Written by: JacksAnnie
1. As a little baby girl she felt so at home in uncle Bray’s arms.
His scent, his comforting voice, and how he’d sometimes sing softly to her when no one else was around, when she woke up crying in the night and her mother was too exhausted to do anything.
As a teenage girl she doesn’t remember him. All she knows is what she’s been told about him, all she has is a faded picture of him with her dad, his brother, both smiling.
But every time she thinks about him she feels a longing, a feeling that he was someone special to her, and she wishes she had more than the others’ memories of him.
2. She doesn’t remember much from when her mother and Jay were together, she has vague memories of him reading to her from a book once.
Most of all she remembers him with Bray. How he’d play with him, feed him, tease him, and hold him when he cried. To Bray he has always been dad, and Jay has always loved him like a son.
Brady always feels a sting of jealousy when she sees how close they are, and can’t help but wonder sometimes, why not her?
3. Her mother took her to see the Eco’s as often as possible, and Brady always learned more there than she did at the mall. Hawk did his best to teach her everything an Eco needs to know to survive in the nature, without hurting it.
As a little girl she once tried to play matchmaker with Hawk and her mother. It didn’t work at all, and she admitted to it when confronted.
Hawk looked shocked when she said she wanted him to be her dad, and then he smiled and patted her gently on the head.
“I love you, sweetie, but I wouldn’t be much of a dad.”
She had never forgiven herself for telling him, as things had never been the same, even if she always knew he loved her. After they had to move camp further away years ago, she barely saw him or the rest of the Ecos.
4. Jack has always been there, as long as she can remember. He fixed her toys when she was little, and was forever her hero after stopping her tears over and over again.
A few times when she was younger he and Ellie babysat her, and she always loved his weirdness and insecurity with her.
As she got older she’d spend time with him in the workshop, learning about scientific things, and mostly trying not to mess up anything for him.
After Ellie left him, it seemed natural that it was her mother who was there for him. She’d make him dinner, and the three of them would spend the day together. Jack became a bigger and bigger part of their lives, until he and her mother could no longer deny there was more than friendship.
Brady had never been as happy as the day they told her she was getting a little brother or sister.
Jack loved her as much as he loved his own children, she had never doubted that. She was his little girl, always.
5. No matter how much she loves her family now, there are times she misses her real dad. She doesn?t know how she can miss someone she never knew, but she does.
No one but Lex was ever willing to talk about him much, and Lex stopped telling her horror stories after she started crying one time. Her mother has told her some of what he was like before he changed, but she won’t talk about after.
Brady wishes her mother would tell her, because the smiling boy in the picture with uncle Bray is not the monster Lex told her about.
She wants, no she needs to know how he could change so much. Maybe then she can stop the nagging voice in the back of her head that tells her she could end up the same way.