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

[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?"

[missnicegirl]

"I guess so."

[therighttime]

"Jenny sounds really swell. You two are lucky to have each other."

[missnicegirl]

"I know." She smiles. "I love her. She's the best."

[therighttime]

Steph grins back. "So you're going to high school soon, huh? You might like talking to Tony, he graduated college at seventeen. You'd probably understand more of what he talks about than I do."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, I'm not sure if I'll go to high school that soon," she says consideringly. "If I'm going to be skipping ahead that fast, I might as well wait until I'm done all the high school material too and then go straight to college."

[therighttime]

"You mean you're doing high school work right now?"

[missnicegirl]

"Yep! Mostly in math. I get ahead in math faster than I get ahead in anything else."