trans_9 | I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

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I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

[ooc: Rather than spam the boards with posts for my characters, this thread takes place a few days after everything quiets down in the medbay. If your character wants to speak to either Luis or Steve, this is the place. I won't have the two of them respond to each other (I'm not quite that tasteless), so let me know who you've come a-callin' for. Alternate thread title: I Can't Believe It's Not Muncest.]

In an isolated bed near the back of the medbay, a teenage boy lay restrained. Anyone who'd caught a glimpse of Steve on the day of the incident would have said he looked much better, but he still looked like hell-- bloodless, clammy skin misted with a thin sheen of sweat, veins standing out dark and purple, a facial expression that read he had been sleeping for quite a while and could stand to sleep for quite a while longer. His right shoulder was tightly bandaged, as was his left hand, and a loose bandage had been wrapped around his head to cover his left eye. His hands were still strapped down to the bed and an IV was feeding into his arm, but it looked like the energy and the color were slowly returning to the skinny redhead.

Now if only it wasn't so goddamn boring in here.

There wasn't even the comfort of constant conversation. Dr. Sera kept busy looking out for the injured all over the medbay, and didn't seem much for talk anyway. Any time he didn't spend hunched over the laboratory equipment in the back of the room he spent sort of muttering to himself, staring at charts, or making thinly veiled passes at the female visitors to the medbay. He did have the decency not to hit on the injured.

Still, his brain was fully entrenched in Science Mode and anybody who needed to speak to him would need to flag him down.

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Being pale made his embarrassment stick out all that much more. Steve nodded at the idea of a magic future healing tank thing. If such a thing existed here, he would have definitely hopped in by now, even if it wouldn't take care of everything.

"I really just got banged up and cut by the Tyrant's claws. But when I started bleeding, I thought about an outbreak and my blood started..." he dropped his voice, "lighting on fire, and the virus... well, you probably already figured out. The virus woke up."

He was quiet, watching Steve intently. "You did something to stop it," Luke said. It wasn't a question. "Because you're still here."

Steve turned red enough to look somewhat normal. It took him a moment to respond.

"I did what you said," he murmured. "I just... kept telling myself I was gonna make it this time. And I could feel myself losing control again, but whenever I did I just... like, ignored it and said it again."

For a long time, he'd been worried it was some aspect of his teaching that had caused Jacen to fall; that he had failed as a mentor, and as an uncle. But now the final nail was in that coffin, and Luke felt pride filling him up from head to toe.

"That's great, you did just what you should have," he said, grinning widely. "I knew you could do it!"

The edges of Steve's lips lifted, only vaguely, into a tiny, awkward smile. "God... I dunno..." he muttered, but the smile wouldn't go away. All this attention was embarrassing him, but it was also the kind of attention he hadn't gotten in a long, long time. It was comforting. It was nice.

"I'm proud of you," he said softly, his own smile not going away. "You faced a challenge from within yourself--literally and figuratively--and you proved yourself the better."

"Oh, come on," he said quickly. "It... it's not that big a deal. Really."

"Well, I think so." He smiled. "But you should rest some more, Steve. I have a feeling you're going to need your strength. We can talk some more later, okay? I'll come back and see you again soon."

"Y-Yeah," Steve agreed, nodding a little bit. He hesitated a moment and then muttered quickly, "Wait. I mean, um... hang on, I..."

Luke paused, his voice gentle. "Yes? What is it?"

Steve looked away from him, fixing his uncovered eye on the wall on the other side of the room.

"Would you mind maybe... I don't know, just. Sitting here a while...?" he paused, then quickly rushed to clarify. "Just, nobody comes back here and I'm kind of. Sick of being alone. You don't have to."

That made Luke smile. Steve really was becoming like a student--or like a son, to replace the one he might have lost. "I don't mind at all. I'll sit here until you fall asleep, how does that sound?"

He nodded, looking as awkward as physically possible. Steve felt too old to be asking something like that, like he should be able to deal with it on his own.

There was a long moment of silence before Steve said anything again. "My dad used to. When I was sick," he said, almost to himself. "Just come in my room and sit and watch TV."

Luke pulled a stool over to him with the Force and sat on it. "My aunt and uncle would do the same--well, close enough, I guess. They'd take care of me." He thought a moment about what he knew of Anakin--the man who had been Anakin Skywalker before he fell. "I think if my father had been able to, he'd have done the same."

It was strange talking about his father again. Luke knew the whole story and where Steve's father was now, so it wasn't that big of a deal. But it was still strange. Telling stories about him now felt almost a little bit like lying.

Steve seemed unwilling to talk about that on any deeper level, leaning back on the bed and closing his eyes. "Sometimes I wonder what would happen if he was here. Or if Mom was. What I'd say or do. Probably sounds like I'm really hung up, huh?" Gee, Steve, you think?

"I think it's pretty normal to do that. I know I do often." He leaned an elbow on the bed, staring off into space. "I think maybe everyone who shares our situation does a little bit."

He nodded in agreement. Steve thought about the news that someone had passed onto him-- that they were all here because their universes had been destroyed, and that there was only a tiny chance they could be fixed. Everybody on this boat was in the same boat as him-- stranded without a home or anywhere to go. He thought it was sick that he took a little comfort in that.

It was also sick in the way that it really drove the point home. This was reality now. Strapped down in a hospital bed with a slow, slim chance he could go back to "surviving", his own special version of normal.

He kept his eyes closed. "I miss normal. I wish it still existed."

Luke snorted softly. "You and me both, sometimes, Steve." He rested his chin on his palm, watching his young charge. "But if things were normal, we might not even be here."

He thought about that a moment. If things had been normal, his father would have put aside his feelings for his mother, because it was normal for a Jedi not to marry... in a normal world, Luke would never have been born. Here, he was doing good, helping to restore balance, doing the work a Jedi was made for.

And maybe, maybe the mark on him after he'd killed Lumiya in revenge would fade.

If things were normal, Steve would be starting the last semester of his senior year of high school. It would be just after Christmas and he'd be scrambling to fill out college applications or decide if he wanted to study abroad. He'd be trying on graduation robes and filling out invitations. He'd be living in a small but nice house in a suburb in Minnesota with two parents who loved him and he'd still think zombies and aliens were pretend. And he would still write his college application essay about his father, because the topic was to explain about a hero who inspired him.

He'd never have met Claire. Or Luke. But Steve couldn't help but think that even sacrificing their friendship might have been worth it for normality. He would give almost anything for that normality again.

There was a somber expression on his face and he opened his eyes. "I wish I was normal again."

"Hey, now, don't say things like that." Luke looked at Steve calmly, but with the kind of leverage several decades of experience could bring. He'd seen normal people get turned into raving lunatics, and, because of Callista, knew all too well that suddenly becoming normal could wreak more emotional havoc than anyone knew.

"We all have things that define us in some way," he said. "Set us apart from everyone else. Some of these things we can't help--you can't help the things that have been done to you any more than I can help being a Jedi. But what we can change is how we view these things." He folded his hands, looking at the young man with a kind of serenity in his gaze. "These are the things that set each person apart. It is up to others to accept you with all the quirks that make you who you are, but it helps if you've accepted yourself too."

Luke grinned. "Besides, if everyone were normal, it would sure be boring around here."

Steve stared down at his lap, letting out a heavy sigh.

"I know, I know, it's not my fault, but--" He made a tiny, frustrated noise and lowered his voice so nobody would overhear them. "Dammit, I don't want to be the kid who lights on fire when he bleeds! I don't want to be a monster, or an outbreak waiting to happen. I just want to be me again."

"I know," he said softly, and there was a hint of pain in his voice. An echo of a stubborn young voice saying he wanted to do things the hard way, like Uncle Han, a child afraid of his own birthright because of the terror and pain of war... if Luke could have sheltered Ben from all that, taken him far away from the Vong invasion, he would have. Sometimes he felt like a failure as a parent because of it, but in the end it had helped shape Ben into someone who could put aside the Force if necessary and look at things logically.

"I wish there was more I could do for you," Luke continued after a moment. "But all I can say is that when we talk, I don't see all that. I just see Steve, and not all the horrible things that have happened to you. They are a part of you, yes, but they aren't everything about you."

He leaned back against the propped-up mattress again, lowering his shoulders with another exhaled breath. Steve was quiet for a few moments, and finally he closed his eyes again. "Even without the virus, I feel like I can barely remember myself anyway," he said quietly. "Before Umbrella and before all of this bullshit. I just..."

No. He would not cry. His wrists were restrained and there would be nothing to hide the fact. He absolutely would not cry. He should just stop talking. But Luke would listen and Luke was neutral and wouldn't make it hurt like Claire would (through no fault of her own.) Luke was the best person to say it to.

"You don't feel like yourself, you know? I used to be happy and I used to like who I was. Now it's like I can't get away from it." He looked down at the barcode tattooed on his arm. "Like they ruined me."

He'd felt the same, after escaping the clutches of Palpatine reborn. "They tried, perhaps," Luke said. "But I don't think they succeeded. If they had, I don't think you could have talked yourself out of losing control during that fight. But you proved yourself better than the horrible things they did to you, and that means you're better than them."

There was always that, now. Before, all Steve had was blind hope and what felt like stupid optimism that if things went bad, he could take control. Now he knew it was the truth, and there was no arguing otherwise.

Steve let out the breath he'd been holding and kept staring at his tattoo. "I guess," he said quietly. "But then... when do I get to feel normal again?"

I've got a disease, deep inside me [totally open]

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