Work Text:
A respite:
a short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant.
The beach was filled with noise. Not everybody could enjoy something like this anymore.
Ripley had been in stasis for 57 years. The time had passed, and she’d outlived her own daughter. Amanda had been her sole reason for fighting so hard back on the Nostromo, besides not wanting to die. After her outburst with some of the investors who’d reprimanded her about blowing the large towing vessel to pieces, and them not believing a word of what she had said about the alien, she sat on the beach near the house she’d raised Amanda in.
Amanda was intelligent and brave, and she lived all the way up to her last moments until
Cancer took her years before her time. And to believe that she’d never witnessed her grow up! Amanda probably felt as if her mother didn’t care for her at all. She took a deep breath, the outside air filling her lungs, just like it had almost 60 years ago, right as she was about to leave earth. Her hands trembled as she stared listlessly at the water, her reflection rippling across its surface. She had heard countless poems and tales about how clean water looked and tasted, but after so much had happened, she didn’t really care anymore. Why should she waste time thinking about clear water when her only child was dead, never having known her mother?
The smoke from her cigarette seeped into the air, the burning light licking at her hand
just the tiniest bit as her thoughts raged on about her daughter. She couldn’t believe that her daughter was dead; everything she’d done to get home to her daughter had been in vain.
The smallest tear formed around her eye, blurring it ever so slightly. She continued to
stare, wishing the deep water would swallow her whole, that the currents would pull her under and keep her there forever, and she’d meet her daughter again.
“Oh, Amanda, if only you’d known,” Ripley whispered, dropping the cigarette. Her voice
quivering as she quietly sobbed. She stood, finding her balance before walking back to her house.
She opened the front door, dust covering the pictures of her family before her departure.
Despite her incredible grievances for her daughter, she had some for the crew of the Nostromo, too. Specifically, two of the most incredible people who were on that ship, Lambert and Dallas. Both had been occasional flicks during her time on the Nostromo. She took more of a liking towards Lambert, but both had helped her through things on that ship. When Dallas was killed by that thing, she’d felt a large hole form in her heart, and it grew when everybody else died too. It had been Ash’s fault that the thing was taken aboard in the first place; if they’d obeyed the rules as she’d enforced, then maybe they’d be alive. That was a sick way of thinking, though. Nobody could’ve known what had happened. Maybe if she had run after Lambert and Parker earlier, then maybe both of them would have made it. She couldn’t believe she was the only one left. She grieved and mourned. Everything she had was gone, and she could never bring it back. She saw them in the back of her mind. They haunted her, sometimes taunted her for
what she’d done wrong.
She sat on her daughter's bed, staring at the bed's elaborate patterns. Nothing compared to this feeling. This immense fatigue, this immense guilt. She was so deep in that she couldnt even light a smoke anymore; her hands trembled and betrayed her every time she tried to hold something for more than 2 seconds.
By the time she came to terms with everything, she was told about what happened on LV-426. She was flabbergasted. How could anybody terraform that place? She had another outburst towards those executives, but she agreed to go anyway, as she was willing to help any survivors.
With a final look at her house, previously so built with love, now filled with emptiness, she shut the
door, and continued to the ship.