Title: Thursday's Child

Author: Sita Z

Genre: Angst/Drama

Rating: M

Summary: On a hot day in August, a child is kidnapped. Thirty years later, Malcolm has a strange encounter.

Disclaimer: This fiction was written for my personal enjoyment, not for any profit whatsoever.

AN: Big thanks go to my wonderful beta readers - T'eyla, for loving the Malcolm moments, The Libran Iniquity, for helping me fight that monster called English grammar, and Gabi, for working her beta magic and improving the story to no end. Thanks girls!

This story will be updated every three or four days; feedback, as always, is very much appreciated!

And now... on with the story!

------------------------------------------------------

Prologue

August had been a hot month. During daytime, everything seemed soaked in heat, and even during the nights the temperature wouldn't cool down. Nature struggled to cope with the drought, and the wildlife suddenly found their lush, green corner of the world turning into a place where only the fittest survived. The grass grew yellow, and the ponds shallowed out, revealing the muddy rocks and tangled weed that dwelled at their bottoms. Animals coming to drink had to content themselves with a small, cloudy puddle in the very middle, and soon even that dried away, leaving only mud and dying plants in its wake.

The people living in the area were better off - after all, it was the 22nd century, and no one had to worry about their watering place going dry. Still, while the heat hadn't killed anyone yet (except for an old lady who had fallen asleep on her porch and suffered a heatstroke), it began to drain them of their energy. They stayed at home, shutters closed and air conditioning running at maximum, and it was only in the evening that they finally ventured out, taking a late afternoon stroll or having the occasional barbecue.

But the heat also took some of their fear away; it was simply too hot to be worried about anything, or to watch anxiously if there were any warnings about their region on the news.

In fact, thinking back to that particular day in August, Susan had to admit that she had never even switched on the Vid after getting up. Of course, you were supposed to check every morning, midday and evening - Government Security policy - but on that particular day the baby woke her up at 4 am and cried for two hours before she finally managed to tiptoe out of the room and back to her own bed. After that, Susan was too tired to remember anything, let alone check the Vid to see if there had been any warnings. But then, the warnings seldom made any difference, and on that day in August, warnings would have made no difference at all.

Susan usually got up at 7, so she still had one hour of sleep left when Lizzie finally quieted down. Carefully closing the door of the children's room, she went back to her bedroom, and sighed when she saw the light seeping in through the blades of the closed shutters. It had still been dark outside when she had gone to check on Lizzie.

Susan crawled back under the covers, and knew at the same time that she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. She couldn't sleep when the room wasn't dark, and she missed her husband's warm, quietly snoring presence on the other side of the bed. Charles was visiting his parents in Miami - his father hadn't been well lately - and wouldn't be back for another week. His mother had wanted Susan to come as well, bring the children, but as much as she wanted to go, there was no one to take care of the farm while she was gone. So Charles had gone alone, feeling bad about leaving her with both the farm and the children to look after, but she had told him that it was okay. His parents needed him, and she was going to be fine. Just peachy.

Well, maybe not so fine, after all, she thought as she lay awake, staring at the windows that reflected the light of the early morning sun. He'd been gone for only four days, and she already missed him so badly. It was the first time in the eight years that they had been married that he was gone for more than two or three days. You couldn't simply drop everything and go on holiday when you owned a farm, and these days, people tended to stay at home. Stay where it was safe - of course, there wasn't such a thing as a safe place, but at home you could at least pretend it was. You could go on with your everyday routine, worry about the fields going dry and your husband being away and not think about what was going on in this hell of a world that their beautiful blue planet had become.

Susan sighed, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. The boys were up - she could hear the thuds and giggles that usually accompanied their early morning pillow fights - and when Andy and Trip were up, then Lizzie was going to wake up in no time as well. Susan only hoped that the baby had done her share of crying for today, and wasn't going to wake up cranky. She wasn't sure if she was up to another two hours of wearing a path in the bedroom floor.

Opening the door to the children's room, she saw that Lizzie was indeed awake, sitting in her crib and giggling as she watched her two older brothers pelt each other with every pillow and stuffed animal they could reach. Six year old Andy had just sent another pillow flying in the direction of his younger brother, and Trip quickly ducked, the pillow missing his head by inches and hitting the crib instead. Lizzie squealed with delight, probably feeling that she had been invited to join the fight.

Susan smiled. "Mornin', guys. Be a little careful, okay?"

"Mommy!" The boys hopped out of bed, feeling far from guilty about the mess they had made (after all, this was their usual morning routine) and ignored Lizzie's outraged cry at being left behind. "Can we go outside an' play, Mommy? Please?"

Susan marveled at their inexhaustible energy; these days, the heat tended to leave most people sluggish and slow. Not so her boys; they would be happily playing soccer on the front yard when every adult in the neighborhood had escaped to the shadiest place they could find, chugging down iced tea and praying that the air conditioning wouldn't break down.

Susan lifted Lizzie out of her crib so the baby would have no reason to start another crying marathon.

"You boys get yourself dressed an' have some breakfast first. Don't forget to put away your dishes when you're done!"

Ten minutes later, the slam of the screen door told Susan that her boys had left the building. While she had no doubts that her orders had been followed and the boys had stuffed their cups and bowls into the dishwasher, she doubted that either of them had eaten more than a few spoonfuls of cornflakes. Andy and Trip regarded breakfast and other meals only as an unwelcome interruption, and Susan had no idea how they managed to eat so little and stay so hyper at the same time.

She went downstairs and sighed when she looked out the window - the sky was of a clear blue, and there was no cloud to be seen. She had expected no different, of course - after all, the last rain was almost a month ago. She was going to have to water her vegetable garden today if she didn't want the tomatoes to look like shriveled prunes at the end of the day.

Later, Susan didn't remember when she had heard it first - before or after Lizzie had suddenly started to cry - but she remembered that her last thought before It happened had been about watering her tomatoes. Even after all those years, it was that thought which always brought the tears to her eyes.

There was a scream. It was an adult screaming, a man, and at first, Susan was too surprised to be scared. The sound was so - unexpected, and didn't fit at all into the peaceful summer morning. She stood completely still, and then she heard it. A strange hum, growing louder like a giant bumblebee's buzz, and a sound like a weapon being fired. No. Not like a weapon being fired. The sound of a weapon being fired.

After that, Susan's memories were only fragmentary, like snatches of a nightmare that you still remember years after you woke up sweating and shaking, telling yourself that it had only been a dream. Only that it hadn't been a dream. It was the nightmare happening again and again all over the planet, and the second she heard the weapon fire her only thought had been the children.

Clutching a terrified, screaming baby, she had run out the back door only to see their neighbor's house on fire. Smoke was darkening the sky, and she could hear screams and explosions, could see bursts of flames when another house started to burn.

"Andy!"

Her son came running toward her, his eyes so wide that they didn't look completely sane anymore. He wasn't crying, but his face was as white as a sheet and his lips were moving, as if he were trying to say something.

"Andy! Where's Trip? Oh my God..."

She grabbed her son and held him tight, watching part of the neighbor house's roof come down and hit the driveway with a loud crash. And then she saw them. There were four of them, huge, bulking silhouettes against the light of the flames. Coming closer.

Susan grabbed Andy's shoulder, trying to shake him out of his shock.

"Andy, you take Lizzie 'n' go hide in the basement. Y'know, the room with the door that can be locked from the inside. Go in there and stay there no matter what happens. D'you understand?"

The boy stared at her. "M-mommy?"

"Do what I say!" She shoved the crying baby into his arms, and gave him a push. "I'll be with you in a minute!"

That did it. Andy raced towards the house, and Susan turned around. They were coming closer, and she knew that they had seen her, that they were coming for her. Her mind screamed at her to run, to escape while there was still time, but Trip was still somewhere out here. Her child was out here, and she wasn't going to leave him behind.

"Mommy!"

For one moment, Susan stood frozen with shock. The aliens were now close enough for her to see their faces and weapons, and one of them was holding something in a vise grip under his arm. Something that squirmed and kicked out, desperately trying to get away.

"Trip!"

Susan Tucker wasted no time to think. She was scared out of her mind, and it was not heroism that made her do what she did next. Seeing the alien hurt her child filled her with a white-hot rage, and as she ran towards the Orion raiders all she could think of was killing the man who was threatening her son.

"Let him go!"

One of them raised his weapon, but she didn't care, hurling herself at the alien who was holding Trip. He shoved her away and another one laughed, saying something in a guttural voice. She scrambled back to her feet and would have started another attack if not for the hands that grabbed her arms and lifted her off her feet.

"Let me go, you bastard!"

Susan went wild, kicking and scratching and screaming, and at the same time she could hear Trip crying and shouting at them to let her go. The man who had grabbed her lost his grip and she punched him in the face, hard enough to crack her knuckles and his nose at the same time. They both screamed with pain, and he let go of her, dark green blood coming out of his nose and running down on both sides of his mouth. Ignoring the pain in her hands, Susan went back at the man holding Trip, and managed to land one solid punch on his cheek before he grabbed her and held her away at arm's length. Through a blur of tears, she looked at him, and saw that unlike the other men, he wasn't laughing. His round, young face was flushed, and he seemed confused, startled maybe by her reaction. He had no compassion for her, but she saw that her fighting back had surprised him. Thrown him off balance.

"Please," she whispered, never taking her eyes off his face. "Please, let him go."

Something flickered in his eyes, and for one, crazy moment Susan believed he was going to do it. Show mercy. Let them go. Then, however, someone spun her around, breaking their eye contact and wrapping strong arms around her waist to lift her up again. Susan reacted instinctively before he could hoist her over his shoulder, ramming her knee into his crotch.

The man gave a strangled sound and doubled over, hands on the injured part of his anatomy.

When Susan thought back to the frenzy of her fight against the Orion raiders, her memories seemed to black out at that particular point, and she supposed that this had been when one of them had knocked her down with his gun. The last thing she remembered was whirling around, and looking into the terrified face of her four-year-old son for the split of a second before pain exploded at the back of her head, and her world dissolved.

Susan woke up twelve hours later, back in her room with Doctor Lowell and Charles sitting next to her bed. They told her that the attack was over; both Andy and Lizzie were alive, and so was she, although it had been a close call. The Orions had probably thought that she was dead, and that was why they had left her behind. Most of the town had been burned down, and more than 500 people were Lost or dead, but she was going to pull through. She - they - had survived.

"Trip?" Susan asked, trying to prop herself up on her elbows. At her question, the forced smile both men had been wearing crumpled; Lowell looked away, and Charles covered his eyes with his hand. And that was when she knew. Her son was gone.

Susan cried for a month. She refused to eat until she needed vitamin shots to stabilize her weakened metabolism, wouldn't listen to Charles when he carefully tried to comfort her and spent hours staring at the blank ceiling of her bedroom, asking herself over and over again why. Why had it happened, why had it happened to Trip, why hadn't she been able to defend her child. She supposed there were answers to at least some of her questions, but Susan wanted no answers. Answers weren't going to bring her son back, so what use was it to talk, to explain. Trip was gone.

After two months, Charles came to her bedroom and told her that Andy had asked him if Mommy was going to kill herself. He told her so with no accusation in his voice, but still, it was the first time Susan really listened to him. She sat up, blew her nose, and went to comfort the son that she had left.

Life didn't get back to normal, not for another five or six years, at least, but Susan found that she had the strength to continue her routine. And she found it in herself to be glad when Andy started to smile again, when Lizzie learned to walk and talk and grew up to be an energetic little girl that didn't have to cope with the nightmares her older brother frequently had.

There were times when she didn't think of Trip, and she told herself firmly that it was okay, although deep down she never believed that it was. Sometimes, she and Charles would look at some pictures, but after a while they silently agreed that it simply hurt too much. Pictures might provide some comfort if your child was dead, if there was death certificate and a gravestone with his name on it. But if your child was Lost, then pictures only opened the old wound, reminding you that this had been then and that you didn't even want to know what now might look like.

Sometimes, when Susan lay awake at night, she prayed to any God that might be listening that this day in August had been the end for Trip, that he had been killed. But she knew that it was not so. Her son lived.

And that was what hurt her most of all.

TBC...

Please let me know what you think!