Disclaimer: Terra Nova is not mine.
Maddy has never done bleak.
That sounds weird (and when something sounds weird inside her head she knows that there is little to no chance of her articulating it to someone else in any way that sounds semi normal), but it is the truth. There have been a lot of times in her life when someone could have (justifiably) used the term bleak to describe what she or her family were facing - her dad's imprisonment, her hospitalization, or a chunk of her family moving on to Terra Nova while she and her dad stayed behind all could have been viewed in that manner.
She preferred to look at them as temporary setbacks or obstacles that needed to be routed around (or even progress toward a larger goal in the case of the last). Even her illness had brought about a legal means for Zoe to be moved to the colony, so she will take the Pollyannaish road of saying that there is always something to be found. There is no such thing as hopeless in her world because she has never let there be.
Just look at where she is.
She has hung on her baby sister to her heart's content until they get to giggling so hard that they can't catch their breath. She leans her head on her mother's shoulder sometimes at the breakfast table just because she can until they are both sniffling a little bit before they go on with the rest of their day. She even hugs on Josh until he starts making a show of pushing her off and pretending that he cannot handle all of the "mush" that she is dishing out. She lets him have his pretenses - as silly as they are. Josh has earned that leeway because he did what she asked of him so long ago (and she owes him for that even if he does not see it that way). She can let him go around being a boy even if he is really supposed to be a man by now (is a man in the way that he has stepped up and been who Zoe and their mother needed for him to be while they were apart).
She smiles with satisfaction watching her mother squeeze her father's shoulder when she walks behind him and the way her father's fingers linger against her mother's hand when he passes her something at the table. She shares a knowing look with Zoe when their dad and Josh step out into the little patch of garden at the front of their house (they have a garden!) to have a talk after supper. She takes walks with Mark. He holds her hand and listens to her stories like they are the most interesting things he has ever heard. They ask each other questions, stare at the stars in silence, and forget that time is something that is being measured apart from the two of them.
It's good. She's good. They are good and getting better.
She works on projects and fixes things. Her fields of study combine or disburse in use from one day to the next, and there is always something new to see, to experience, or to tackle. It's so much more than even her imagination conjured up for her to dream.
There are bumpy patches and lots of work, but she is used to both of those.
Maddy has always worked for and toward what she wanted (no matter what nasty not quite whispers might have been tossed around not quite behind her back back in her school years about how her being smart meant that everything must have been easy for her).
She has always had goals and lists (always, always with the lists) and some sort of route from Point A to Point B that has required effort to be put forth on her part. It is, therefore, a little difficult for her to wrap her head around the sheer amount of luck involved in her landing where she has.
Maddy knows that she was beyond lucky to be as unscathed by the whole ordeal as she was. She really had no right to be anything as simple as slightly scratched up after her fall, dunking, near sinking, accidental portal crossing, and sojourn in what had to be a desert misadventure.
There were a lot of things that happened in quick succession that had absolutely no reason to work in her favor other than the fact that they simply did. She did not jump off that boat; she did not pull her father in after her. She did not pick the landing spot or arrange for a means of communication with this new world's civilization to be almost immediately at her disposal.
She's not sure what she would have done left to her own devices in such an arid region with no clue as to appropriate direction picking. She has read books (of course she has read books) but theoretical knowledge and its practical application are not automatic compatriots (medical courses had taught her that). She was lucky to have stumbled across the wrecked rover so shortly after her crossing (happy as well to know that she had been of no small service to the wounded man trapped inside).
It had all worked out very well - too well really if she was taking the time to remind herself of the honest circumstances of the situation. She had had a moment or two right at the start when she had considered the possibility that she had sustained head trauma in the course of the research ship debacle and was in the midst of some sort of wish fulfillment coma dream (she had even taken the trouble of the good old-fashioned method of pinching herself for reassurance).
She has worked for this for a long time, and now it is fait accompli because chance decided to play favorites with her (at least that is what it feels like). As wonderful as it all is, it is also awkward because she was not expecting to be here on accident. It has left her with loose ends that she needs new plans to handle, and as much as she likes making plans, she is off kilter from the knowledge that she does not have the fact of earning her spot here to fall back upon when she needs it.
She has been enmeshed in finding ways to work within or around the Terra Nova recruitment system for a long time, and it takes her a little while to realize that she is now in a position where she can (and needs) to make it work for her. This fact becomes the central tenant of her new plans. She isn't finished yet.
She has done her level best to work up some trust and credit with Commander Taylor, and she hopes that she has accrued enough. This is an opportune moment - she has kept her ears open and knows that the ag corps is struggling to keep pace with the expansion plans and timeframe that came with the last Pilgrimage. She knows exactly what the ag corps needs and exactly how to get it for them. She is ready to make her pitch.
In the end, the invitation is natural.
It's the message to Audra that is tricky. Routing it through Dillon ends up being the easiest way (she has to believe that Dillon is there to get it).
She has to do a whole lot of waiting. It's a good thing that she is patient.
She has to do a whole lot of waiting. It's a good thing that she is patient.
It's the message to Mr. Moore that is tricky. Routing it through Audra ends up being the easiest way (she isn't even sure that Mr. Moore is there to get it).
In the end, the invitation is the last thing that she expected.
Maddy may be on a first name basis with the man, but Kara has never been quite comfortable with the man's invitations to dispense with the formalities. He is, ultimately, her boss (in a her boss's boss's boss sort of a way). She may know Audra, but a request to spend a weekend at the couple's home is simply not part of anything near her expectations of normal.
All she had wanted was some insight into why Maddy had suddenly gone incommunicado when she had sent the message to Audra. She knows Maddy in solid work mode (which is why days of no responses hadn't set off any warning bells). The week and a half mark had gotten her twitchy. She had known that Mr. Moore was going down to personally oversee something her friend was working on, and she thought the man's wife might be able to give her some idea of what was happening. She can't help but believe that something has gone very wrong (she can't even get hold of Jim). Why else would they want to break whatever it is to her in person?
She is not in the best state of mind as she travels. It leaves her too much time for thinking all of the wrong kinds of things. She is not ready to hear that something bad has happened to her best friend. She is trying to not get stuck on the worst case scenario, but it's hard. Worst case scenario has been all too common in her life.
She wonders if she will ever get used to the fact that people always leave her. She knows that is not an entirely fair view for her to have on the situation, but she feels it just the same. Fair, after all, is something that only applies to children's stories. She learned that a long time ago, and she does not think that it makes her cynical that she understands that fair is just not a thing. In fact, she likes to think that she is actually a pretty positive person.
She is actually a pretty positive person. She has not given up - and she has had an endless stream of examples of those that do as her object lessons in life for as long as she can remember. She grew up in a world that liked to pretend that it was already over, and she had rejected that premise before she was even old enough to realize what the premise actually was. The world is not over - if it were, they would not be in a position to discuss it to death the way that she had always felt that the grown ups around her had done.
They are not just marking time on a doomed world. People are designed to be problem solvers. They finagle and they fix. It is a fundamental part of what makes them human, and she refuses to believe that twiddling thumbs and going woe is me and shutting down in an attempt to keep everything in some sort of a holding pattern is an appropriate way to go through life. In fact, she finds the whole lack of hope culture to be a bit disgusting (and she is not certain that she will ever find it in her to forgive the powers that be for creating that narrative that so many of her friends fell prey to that everything was without worth and effort was futile).
Still, all of her beliefs have never shielded her from being chronically left behind.
People that she thought were friends first starting leaving her when she was in junior high. She does not know what the final straw was that preceded the overdose (she suspects that no one on the outside of such a compulsion ever really knows for sure), but she does know that it was not the accident that the girl's parents pretended. People who have given up have an aura about them. The lack of belief in anything beyond whatever is clouding the view of beyond the present moment becomes a palatable thing. She did not recognize it for what it was that first time. She has had plenty of practice in seeing it for what it is now. The older they got, the more likely it became that her classmates would see themselves as approaching some sort of an end to everything that they thought of as good in their lives.
She is clearly not wired that way - because she does not understand. The concept that you can one day wake up and decide that nothing will ever be worth anything again in your life has always struck her as pretty arrogant (and short sighted and selfish and all of those other things that you are not supposed to say when someone has committed suicide because it is somehow not the done thing to do anything other than eulogize the person in question and whitewash all of their decisions as some sort of a comfort to the people that they were leaving to deal with the aftermath).
Josh leaving was different of course. Josh was going toward something rather than running away from nothing even if he had been more dragged along than going under his own steam at the time. She understood his reluctance even while she did everything in her power to talk and listen him beyond it. She was happy when he went. Josh was far more family devoted than he allowed casual observers to see (and Kara had never been just a casual observer), and Maddy's hospitalization had been a nightmare come to life for the boy that held himself responsible for the safety of his sisters. Josh had struggled with where he was and what he needed to be after his father had been removed from their home, and he had landed in a protective older brother role that held hints of man of the house and father stand in added to it.
Kara had been able to do little other than listen both times, but on both occasions, that seemed to be what he needed the most - someone that cared and that he trusted who could be allowed to know what was really going on (but for whom he was not ultimately responsible). She wanted Terra Nova for Josh nearly as badly as Maddy did. That is far less self-sacrificing than it sounds at first hearing. Yes, she believes that she loves Josh (high school romance clichés or not - she and Josh were each other's best friends long before they were anything else) and she wants what is best for him. But, this was also a way (a good way) to ensure that he was safe and well and better (leaving her to only be responsible for herself) in a way that she got to be a part of the decision of leaving. It's the only time in her life that she has felt like she had any control over the being left.
Her parents' departure from her life was less jarring than one would have expected (simply because she could not remember a time when they had not been keeping a countdown toward what they always referred to as their "retirement plan" that had been directed in her direction). Her parents were always going to leave her as soon as they could - she had always known that. It didn't make the being left any less being left.
When she listens to Mr. Moore in the sitting room (secure area where they could speak freely they had told her because she absolutely cannot speak of what they are telling her to anyone else) explaining that Maddy and Jim are technically considered lost at sea, there is a part of her that has an initial reaction that she has once again been left behind. It isn't fair of her (but fair isn't a thing). She has always known where Maddy was going; she just thought that she would get a chance to say goodbye first. As it turned out, there were no goodbyes. There was just an inconclusive witness account that she could not decide what to do with - she wanted to believe that the portal was the answer, but she knows that there is another possibility.
Mr. Moore would never have left her friend (her family really) to drown, but there were extenuating circumstances. They were distracted (and dealing with pirates . . . pirates!), and things could have gone badly in the confusion. Jim would not have left Maddy in the water unless someone physical hauled him out - she knows the man well enough for that. Her found family might be gone gone and not merely gone, and she does not count on ever knowing for sure (in much the way that she had reconciled herself to the fact that she would never truly know what had happened to Josh - would have to believe that he was okay and was building a good life for himself in absence of information).
She tries to think about the Shannons all together while Maddy rattles off seemingly endless amounts of information about random dinosaur species. She tries to not think about them at all. She keeps going back and forth between the two while she tries to get a handle on her new reality. She realizes that she is not doing a very good job when she practically bites off Austin's head when he once again tries to feel her out about a not so friendly dinner. She can't deal with that - has no space in her head for anything other than the not grieving grieving she is doing over yet another loss in her life.
She apologizes to him, of course, and she sends messages in reply to Audra checking up on her saying that she is fine (and she thinks that she is under everything that just needs a little time to set in).
Life goes on - it always has.
It keeps going, and she keeps going with it - all the way to this moment where she is shifting the backpack she is wearing trying to make the weight settle a little more evenly across her shoulders. The smiley face followed by the words "you know who is just fine - just like we knew she would be" that Audra had sent her had been barely open when the recruitment questionnaire had arrived. They must have liked her answers to the questions they had for her in regards to her research because here she is - waiting in line for her turn through the portal.
She doesn't know exactly what she is going to find, but that's okay. It turns out she's not left behind; she's joining.