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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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."

"Sounds like he needs to work out some issues," Hurley says. It's probably an understatement considering that Brad's dad just killed two people because his kids were moving. Hurley presses down on the lever to release all the tokens. They scatter all over the table.

"My dad left when I was like, eight and came back around when he needed something," he says, separating the tokens. "Did you not get along with your dad?" His brother getting along better with him didn't exactly say much about Brad's relationship with him.

He started to help Hurley separate the tokens.

"Mom says we're opposite sides of a coin," he said, hearing his mother's explanation while speaking. I miss my mom.... "He doesn't get things, you know? Like why I might actually like school or why I'd rather be texting my friends than on some lame trip to the middle of the woods."

"I've spent three months on a beach or in a jungle," Hurley says. "I still don't get why anyone would ever willingly subject themselves to the wilderness."

That much is true.

"Does that mean your brother more of like, an outdoorsy-type person?" Since his brother and his dad seem to get along better.

He shrugged again. Brad was doing that a lot lately.

"Not really." he replied. "Caleb just still laugh's at his dumb jokes... plus my dad will do whatever he asks."

"That's not cool," Hurley says, because it seems Brad's dad is playing favorites, which is Not Cool At All. Hurley never had to deal with it, but that was only because he was an only child.

Tokens separated, Hurley slips in another token without bothering to ask Brad if he wants to play another game.

"I've been looking at this place as a vacation," he says. "Not like, a vacation I wanted to go on or anything, but a break to figure out stuff before I get back. Maybe enjoy myself before I go back to the island with the Smoke Monster and the Others and the people on the helicopter who are trying to kill everybody and stuff."

He frowned, trying to comprehend Hurley's words.

"Smoke Monster?" He said. "The Others? and... someone's trying to kill you in a helicopter?"

Those seem like three different big things for one island... what is Hurley's world like?

As an after thought, Brad picked up a red token and started off dropping one in the far end of the board.

"I don't even know," he says. "There's like, these people who are like, inner-circle who know exactly what's going on because they're always in the middle of it. And then there's people like me who are kinda inner circle, but sometimes not."

He and Charlie were definitely in that place.

"So like, I never saw the smoke monster, but it goes around killing people sometimes. Or other stuff, but I'm not really clear on that. And we thought the people on the helicopter were there to rescue us, but just before I got here, a bunch of them were holding my friends hostage on the beach, so I had to rescue them."

Rescuing them involved mowing them down in the Dharma Van he found.

"And the Others? I still don't know who those people are. They like, live in this village and abduct people and stuff."

Hurley slides a token in.

"No offense, but your world sounds pretty confusing." He said. "Even more than this place.. and this place is really weird."

Brad thought the whole thing sounded like some strange thriller direct by M. Night Shyamalan.

He put another token in too.

"Yeah, I know," Hurley says, slipping in another token. "My life actually used to be normal. Now it feels like I just move from one weird situation to the next."

Not that that was his favorite situation, but...

"But you kinda learn to just go with the flow. Nothing wrong with letting yourself get swept up in things as long as the current's taking you forward."

"That... sort of makes sense, actually." He said with a slight smile. His eyes remained troubled. "You ever just want to get off, though? Or press pause?"

Brad had liked how things were before the weekend.

Was that the first time the kid's smiled since he's got here?

"All the time," Hurley says. "But wishing for it's not going to change anything. Life's not gonna stop just 'cause I want it to."

Hurley takes one of the tokens in hand and taps it against the table. "But that stuff? It's not easy to do. I still freak out all the time."

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