Disclaimer: Terra Nova does not belong to me.
He likes to think that he and the youngest of the Shannon clan have a certain level of understanding with each other. He and Josh may have done nothing but rub each other the wrong way for the entirety of their acquaintance, but Zoe has always been far more accepting of his presence within her mother's circle. He is not going to pretend to some in depth knowledge of the girl's interior thought processes, but they get on well enough and have spent more time together than he ever expected to spend around an actual child.
He does not have any family. He has not for a very long time. In all honesty, all he had for a very long time was a set of coworkers and the occasionally more inclined to actual conversation assistant. He was okay with that, but he had never given any serious thought to actively choosing that as a lifestyle. It just sort of happened. His work is central to his life, and he sees no reason for that to change. He also understands that it limits his opportunity for interactions in a way that ripples out into his relationships with those around him. Even Elisabeth, dear friend though she is, fits into the work centric mold of his life.
Her little girl is different. He likes to think that having Zoe around is sort of what it might be to have been an Uncle Malcolm in a different world. She comes around with some sort of purpose in mind, completes it, then goes on her way. It's . . . pleasant (and not an undue burden on his time - the advantages of being able to hand the child back inherent in not being one of the responsible parties). He is fond of the child, and he finds some of her antics amusing (again because he does not have to be the responsible party that deals with the aftermath of said antics).
He keeps an eye out when her family life gets tossed on its ear (after he makes it through the whole display of territorial posturing that accosts him when he returns to the interior of the settlement walls). Zoe does a lot of hiding out when she is dealing with emotions (even a casual observer of the Shannon household would know that), and there seems to be a lot going on that might send her seeking refuge in one of her spots. He knows one of the security force keeps an eye on her, but there is no reason to not have another pair of eyes on lookout.
He would worry about Zoe getting lost in the shuffle of the chaos, but he has learned that Zoe is pretty resilient (and a lot tougher and sneakier than Elisabeth and Josh ever give her credit for being). That being said, it does not hurt for the girl to have a reminder that other people are paying attention if she needs it (although who knows what levels of Neanderthal declarations he will be subjected to if her father gets another bee in his bonnet about him overstepping some sort of boundaries).
He likes to think that he and the girl had established his status as a safe to talk to adult during the time of the dinosaur egg that had been of, apparently, imminent importance. (It was not as if he did not have interests of his own in the specimen, but he was not running a nursery for wild animals in the midst of his lab that was full of really very breakable things.) They had taken shifts of watching for it to hatch together, and he had found the child far more conversable and easier to be around than he had expected a child of her age to be.
He, of course, had had no direct experience as an adult of being around children of that age in anything more than a passing capacity, so he was willing to admit (scientist that he was) that his expectations may have been skewed by a lack of pertinent information. He and Zoe had ended the hatching and early care experiment on a reasonable note - he had not been the one that broke the final news that the baby (and yet still completely oversized for the space in which they were keeping it) had to go. (This was yet another perk of being not the parent. The unpleasantness of tearing down fantasies did not fall within his purview, and he was not sorry to not volunteer for the duty.)
She stopped by from time to time to say hello or ask to make sketches of some of the sample species of flora that the OTG groups brought back with them or to give him an update on the general appearance and perceived health of "her" dinosaur (courtesy of the OTG assignments of that same soldier that would bring her in from overly lengthy stays in one of her spots) that he dutifully entered into a spreadsheet that was kept on his server for that specific purpose.
He did not come out and directly ask her anything. She was the sort that volunteered if she wanted you to know something she was thinking. (He had very much enjoyed a pet theory of hers from years previous that Horton was, in fact, undead even if no one else seemed amused.) She seemed pleased to have her family back . . . in the same space even if they did not seem to be quite together together. She was excited to have her sister and looked as if she was building some sort of level of communication with the father of whom, given her age, he was not certain she would even have actual memories.
She still spends quite a bit of time out in her sketching pasture (as she refers to the orchards), but Maddy has caught on to her disappearances and is now keeping tabs on her. It only took her a matter of days - the young woman seems very put together. If nothing else, the two girls may pull everyone else in the family into line via sheer will power. He certainly would not want to be between the two of them and something they had set their minds on having.
Surely, they will all work it out soon enough.
Surely, they will all work it out soon enough.
Zoe has confidence in her family's ability to get their act together. They kind of have to get their act together. It is not like they can hide from each other - even though her mom was doing her best to try that back at the beginning of this whole pleasant surprise while Josh was spending an excessive amount of brooding time in his room (even for Josh).
Maddy is a little too much in the it is all so new and shiny and I do not know where I want to explore first mode for it to strike her just how out of it the rest of them are being, but Zoe cannot really blame her for that. This place was Maddy's dream for as long as she can remember, and her sister got herself here. She did not have to wait on the regulations or the settlement requests or any of the other things that Zoe will admit she only has a very basic understanding of - has never really bothered with because (unlike Josh and Mom) she has always had a belief that Maddy would find her way here eventually.
She may be young (and too young really to have understood all of the implications back when everything first went down), but she is not ignorant of the truth of what her sister did. Maddy gave them up because she believed that it would be better for them if she did. She also did it because she truly believed that she would find a way to bring them back together again. She had told Zoe that she would see her as soon as she could, and Zoe had believed it because she knew that Maddy had believed it. It had never occurred to her to doubt that Maddy would do what she said no matter how long it might end up taking.
Maddy has always been reliable like that. She is a little place struck right now (and she, if anyone, gets to be that), but she is going to start noticing the not quite rightness of the rest of them soon. Then, the two of them can get to work on sorting everyone else out - they always make everything so complicated. Maddy does not make things complicated. Maddy just finds a way to fix. Look what she's already done - surely getting the various members of their family to talk to one another has got to be easier than that.
Doesn't it?