Chapter Text
People always told her “You don’t know when to quit.”
She told them “You don’t quit on people.” You don’t. Not when they push you away, not when they ignore you, vanish off the face of your social landscape, stop answering calls or texts.
You don’t give up on them.
“It’s like putting out food for a feral cat,” she explained once, leaning on the back deck railing while her mom flipped burgers and questioned why her friends were so strange. “Might take years of trying before they warm up, but you know they’re the ones starving worst. They don’t come right away because they don’t know how good it’ll be.”
“Maybe they really don’t want to come,” her mother had said.
“They do.” She’d smiled knowingly. Her social circle was several dozen isolated odd-balls strong, people who didn’t think they fit, didn’t know how to mesh, didn’t get invited to parties. She loved picking them out of the workday crowd and starting that process. Tossing treats. Building trust.
And the payoff was that moment she saw them smile, open up and relax, truly enjoy themselves. The wary stray starting to purr. A lot of her friends were friends with each other now, a little network of strangers who might only want social interaction three days a month, for whom three was a crowd, but she’d text and drive up and invite anyway, keeping that door open for them.
She had a schedule, a journal. Notes. People called her a bother. She’d been sworn at on bad days, and cried on on hard days, and laughed with on good days.
She was there for her friends.
And when she started the job at Black Mesa, she got excited. Lots of silent, scared feral cats in that place, lots of people who’d never had someone grab them out of grey monotony and offer them intentional fun.
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“I’m late, you understand. Not late yet, but I will be. I simply must get through. No, you move, sir, my work is unquestionably more important than yours!”
The scientist shoved his way through the security checkpoint and brushed aside her request for his badge. His passage dislodged another scientist’s armload of folders and the security desk’s lamp and the whole mess went sailing across the hall in his wake.
”Asshat,” she signed quick with her left hand, easily disguised as pushing her hair back, while she retrieved the lamp with her right. Signing her gossip was reflex born of twenty years of teasing and in-jokes between her and her brother. He was deaf and two years older than her, and had a painfully sharp wit that expressed itself in lightning-fast offhand sign.
Someone else had seen it though, and the green eyes behind the thick black-framed glasses bored into hers. ”Sorry!” She flashed at him, with a raised eyebrow, and debated winking.
Stray cat.
Skinny, wary stray cat.
He looked away.
He was taller than her by four inches and thinner than her by another four inches, and he was dressed in a white lab coat and had a badge color-coded for the anomalous materials lab, but he was new. He had that specific wide-eyed look of someone who wasn’t quite convinced the floor wouldn’t fall out from under them at any minute.
And since this was Black Mesa, it was a valid concern.
She’d been worried all her new coworkers would be too set in their ways for her tricks, but she’d cultivated a handful of security guards and had two interns in her orbit and was mentally scheduling the loud extrovert party on Friday night and the four one-on-one lunch dates for Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
She had room for one more.
And that guy needed a friend. And food. And a good brushing. And maybe a flea collar.
She knew the look of someone who’d slunk their way through seven years of academia without an emotional connection to show for it, and she’d seen the aftermath of their spiral into despair.
She wasn’t going to let it happen again on her watch.
You don’t quit on people. Not when they bite and scratch and swear at you, not when they slam the door the hundredth time, not when they refuse to answer a text for weeks on end. Because one day they’re going to need to know someone still wants them around, has been waiting for them. However long it takes.