God in the nose.

It may be something bigger than all of them, but in the end all SHE knew was that she was doomed to be alone.

It was an anger Steve was familiar with, even if his had not stemmed from exactly the same source. It was more that he had been the one who had to go away, and leave everyone (Peggy) he loved behind. But he had lost many men before that, including Bucky, so even that side of things he knew.

"All I can tell you," he told her, speaking to her as if she were an adult, rather than a child, "is that cutting yourself off is not the answer." It had been his instinctive reaction, as well, after they had woken him up, and it was a recent revelation that it was not any kind of solution. "There is more to living than simply being alive."

Newt shook her head, her tangles swaying. "What's the point if you're alone in the end anyway? Maybe nothing's worth it in the end."

That's what she'd been feeling like for weeks now. There was no point. Only the minimizing of hurt.

The lack of a point to her survival fueled the anger. Life was all one big joke on everyone. And the punchline sucked farts.

"It' easier to keep from being hurt." Actually it was easier to just sleep away everything. Sometimes dreams were happy. Happier than being awake. They even made the nightmare's worth it.

"I'm still pretty sure I'm a jinx. Co-inside-ence only works two or three times. More than that's it's a pattern."

Newt's head was starting to hurt. She really needed that cupcake.

"You won't feel the pain of loss if you have nothing to lose," Steve agreed. There was nothing he could say to convince her that she was no jinx, but he certainly would not leave her. "But if you have nothing to lose, what do you get up for every morning?"

It really was that simple. Even after he had woken up in the 2010s, he had always had something to get up for, even if it had just been his ideals and principles. Those could get ripped out of a man as surely as anything else, but at any given point in his life, he would have fought with all he had to prevent it from happening.

"Sometimes I don't," Newt admitted. Some times it was too much to pull herself from whatever hidy hole she was in and do anything. Not eating much cut down the need for the bathroom. She was certain she'd slept through a few days.

"I don't understand the point, sometimes. Maybe it would have been better if the monsters got me, too." It may have saved other lives.

"You're nice, Mr. Rogers," he hadn't repeatedly lost everything yet. She had no idea of his history. But he was too upbeat to have gotten kicked in the teeth often enough to learn to lay down. "So, you really should stay away."

"Like I said, I'll take my chances," Steve repeated. "It's part of being nice. I can't stand the thought of someone having nothing to get up for in the morning."

Especially not a kid, but really he could not stand it in general. Even here, there were reasons to get up. It was easier for having most of the Avengers with him, but even after waking up in the 2010s he had forced himself, morning after morning, to find reasons.

"I thought there might be no point, too, at a time in my life," he explained, because she deserved to know that he wasn't just saying empty words. He knew what it was like. "I hung in there. I forced myself to get out of bed. Eventually, it got better. Things won't always be so dark, kid."

"It's been over a year," Newt had settled,she felt less a compulsion to bolt.

Mr. Rogers still didn't understand. She hopped up to sit on a prep table. "My daddy was the first to die..." Newt went on to tell about finding the alien crash and the face huggers, the way the colony was decimated within days. Of running even as her brother screamed for help as he was dragged away. She told of months alone, only the air ducts and small spaces being refuge. Of the marines and Ripley. Of waking here and Brisco and the disappearing one by one.

What nine year old wouldn't think they were at fault? Over a year of fear and loss with only two months of something close to happiness here. She saw it as starting all over again.

"I can't see better. Better is a short trick to make you feel safe befor the dying starts again.

Steve leaned against a counter opposite her, so he could give her his full attention, and listened as she told her tale, hands in his pockets so that she hopefully would not pick up on the telltale signs of tension, on how revolted he felt that she had had to live through all this, how unfair it was.

"Or maybe the dying is what you have to go through to get to the better again," Steve answered, after a few seconds of silence. "Death isn't something you can do without, though you shouldn't have had to go through so much of it. And we can't trust this place." These were the facts she already knew. "But if you give up, then death wins. This place wins."

"Maybe that's what they're trying to do. See what it takes to break people. A lot of the people here are strong, famous, special. This whole thing just might be to see what it takes to break people like you. But I'm not like that. I'm just a girl. The only thing special about me is knowing how to hide.It's not hard to break glass." Newt drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs.

"If I break people might not pay attention while they try to step around me or even try putting me together. Being distracted is bad." It didn't make it hurt less. It didn't make her want to face any more loss. But part of her just WANTED a grown up to take care of her. To lie to her and tell her it'd be okay. Brisco almost did that.

Most of all, Newt wanted the impossible. She wanted her mother. She wanted it all to be a bad dream. She wanted to wake up and be hugged and cuddled and told she was being silly.

"I'm tired. I'm trying to be grown up, but I'm not. I'm not sure I care who wins just that the game is over. I don't wanna play anymore."

"You don't have to be a grown-up, Newt," Steve told her, sympathy evident on his face. She had not had anything like a childhood, and of all of them on this station, with all their tales of woe, she was the most unlucky.

"How long since you've had a proper meal?" he asked, more of a rhetorical question than anything else. She'd just eaten a cupcake, and she was a kid. "What's your favorite food? Burgers, pizza, hot dogs?" He was getting it out of the replicator in his room if it took him a hundred tries. "We can have dinner and a movie in my quarters."

He had no intention of leaving her alone, and he held his hand out invitingly. He wouldn't let her break, and he would never think of that, or her, as a distraction, either.

Newt gave a half hearted smile. "The machine gave me salmon and rice instead of a candy bar. That was a couple of days ago, I think. And my favorite food is Chocolate and ice cream."

Yeah, she knew that wasn't want he meant. The burgers the colony got were really processed and expensive. Beef had to be shipped from Earth. Chicken was a staple, as it provided meat and eggs with less feed, and therefore was raised on planet. Hot dogs were cheap, even if they were shipped, so she got them occasionally.

"Pizza. Mom made it when we got good marks on studies." Frozen and dehydrated were what she grew up with. We got pop for birthdays. But the machine keeps giving me vegetable juice when I ask for it here. I tried asking for Veggie juice and got tea." She made a disgusted face.

Her weight loss was obvious. She had to have lost five pounds and on a nine year old that was a lot.

It was a bad idea to go with Steve. He could get hurt. But she'd seen him fight in the gym. Maybe he could fight whatever took people off. Maybe.

Newt tried to think of some old movies that might be from Steve's time not remakes. She reluctantly took his hand.

"You ever see the Princess Bride? It has sword fights, adventure, revenge. So boys can like it.?"

"Sword fights, adventure and revenge? Sounds like the perfect complement to pizza," Steve warmly agreed, his hand steady around Newt's as he led the way out of the kitchen, towards his quarters. "I'm sold."

He would honestly have watched anything, as long as Newt agreed to come, but that actually sounded like a good adventure movie, even if the title was a little weird for an adventure movie. Maybe the princess bride in question was the hero, who knew.

"Hopefully we'll be more fortunate trying to get that movie from the Cortex than you seem to be getting pop out of the replicators." The Cortex wasn't quite as tricky as the replicators, but it still in no way seemed to cooperate with them.

Kate actually double-taked when she saw a kid while passing by the kitchen. A little girl. Kate had done her share of looking around the station and had no idea there was someone that young aboard. If a kid was here, what were the odds that she had parents with her?

She walked into the kitchen on quiet feet and stood near her. You got the feeling this wasn't a kid you wanted to spook.

"I would like a cupcake too, please. With sprinkles on top."

Newt looked up, only mildly startled.

Newt reached into the replicator and pulled out an orange, giving the contraption a dirty look. "Yeah, good luck with that. I asked for a chocolate bar a couple of days ago and I got a plate of cooked salmon and rice. I think it's laughing inside."

The fact that the woman wasn't one she had met before made Newt a bit angry. Not at the newcomer. But the station had a habit of bring in new people when it took away others. Was she a replacement for Brisco or Kasumi?

She may have learned that life wasn't fair but she didn't have to like it and it didn't taste any less bitter for it's truth.

Kate didn't get her cupcake with sprinkles. She got...some lentils, which she took from the machine with a frown.

"I think this is the exact opposite of what I wanted." Not that she had wanted a cupcake for any more reason than to approach the girl. She wasn't exactly great with kids, just didn't have much experience with them.

Kate turned to the kid and waved the plate at her. The lentils sloshed enticingly. "Wanna trade?"

Newt shrugged and handed over the orange. She didn't really want the lintels either but her stomach made a loud demand at that moment. Something had to shut it up.

Newt backed up to a prep table and climbed onto it, digging into the lintels with her fingers. "They play with us. The machines, or the whatever. I think food is control."

Because they could. Because the powers that be were sick and twisted. In the end none of it mattered anyway.

Kate took the orange and tossed it back and forth in her hands as she watched the kid attack the lentils with the hunger of someone who hasn't seen food regularly in a while. She tried not to look as angry as she felt, but not at her. At this fucked up place that let a kid slip through the cracks and end up disheveled and dirty and alone.

"I think you're right," she agreed and tossed the orange back and forth in her hands. "Like it's just a joke to someone."

"Do the machines not give you things when you ask for it?" That was a problem she hadn't seen yet, but could prove disastrous.

Newt swallowed the leugme's in her mouth and gave a wry smirk.

"It gives stuff. Just usually NOT what you ask for. I asked for a cupcake and got an orange. Ask for potatoes and get some alien green slimy paste. So far I think the weirdest one was someone got a live squid. So far it seems to have all been okay to eat for the ones getting it."

Not everyone here was human. They were given stuff that was digestible, just not recognizable or tasty all the time.

"You're new," at least from the last time Newt was among people. "I'm Newt. Or Wall Mouse... or Little Mouse... depending on who'se talking. You're better off staying away from me. I make people go missing."

Her name was Newt. Kate blinked and, hell, now she could place the face. Aliens was one of the movies they had watched on weekends at the academy, she always backed Ripley in the many arguments of who was the greatest action hero of all time. And now the kid from it was sitting in front of her.

Damn, this fiction thing was a drag. If there was a real Ripley walking around this place, Kate might actually die on the spot.

"Hi, Newt, I'm Kate. And I might stick around you for a while if that's okay. I'm pretty new and you seem like you know the ropes around here. Did you have to eat the live squid?"

Newt scrunched up her nose. "Ewww, no. I'm pretty sure it got tossed in the garbage. I can eat weird things, but not that gross."

"I'm not safe, Kate. People die or go away around me. Everyone who ever tried to look out for me is gone now. You'd be safer with someone else," Newt paused, considering the best people to help Kate settle in.

"Lady Grandmum's been here from the start. She knows her way around. Or Kirk and Spock. Stay away from Sherlock, though. He's mean and might feed you to something nasty for fun." She her face displayed her dislike. "Nuada's okay for me, but he doesn't like most humans. Of the three humans he liked two are gone, and he's chasing people away, except Shepard, and Klaus. But Klaus isn't human, I think." Newt tried to think of the original people here. "Abed. You wanna stick by Abed. He's creepy but he knows everybody and a lot of stuff we run into. He's the one to stick by."

"Stick with Abed, huh? I guess I can do that. I wasn't very nice to him when we met, because he knew my secrets. But if you say he's a good guy I'll give him another chance." It was weird to imagine someone knowing the details of her life the way she'd seen Newt's. The idea made her stomach hurt.

She dug into the orange with her thumbnail and began to slowly peel it. While she kept glancing up at Newt and made eye contact when she could, her voice was still conversational to keep things from getting too heavy too quick. "Sometimes I feel like that too. I've lost people and it feels like my fault. It made me really lonely."

"I lost everybody," Newt's voice was soft, almost whispered before she shoved some more lintils in her mouth. She chewed for a bit, considering well before swallowing. "Everyone I let myself like dies or is taken away. By the fourth time, you tend to catch on to a pattern. It is lonely. But it's better lonely than hurt," Her voice faded once more at the last sentence.

Newt looked over to the replicator. "Cola, please?"

A glass full of vegitable juice materialized. "I think it's out to get us."

Looking at her, Kate's heart ached. She was angry, furious, at the injustice of the universe that this girl has had to lose so much and be so worn down. But mostly she was just so, so sad.

"I get why you would feel that way," she reached out to Newt's hand, just a quick, grounding touch before pulling back. "It's safer, because you might be saving yourself some hurt." Kate took the vegetable juice and set it in front of her. It was a particularly vibrant green. "I would drink veggie juice and eat live squid every day if it meant not losing people. Even the gross tentacle bits."

Newt nodded. She could agree to that. She really hated being alone. At least she had the reassurance of people being right outside the vents.

"I sometimes think I'm here as a distraction. All these people who are powerful, important, strong, and then there's me. Whatever the kidnappers want, I think they're testing us, or you. Seeing what it takes to make you snap. I think I'm here so some might get attached and then they either get taken away, or eventually kill me to push the important one's further. So staying apart might be best for everyone else as well."

Newt may be nine, but she'd had a month to curl up and think of scenarios. All bad, of course. Science was her favorite subject, so it promoted logical thinking.

"Or," Kate started and held out a segment of orange to her. "The people who seem important are really just distractions. Maybe our captors're emotion eating monsters who took us away from home and trapped us here. They want to fatten us up by making us as sad as possible, so they make people disappear. Maybe our only way to fight back is to be happy anyway, since happiness gives them indigestion."

She offered her a little wry smile, so Newt knew she was aware of just how ridiculous an idea that was. "It's my theory, anyway. I'm not very good at being a resistance fighter, though. For now just getting by is all I can do."

Edited 2012-10-01 20:42 (UTC)

Of course Kate's idea was silly. But she most likely intended it that way.

"I had hoped the 'getting by' part was over," Newt admitted. Isn't that what she had been doing for so long until she arrived here? "But I'm good at it." Getting by, that was.

Newt felt the tightness in her belly go away as the cupcake shut up the hungry sounds.

"Either way it seems we're all stuck. People from all realities? That means we aren't likely to be in our own right now. And how do we get back against that?"

She was much too young to be so fatalistic. However, experiance had shaped her by now.

Logan's having bad luck with the replicator; no beer to be had for hours now, just orange juice and aspirin. A hint, and not a funny one.

He makes his way to the kitchen in the hope that someone has a secret stash he can raid. Instead he finds [and basically trips over] a girl even littler than the one that's making him drink. He's seen her before, and his brain's trying to catch on something about her, but it's pretty well lubricated with the Green leftover from Rogers party.

"Hey pipsqueak, watch out will ya?"

Newt looked up at Logan, "I was just standing here. You were the one moving."

This was the guy who was teaching basic self defense. Or was. She hadn't been to a class since the one where she managed to kick him in a bad place before the explosions made everyone run. She didn't even know if classes resumed after Narnia. And Narnia seemed a lifetime ago.

"I was just trying to get a cupcake," she stepped away. Maybe she wasn't hungry after all. It had only been.... how long since she ate? She stopped looking at time a while back.

The fact that no one noticed she was gone was a good thing. Maybe no one else would get taken.

A bag of some sort of jerky appeared in the machine. The writing looked French or close to it. Maybe it was from earth.

She had her food stashes. She hadn't used any because the machines still worked. But if Logan wanted the jerky he was welcome to it. It was miles away from a surgary cupcake.

Logan's a little drunk, sure, but the kid's making some sense. He's not gonna tell her, of course, but he's always had a soft spot for no-bullshit types, especially when they're four feet tall.

He takes the bag of jerky [not a bad score] and grumbles "Hey you -give me a damn cupcake." True to form [because he doesn't actually want one], the computer does: red velvet with a marzipan maple leaf on the frosting. Har freakin' har. He holds it out to the kid.

"You're mighty dirty, bub."

Newt had no idea who Bob way, but she let it slide with a shrug. "Don't like to be out to much."

Besides you were vulnerable in a shower, and it was too much effort. Too much everything.

Newt takes the treat with a hint of a smile. "Thanks. It must like you better."

Maybe he could get it to dispense something to drink other than that awful tomato celery stuff. "It won't ever give me pop, or fruit juice. Just some vegetable drink and something that smells like pine cleaner. I've been making do with water. I think this one's more broke than the others."

She peeled the paper away from the cupcake and took a tentative bite. Looks could be deceiving as well. She was pleasantly surprised that it tasted a little more chocolaty than red velvet usually did. That wasn't a bad thing.

He's kinda tickled by her use of the word 'pop' -it's very upstate New York, a region near to his heart. Logan munches the jerky, considering where his brain is trying to tell him he's seen this girl before...Oh yeah.

"Guess there hasn't been so much going on for you with Brisco not around." He can sympathize -Brisco pulling a Houdini had put a dent in his social calendar, too.

Newt bit her lip. No, no more crying. She missed him as much as her family, as Ripley... and crying didn't fix the gaping holes.

"I'm a jinx. I start to like someone and they go away or die. So I'm staying away. Everyone's safer that way." She choked down the last of the cupcake and wiped her fingers on the thighs of her overalls. "Actually, it might be safer if I hate someone."

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