Archive of Our Own (BETA rev. 2101)

Very little is known about the life of Ellen Ripley before the Decade of Terror. We know she was born on Earth in January 2092 and had a daughter, Amanda, in 2111. The identity of the child's father is unknown. Ripley, along with many others during that first reach into colonizing space, served on expeditions with Weyland Yutani Corporation, seeking natural resources which were scarce on Earth. While the voyages were often dangerous, they paid enough to allow the workers eight to twelve months furlough on Earth between trips, a potential blessing if we assume Ripley was raising her daughter alone. By the time of the incident aboard the USCSS Nostromo, Ripley had climbed to the rank of Warrant Officer.

-- Amelia Lambert, Ellen Ripley: Warrior, Mother, or Both?

Like many who grew up on the colonies of Mars, Dwayne Hicks entered the Colonial Marines after completing his required schooling, as it was one of the few options available for the children of colonists to escape that unforgiving life. He excelled in the service and was, by all accounts, well liked by his fellow soldiers. He was quickly chosen to join one of the elite strike force teams often sent in to quell rebellions in penal colonies. For the mission to LV-426 he was serving as corporal beneath Sergeant Apone, one of the most decorated sergeants in the Marines.

-- Jefferson O'Connell, The Saviors of Humanity

It has been argued that had the world governments not been in a period of free market capitalism, the events of the Decade of Terror would never have reached anywhere near the catastrophe which almost occurred. Companies were allowed to act with essentially no limitations, openly bribing governmental officials and buying military squads to serve their own ends. Monopolies like those of Weyland Yutani continued unchecked and there was no oversight on their actions. Indeed, the Alien menace would likely have not spread nearly as far before action could be taken had it not been kept secret by the Corporation for so long.

-- Neil Tsung, Mistakes of the 22nd Century

*My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are. *

They keep her drugged.

Sometimes she manages to swim up out of the murkiness, just a little, or sometimes the nurses are late with her next dose, the drug burning where it enters her skin, and she claws herself partway to lucidity. She pieces things together then -- remembers waking from hypersleep and Newt clinging to her in the hospital and a company review panel and a secret coded message from Burke. Bishop is dead -- circuits fried -- and she thinks they slipped Hicks some liquid amnesia or handed him false memories or something. Nobody believes a traumatized nine year-old girl and the company wants a scapegoat and wants to avoid responsibility for a squad of dead marines. Any family or friends who may have once spoken up for her are long gone now. She's out of her time.

Each morning she wakes with her throat raw from screaming. They tell her she has nightmares. They tell her she imagines aliens -- make believe monsters screaming in the dark and bursting out of her chest and stretching over her face to smother her. They tell her she was in hypersleep too long and the human brain wasn't designed for that kind of stress or that kind of time loss. She knows there is such a thing as monsters.

Hicks comes to visit her, long after she's lost track of how many days, weeks, months, years she's been trapped in this new hell. It's late afternoon which means the morning's meds are wearing off and they haven't brought her a new dose and the fog she is lost in isn't quite as thick.

"Hey," he says, poking his head into her open doorway and offering half a smile.

She nods, forcing sluggish face muscles into a semblance of a greeting. He walks in and sits down on the straight-backed wooden chair next to her bed. Patients in her ward don't have doors that lock. At least not from the inside.

"I..." he starts, looking down at his hands. The left one is scarred and the skin patchy, one finger shorter than it should be. "I don't really remember what all happened out there."

Shrugging tighter into her sweater, she pulls herself up, forces herself to focus on his words. "What do you remember?"

His head shakes in frustration and his hand reaches up to the scars which pockmark his face. "That's the thing. It's all...blurry. They say there was an explosion and I'm some kind of hero to have rescued you and the kid. But Vasquez, Drake, Apone...they were tough motherfuckers. And sometimes..." He stops and looks around. There's a camera over her door. "They have to give me shots, periodically, for -- " he gestures to the left arm that hangs partly limp at his side "-- and sometimes, when it's been a while, I have these dreams."

"Monsters," Ripley whispers.

His head nods, once.

She's clearing up. They must be waiting for his visit to end before her next dose. "Get me out of here," she hisses, desperate and afraid and so pissed off that she can't rescue herself. His eyes are big when he turns to look at her.

As his mouth opens a nurse enters her room with a big smile that doesn't come close to her eyes. Ripley hasn't tried to fight them in a long time but this time she almost tries to push away the needle before the burn of lethargy enters her veins. Over the nurse's shoulder she can see Hicks mouth, "I will," before leaving the room.

She doesn't believe him until a month later when the fire alarm goes off at two a.m. and in the middle of the jostling and chaos and confusion and shouting there are new hands pushing her wheelchair, faster and more forceful than any of the orderlies, and she looks up and back and the eyes above the facemask don't belong to any of the hospital staff.

Hicks whisks her out with the efficiency of a combat maneuver, and they're on a desolate cargo ship before anyone notices she's missing. She doesn't ask how much he paid the crew not to ask any questions. She thinks they're used to not asking questions.

During the journey, she sweats the drugs out of her system, shaking and screaming and chattering and Hicks stays nearby and pours water down her throat and makes her eat and holds her when she shivers so hard she thinks her teeth will knock lose. They get off on an old, mostly forgotten colony with forests and mountains and no lifeforms that weren't brought from Earth during the terraforming. He looks her in the eyes and says, "I owed you."

~*~

It is believed that Hicks took Ripley to one of the more developed colonies several systems from Earth, though his plans once they arrived are unknown, as is the exact location. Historians have few facts to piece together. Hicks went AWOL from his training job with the Colonial Marines in 2181, not quite two years after the death of the rest of his squad on LV-426 and the month-long hypersleep trip home. Two days later the hospital where Ellen Ripley was being cared for had a small fire in the basement and, in the chaos of evacuating patients, Ripley disappeared. Official reports indicating she had died in the fire were later rescinded.

--Jefferson O'Connell, The Saviors of Humanity

Ellen Ripley and Sergeant Dwayne Hicks lived here for a year after their escape from Earth, before moving on to explore the galaxy and save humanity during the Decade of Terror. This monument was erected on May 15, 2200, ten years after the beginning of peace.

-- Written beneath a statue of a man and woman on PX-738

You have to understand, Ellen Ripley wasn't famous when she worked for me. She was just a good hand loading cargo who came around just when I was looking for a replacement crewmember. When she disappeared with the young soldier who showed up at Adams's one day, I just assumed I'd lost another person to the quick sort of romance that tended to happen on the outer edge.

-- George Lopez, My Time Flying with Ellen Ripley

*It's a locator so I can find you anywhere in the complex. It's just a precaution. Doesn't mean we're engaged or anything.*

Ripley maneuvers the exosuit, stacking the final boxes of salvage floor-to-ceiling in the cramped cargo hold, before joining Lopez on the bridge of the planetskipper. "We're all loaded up," she says, strapping herself into the co-pilot's seat. "Stacked floor to ceiling. Should fetch a good price."

Lopez pulls back the landing gear and the little ship struggles against the lesser gravity of this backwater planet. It's little more than cargo hold and bridge, but Ripley doesn't want to sleep away time ever again. She'd lived with Hicks for a year, getting back into shape after the hospital, and one day she couldn't take it anymore. Two short hypersleep jumps (the last she plans to ever take) she'd found herself on a nice terraformed planet at the edge of the Core System where Earth is a distant memory and nobody asks too many questions. After a few days and a few careful inquiries, she'd found a pilot who needed a practiced cargo loader for his "supply runs."

Logically, she knows she can't outrun the nightmares. Doesn't mean she can't try.

Lopez grins when they hit orbit and angle back to the planet that's become home. In two days Ripley has a pocketful of money and three weeks furlough. She writes a letter to Newt, living with an aunt and uncle back in Minnesota, and then finds a way to keep busy.

The bar she favors is darker than most, and dingier, and full of regulars and hard-eyed veterans and people who understand wanting to just drink without interruption. She's feeling good enough tonight to visit the poker game in the back corner and let Ling win money off her in exchange for a few hours of pressure-free company. She's down two hundred credits and three mugs of beer when a hand reaches over her shoulder to lay down a pile of chips and a voice says in her ear, "Fancy meeting you here."

Ripley whips around, half to her feet and Hicks is already backpedaling, hands raised to show he isn't armed. "What are you doing here?" she snaps. Running away from the memories doesn't work if they chase after her.

"Looking for you," he replies, lowering his hands slowly. "You're not an easy woman to find."

She raises an eyebrow. "Ever think I might have made it that way on purpose?"

"Can I buy you a drink?" he asks, ignoring her question. He shrugs a shoulder back to the bar, where Adams is wiping glasses with a rag that only makes them more dirty. She doesn't want to, but knows deep down they'll always owe each other, and she has to admit he's one of the few people who never betrayed her.

He waits two hours before he tells her why he's here. "Prison colony went silent. On the outer edge."

"No," she says, standing up. "I'm done with that."

He looks down at his hands. "They're not sending anyone. Don't care what happens to prisoners."

She's backing away because she's done, dammit, but he turns and looks at her and there's something about the need and the hope and the desperation and the damn certainty in his eyes that she knows she's already over a barrel.

Lopez doesn't promise to save her spot, though she thinks she'll be welcome back if she returns. She gives him all she owns and Newt's address, just in case three months pass and he hasn't heard anything.

Newt gets the package four months later.

~*~

I knew they weren't dead. My aunt said it was just a childish fantasy and the therapist they had me going to said I idolized Ripley and Hicks too much and needed to always believe they were alive to save me. But I remembered the aliens and everything Ripley did to protect me, and I knew they wouldn't have been killed that easily. It wasn't worth arguing with everyone though, so I just kept the box under my bed and pretended I was sad.

-- Rebecca "Newt" Jorden, What I Remember

The prison colony known as Florina 961 was the first fully terraformed planet to be overrun by the menace, but it was not until twelve more planets fell that the world government decided to step in and act in spite of continued noncompliance and rebuttal from Weyland Yutani. At that point, in 2188, the Aliens had enough of a foothold into our infrastructure that it was already impossible to defeat them without significant loss of life. None of the research done by any of Weyland Yutani's weapons research departments, located on four of the earliest-compromised planets, was remotely useful in fighting the menace.

-- Neil Tsung, Mistakes of the 22nd Century

They'd swing in like rescuing angels, evacuating colonists just before the coming siege, but always there were whispers that someday there'd be nowhere else to run. Without the knowledge, determination, and occasional ruthlessness of Ripley and Hicks, it is unlikely humanity would have survived.

-- Serena Owusu, Unlikely Heroes

*I'm not going to end up like those others. You'll take care of it, won't you?*

The planet blossoms into flame below them as they climb into orbit. The new fire weapon engulfs an entire planet in fifteen minutes, leaving nothing behind but a scarred ball of rock. When the scientists back home finally put it together, everyone said it would be like the atomic bomb that ended the great war in the 20th century. Nobody thought how different it was when your enemy doesn't know how to surrender.

Ripley hates this. It's not her world anymore, not her time, and instead of resting all she does is keep fighting again and again. She gave up pointing blame at Weyland Yutani and the government and Ash and Burke and all the damn fools who couldn't see the bigger picture beyond the potential dollar sign. Holding grudges takes too much energy.

Hicks shoves a mug into her hands full of something wet and hot and steers her away from the viewport before she can start trying to guess how many colonists couldn't be evacuated in time.

"Decontamination's over. We're clean," he tells her quietly. The skin on his face is shiny from the new dermaplast tech. It doesn't deal with old wounds as well as fresh ones, but he has better movement now. That's one thing the war's given them -- the medical profession is excellent at treating acid burns.

She nods. "How many?"

"We lost Carroll, Onassi, and Hendricks," Hicks tells her. "But that planet had two bitches." Hudson had originally called them queens, back on LV-426. The term died long ago.

Carroll was the young one with braids and a quick smile, she thinks. She can't remember the faces of the other two. They've lost too many and the newbies go so quickly she doesn't try to learn names unless they've been around at least five months. The flicker of flames through the viewport makes Hicks's skin look red.

"What aren't you telling me?" she asks. She can read his tells now.

He shifts his weight, then puts his head up, shoulders out, Marine every inch. "They found an egg on Earth," he says. "They're evac-ing, but..."

She's out the door before the mug she was holding shatters on the floor, and he catches her on the bridge as she's shouting orders to Costanza to take them home as fast as possible. "She's safe Ripley. Newt was on one of the first transports out."

"It's not working," she says, turning to face him. "We just keep losing planets and they make more bitches faster than we can kill them."

Hicks puts his arms out. "If you have any better ideas, I'm listening."

"We need to take the fight to them," Ripley says, brushing past him to head to the map room.

He finds her in there, staring at a chart with too many red crosses on too many planets. He steps behind her and puts an arm around her shoulders. For a minute she lets herself relax into him, into his heat and the rhythm of his breathing, before she pulls forward to point at a handful of planets. "Here," she says. "We need to go here."

"They're just animals, Ripley. They don't care where we strike, they just keep growing."

Ripley shakes her head. "The first bitch we killed, she cared when I torched her eggs. And we've never seen a queen hatch. There's a pattern and it leads back to here."

"Ellen..."

She turns to look at him. There's a flicker of doubt across his face before he nods. Her instincts have saved their asses too many times for him to not trust her now. She follows him onto the bridge to make the course change.

They don't question, this group of soldiers and colonists and motley crew of recruits who were sick and tired of losing people and left the government response to join her and Hicks. She thinks the government would love to reign them in, make them toe the line, but they have the best track record out there.

The course change isn't questioned and nobody comments that they'll be flying through the thickest part of monster-inhabited space. Ripley looks around at all the faces, much too young for this, with eyes much too old. She hopes Hicks is right to trust her this time.

~*~

If we are to be honest, the final battle wasn't. After Ripley and Hicks took out the Alien homeworld and destroyed their ability to produce more queens (known as "bitches" by the soldiers who fought in the Decade of Terror) there was still significant cleanup required as hives had spread deep into the Core System. Earth had already been lost, but four planets actually fell after that so-called final battle before our forces managed to completely annihilate the threat.

-- Mariella Hernandez, A Timeline of the Decade of Terror

The famous folk song speaks of Dwayne Hicks and Ellen Ripley leaving us on the wings of fire, saying a final farewell to the people they'd managed to save before moving on to a better place. In fact, neither was killed in the final battle, although their ship barely limped away from the Alien home planet. Hicks and Ripley were ID'ed by several eyewitnesses during at least two of the cleanup operations, though no report can account for their seeming disappearance. Whether they fell in one of the operations or simply chose to fall of the grid, we'll never know. Perhaps, in the end, the story told in song is more comforting than any reality.

-- Serena Owusu, Unlikely Heroes

I swore to keep their secret and, as this manuscript is not to be published until fifty years after my death, I feel safe assuming that finally releasing this secret to the world will not harm them. Ripley kept in regular contact with me throughout most of my life, sending letters from the planet she and Hicks settled on after the Aliens were no longer a threat. They were not killed in the final battle, nor in any of the follow-up operations, but they were also done being our heroes. Nobody should have to shoulder that weight.

-- Rebecca "Newt" Jorden, What I Remember

*Outstanding. Now all we need is a deck of cards.*

The planet they settle on is at the edge of the core system, terraformed long enough ago to be stable, distant enough to have been overlooked by the bitches, and very sparsely populated. Their cabin is built from real trees on a hill overlooking the ocean, a mile from the closest town, and it reminds Ellen of the Oregon coast. The wind tries to find a way through her wool sweater as she harvests apples from the trees out front, bringing with it moisture and the salt-tang of the water. It's quiet here and completely unexciting and space will always be just a distant memory on the horizon. It's everything she never thought she wanted and everything she'll never give up.

She's taking a bath when Dwayne comes home. She's happy to stay home most days but he gets antsy without going out and working. This planet is far enough on the edge, and they've gotten old enough that either nobody recognizes them, or they're all too polite to say anything. Ellen hopes it stays that way. She doesn't want to run anymore.

He pops his head in, letting chilly air into the bathroom. "I brought home dinner," he says. "Should come eat before it gets cold."

On her way downstairs Ellen passes the smaller second bedroom they don't use and allows herself the momentary pang of regret for the children she'll never raise -- for Amanda and Newt -- who both grew up without her. Newt's latest letter included a photo of her own children.

Dwayne already has the fire lit in the kitchen when she comes down and there's a quietness to the place. She stands in the doorway watching him lay out plates and forks and bottles of beer in that easy grace he has sometimes.

He makes love to her that night, after they sat by the fire until their hot cocoa got cold and after a storm whipped up outside, tapping branches against the windows. It's long and slow, and afterward he falls asleep against her shoulder. For a long time she stares at the ceiling, letting her fingers trace across the skin of his back, mindful of his scars. They don't really belong anywhere, neither of them, anymore.

When she sleeps the dreams come, as they often do when the wind howls. She wakes in the middle of the night, gasping and clutching her chest, and he's there to pull her back down.

He never says the monsters aren't real.

~*~

We have often said that monsters aren't real. We tell monster stories to children to threaten them into behaving, or to teach people to not go alone into dangerous places. But by denying the existence of monsters, we also deny the existence of heroes who can vanquish those monsters. If the Decade of Terror and the Alien menace taught us anything, it's that monsters are real. But heroes are also. Unfortunately, just as the heroes in stories don't always get the happy endings, sometimes the endings of real heroes are similarly masked in shadows.

-- Amelia Lambert, Ellen Ripley: Warrior, Mother, or Both?