#bb louise

Sam felt the BTs gathering the moment he set Lou’s pod on the bed of the incinerator. They were the first he’d felt since the others brought him back from the beach. These ones felt different, though. Smaller. Like Mama’s daughter, almost... It only took him a second to realize what they were. The other BBs that had been ‘decommissioned’. Children that never got the chance to live.

He grabbing Lou’s pod before he can think twice. He has to try to save her.

And he did.

It’s like some invisible weight is lifted from his shoulders the moment she cries and opens her eyes to look at him. She’s alive and that’s all that he cares about. Giving her a chance at a life she deserves. Because even though everyone says he’s the one that saved America. It’s really all thanks to Lou.

He holds her close as he leaves the building. The BT’s are still there, watching, but he gets a feeling they just came to make sure Lou was okay. That she wouldn’t be alone no matter the outcome.

The rain is warm as he steps out into it. The timefall had stopped after Amelie severed the connection to her beach. And as far as they could tell, all BT’s were gone now as well. The ones that came for Lou had vanished back to where they came from as Sam left the building. He couldn’t feel so much as an inkling that there were any still around.

Lou makes a happy little sound where the warm rain hits her exposed skin. He had worried she would be cold, given that she’s spent her life in a pod that kept her temperature regulated at 98.6 degrees. But something in the air itself has changed, making the world feel warmer.

“Let’s get out of here and find you some clothes and something to eat?” Sam says to the wide-eyed little girl he holds to his chest carefully. He’s never actually held a baby before. It’s a little scary, but she seems fine. She makes a happy little gurgling sound before sticking her thumb in her mouth and blinking at him. Clearly not understanding him but happy that they’re together.

He takes the long way down the mountain. Taking care not to go too fast and jostle Lou, who’s got her head laying against his chest as she makes small snuffly noises and yawns. She’s fighting to keep her eyes open, he can see it when he looks down at her. A tune comes to him as he walks, one he remembers from the flashes he would get when connecting to Lou through the pod.

“See the sunset… The day is ending… Let that yawn out… There’s no pretending…” Lou’s eyes droop more and more as he sings to her. A phantom warmth wrapping around them both. A final hug from the father Sam never got to know. The grandfather Lou will be told about when she’s old enough. Because that’s what he is to her. Lou may not be his biological daughter, but he loves her like his own. More than he thought he could love someone after what happened to his family.

By the time he’s finished what he can remember of the song, they’ve reached the bottom of the mountain and Lou is sound asleep where he cradles her to his chest. There’s a truck in the distance, one that he knows was left by a fellow courier for others to use. It’s a bit difficult to get into without waking Lou, but he manages and once he’s situated with Lou safely tucked inside the now open upper part of his jumpsuit to keep warm, he sets off.

He heads to Mama’s lab. Knowing the place will be empty and have plenty of supplies for the time being. 

The ride there goes much faster than he could have ever hoped. The roads he helped start have been upgraded and expanded on. Since the time fall stopped over a month ago the members of Bridges and the UCA have been busy strengthening the connections between the cities.

It takes maybe three hours to reach Mama’s lab. Before it would have taken a day or more, and he can’t help being impressed at the progress people have made in just a few weeks.

The contents of Mama’s lab are exactly as they were when the day he left to reunite her with Lockne. A bit chaotic to him, but untouched by another being. He knows Mama had been here since the bombing, and that she likely had her possessions dug out of the rubble once she was free. So if he’s right, he’ll find what he needs here somewhere.

Sam feels a little guilty as he begins to dig through Mama’s personal belongings, but he knows she would understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. And that she would give him what he’s looking for herself if she could. 

It doesn’t take long to find a dusty old duffle bag that has what he was hoping for hidden inside. Baby clothes, formula mix, and diapers. One’s intended for the baby girl Mama and Lockne lost. The clothes and diapers are bigger than Lou needs, but he doubts he’ll find anything made to fit a premie anywhere nearby.

Not that Lou cares. The second he sets her down on the soft pink baby blanket that had been in with the baby clothes, she lets out a happy little squeak and wiggles around, kicking her legs out in what sort of looks like a little happy dance. It brings a smile to Sam’s face that almost hurts. She keeps dancing even as he scoops her back up wrapped in the blanket and gives her her first bottle of formula. 

She sucks it down like it’s the best thing in the world.

It takes a bit of trial and error after that to get a diaper to fit her tiny body, but he manages. Same with getting her set up in a onesie that she practically swims in. But the clothes are warm and soft and Lou doesn’t seem to mind. Her little fists grip the ends of the sleeves as she wiggles around a bit. Testing out her newfound range of motion in open space. She spent 28 weeks inside of her mother, and then more than a year inside a pod as far as he knows. It has to be strange being out in the open now after so long.

“What do you think?” Sam asks as he gets the little zipper on the front of the pink and purple spotted onesie closed and carefully scoops her into his arms. She manages to get a hand free from one of the sleeves and pops her thumb into her mouth as she looks up at him with big blue eyes. It doesn’t take more than that to know she’s happy.

“We’re gonna be alright, just you wait and see. We made it all the way across this continent together, you and me. We can handle anything,” Sam says as he starts to rock Lou gently. “We can stay here a while, get you used to the world outside that pod before we find a place all our own. How’s that sound?”

The yawn he gets from Lou is all the answer he needs. 

The first time Lou wakes up Sam, he honest to god thinks someone must be hurting her. She’s tiny, but her cry is -loud-. It takes a moment for the fog of sleep to leave him and for his mind to catch on to the fact that no, nobody is hurting her. She just needs a diaper change. And probably another bottle.

It’s about two in the morning, and somewhere in the back of Sam’s tired mind, he remembers that newborns need feeding every 3 hours or so. It’s been almost 5 since they went to sleep, so he figures Lou has to be pretty damn hungry by now.

Getting her diaper changed goes mostly alright, he only hesitates for a moment when trying to figure out the best way to do it. He hadn’t gotten this far in the whole learning to be a parent thing when he and Lucy were expecting their daughter. He’d read the first few chapters of the one book she gave him, and that was just on feeding and clothing do’s and don’ts.

“Hey there, Lou,” Sam coos tiredly as he finishes getting her new diaper on and starts to zip her back into her over-sized onesie. “There now, that wasn’t so bad,” he says more to himself than the tiny whining girl he scoops into his arms. 

Lou still looks upset, which briefly has him worried, but then again he imagines it has to be pretty upsetting waking up to a wet diaper and an empty stomach after so long not feeling hunger or really experiencing anything else normal babies experience. He knows she’s not a normal baby, and he knows now that neither was he. He still isn’t really sure how he feels about that… Regardless, he figures given that she’s really over a year old and not a new born, experiencing these things for the first time has to majorly suck.

It’s easy enough to hold Lou in one arm while he fixes her a bottle, and as he does so he wonders how long she’ll stay this tiny. Deadman had said she’d started gaining weight and developing like a normal baby since they had bonded. If he had to guess, he’d say she’s definitely bigger than she was when he got her a few months back.

“What do you think, Lou? Should we go back to bed after this?” he asks a he gives her her bottle and starts to walk back and forth in the empty garage turned lab. 

Lou, to her credit, is too busy downing her warm bottle of formula to have an opinion. Not that he expected her to have much of one.

With a tired sigh Sam heads back to the small bedroom and carefully climbs back into bed so he’s still holding and feeding Lou while he gets comfortable with a few pillows propping him up.

The next time he wakes up, it’s to a drooling baby soaking his tank top where she rests with her head right over his heart.

It’s about 5AM, and after a long few moments debate he carefully gets up and does his best to lay Lou down in her makeshift crib while he goes to get a shower and get changed.

It feels weird being here. In Mama’s lab. It feels different than it did before. And not just because there’s no baby BT there making his skin tingle and something in his mind go we’re not alone, get out!. The place feels like it’s lost something that he can’t describe.

He brushes the thought off as he finds the bathroom and gets the shower going. The water is almost too hot when he steps inside and he finds himself really not caring. It feels good. After so long both out in the cold and inside the controlled environment of the Bridges facilities he welcomes something simple and out of the ordinary like this.

Something catches Sam’s eye as he washes up. His wrist. It has a faint mark from wearing that cuff for so long. Sort of like the mark on his finger where he used to wear his wedding ring. Compared to the hand prints and scars all over his body, it’s honestly a mark that doesn’t bother him. He’s glad he took the cuff off. Was able to get away. And he’s extremely grateful to Deadman for making this possible. For suggesting how to save Lou and giving him this chance to get out of there with her.

When he finally makes his way back to the bedroom Lou is awake and watching the odradek he rigged up spin slowly and play a lullaby as the metallic parts of the sensors shimmer different colors in the faint light it emits. She notices him when he steps closer, and she reaches out with tiny hands for him.

It makes a warmth spread through Sam at the sight, and he can’t help but smile as he picks her up and holds her close to him. “Hey, Lou. What do you say, you wanna get somethin’ to eat?”

 Lou simply grabs at his face with one hand while sticking the thumb of the other in her mouth in response. Sam figures that’s a yes and goes to fix her a bottle.

When they enter the tiny makeshift kitchen he nearly jumps out of his skin at what he sees. 

Lockne is standing at the small stove with a kettle on one of the burners as she reads the back of the container of formula. When she sees Sam and Lou the sad smile Sam remembers Mama giving when she talked about her daughter is the exact smile Lockne gives them.

“Hey, sorry if I startled you,” she says as she sets the container of formula down on the counter. “I got an alert that the sensors at Malingen’s lab were activated. We thought it might be you so I got Deadman to help me find a vehicle without a GPS tracker and I came to check.”

“Anybody else know you’re here?” Sam asks as he tries to get himself to relax. He can trust Lockne. He knows that. But if anyone at Bridges finds out where he is, that Lou is alive, he’s sure that shit will not end well. For anyone. And there’s no way he’s letting those bastards take Lou from him after everything they’ve been through.

“Just Deadman, Heartman and Fragile. Deadman told us where you went,” she says, pausing to stare in wonder at Lou, who’s turned her attention from grabbing at Sam’s face and hair to watching Lockne with a new fascination “Is Lou alright?”.

“She seems fine to me,” Sam says as he takes a hesitant step into the room.

“She?” Lockne says with a smile, this time more warm than sad. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

After another moment's hesitation, Sam takes another step closer, bringing him just an arms reach from Lockne. “Do you, uh, do you want to hold her?”

Lockne raises her hands, but then pauses and bites her lower lip before she reaches out and waits for Sam to hand the small girl over. He does, and for a moment Sam is sure he saw Mama standing side by side with Lockne as she holds Lou close and smiles down at her.

“Hi there, Lou. It’s nice to meet you,” she says in a soft voice as she gently rocks the tiny baby in her arms. “I’m really glad she’s okay, Sam. We were so worried for you, if you really lost her…”

Sam feels the air shift with the words being left unsaid. They both know what losing a child does to a person. 

“She’s a fighter,” is all he can bring himself to say before he steps past Lockne and grabs the kettle off the stove before it can start to whistle.

“I wonder where she could have learned that from,” Lockne says with a slight laugh as she moves to take a seat at the small table off to the side of the room. “Did you plan on staying here a while?”

“For a few days at least. I wanted to make sure Lou was really alright before I looked for someplace else for us to go,” he admits as he fixes Lou’s bottle and sets it to the side to cool a bit. “I came across some abandoned places here and there that weren’t destroyed by time fall. I figured we could go to one out of the way and get settled there.”

“We can help you with that, you know?” Lockne says, catching Sam a bit off guard.

“Yeah, how?” He asks as he comes to take a seat opposite her at the table. She’s not looking at him, attention focused on Lou, who grabbed a strand of her hair and is holding it in a tight grip with both hands as she makes a soft babbling sound.

“Now that the timefall has stopped and the BT’s are gone things are going to get a lot easier. Especially getting supplies. Wherever you end up we can make sure you and Lou don’t have to go without anything you need,” she explains as she carefully gets Lou to let go of her hair, her smile growing wider as that gets her finger grabbed in response.

“You don’t have to do that. You don’t owe us anything,” Sam protests.

“We want to help. You’re family. Real family helps each other. And I know you didn’t have the best experience with family in the past. But I swear we all just want to help you. You and Lou. We all care for you and this little girl,” she says earnestly as she looks Sam in the eye. “We won’t abandon you, Sam.”

They stare at one another for a long beat before Sam finds himself ducking his head a little and nodding. “Alright, you can help us,” he finally concedes. He knows he can trust her. And the others. He just needs to keep reminding himself that. For his sake as well as Lou’s.

When he looks up again Lockne is standing and coming around the table to pass Lou to him. “I’ll head back to the city and let the others know you’re here and that Lou is alright. I’ll be back either late tonight or sometime early tomorrow. Nobody will question my coming and going from here since it’s Malingen’s lab.”

“Hey, Lockne, “ Sam says as she turns to walk away, making her pause and look back at him. “Thank you.”

Again, for a flash, he sees Mama standing with Lockne, both of them giving him a smile and nod before turning again to leave. “Take care, Sam. We’ll see you again soon.”