trans_9 | Awkward Turtle [closed]

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Awkward Turtle [closed]

Just as he suspected. There really wasn't much to do, even on a giant crazy spaceship like this one. There was a media library, but you could only watch movies for so long before you remembered that you were on a giant crazy spaceship and it was stupid to be watching movies.

That's what made Steve go check out the sensoriums, if only so he could work off a little steam on some kind of training course. That seemed like a popular option. Thinking on it too much had made him ask if it could create the images of people, too, and since then he'd been trying to decide how creepy it would be to go see virtual versions of his parents. Whether it would be more therapeutic than necessitating therapy afterwards was still up in the air.

He wandered the halls glumly, trying to get his mind off of it and forlornly thinking how nice it would be if somebody he knew was somehow aboard too.

He did not expect to get his wish thirty seconds later, when somebody walked by and he immediately recognized her.

"Wait... Claire?"

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Claire likely would have noticed him first if she hadn't been preoccupied by thoughts of her own. She was still adjusting to this whole idea of being a mother, and she constantly had to remind herself of the story and how she was sticking to it.

She paused when she heard her name, and hesitated for a moment, thinking she recognized that voice but not being totally sure. When she turned back to look in the direction she heard her name being called, she froze, her eyes widening and her mouth dropping slightly open, before she was able to find her voice.

"...Steve?"

Steve's breath hitched in his throat and he felt the brief, bizarre sensation of his heart racing. It seemed to fade after a second or two, so he didn't pay much attention to it.

After all, it was Claire.

"Claire! It's really you!" he said again, an ecstatic smile crossing his face. He cut across the hallway and ran up to her, suddenly seizing up with the very awkward realization he had no idea what he should do or say to her. Should he give her a hug? Cry? Put on a happy face and play it cool?

When he couldn't decide, he ended up staring at her with a mix between surprise and utter joy. "Um... hi!" Very smooth.

For the second time in a week she found herself facing someone she hadn't seen in seven years, at the exact same age they had been when she'd last seen them. Of course this was almost even more jarring than finding Sherry, because Steve had died. She found herself staring a moment longer before shaking it off and closing the distance Steve hadn't breached, pulling him into a hug. Despite Wesker's creepy threats, she'd never thought she'd see him again.

"Oh my God, Steve you're alive." Probably not the most tactful thing to say in this situation but she was a Redfield.

Steve was actually quite pleased Claire had made the first move as far as hugging went, evident in the way his arms immediately closed around her. She might have noticed him shaking a little bit.

"I never thought I'd see you again," he said under his breath. She was... taller, he noticed, or if not taller then she seemed different somehow he couldn't really specify. But she seemed surprised he was alive, which all but confirmed the last, fuzzy memories he had before waking up on this creepy ship. Oh well.

"I'm so glad you're here! This place sucks."

Claire pulled away from him before he could get any ideas from the hug, smiling at his comment.

"No kidding," she replied, keeping a hand on his shoulder and tilting her head slightly. "Did you just wake up?" It was surprising at first when she thought she hadn't spotted him on the Obs deck, but then again, she'd been rightfully distracted by Sherry.

Now that he was at arm's length he could tell what the difference was. Claire was older now. How much older Steve wasn't sure, but she was definitely older than she'd been before. He didn't really feel like asking either, but he supposed that would come up along with all his other questions.

"A couple days ago, yeah," he said with a little shrug. "I'm still not sure what's going on. Everybody's told me but it's still too weird to get. So I've just been kind of wandering around alone."

"I guess it's a good thing I came up here when I did, then." She smiled at him, dropping her hand away from his shoulder and using it to gesture back the way she'd come from. "I spend most of my time down in the City. It's a little bit less creepy there."

Steve looked immediately intrigued by this idea. "You mean we can live other places than that freaky bunk room place?" he asked. "Jeez, sign me up! I hate the way everything moves around here. I'm never going to stop having nightmares for the rest of my life at this rate."

After a few seconds he realized how awkward that comment was given the circumstances and what he believed to have just figured out.

"Anyway," he said quickly, trying to change the subject. "You look... different. I mean-- you look good but you look different."

A frown passed over Claire's face when Steve mentioned nightmares, but she shook it away quickly at his topic change, since he obviously didn't want to think about that right now and she wasn't going to press him into it.

"Older?" she questioned, a bit of a smirk on her face. She found it weird to refer to herself as such, since she didn't feel she'd changed much, but on the other hand, someone who was used to seeing her when she was nineteen would see an obvious difference.

He smiled at her awkwardly. "Yeah. I thought so. I just didn't want to ask." Well, this was embarrassing. Steve had always felt self-conscious about being younger than her, and now it was made even worse by the fact she looked noticeably adult next to him.

It crossed his mind briefly that it was stupid to feel self-conscious about anything with Claire, because he'd known her for all of two or three days... apparently years ago.

"So, uh. How long has it been, anyway?"

Claire exhaled, leaning back on her heels a little and looking away briefly.

"A little over seven years," she replied. She doubted that would count overall in their time on this ship, but to her, it had been seven years since she'd watched Steve die.

Predictably, his face sank. "Seven years?" How could it have been that long? That would make Claire somewhere in her mid-twenties.

He looked lost in thought for a moment. Finally, Steve looked up at her somewhat awkwardly. "Hey Claire. I don't really remember what happened at that base. It's kind of fuzzy at the end, so. Um."

He reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "Did I really... die?"

Claire stared at him for a long moment, her brow furrowed. Then she took a slow breath and looked around the hallway.

"We shouldn't really talk about this here. Let's head down to the city, it's a little more private there." And Stacy couldn't listen in. Without waiting for an answer, she headed back in the direction of the creepy tentacles which would take them down to the city level.

Steve didn't answer, following her immediately and sticking close. He hadn't made it down to the city yet. There were enough hallways and places to explore on the upper areas of the ship to where he just hadn't gotten that far yet.

"Why can't we ever end up in normal places, huh?" he said, gesturing at the walls and trying awkwardly to lighten the mood. Since apparently it wasn't going to stay light for long.

"Just the kind of exciting lives we lead," Claire replied, smiling a little. It was an unlucky draw, but she could honestly say Steve was the first person she was glad to see on this ship. Because despite the stuff that happened back home, it still beat where he might've been.

He shook his head, shrugging his shoulders irritably. "If this is what they mean by 'exciting', I'd rather just go back to high school." After prison and zombies and now spaceships, Steve never thought he'd miss pre-calculus class so much.

"So is this like a real city? Inside the ship and everything?"

"Yup," she replied after holding back a smile at his crack about high school. "It's a little weird and alien, but there's a fake sky and everything. You can almost forget you're on a weird space ship there." Almost being the operative word. Considering there weren't any actual homes and people were shacking up in makeshift beds to avoid sleeping in the creepy wall nooks, it was hard to completely forget such things.

"As long as the walls don't breathe, it's gotta be better than where they want us to sleep," he said.

It was sort of nice to be somewhere with Claire where they didn't have to watch their backs at all times. Stacy's interior was weird and freaky, but at least it didn't attack. "I haven't looked around too much. I went to see the library place and the sensoriums today... There isn't anything to do but look around. Besides eating that horrible food, ugh."

"I'm sure Leon wouldn't mind you taking one of the rooms in the Precinct," Claire replied without really thinking about it. Leon might mind, but it wasn't like she'd ask his opinion on it. Steve had had a hard enough time as it was without waking up in creepy surroundings.

"There's a lot more to the ship than just what's up here. Have you used the uh, tube things at all?" Not really her favorite form of travel, but they apparently couldn't be picky around here.

"Oh, good," Steve sighed with relief. He wasn't about to ask Claire if he could stay with her, but he was more than grateful for the invitation. "Maybe then I can actually sleep."

That was a minor load off his mind. "I've only used the tubes a few times. The first was an accident, haha... it sort of put me off of them for a while."

Then something sharply occurred to him. "Hey, wait. Who's Leon? Is he that friend of yours you emailed the other d... on the island?"

"The same one." It didn't even register to Claire that this might not be something Steve would be all that pleased about, but she wasn't giving anyone any reason to think they were anything other than friends. In all cases.

"He woke up here a few months before I did."

"Ohhh." Well, it would be useful having someone around who'd been here for a long time. He could answer questions and probably knew his way around.

"I guess if he's a friend of yours then he's okay," Steve concluded. It wasn't as though he really got to decide what kind of people would be living at a place where he was only just invited to stay, but having Claire's approval behind him spoke volumes for what kind of guy this Leon person was.

"Is your brother here? I kinda wanted to meet him sometime."

Claire sighed a little at the mention of Chris, shaking her head.

"I don't know. If he is, he hasn't woken up yet." And she had no way of knowing, which bothered her a great deal, and was evident at the slight slump in her shoulders as they continued to walk.

Ooh, bad topic. "Uh. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked," Steve said quickly. "But... you know, he's probably fine. If he made it all the way to come get us before, then he's definitely okay on a ship like this!"

Hopefully his uninformed opinion and assumptions would be comforting in some way.

"So there could be tons of people in those freaky pods who we don't even know are here yet, huh...?"

"It's possible," she replied, brushing off the brief moment of upset at the idea of her brother being somewhere on board and her not knowing of it. "Stacy isn't exactly forthcoming with information about who's around."

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Awkward Turtle [closed]

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