Lost and Found (OPEN)

[girlintheducts]

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.

Comments

[acalltoarms]

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."

[girlintheducts]

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.

[acalltoarms]

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?"

[girlintheducts]

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.

[acalltoarms]

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.

[girlintheducts]

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."

[acalltoarms]

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?"

[girlintheducts]

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."

[acalltoarms]

"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."

[girlintheducts]

"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."

[acalltoarms]

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."

[girlintheducts]

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.

[acalltoarms]

"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."

[girlintheducts]

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.