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The knock on the door woke Ripley from her sleep immediately. She shot up in bed, hand instinctively coming up to her chest despite her not even dreaming of the creatures which frequented her thoughts. Lately, the days had been worse.
“Ripley?” a shaky voice asked from the hallway, followed by another tentative knock.
“Coming, honey, one second,” Ripley called back quietly. She didn’t want to wake Hicks. “Nightmare?” she asked as though Newt didn’t have nightmares more frequently than she did. It would make the little girl feel better if she didn’t think she was upsetting Ripley.
Newt nodded, so Ripley shuffled out of the room, gently closing the door behind her. She bent down and wrapped her arms around her daughter, wordlessly telling her, I’m here.
It had taken a while for Newt to feel comfortable even just being alone in the dark hallway outside her parents’ room; she used to run in and huddle between them, clinging to Ripley like she was her only chance at safety. Now she’d ask if she could stay for just a little while – which of course always ended up being the full night.
“It was bad tonight,” Newt mumbled, her arms tightening around Ripley.
“Do you want to talk about it in the morning?” she asked gently, her psych evaluation recommendation still fresh in her mind. She rubbed wide circles into Newt’s back as the girl thought about it. Ripley didn’t believe much of her therapist’s bullshit. She didn’t see how talking about the horrors her family had experienced would make them any less horrific or real in her mind. If anything, she could only see how that would make them more prevalent in her life, when all she wanted to do was finally escape them.
But Newt seemed to benefit from talking about her nightmares, like simply listening to herself describe them made her remember they were just dreams. To Ripley it just made her remember the reality was so much worse.
“Ok,” Newt finally replied, pulling back from the hug slowly.
“Back to bed?”
“Affirmative,”
Ripley smiled a little and led Newt back down the hall to her room. It was small but the girl was meticulous about the cleanliness of the space, making sure she never felt like she was back in the vents of the Sulaco. Ripley had no trouble navigating her way to the bed, guided by the string of newt-shaped string lights, glowing a gentle green in the otherwise darkness of her room.
Newt climbed under the sheets and pulled them up to her chin. “Night, Mommy,” she said with a tiny smile when Ripley put her hand on her cheek.
“Sleep better,” Ripley pressed a kiss to Newt’s cheek and headed back to her room. When she got there she nearly jumped, scared by Hicks sitting up in bed.
“Jesus, Dwayne,”
“Sorry. Couldn’t rest right,”
He lay back down once Ripley was under the covers with him, their foreheads nearly touching in the dark.
“Hey,” she whispered, her curls falling into her face. She hadn’t been bothered to cut them and was starting to get annoyed by constantly needing to push them out of her eyes.
Luckily, Hicks was one step ahead of her. He brushed the strands away from her face as well as he could, considering the lack of distance between the pair. His elbow bumped her hip as he moved and they both grinned.
He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him so he could rest his head on her shoulder. He kissed her where her tshirt – his old Marines tshirt, in fact – had been dragged down to expose her collarbone and she raked her hand through the hair at the back of his head.
“You’re so good with her,” Hicks whispered, head still on Ripley’s shoulder.
“You say that like you’re not,” she replied simply.
“It’s different. You tell her what she needs to hear,”
Ripley hesitated, her fingers tightening slightly in Hicks’ hair before she responded, “I don’t know. She reminds me of me. Before everything. But she can get better,”
There was another moment of silence, something which both Hicks and Ripley revelled in. They’d often support each other quietly, small touches of hands or shoulder bumps or just eye contact which said everything they needed to. It developed when they landed back on Earth and had to navigate Weyland-Yutani’s constant interrogations.
In bed they’d just hold each other and let themselves be grounded in the fact they’d made it out and were safe. Their legs tangling and chests pressed together as closely as possible.
Hicks broke the silence hesitantly, “You deserve that too,”
“Hm?”
“To feel like you can get better,”
“Oh,” Ripley responded. She didn’t continue, just brushed her thumb over Hicks’ cheek, telling him to move on. As much as she hated to admit it, she didn’t like when Hicks treated her like she was able to heal from the shit they’d gone through together, because it was so wildly different to how she saw herself.
She couldn’t see herself changing, she was too old for that now. She knew Newt was still a little girl who had a lot of growing up to do. But Ripley felt more set in stone, she’d cemented herself in her mind as scared but strong, unmovable. Hicks looked at her like a flower growing out of a crack in cement. Like she could change and be something different in spite of it all.
Her arm tightened around his shoulders and they fell back asleep.