AU Milliways: 2012 Captain

[therighttime]

The sun is shining, the grass is green, the lake is a gorgeous glittering blue...

And Steph is in the bar, curled up in a chair with a sketch book and a mug of coffee.

Increased energy aside, not everything changes when you grew up a sick, skinny kid in the city.

Comments

[therighttime]

"It's important to know which heads to aim for," Steph replies seriously. Tony calls it her Captain Voice and after a few years in the service, looking out for the men around her and making the final decisions, she's just fine with that. "War is ninety percent information and only about ten percent actual combat."

[missnicegirl]

"Yeah." She nods. "I know."

That sounded more than a little like the voice of experience.

[therighttime]

It throws Steph. The little lesson she'd tried to thrown into an innocent conversation, already learned. She's quiet for a moment, looking at the girl, and then smiles her own bland little smile.

"Wish you didn't," she says, quiet. Then adds, "And I haven't even told you about Tony yet."

[missnicegirl]

"I don't wish I didn't, because if I didn't then my school would still be run by an evil witch," she says matter-of-factly. And then grins. "Tell me about Tony!"

[therighttime]

"Wish you didn't have to," Steph corrects herself, but there's a light in her eyes that wasn't there a moment ago. "So you're a veteran of your own war, huh?"

And hey, in this place, she might actually mean a real, true evil witch was running her school.

Oh, she'll talk about Tony - she hates to, imagining that he secretly likes it, but she will. He's a conversation all on his own, usually.

[missnicegirl]

"This really nasty lady named Miss Trunchbull was running the school," she explains. "She did a lot of really nasty stuff. But it turned out she murdered her brother-in-law for his money, so I convinced her his ghost was after her and she ran away, except then it also turned out she could do magic and she came back and kidnapped somebody I care about and I went after her and there was a big fight and she hit herself with a lightning bolt and now she's dead."

This story gets shorter every time she tells it.

[therighttime]

Steph considers this for a few moments, frowning thoughtfully. It's a pretty fantastic story and from such a small kid, she's inclined to take it as just that: a story. Embellished here and there to make it more entertaining, a little more special.

But then there's how honest and upfront Matilda's been from the start. And even if she is embellishing, that story had to start from somewhere.

"Well," Steph says, once she's made up her mind, and smiles at the little girl. "Anytime you want to join up with my team, Matilda, you just say the word."

[missnicegirl]

"Deal," she says, grinning. "I'll probably wait until I finish college, though. Unless you have a really big emergency."

[therighttime]

"Oh, I don't know what could be more important than finishing college, though," Steph points out, grinning right back. Such a little girl, already dreaming of college, that is amazing. "But we'll keep you updated. What are you going to study when you get there?"

[missnicegirl]

"Everything I can get my hands on," she predicts. "Math. Definitely math. And I'll probably take the opportunity to learn a bunch of languages if they have any I haven't gotten to by then."

[therighttime]

If there are any. Steph's starting to get the same sort of feeling, talking to this little girl, that she sometimes gets talking to Tony and Bruce. That sense that she's missing something big and important and blindingly up over her head.

"How many have you learned so far?" she asks, smile gentle.

[missnicegirl]

"Three!" she says brightly. "English, Russian, and Mandarin. That's half the official languages of the United Nations; I'm going to work on the other three next and then I think I'll go by number of speakers worldwide. Spanish and French are probably going to be easy, but I'm not sure about Arabic; it's got another new alphabet and those are hard."

[therighttime]

Steph's smile bursts into a grin, fascinated and impressed. "Oh wow. I bet that would be hard. I never did pick up any other alphabets, but I haven't traveled very much. Have you been to any of those places?"

[missnicegirl]

"No! I've never left the state except through Milliways," she says. "The farthest I've ever been from my hometown in my own world is Buffalo. I did go to England once, with a friend I met here, but I didn't stay very long."

[therighttime]

"And you still picked up all those languages? That's amazing, Matilda! Did you get to see London at all?"

[missnicegirl]

"A little bit. Not very much. And it's not that amazing—languages are easier to learn the younger you are, and I'm six. Plus my best friend speaks Russian, so I get to practice with her a bunch. Mandarin was harder; I don't have any friends who speak that."

[therighttime]

Steph considers that, thoughtful. "I know Nik speaks a lot of different languages, definitely Russian. I only speak little pieces of a few languages, nothing fluent. But you're right, having a friend to practice with would make it easier."

[missnicegirl]

"Nikolai? That's a Russian name, so that makes sense." She repeats the name, with the Russian pronunciation this time. "Николай."

[therighttime]

"That's how he says it, sometimes," Steph agrees. "Not very often. If he didn't say it himself, you'd never know he was Russian, his English is flawless."

[missnicegirl]

"So is Lavender's! Well, she lisps a little, but that's because she's six, not because she's bilingual."

[therighttime]

Steph grins, good-natured. "That makes sense. It sounds like you really love learning. Do you like school?"

[missnicegirl]

"I love school," she says enthusiastically. "Even though I'm probably going to be learning everything at a high school level before I'm in third grade. I'm friends with everyone in my class and they're all really great, and of course my teacher is the best. My teacher is my adoptive mom," she explains.

[therighttime]

Steph's eyebrows fly up, surprised. "What's that like? Being around her at home and at school, that's okay?"

Steph loved her mother - adored her mother - but it was easier to get through the day when Sarah Rogers didn't know exactly what school was like for her daughter.

[missnicegirl]

"Sure it is! I mean, she was my teacher first," she says. "She adopted me because Mom and Dad had to run away from the FBI and they didn't really want to take me with them and I didn't really want to go and I asked Jenny and she wanted to keep me."

[therighttime]

"...you've lived a whole lot in six years, haven't you?"