strangetrip | Check-In: Not-Mother Hen

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Check-In: Not-Mother Hen

Kitty sat at the bar with a cup of coffee and her notebook, watching the 'welcoming committee' make themselves busy. Liz was here, as she'd promised Kitty she would be and Kitty gave her a quick smile of encouragement.

One of the worst things about Check-In Days was that you never knew whether it'd be a whole long day of no one arriving, one spectacular fall from the ceiling and dropping dead after another, or anything in between. It made it hard to know what to do with yourself. After awhile, you got used to it and just kept on with whatever you'd do otherwise, and know that if you didn't step up for a new arrival, someone else would. But for someone not used to treating it like a responsibility to be here, especially someone with Liz's anxious need to be perfect at it, Check-In Day could be emotionally exhausting.

So Kitty made sure to have milk warmed for hot cocoa and her plans for the obstacle course handy in case Liz needed something to do with herself. Otherwise, she was working on a modification of Cerebro to see if she could start detecting new arrivals.

[ooc: Regular check-in day gathering post. If you want Kitty, ping me.]

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"uh, Red." He replied.

Brad let his brain take in what Hurley said. It was really important to him that Caleb wasn't alone.

He dropped the first red disc into the middle slot.

"I was in a truck with my younger brother when I got here," he said quietly. "He's 12."

"Yeah?" Hurley asks, dropping in his own disc on top of Brad's. "You weren't driving, were you?"

He doesn't look old enough to drive with a license. Permit, maybe? Hurley wasn't sure. He was pretty bad at figuring out ages. He thought Walt was like, 7, and he was 10 and pretty good at spelling, too.

"Yeah, I was." He said. My dad talk me two days ago before.... "We needed to get away from where we are. If a cop pulls me over, I'd be okay with that."

We just wanted to go back home and see mom

He put a red beside his other one.

Hurley deposits a token directly on the other side of Brad's first. He's surprised to hear that the kid was driving around, but considering that he and Johnny once stole a golf cart and drove it around the course when they were about Brad's age, it's not entirely unbelievable.

"Where were you?"

Brad takes a moment to answer and uses looking at the placement of their tokens as an excuse.

"North of Sudbury, Ontario." He answered. "In Canada. It's like, the middle of winter there, not like it is here, and we got stranded in the woods a few days ago."

The next red token is placed beside his others. It creates three in a row.

Hurley slips his piece right on the other side of his 3. He's got him blocked in for now.

"What, the snow strand you or something?" he asks.

He looked at the tokens for his next strategic placement.

"My, uh..." He said, visibly pausing with a deep inhale. Brad's shoulders rose and fell and his next two words came out careful like walking on ice "... My dad. He was letting me drive back home because he had been drinking. He was teaching me. But my brother Caleb was being a jerk and we started fighting and we hit a tree. Our car was stuck in the snow."

Bradley held the token between his thumb and middle finger and spun in slowly with his index.

"I came here in a different truck a few days after that." He added, then placed the red token over the black on in the middle.

Hurley frowns at Bradley's artful placement of his token.

"That sucks, dude," Hurley pronounces, surveying the board thoughtfully. "I kinda crashed a car before I came here, too. It's not fun."

Hurley finally places his token.

"Are you and your brother pretty close?" he asks.

"Yeah" He said. "I mean, most of the time. He can be really annoying, but he's 12."

Brad shrugged. He thought Caleb was annoying a lot, but the distance had him realizing he missed his brother.

"I'm supposed to take care of him." Brad added. "I'm the oldest."

As an after thought, brad dropped a token in, trying to connect his pieces.

Hurley pops in another token.

"I don't have any siblings, but my family's Catholic so I have about a million cousins. We were always fighting all the time. Doesn't mean we didn't take care of one another when it counted."

"I just... I never told him, you know?" He said as he turned his token over in his palm. "I should have told him more."

He dropped in his token to block off Hurley on way.

Hurley frowns at Bradley's block, then glances over at the kid.

"I know it probably doesn't help now, but," Hurley slips another token in. "There's nothing stopping you from doing that when you go back,"

Brad looked at the tokens he had left over and idly counted them.

"I know," He said, selecting one. "I just hope I have the chance to tell him, that's all."

He dropped his in after careful consideration. He wondered if either of them were going to win at this point.

"How long have you been stuck here?" He asked.

Hurley can get that. There were tons of things he wanted to tell his ma when they were on the island and the island was considerably more dangerous than this place.

"Since April 1st. Probably the universe's way of letting me know this is all a big joke."

He slides in a token. The kid's actually really good.

Edited 2018-06-25 12:54 (UTC)

"You really believe that" Brad asked, peering over the game board to Hurley. "That the universe plans things or there's fate or whatever?"

Hurley takes one of the plastic tokens and turns it around in his hand.

"I think we make our own fate," he says, thinking of Charlie. "There's nothing out there that's controlling our destiny. Just us."

He looks over at Brad.

"Why do you ask?"

He shrugged.

"You said the universe was playing a joke on you," Brad said.

He finally places his own, almost connecting 4 together.

"If there was Fate... at least stuff wouldn't be our fault," He said quietly.

"Yeah, but that means that we wouldn't be responsible for the good things that happen to us, either," Hurley says.

"What I think," Hurley says, mindlessly placing a token somewhere that wouldn't block Brad from getting his four-in-a-row, "is that you should decide whatever you want to believe and not worry so much about what other people think. You wanna believe in fate, do it, dude."

Bradley wasn't sure if he believed in fate, or if he wanted to so then his dad wasn't as terrible a person.

He placed the token to connect his four red tokens together. I wonder if he let me win... He looked at Hurley, then he refocused on the winning tokens.

"My dad killed two people," He admitted quietly, barely over a whisper.

His expression was pained and there was a deep frown present.

Hurley is right on the brink of swearing because what the hell, how did he miss that? when Bradley opens his mouth and tells him that his dad killed two people.

"What?"

It's probably not the first thing Hurley should have said, but it's the first thing that came out of his mouth.

His gaze dropped to the table top. He loosely played with the remaining red tokens idly.

"Caleb told him we were moving to London," Brad began, "...and I guess that freaked him out and he didn't want to go back home. And there were these guys who had a radio and a truck..."

How do you respond to that? Hurley barely knows the kid and he suddenly feels protective of him.

"Dude. Please tell me you were getting away from him with your brother."

Brad nodded slowly.

"Yeah... That's why I hope they're right about me not just disappearing from where I was..." He said, not looking up from the tokens on the table top.

"Dude, if I didn't believe it, I wouldn't say it," Hurley says. "I'm not, like, in the habit of lying to people."

He's pretty sure if he tried to, he'd be pretty awful at it. But that was fine; Hurley wore his heart on his sleeve anyway.

"Why was he blowing a gasket over you guys leaving?" Hurley can imagine being upset separated from his sons, but not murder two people angry.

Bradley shrugs like the teenager he is in a dismissive, but simultaneously oppressed way.

"He doesn't have custody of us. He left when my mom had me, then came back and then left..." He said with another shrug. "I guess it just freaked him out we were going so far away or.. something."

Brad didn't understand it entirely.

"He's always been kind of...intense." He added. "... Caleb always got along with him better."

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