trans_9 | For the Sake of Revenge

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For the Sake of Revenge

Yeah, it had been months since Steve had renounced his feelings for Claire, and he even had a girlfriend now. But something still ate at his nerves whenever it came to talking privately with her. Especially when she was the one who asked him to come talk to her. And especially when she wanted to meet somewhere strange, like hydroponics.

Steve had never actually been to hydroponics, so he was struck in awe as he stepped into the massive terrarium for the first time. Nice to know there was such a green place that wasn't virtual. Though there were probably man-eating alien plants or something creepy here.

At least his wandering train of thought was doing a good job of distracting him from worrying about what Claire wanted.

Well, until he saw her, anyway.

"Hey Claire," he said with an awkward little wave. "This is kind of off the beaten path..."

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Claire had deliberately picked somewhere that was a little secluded, off any of the paths that people were more likely to wander across, because this really wasn't a conversation that needed onlookers. Typically she would've just asked Steve to meet her somewhere private, like one of the conference rooms in the precinct, but since Leon's promotion she hadn't visited the precinct much, and she figured that would set off warning bells in Steve's head, since nothing good had ever come from their conference room conversations.

Hydroponics was peaceful, and she'd settled herself in a clearing surrounded by trees and overgrown bushes to wait for Steve to find her. This would hopefully make things less stressful on the poor boy.

When Steve found her she was leaning against a tree, watching Boon sniffing around the clearing. She looked up when he approached, as did the puppy, who beelined for Steve, barking at the newcomer.

"Boon, knock it off!" Claire laughed, shaking her head, before looking up at Steve to reply to him. "Yeah, I've been coming here a lot, lately. It's better than the Sensoriums, right?"

Boon pretty effectively wiped out anything that looked like nerves for the moment. Steve was quick to lavish attention on the puppy, kneeling down and scratching behind his ears while trying to keep him from jumping in his face. "Hey, I didn't know you got a dog! I love dogs. Oh, and you're cute, huh?"

"It is nice to be somewhere green and know it's not just an illusion in your head," he admitted as he stood up, motioning for the dog to follow him back over towards Claire. "The sensoriums are nice but they get creepy after a while."

Yeah, here came the nerves again. Steve let out a breath. "So... what's up?"

She hesitated a moment when he asked what was up, taking a moment to run her fingers over Boon's head when the dog leaped back to her, before deciding it would probably be best in the long run if she just had out with it.

"You remember how I told you I'd look into who got GLaDOS to mess with you, right?"

He'd had a sinking feeling this might be about that. It suddenly felt like he'd swallowed a lead weight, and his expression dropped to one of surprise.

"Did you?" he asked instantly. "Did you find out who it was?"

"Yeah," she breathed, her eyes taking a moment to find their way up to Steve. "I did."

Steve's hands suddenly clenched into fists, and he looks some cross between excited and pissed off.

"Who was it? Is it somebody I know?"

She studied his reaction carefully, tilting her head slightly and raising her eyebrows.

"Before I tell you you need to promise me you're not going to go hunt them down for righteous justice."

His face slid a little further towards "pissed off."

"Why?" he replied. "The ship is gonna punish them, right?"

Claire grimaced a little at that. Lex hadn't so much gotten punished for what he did to Steve by Stacy, but she hoped he'd think twice about fucking with someone she cared about, next time.

"We're working on it. But since GLaDOS is such a... problem, it's hard to get solid proof that this person is the one who did it."

Great. There were GLaDOS fucking things up again. Steve would have liked to met the idiot who installed that shitty AI in the first place to see what the hell they were thinking.

"You expect me to just... wait around and see if they ever face any consequences?" he asked. "I'm not gonna let them get away with it!"

"No," Claire sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose briefly, shaking her head.

"I expect you to let me deal with it. They will be held responsible for their actions, but you don't need to get worked up again, Steve." Besides she was already up two violations for dealing with it preemptively.

He glared at her and took a few steps forward. "Why do you always end up dealing with my problems?" he said irritably. "This should be something between me and the asshole who attacked me-- and I haven't even been allowed to look into it myself."

"I'm not a kid. And I don't need other people to fight my battles for me."

The puppy in Claire's lap detected the shift in Steve's mood, and while he'd been totally cool with the boy a moment before when he'd been getting attention, now he was letting out a low growl, which Claire quickly shut up.

"It's okay, Booney," she muttered, before looking up at Steve again, her gaze even.

"Steve, until you're cured and you won't die if you get too worked up, all of your problems that could work you up are my responsibility." Typically she liked to give Steve a measure of space, and avoided making him feel like he was a burden on her, but she couldn't bend on this. She had a feeling it was exactly what Lex wanted, making Steve go after him.

He was clearly frustrated, more by the situation at large than at Claire personally, but this had obviously been bothering him for a while.

"Who knows how long that's gonna take? If you people would let me do anything for myself, then people wouldn't think I'm helpless and they wouldn't mess with me in the first place," he pointed out. "You don't have to be responsible for me. I can take care of myself."

Claire could practically hear Leon saying "I told you so," which almost irritated her more than Steve attempting to be too proud to allow her to help.

"Steve, you bleed fire. If you get worked up, you start getting sick. If you get really worked up, you sprout arms off your chest. You're getting worse." This was all stuff she herself had been trying to deny, so it hurt to have to more or less echo everything Leon had been trying to tell her for months.

"I know you want to be your own person, and that's fine. That's why I wanted to tell you who was messing with you in the first place. But you need to leave it alone."

Steve was about to retort, but Claire caught him off-guard with that statement and it immediately shut him up. He quickly looked away from her and his hand automatically reached for his side, where there were still a pair of scars healing up from his last mutation.

"I know I'm getting worse, okay?" he muttered under his breath. "I know better than anybody else."

She felt bad for bringing that out so bluntly, but she had a feeling as much as he knew, sometimes he needed to be reminded. She sighed, her brow furrowing as she looked up at him.

"I know. But what that means is you need to try to keep yourself as mellow as possible, to give Luis as much time as he can get to come up with a cure for you. I know how hard it is, especially with pricks who will try to rile you up, but you need to stay cool."

"Do you know how much it sucks that I can't do anything around here, just in case I start turning into a freak again?" Steve groaned, letting out a heavy sigh. "We're all supposed to be here for some reason, and I'm just a huge liability who can't even get a paper cut without getting thrown in quarantine! Why did they even bother picking me up?"

He clenched his fists again and longed for something to kick.

"Why do I get treated like a threat, and the son of a bitch who attacked me gets to rest easy until we prove it?"

Claire knew exactly why they'd bothered picking Steve up, but that was a truth she'd firmly sworn never to divulge to him, so she didn't answer, looking down at Boon and scruffling the puppy behind his ears, before Steve mentioned Lex, and she looked back up, giving him an oh, please look.

"Don't think for a second that asshole is resting easy. Leon's hands may be tied because he has to uphold the laws of this ship, but I'm not suffering the same moral complications. At the very least he's got a bruised jaw, right now. And at the most, if he does anything like this again, I'm throwing him out an airlock." Despite how that would typically sound like a joke, there is absolutely no humor in Claire's voice.

"I hate to say it, but if I end up getting killed next time he decides to play scientist, throwing him out an airlock really won't be all that satisfying for me," Steve pointed out, though the mention of a bruised jaw seemed to cheer him up slightly, evening out his voice at the very least.

He let out a heavy sigh and his brow furrowed. "Claire, you have to tell me who it was," he insisted. "You can't just not tell me. I have the right to know!"

"I know," she replied, biting her lip. "I need you to promise me you'll just steer clear of him though, okay? And don't do any tests anyone asks you to do unless it's Luis or Scarlet specifically."

Steve sighed again. "Obviously. You know, I didn't do what GLaDOS told me to because I agreed to..."

Then he looked a bit torn before he answered her. "I won't go near him, okay?"

Claire sighed, nodding her head. "Okay." She wasn't sure how happy he'd be about it once she told him, but she got him to say it, at least. Hopefully he wouldn't break a promise to her.

"It was Lex Luthor."

"Lex Luthor? That bald asshole?"

It was someone he'd suspected. Well, clearly, it had to be someone who knew there was something wrong with Steve and that was a very small list. But it was still a shock.

Because Steve knew who Lex Luthor was, and that was about it. He was the one Steve had spoken to literally once, in the middle of the whole Nightmare fiasco. The one who'd seen Steve bleeding fire while he was helping rescue the group, half of whom were complete strangers to him, from armed guards. The pompous jerk who spent all his time holed up in a fancy crew lounge and walking around like he owned the place.

Well, there went the calm.

"That stupid fucking sadistic psycho!" Steve snapped. "I don't even know that creep! I'm gonna kill him!"

"No, you're going to stay away from him," Claire replied firmly, keeping her gaze on Steve while he ranted. She wasn't going to let him run off on a tangent, as much as she felt Lex deserved it, she didn't want anything worse happening to Steve.

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