A/N: This is just a cute hurt/comfort/family oneshot about the best odd family ever: Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop. I might add more if there's any interest, so leave a review if you'd like to read more! :)

"Meatloaf again?"

Corporal Hicks turned to see Newt's plaintive, serious little face tipped up at him, the foil packet in her hand held up as an indictment. "I had meatloaf for breakfast."

"Sorry, sweetheart, they got jumbled and they all look the same," he said. He rifled through the box, picking up another bag of powder and squinting at the faded label. "Here, I'll trade you. Try this one."

He took her opened rehydrated meatloaf packet and scraped it out of the bag onto the flimsy plastic plate he'd been using for the past week.

"Thanks, Hicks," Newt said. She turned and scurried back into her makeshift fort-a few blankets strung around a table to form a little cave with pillows, books, and a "secret" candy stash inside (which both Hicks and Ripley made a concerted effort to keep stocked at all times without her noticing).

Hicks shook his head and smiled to himself, scooping a mouthful of dry meatloaf into his mouth before returning his focus to the schematics onscreen. He tapped his earpiece. "Bishop, how we doing?"

"Nearly complete," Bishop said. His voice was as even and cool as ever. "I should have this duct sealed off in six and a half minutes."

"Great, keep me updated." He slid a cigarette between his lips. It was halfway smoked already; he had about a pack or two left, and with days of travel to come, he was doing his best to ration and save. By all rights he should have been in cryo sleep right now-and in fact he had been up until a week ago, when impact with a wayward asteroid flung wide from the Gamma-13 Belt had thrown a monkey wrench in the computer system. It had woken them all up out of cryo and now refused to put them back under due to various ship damage. It was shaping up to be a real pain in the ass.

He dragged his M-14 off one shoulder to his lap and used the flamethrower as a glorified lighter, just flicking it on so that the barrel warped the air with heat. It was an old marines trick, and he remembered with a smile how Hudson had once made the mistake of actually pulling the trigger to light up. Naturally, a jet of flame twice the length of his arm had roared out, singeing his eyebrows and narrowly avoiding killing him. They'd had a good laugh about that one, and to this day Hudson couldn't pick up an M-14 without everyone raising their eyebrows and innocently reminding him about the safety or offering him a light. Hudson, of course, had taken the joke as gracefully and maturely as he took all jokes at his expense-that is to say, whining and snapping about it at every opportunity.

He felt a sharp, unexpected pang in his chest. He still wasn't used to referring to Hudson and the others in the past tense.

It felt wrong. How could things change so fast? People you spent years training beside, sweating together, bleeding together, fighting for your lives together, learning the ins and outs of one another so well that you knew them by the way they sneezed and laughed and swore. They'd saved each other's lives so many times that they didn't even keep count anymore; you just assumed you owed someone a beer when you were in port and paid up accordingly. They'd seen combat hundreds of times over, and sure, they'd lost friends before-but not like this.

Everyone gone, in just a matter of hours. People so full of life-drunk on the high of brutal, animalistic survival-snuffed out, one by one. Every "is" became a "was," random sentences and shouted commands became last words. Fragmented anecdotes and shared stories that they told at bars on leave became mere memories with Hicks their sole caretaker, packaging them up neatly for a future eulogy.

That was, if he ever got back to a civilization worth delivering a eulogy to.

He took a long drag of the cigarette. The skin on the right side of his face was taut, protesting against any slight motion. It was still healing from severe acid burns. Little progress had been made on the wounds' condition when he was in cryo for a month; his whole body was frozen, which meant that while wounds didn't worsen, they didn't get better, either. It was hard not to show the others how much pain he was in, but he didn't feel like causing them anymore stress than they were already feeling. There was only so much medicine onboard and they needed to ration that just as much as cigarettes.

He looked up at the sound of boots on metal. Ripley walked into the general comms room with a haggard look on her face. She pushed back her hair with one hand and spared a weary smile for Newt, who peeked out of her blanket lean-to when she recognized Ripley's gait. "You get something to eat, Newt?" The little girl nodded, holding up the bag she was eating out of and retreating back behind the blankets.

Ripley glanced over at Hicks. "Is starboard sealed off yet?"

Hicks gestured at the blueprints on screen. "Bishop's nearly done with A-17, and I sealed off 12 and 3 a couple hours ago. When he's finished, it'll be done."

"Good. Hopefully that'll convince the system to let us get back to sleep." She let out a long breath. "I don't like the looks of the damage to the cargo bay."

"I know. But it's sealed off now. Nothing to worry about." Hicks watched her pace over to the table, unslinging her gun from her back and resting her hands on her hips. "Ripley."

She looked back at him, steadied by his voice and the reassuring look in his unbandaged eye. He said, "We're fine. There's nothing on this ship but us. We've checked a dozen times over."

She chewed the inside of her cheek and nodded. "I know." Her voice was hoarse, worn thin from the events of the past month. Hell, from the past years - this had never let up for her. Running for her life, fighting, killing these things-that had been Ripley's whole life for far too long, Hicks realized. And now he'd been dragged into it too. Only, he found that he didn't mind so much. It was hard to be too upset about the state of things when he was with her.

As if in defiant retaliation to that thought, his skin started to itch and burn like fire as it always did when the numbing salves began to wear off. They were supposed to last for forty-eight hours or more, but he found they only did the job for about eight. They weren't really meant for burns as severe as his. He did his best to just grit his teeth and bear it, but Ripley usually noticed his pain and would use more of the precious supplies to ease his discomfort despite his protests. It was entirely possible that they had a long journey ahead of them if they couldn't get the cryo fixed, and using precious medical supplies was a waste.

A frown crossed Ripley's face, and she opened her mouth, about to ask if he was feeling worse, but a tinny transmission from Bishop cut her off. "Hatch A-17 closed and sealed. Starboard side completely secure. Heading back now."

"Thanks, Bishop," Hicks said.

Fortunately for all of them, the ship had several replacement parts for androids. Soon after coming out of cryosleep, Bishop had Ripley carry him to the medbay where he was able to reattach a new lower body so that he was able to move about freely without any residual damage. Since then he'd been invaluable, requiring no sleep or food and working twice the hard as the rest of them.

"Thank God," Ripley muttered. She walked over to Hicks, pulling up the cryo chamber controls on the computer. "Computer, run diagnostics on the cryo chambers and report on usability."

Instantly a readout appeared on screen. All of the chambers were fully functional, but they were grayed out on screen, indicating they were manually switched off by the system. "Disturbances detected in the ship's hull and outer extremities that indicate possible breach points. Cryo chambers will not be fully functional until these issues are resolved. See the readout for the approximate locations of these disturbances," the computer reported.

Ripley's eyes flicked back and forth as she read over the report. "These'll take at least another week to repair and seal off if not longer. I was hoping they were minor enough that the system would ignore them."

Hicks smiled. "At least we've got plenty of meatloaf."

She gave him a look that was intended to be terse but instead became a smile. "Shut up." She moved to get her gun and a welder. "I should get started on those weak spots."

Hicks caught her by the elbow, wincing as his injuries protested against the movement. "Stay a minute," he urged. "You haven't eaten all day. You have to take care of yourself."

Ripley hesitated, then gave in, sitting down at the table beside him. He retrieved three silvery packets from the box, fanning them out and offering a crooked smile. "Take your pick."

"Which is which?"

"Hell if I know."

She laughed and took the middle one from him, tearing it open and pouring in some water to rehydrate whatever sorry meal lay powdered and crushed up inside. "I'll be glad when we can get real food again," she said.

"I don't know," Hicks said lightly, catching sight of Newt watching them from her fort. "I kind of like our family dinners. I might miss them."

Ripley raised an eyebrow. "I don't remember making any plans to ditch either of you when we get back to Earth." She looked at Newt. "What about you, Newt? Did you plan on that?"

Newt giggled and shook her head.

Ripley nudged him in the ribs. "Did you?"

Hicks smiled, looking down at her and studying her face. He brushed a few stray curls back from her eyes. "No."

They smiled at one another, and they sat like that, talking about everything and nothing, Hicks' arm around her back, her shoulders pressed against his side, shaking whenever she laughed (which was more and more often, these days). They sat like that, in the middle of space, battle-worn, battle-scarred, and battle-fearing, yet comfortable and content in that moment in the knowledge that they were a family.

An android, a young girl, a hundred-and-something year old woman, and an injured corporal floating through space, content so long as they had one another.

To Hicks, it sounded like a happy ending-or, at least, the start of one.