trans_9 | Visiting Hours [CLOSED]

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Visiting Hours [CLOSED]

Luke made his way down to Quarantine. It had been some time since Steve had been put into his containment bubble, and he knew the teen was getting a serious case of cabin fever. Luke knew the feeling real well--how many times had they been called to their starfighters, only to sit for hours on end waiting? How long had he spent in hyperspace between crises, not knowing what to expect when coming out the other side and having nothing to do in the meantime? In a spacefaring society with faster-than-light travel, cabin fever was something that was well-known.

He would have knocked on the door coming in to Quarantine to announce his presence, but since Stacy wasn't made of wood, that option was taken away from him. So he settled for clearing his throat loudly to get Steve's attention.

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Steve was currently sprawled out on the little bed on the side of the bubble. He might have been asleep, but when Luke cleared his throat he immediately sat up and glanced over his shoulder.

He looked noticeably better-- his eyes had returned to blue and the color was coming back to his skin (the color that wasn't green, anyway). There were still bandages around his hands and a bit on his forearms, but compared to the week before, it was a huge improvement.

"Oh thank god, I was about to start counting the lines on the ceiling again," Steve moaned, rolling off the bed and crawling over towards the bubble to talk. "Hey, Luke."

"Again?" Luke sat crosslegged, grinning. "How many times have you counted them?"

"About three times since I've ever been in here," he muttered, kind of slumping over to lay on the floor in front of the bubble.

"I think this is what going crazy feels like."

"I hope you came up with the same number each time at least," Luke said mildly, then smiled and put a hand on the bubble in greeting. "How's it going otherwise, Steve? You're sure looking a lot better than you did when I brought you in here. Even more than the last time I saw you, too."

"Boring as hell." He rolled his eyes along with a heavy sigh and held up his arms to show the bandages, pulling one out of the way. There was still an ugly green patch of skin across his forearm, starting to scab over but still oozing. "They won't let me out until this shit heals over. So I'm stuck for DAYS at least."

"I bet it won't be as long as that," Luke said reassuringly. "And you've come a long way already. Now that your healing's at this stage I'm sure it'll pick up the pace. And if not, I can always smuggle you in a deck of sabacc cards and teach you how to gamble well enough to make even Han sweat."

He smiled, leaning his elbows on his knees. "I'm glad to see you better though. I really was worried for you even the first time I saw you after you woke up."

Luke paused, but didn't continue saying anything to Steve about what Ben had come up with regarding GLaDOS and the person they'd found responsible for ordering the test on him. He'd given it to Ben to decide--his son had to learn how to make these kinds of choices on his own, because, as much as it choked Luke to think of it, someday he wouldn't be around to give him that guidance. But by then Ben would be an even more talented Jedi.

"You might be surprised how good I am at gambling," Steve said with a devilish little grin. He had spent a few months in prison, after all. There was little to do besides play cards.

His expression evened out slightly when Luke mentioned how worried he had been. Steve sat up and glanced out of the bubble at him, looking embarrassed. "I hate making people worry," he muttered. "But it's like the meaning of my life all of a sudden."

"That's what happens when people care about you," Luke said gently. "They worry for you when something bad happens and are happy when you succeed. If you think that people like Miku and myself weren't going to worry about you, then, well, you don't know us as well as we think you do."

He grinned. "If you're a gambling man, you should be able to see the odds on us being concerned for you are pretty good."

"No, I know that," he replied, shaking his head. "But do you know how sick I am of making people worry all the time? If I could take care of myself, I wouldn't have to be such a burden on everyone."

"You're not a burden at all," Luke countered. "And besides, I think you can take care of yourself just fine."

Steve made a very cross expression. "I think the fact I'm stuck in this bubble kind of counters you there."

"Well, I've spent my share of time in medbays and bacta tanks," Luke replied, studying Steve closely. He had a pretty good idea of what had been occupying Steve's mind if this was the tack the conversation was taking, but he'd learned not to poke too directly at the bruise.

"But if you want, I can teach you a little bit. You might not be a Jedi, but that doesn't stop you from learning something about how to handle yourself around a bladed weapon."

That seemed to perk Steve up a bit. He looked up at Luke and seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "Everything I know about fighting I kind of just picked up. But do you really think it'd be okay? The docs are worried if I have to..."

Quick redirect. "But if we're here to fight a war, I don't wanna be totally useless!"

"I'm sure if we do it in moderation and make sure you don't get too worked up, it'd be okay," Luke said, eying his young friend shrewdly. "We can check with the doctors though. But either way you wouldn't be totally useless!"

He sighed. "Okay. If you can convince the docs, then yeah. It'd be awesome to get training from you."

Steve sat up and leaned back on his elbows, staring up at the ceiling. "You know, if I had to have a stupid virus, I could have at least... you know. Been able to use it."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "I'd have thought you would want to minimize the time you spend in here, rather than the opposite. I suppose it'd be good for meditation, though... able to block things out easily..."

Steve's expression betrayed the fact he had been spending an awful lot of time thinking about this in his plentiful free time lately.

"That's just it. If I could control the virus, I wouldn't need to be locked up. It wasn't created to be some kind of freakish plague to kill people, you know. It was supposed to... to make people into weapons."

He looked embarrassed for even mentioning it.

He shook his head. "Then maybe we should learn more about it and how it works, beyond what we've seen now, before we start doing something reckless."

Luke realized how that must sound to Steve, who'd been sitting here mulling all this over for days now, and smiled to soften its blow. "I'm not saying it's a bad idea, or that it's a stupid thing to suggest," he clarified. "But jumping into a sand pit without looking to see if there's a sarlacc at the bottom is a pretty bad thing to do. And I just don't want to have to see you locked up in here unless it's absolutely necessary. I know it can't make you happy to be in here."

"Of course not," he said quickly. "I hate being such a freak. I just want to be normal again. But I've been thinking..."

He frowned and stared down at the floor, hesitating a long time. "I've been thinking maybe the virus is the only reason I'm here. It's not like I can do anything else. Maybe I'm... supposed to be a weapon. Maybe that's the only thing I can do here to be useful."

"I don't think that's all there is to you. I've said before that what was done to you isn't the only thing that defines you, and I'm sticking to it. Just like being a Jedi isn't the only thing that defines me." He lapsed into thought as well, though, chin resting on a palm. Steve didn't want to be a victim of all this anymore, and Luke couldn't blame him.

"I'm just not sure. I don't know enough about it to be able to say one way or the other. But it's something else to bring up to the doctors when we talk to them about getting you trained. And hey, if they nix that then you'll be pretty good with a blade by the time I'm done with you."

Luke was as supportive and optimistic as always, but he couldn't shake this one so easily.

Steve pulled his knees up to his chest and kept on staring at the floor.

"That's not what the ship said."

"Just because the ship's a piece of advanced bioengineering doesn't mean it's always right," Luke pointed out.

"Well, it'd probably know if my whole existence here was an accident from the quarantine department," Steve said bitterly.

"You aren't an accident," Luke said vehemently. "Your being here, awake, on Stacy isn't any kind of mistake. And it's certainly not just because of the fact you can turn into... what you do."

He shook his head. "Besides, it wasn't Stacy who did all this to you. It was a rogue AI, and as such you really shouldn't believe anything it's said to you. It was a test designed to push you to the limit, to make you lose control, but you didn't. There is much more to you than just what meets the eye, Steve. You can really be something."

"You can say 'monster', I'm not that deluded about it," he snapped. "Some failed experiment that can't even..."

Then he sighed heavily. "Just forget I even mentioned it, it's stupid. It doesn't matter anyway."

"It does matter to you," Luke said. "And you matter to me, and to Miku and Mara and lots of other people on board here. We'll ask someone if they think it can be controlled... and even if they say they don't think so, we'll put our heads together and think of something."

He sighed again, then turned around to lean his back against the bubble.

"I don't know if I want to anyway. To me, it feels kind of like letting Alexia win. But if it's really the reason I'm here, then. I don't know."

"Well, why don't you think about it some, and let me know?" Luke held up his omnicomm. "It's not like you can't get hold of me to talk about things like that."

"Oh, don't worry. I've been thinking about it, all right." Steve turned around and shook his head, shrugging his shoulders a bit. "Just forget it. I'm sick of it."

Then he looked up and made a clumsy attempt to pretend he was over it, changing the subject. "So what's been going on out there? Anything interesting?"

Luke gave Steve a look that communicated he knew exactly was Steve was about, but took the hint and steered off that subject for now. They'd probably return to it, if only because by saying he was sick of it Steve had made it clear it was something important to him. Luke had been a teenager once, and was raising one--now two--not to mention all the teenage Jedi initiates that had gone through the academies. He'd seen this before.

"Not too much, mostly just picking ourselves back up after the fight with the Ohm," he said. "Elections are going on for Captain and Council right now. Has Ben come to see you?"

"Oh yeah, I had to use the omnicom to text my votes in. And Ben came to visit... Just the one time," Steve said, shrugging. "He came in trying to figure out who attacked me. I never heard if he got anywhere or not."

"You two sure seem get along well," Luke said, and that smile blossomed on his face again. The fact that his son and the young man who was like a son to him seemed to be friends. "I'm glad."

"He's a lot like you," Steve commented, shrugging a bit. "He even told me the 'anger leads to hate' thing, word for word." Of course, that didn't mean Steve wasn't awkward as hell around Ben. He still felt a little weird relating to people his age.

"And I had to tell him about me, but I figured I could probably trust him if he's your son."

"He's trustworthy because he's a good person." Ben already would be saddled with the Skywalker name his whole life--Luke didn't want him to be judged just by who his parents were, but on his own merits. Which, to Luke's admittedly biased opinion, were many and varied. "Just like you."

He shrugged, looking bashful. "And the quote is kind of a family tradition. Sorry you have to keep getting subjected to it by various generations of Skywalkers."

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Visiting Hours [CLOSED]

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