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[That impulse to be mad over it is a hard one to deal with. Hank was never mad at Cole, but he sure took everything out on Connor for even being vaguely distantly related to a small facet of the incident that killed him for long enough. Luckily, while he's still mad in a way, he figured out a better place to put it.]

One is about a little boy who loses his parents and ends up living with horrible aunts. Then he ends up with a magically giant peach that he gets to escape and travel the world in. He makes friends with the bugs that live in it and they become his new family. And one is about a pig that doesn't want to be eaten, so the spider that lives in his barn puts messages about how great he is in her web.

The uh... one I found here was a little different. He was a Spoink worrying about being traded off, rather than being eaten.

[Newt keeps it all bottled in. They are dead, are facts, Ripley is her new, better mom who didn't break her promise and die on her....and yeah maybe one day she'll figure out that the situation was more complicated then, they broke a promise/chose to be stupid and die and left her alone. It'll just take a while.]

....it would be good to practise my reading. I can read longer chapter books now!

[She doesn't have any of her tutors left here. So she's proud okay. And she's been slowly reading nonfiction since she got here because learning.]

I like the libraries here. The people who work there are really nice.

You know what I miss? When I was your age and went to a library, they didn't do electronic systems back then so you had cards that you wrote your name on and used to check a book out. And sometimes I could see on that card someone had checked that book out way back before I was born. The year and date, written right there beside their name.

I always knew it was a good book if someone checked it out more than once.

[God sometimes he feels fucking old.]

Oh wow. That sounds really neat. What happened if they ran out of room on the card? Did they put a new one in and keep the other one?

The computers here are fancier than they were back home. A lot of stuff is. But then they don't have a lot of other stuff we had either. ...It's kind of weird.

[She's from a future that was written in the 80's. Their version of high tech didn't pan out as well as they thought.]

They usually got a new one, yeah. I think they kept the old one, at least until they got rid of the cards altogether. They started doing that when I was in high school. Gave everything a barcode and a serial number.

[He had missed seeing people's handwriting on those cards.]

Ours are a little high tech but this is about easy enough for me to keep up with. Most of the time. Don't tell anybody.

[He says as if his technological ineptitude isn't obvious. Way to go spending all your time with an android, sir.]

I guess that makes sense.

[sort of.]

It would have neat to see if people read the books though.

I won't.

[Super serious. Your total secret is safe with her.]

Do you read a lot?

I do, actually.

Well, I didn't for about... three years or so. Sometimes when something bad happens, you stop doing things you like to do or taking care of yourself as well as you should. You probably already know that.

[Seeing as how, even as small as she is, she's been through so much.]

But I've been getting back in the habit. I started rereading some books here.

[She nods.]

I didn't play games until my pokemon wanted to. It seemed really silly when I was supposed to be trying to survive in a new world. ....I'm still not great at it.

[Credence had gotten her to play tag but aside from that....games are still hard.]

And I only started reading again because I wanted to read better then grade two.

....but I think I like it.

[It's sad that she didn't play for so long, but the professional part of his brain is reminded that's common for someone who has been through trauma. He's glad she's finding her way out of it. That part is tough.]

Good. I think reading gives you a chance to see the perspective of other people. And that's more important than most people realize.

[He should have remembered it.]

How long are the chapters you're reading now?

[Yeah, playing is hard as well because she used to have friends ~~and a brother~~ to play with. It's easy saying everyone died. It's hard to live with that fact.]

Why is it important?

And um....five or six pages I think. Or more. It changes depending on the book.

It helps you understand other people. So you're not a jerk to them when they don't deserve it. I mean, some people do deserve it, but sometimes you mess up and are rude to someone who never asked for it. [Like what happened to Bishop. And to Connor.]

It teaches you when to apologize or just be nice to someone having it rough. And hopefully they learn it too so when you mess up they can forgive you. [If you're sensible and know what you did and ask for it.]

That's doing pretty good. You'll be working your way through big books in no time.

[She'll listen closely to that.]

Oh, I never thought of it like that.

But.....how do you know if they deserve it? I mean, I know some people are evil, like Burke and he deserved to die. But what if ....people died and that's why you're mad at them? And so they can't apologize anyway and they're never coming back and they promised.

[Yeah, um. ...not tears but it's said very quickly near the end. It's an angrier but similar emphasis Newt always uses when she uses that word, ....er this might be why.]

[That sort of promise is hard. He's not sure he would have forgiven Connor if he'd up and died on him. But he knows he was also never mad at Cole for what he couldn't help. Of course, Cole made no promises.]

It's okay to forgive someone who can't apologize anymore.

That's part of seeing something from someone else's perspective. They made a bad promise, thinking they were being truthful or just thinking you'd be less scared and that it would help. Then those monsters made them break it. They probably didn't actually want to let you down.

So if you decide to, and you think it's a good choice, it's okay to forgive someone all on your own. [Even if he knows how very hard that is to do, when you've lost something important.] Even when they can't hear it.

....Maybe.

[She's quiet and it's really hard to admit especially because part of Newt still believes that mothers know everything and should be able to do anything.]

....my older brother tried to save my mom, but he jumped out of the vents and left me alone....and he died anyway.

[And that...really, really hurts because he was with her, he was supposed to stay with her.]

I'm still mad at him...and my mom. She promised she wouldn't leave me.

[But her voice is very quiet and it's....she's had a lot of time to think on it and she's ...unsure. She just wants them back, but that's never happening and she's been angry at them for so, so long.]

Sometimes being brave doesn't work out all that well. It's the worst when it doesn't accomplish much of anything.

Maybe one day when you're not so mad you can forgive him. I guess you don't have to now. But it would probably be nice if you could keep your good memories, which I think forgiving helps a lot with. You don't want to lose those under all the bad.

It sounds like you had quite a few.

I lost a lot of good memories when I was mad. I wasn't mad at Cole, but the reasons he died. But still... I'd love to have those memories back. I'd love to have him back. [That part he probably won't ever be over, and it shows on his face.]

[She listens to that and nods slightly.]

It's hard....I saw all of them die. Even my dad. It's hard to remember stuff about them without remembering that....

....I wish they'd come back. Even Timmy. And my friends, and teacher and our neighbours and the mean guy who yelled at us when we hid in the vents....

I wish they'd all come back. ....and the marines too.

[Her arms are wrapped around herself and she doesn't even realize it. You see one death it's traumatic, you see countless deaths of people you've known your entire life and it gets to the point where she can't handle it. Memories suck, this might be the reason she keeps the emotional things locked away. She can see them in her head again.]

Forgiving can't help with that. It just helps make you less mad while you try to consider the good stuff.

[He wishes he could give her a hug. But he figures the Pokemon he and Connor sent will be much better at doing things that can be there for her when she gets to know them.]

Were the marines like Bishop? I remember you mentioning him?

[He hopes finding a roundabout way of thinking about it would help.]

No...most of them weren't really smart. They thought they could just go in and kill the monsters because they had lots of guns. They didn't listen to me....or Ripley and most of them died really quick.

[They should have at least listened to Ripley. Newt was still in her shell shocked, you're all going to die phase.]

Hudson and Vasquez were nice though. They survived longer then most of them. Hudson saved my life once. Bishop went on a mission where he was by himself. He was really brave. He had to crawl through a pipe to go and fix something.

But he survived and so did Hicks. ....they got really hurt but they're alive. Bishop even got ripped in half but he survived anyway and made sure we didn't get pulled into the vacuum of space.

[And that's the important part.]

I don't think Connor would have survived being ripped in half, so Bishop's made of tougher stuff than the androids I know. [Jesus fucking christ. To most of this, really, but that bit's a doozy.]

Running in guns blazing doesn't work very often. You've gotta ask a lot of questions and look around first.

[Newt nods.]

He's really tough.

No, I don't think they believed Ripley when she told them how dangerous the monsters were. And they didn't believe me, because I thought they were just all going to die anyway and wasn't talking much.

And then they got killed or taken to be used to make more aliens.

I'm glad you talk about things now. It's good you're telling me this stuff, just in case I met a marine or Bishop or Ripley.

[He's pretty sure that a fucking alien wouldn't come wrecking up the place.]

It's easier to talk here. It's not as scary.

And I like talking to you. You're nice.

[You are officially a Good Adult tm, in her books, Hank.]

Thank you. I try to be nice to nice people.

But I'm a big advocate for being a jerk to mean people so if you don't have to be nice to someone and they're being rude to you, cut loose.

I have a feeling you already know that, though.

[She doesn't want to talk to idiots with low survival skills that ignore her.]

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