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[ooc: BENDYTIME, ACTIVATE! Anytime after the crew has returned to the ship.]

When the medics finally woke Steve up from his healing trance, he was not in the best of moods.

For one thing, the trance had left him feeling much, much better than before-- but had not done much for the virus. A good supply of bandages were able to conceal many of the external signs, but he couldn't very well wrap them around the green marks on his face, his fingers or both of his eyes. His levels were stable but until the virus had gone back into remission, he was stuck in quarantine.

For another, there was no news as far as what had caused GLaDOS to go off on him. No clues as to who found out about him, no sign of who might have done it-- just the knowledge that someone on this crew, who he was supposed to trust, was capable of attacking him like that and there was little to be done about it right now.

And of course, someone had to inform him that Zokez II had been nearly annihilated by the Ohm. The beautiful beaches, resorts and cities-- the places where he spent a happy week relaxing, feeling normal, and spending time with Miku-- were gone, destroyed, the people fled and with no hope of rebuilding. His week had been cut short anyway, but now it felt like the whole thing had been ripped away from him. Even the happy moments he had here on this ship were fleeting-- in the end, everything was now just a memory, stuck in the past and never to come again.

And furthermore, he'd slept through it. The first encounter with the Ohm, the stupid aliens who were the whole reason he was awake on this goddamned ship in the first place, and Steve was too busy sleeping off a virus outbreak that nearly stole his mind from him to help out.

"A mistake" indeed.

Steve was not in any kind of mood at all as he sat on the floor and leaned against the bubble, staring at the ceiling. His silhouette was visible through the dimmed bubble.

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He wished he could believe what Luke said, but GLaDOS' voice was still ringing through his head-- when she called him a mistake, when she said he was nothing but a specimen brought aboard to study. All things he had worried about himself-- and all things that made more sense the more he thought about them, even if they made him feel sick.

How could this place be home to him when he didn't even belong here?

Steve sighed and brushed his hair out of his face again. "I might as well get used to it. I'm stuck here. And I'll be back, too."

"Always in motion is the future," Luke quoted softly. "A very wise being said that to a very nerf-headed young Jedi once. Don't think that things are set in stone yet, Steve. You'd be surprised at how fast things change when you start pushing."

He couldn't help the wince on his face as he shifted, and the shifting tugged at one of the scabbed-over wounds on his body. "And I'd hope you just wouldn't give up. I know you're better than that."

Well, he did have a point about the future. Steve nodded at that and sighed.

He turned around slightly to where he could be seen again, but only so he could look at something besides the back of the bubble for a while. "I'm not gonna give up," he said. "But I don't know if it matters anymore. I said I wouldn't lose it again, but back in the sensorium..."

He looked up at Luke worriedly. Luke might have faith that Steve wouldn't have hurt him, but Steve himself clearly didn't.

"You didn't lose it," Luke insisted. "You didn't let that happen. And I'm very proud of you for that." He grinned suddenly, one of those smiles as bright as the binary suns he'd grown up under. "It's how I know you've changed so much."

"I lost it enough," Steve sighed. "It's not good enough."

He leaned his head back and bumped it against the bubble. "After all this bullshit I'm still not strong enough. I still can't do anything useful."

Luke stared at Steve quietly. Then:

"If you think you aren't good enough, push yourself to get better. Force knows I could stand to see a little self-motivation in one of my students for once." Luke shook his head. "There is always a solution to not feeling good enough, and that is to keep working until you do. Although, having someone who's taken a few turns around the galaxy telling you that you've got what it takes would help, I hope."

He didn't respond to that for a minute, curling up around his knees again and taking a few quiet breaths.

"How?"

"Keep pushing yourself to a center, keep searching for that calm," Luke replied. "Don't let failures think you are a failure. We slip; we fall sometimes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't get right back up. If you slip, go back later and learn from it. It's not pleasant to think about something like that again, but it'll make you stronger the next time."

He smiled, the serene Jedi Master. "I've seen into you, Steve. I know you've got a strong will and that your heart is a good one. If I thought you were beyond help--well, I'd have offered anyway, but if you were truly unreachable you wouldn't have made it this far. I'm not saying keep stressing yourself until you trigger this virus and then try to control it, but learn ways to manage stress when it occurs so that it has less of an impact. That's essentially what you're doing every time you center yourself the way I told you before."

Steve was quiet as he mulled that over, but he slowly nodded after a few minutes. "Is that really the only thing I can do?" he muttered, traces of weariness still in his voice.

"There are other ways, probably," Luke said. "There's certainly more than one route to Core--" he stopped, realizing that Steve wouldn't know about hyperspace routes or Corellia, for that matter. "There are many paths to the same destination."

Luke paused, running his hands through his hair. "I'll think of something else. We'll think of it together, if we figure out this way doesn't work. But can it wait until I've had a solid eight? I feel like a krayt dragon used me for a chew toy."

He looked up over his shoulder-- and for the first time, seemed to notice that Luke had been run through the mill. "Holy shit, you're hurt," he gaped, and put his hands against the bubble.

"What are you wasting time in here for? Are you okay?"

"Checking up on you is not wasting time," Luke retorted dryly, and ran his fingers along one of the cuts on his face. "I've had worse than this. I lost a hand once, you know. This one." He wiggled the fingers of his right hand at Steve, grinning for a moment before it faded with exhaustion.

"I'm just tired," he murmured. "Finally getting a face-to-face with our enemy--seeing the kind of destruction the Ohm can bring, feeling that loss of life in the Force... it reminds me only of some of the really bad times when the Vong were invading, around the time Ben was born. And I've drawn on the Force a lot. It gets to you."

Edited 2010-07-02 04:19 (UTC)

Lost a hand, huh? It was... really hard to tell. Steve would have had no idea otherwise just looking at it.

At the mention of the Ohm, Steve frowned and folded his arms over his chest. "I heard about the battle," he said, with no shortage of bitterness in his voice-- perhaps resentment about missing the fight. "Is it true that everything down there is...?"

Luke nodded mutely. "It's horrible," he said, and his voice was hoarse as he thought about the death and destruction that had occurred. "And we can't let people return. There's no way the Ohm will leave it alone. And now they know we're here and we're ready to fight."

Luke sighed, passing a hand over his eyes. "I feel as though this is the deep breath before the dive. All the more reason for you to start working through this when you can, kid." He smiled. "No matter what happens, Steve, I'll always be proud of you and think of you like my own. Mara does too. If you ever need us, all you have to do is ask."

"And I spent the whole thing stuck in here doing nothing."

He sighed again and leaned back against the bubble behind him, letting his head fall back against it. He put on his usual embarrassed look at the praise. "Thanks," he said quietly, and managed a tiny, dead-looking smile. It was comforting to hear that, even if Luke always said it-- Steve was pretty sure he needed to hear it over and over again, sometimes. He could be pretty dense.

"You know... if it was anybody else who found me back there, I don't know if I'd have been okay."

"What makes you say that?" Luke asked gently. "I think--I know you don't give yourself enough credit most of the time."

Well, that was true enough too. Steve smirked at that and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It felt like my brain was in a blender, so I can't remember a lot about it, but... I remember your voice more than anything else."

He curled his knees up to his chest and glanced away from him.

"Since my father died, I..." then he drifted off, embarrassed.

"You...?" Luke prompted gently, after a moment. He wouldn't push Steve into saying anything more though. As always, he was just glad he'd gotten the other to open up to him.

And it seemed that that had an effect, if Steve remembered him speaking when he could remember so little else from that incident.

"Christ." Steve turned crimson (under the green) and shrank down a little more. He finally managed to finish his sentence after a long hesitation.

"My dad," he paused again. "Since my father died, it's really like you're... just as good."

When Steve had asked him to make it all go away, right before Luke had slid him into the healing trance, his heart had contracted, aching. Now it felt ready to burst. In fact, the only people who could make him happier right now he could count on one hand.

In the midst of all the suffering, all the destruction and pain, the Force could always grant a measure of peace.

"Thank you," he murmured, a brilliant, Skywalker-caliber grin breaking out on his face as bright as twin suns. "That means a lot to me, Steve."

"Sure," Steve replied, still too embarrassed to turn around-- though Luke probably didn't need the Force to guess that.

"You've done... a lot for me. And I guess I've never really said so."

"You didn't have to. But thank you." Luke took a deep breath, then struggled up to his feet. "I'd better get on before my wife comes looking for me. I don't want to worry her or anyone more than I already do... and I do need that sleep. It'll probably be more than eight hours." Luke smiled wryly.

"Take care of yourself, okay? I'll be here to check on you as often as I can--every day if I can help it."

"Okay." He finally felt un-awkward enough to turn around, a weak smile still on his face. "Feel better. And don't worry if you can't come, I hope I'm not in here too long, but..."

"Well, I've never really had 'nipple arms' before," he admitted, with the more joking variety of sarcasm.

Luke snorted. "You'll have to keep me posted on what that's like," he said. "I'll see you later, Steve. Get some sleep."

With a smile on his face, and a lightness back in his step, Luke left Quarantine and headed back to the room he and Mara shared for some much-needed rest of his own.

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