milliways_bar | (no subject)

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It's awfully busy back at the Greenbrier. Gordon's taken the opportunity to get little Eli out of his mother's hair. He'd meant to take him somewhere out of the way in the complex itself, but Milliways showed up, so-

"One winter morning, Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen..."

-there is a one-eyed, battle-scarred physicist with a crowbar on his belt, seated by the fireplace reading Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day to the dark-skinned, reddish-haired toddler on his lap.

Not that he couldn't be interrupted, if someone else wanted to talk. Just give them a heads-up first.

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Its been a long winter and Demeter is happy that Spring and Kore have returned.

When she finds a door to Milliways in the kitchen, she goes through and then smiles when she spots Gordon and Eli. She knew Gordon would be a good father.

"It covered everything as far as he could see!" says Gordon. "After breakfast, he put on his snowsuit and ran outside-"

Eli tries to turn the page back. "Not just yet, Eli," Gordon says, and carefully reaches up to distract Eli's hand. "You can go backwards through the book later."

Demeter comes over and kneels down to offer Eli a flower, "Hold that while your father reads to you."

Eli boggles solemnly, as toddlers are wont to do, but accepts the offered flower. Gordon smiles gratefully. "Thank you," he says. "If I don't steer his attention away from the pages, he starts trying to chew on them."

"Oh most books can take some chewing but the flower's better for it and won't do him any harm. Be good and listen to your father, dear,"

She gently boops Eli on the nose.

"He usually is," says Gordon. "Just interested in exploring, and at his age..."

"That's what he should be doing for the world is large and his."

Gordon nods. "Turns out our children aren't the only babies around now," he says. "It's not just humans these days, I mean. The Vortigaunts started being able to hatch out their own children again after the Combine field went down. They started coming out into the sunlight just around Christmas."

"Wonderful and how are all the children getting along?"

"Pretty well," says Gordon, "as long as we keep enough extra toys around to distract them when two or three of them all get interested in the same toy. My niece is making a lot of crocheted tools and things like that for the kids who like to play with hammers."

And crowbars. There's a lot of soft toy crowbars out there. It's weird.

"Places to play can be good too. Gardens, spots where they can put their hands in dirt and sand and other things. I can help you put something like that together if you'd like as well as find more toys."

"Might not be a bad idea," says Gordon, resettling Eli on his knee. "Sergeant-Major Shephard made it to the Doomsday Vault and came back with a lot of different seed stocks."

"Wonderful and I can help get them growing for you."

"We'd appreciate that," says Gordon. "Say, you don't by any chance handle things to do with farm animals, do you? We've got some frozen genetic material, but most of it won't do us any good without at least one or two adults to use it on."

"I do, I have many good friends who are farmers and could help."

Gordon nods. "We'd be grateful," he says. "I don't have the specific species on me, but... I can show you what we've got to work with the next time I come in."

"Thank you. I'm glad to do whatever I can to help."

Much, much later, after the book is finished and Eli has nodded off...

"Hey, you."

Gordon looks up with a small smile. "Hey," he murmurs. "You sound better."

"Mmm. I feel better," Alyx says before giving him a peck on the cheek and settling down next to him. "How was Eli?"

Edited 2014-04-03 00:51 (UTC)

"He was all right," Gordon says. "Settled down eventually. Only tried to chew on the book a little bit, which was good. I think he just wanted to let off some steam."

"Yeah, well... better he does it here than at home, I guess." She reaches over to gently tousle her sleeping son's hair.

Gordon nods. "He met Demeter," he says. "She came by to say hello, and to offer her assistance. I asked her if she could put us in touch with anyone who could help with farm animals."

"Oh? What'd she say?"

"Apparently she does," Gordon says. "We should be hearing from her soon."

Any port in a storm and based on her track record, she's a damn good port.

"Oh good. That makes trying to make sense of Aperture's cloning tech slightly less pressing."

"One look at that stuff and I become very, very glad I wasn't a biologist," Gordon agrees fervently. "Got a preference what to start with? The Fort Collins frozen germ plasm covered a lot of species."

Edited 2014-04-05 01:44 (UTC)

"Chicken and dairy cattle, I think," says Alyx after a moment's consideration. "Having a steady supply of eggs and milk will help extend our supplies quite a bit."

Gordon nods. "I'll mention it to her when next I see her," he says. "And this way we won't have to take a chance on those two-headed cattle, either."

"Yeahhh." Alyx grimaces. "I trust Ellen's word that they're a viable species, but can you imagine trying to deliver a calf like that?"

"I try very hard not to think about delivering calves at all," Gordon says. "I read an early twentieth century veterinarian's memoirs once. Once. If you don't mind, I'd rather stick to helping people raise the chickens."

"Well, either way, there's going to be a lot of feces involved. Fair warning."

"I've swum through worse than that," Gordon says. "I can handle a little animal output."

Alyx looks back at Eli. "On that note... we should seriously start potty-training the twins pretty soon here."

"You're probably right," says Gordon, looking down at the sleeping toddler. "Well. That should be interesting."

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