trans_9 | Delirium Trigger [closed]

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Delirium Trigger [closed]

I've been waiting for you all this time.

Why do you fight when you know you can't win?

Come play with me, Mister 267. And through you, I'll finally become queen...

Alexia's laughter was still echoing in his ears when he'd woken up, shaking and sweating. He'd tried to go about his business as usual but it was hard to concentrate past the fire burning through his veins, throbbing with pain. He'd told Miku he would go to the medical bay if his symptoms remained or got any worse.

Is that why he was standing here in the hallway? He couldn't quite remember. It sounded like someone was blasting radio static in his head, and it was hard to separate his thoughts from the static.

This is not good, he managed to reason, but it got lost in more of that obnoxious, childish giggling. "God, will you shut up already?"

Steve let out a heavy breath and reached up to brush his hair out of his face, stuck to his forehead with sweat. He was going to be fine. This was just a bad fever, nothing to be concerned about.

"Steve..." He felt a gentle hand on his back and he immediately spun around to find the voice it belonged to, though there was nobody there. He backed up against the wall, his eyes wide with some emotion even he couldn't discern.

"Steve... why won't you look at me?"

How was it coming from behind him? He turned to look at the wall, reached out and touched it, and there she was.

"I've missed you so much, Steve...""

There was the hand on his back again.

"Mom...?"

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Claire had been heading back to her own room when she came upon Steve, looking lost and confused. She frowned a little, calling out his name once, but he either didn't hear her or was too lost in whatever was going on in his head to care.

She pressed her lips together and moved towards him quickly, reaching out to grasp his shoulder, trying get his attention. And then he seemed to call her mom.

Okay, something wasn't right, here.

"Steve? Are you all right?"

"Mom?"

"Steve? Are you all right?"

Claire's voice suddenly seemed to cut through the fog and the far-away look in his eyes vanished. He stared blankly at her, like he was trying to figure something out, then gasped in a little breath of air.

"Claire? What's going on?" He looked around her, clearly confused. "Where did she go?"

Claire's brow furrowed, and she looked at Steve with concern, shaking her head slowly.

"You thought you saw your mom?"

"She was just..." he gestured behind him, at the wall where he'd been staring when she first saw him. He looked back just to make sure she really wasn't there.

"She was standing right there..."

She looked at the wall for a second, before looking back at Steve, her frown deepening as she reached out to feel his forehead.

"Are you feeling okay?" She knew, sure, there was a remote possibility that Steve's mother MAY have been picked up and was asleep in the pods somewhere, but... she was definitely not standing there, right now.

"I'm fine!" he snapped, and tried to push her hand away, but not before it was readily apparent that he was burning up with fever.

He tried to take a few steps away from her, keeping one hand on the wall to steady himself. "I feel fine, I just thought..."

"You don't look fine," Or seem fine, and she didn't need to be a doctor to tell he had a fever. She moved after him, keeping her hands to herself this time, but watching his movement carefully.

"Maybe you should go down to medbay."

"I'm fine, okay?" Said in a tone of voice that clearly suggested he wasn't. Steve reached up and rubbed his forehead, trying to think clearly through all the noise and static in his head. His vision was off too, and he knew the little flashes of things he kept seeing weren't real.

He turned away from her abruptly. "I don't want to go to medbay."

Claire sighed, bracing her hands on her hips and tilting her head.

"I know you don't, but if you're sick and seeing things, you really should." Was this a side effect of Veronica? Had to be. She wasn't sure what this meant, but it couldn't be anything good.

"Why? So they can throw me in a cell and-- and experiment on me?"

Steve wiped his forehead again and shook his head. "That's all I am to them, you know! I'm just some infected kid they can experiment on!"

"They're trying to help you!" She dropped her stance and moved towards him again, reaching out in an attempt to take ahold of his shoulders.

"You know if they were experimenting for the sake of experimenting I'd shut them down hard, but they're only trying to save your life, Steve."

He seemed to shrink in on himself, running his hands up through his hair and looking on the verge of panic, though he allowed Claire to grab him. "Until they decide I'm a lost cause and your boyfriend shoots me in the head! What if they-- they're gonna think I--"

"Steve, it's okay. Calm down," she replied soothingly, keeping her grip on him firm but gentle. She ducked her head down a little, attempting to get him to look her in the eyes.

"I won't let anything happen to you. I promised, remember?"

"How can you?" he shot back. "You always say that, but how are you supposed to do anything if they decide that's it for me?"

Claire looked thrown off for a second, hesitating while coming up with her answer. She knew she couldn't hold out hope forever. She knew sooner or later, the virus would win, and Steve would be lost. Again. But as long as there was hope that he could be cured, she had to try to be the optimistic one.

"Because as long as you're you, no one will touch you. And you're still you."

"And how much longer is that?"

He finally looked up at her, terror obvious in his eyes. "There's nothing I can do. It doesn't matter how hard I try or how hard I fight, she always wins! I-I haven't slept in three days. I can't think straight, I feel like I'm going crazy."

She pressed her lips together, shaking her head quickly.

"I know you hate the place, and Contagion is the last place you want to be, but we need to let Dr. Sera know what's going on. He's got to be close to a cure, by now." Claire knew there was something something electro-shock, but she hadn't really been 100% clear on all the details regarding that.

"I don't want to. They're gonna kill me."

Steve grasped her wrists and squeezed hard. "I don't want to die, Claire. I said I hate it here, but-- I don't want to die again."

Claire grimaced, shaking her head.

"I know, Steve. And I promise I will make sure everyone is doing everything they can to keep you alive, but please. You have to go get this checked out." She felt like a broken record, but right now she knew the best thing for him would be to get somewhere where they could see how much time he had left.

"I just want to have a choice. I've never had a choice, ever, not in anything that's ever happened to me. It's never been my fault, it's never my decision..."

His head dropped and he stared at the ground between them, wobbling a bit like he was unsteady on his feet. "Please don't make me go. Please."

She was in a bit of a dilemma, here. On the one hand, she knew that she needed to get Steve down to medbay. He was a danger to the crew and himself if he was seeing things that weren't there, and obviously getting worse. On the other hand, she didn't want to force him to do something he so obviously didn't want to do.

She bit her bottom lip for a moment while she thought, before tilting her head forward a little.

"I won't force you to go, but I do think it's best if you go and get yourself checked up. I know this isn't fair, but if you're getting worse..."

Steve leaned a little more of his weight on her, and didn't answer her for a moment.

"I can hear that bitch talking to me," he said finally. "Just like when she injected me. She says I'm gonna be her legacy, and she laughs and my head hurts. I'm losing it. I'm getting worse. If I go to med bay I'm not gonna come back. They won't let it go this time."

He reached up and slid his hands over his eyes. "I don't have a choice."

"Oh Steve," Claire whispered quietly, a pained look flashing across her face briefly before she shifted, pulling him into a hug.

"Luis was working on something. I guess it's not exactly a cure, but it'll stop the virus from killing you. I guess we'll find out if he's finished it yet."

He seemed all too grateful for it, burying his face in her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her tightly. It wasn't difficult to figure out he was either on the verge of or actively crying.

"He said that?" he murmured. "You're not lying so I go?"

"Of course not," she replied, one hand moving automatically to gently stroke his hair. She tilted her head down a little, looking at what she could see of the side of his face (more like ear...)

"I personally harassed him about it. Almost daily."

He snorted a half-hearted laugh.

"It better not be a gun."

"Definitely not," Claire replied firmly, although there was a hint of a smile in her voice. She was decidedly not going to tell him about the shock part until they got down there. Now that he seemed a little calmer, the last thing she wanted to do was rile him up.

He tightened his arms around her and shivered a bit. "That's been the answer before, so. Good."

He was quiet for a moment. "I don't want to hurt anyone. But I don't want to die. Please, don't let them..." He drifted off and shook his head.

She tightened her hold on him too, unable to say anything for a moment. She slowly nodded her head once she could breathe again, frowning briefly.

"I am going to do everything I can to protect you, Steve. You mean too much to me, I'm not going to lose you again."

"I-It's gonna sound stupid, but I used to think it would have been better if I just stayed dead. And I used to wish I had."

He opened his eyes halfway. "But there's people I want to be here for now. I-it might not even matter what I do, but I won't... I won't let Alexia win again. Even if I do change."

"You didn't let her win last time, either, if I remember right," Claire replied quietly, smiling a little. "I'm still here because you fought her off. That's why I believe in you, Steve." Alexia deserved nothing other than what she got. A face full of plasma energy.

"Yeah," he muttered. "But this time, I wanna stick around long enough to feel good about it."

He finally pulled away and glanced up at her, looking exhausted and burdened. The fog had cleared away from his head and he could think more clearly than before, but he didn't count on it lasting very long with as little sleep as he'd gotten.

"Do... do you think I'm gonna make it?" he asked. "Don't lie. Just tell me the truth, okay?"

She looked back at him a moment, before nodding her head.

"Yeah, I do." There was that niggling doubt at the back of her mind, that said "well, he's died once before because of this virus," but she had to hope. She wouldn't let the weight of the situation crush her.

That actually drew a little smile out of him. A weak one, but it looked more like him than the tiredness on his face. "Then I will," he sighed. "And that's my promise."

The thoroughly awkward shrugging of his shoulders seemed a little more classic Steve, too. "Will you come with me?"

Claire was relieved he seemed to be relaxing a little, now. She would rather he not be panicked before heading down to see Luis. At his question she couldn't help but laugh a little, squeezing his shoulder.

"Of course I will."

"Good." He hadn't really doubted she would, but he wanted to make sure he didn't end up standing in another hallway talking to the wall again. "I'm not really... myself. I don't think they'll listen to me."

"Well, they'll listen to me." She gave him a reassuring smile, tilting her head to the side. She didn't think they'd toss him in the incinerator if he showed up babbling, but then again, she couldn't be totally sure.

And that is precisely why he wanted her to come along. If you were going to have an advocate to vouch for your sanity and worthiness of saving and right to stay alive, Claire Redfield was probably the best possible candidate, and not just on the stubborn factor.

"Who knows. Maybe I'll feel better if I can just get some damn sleep."

"That's usually a big help, yes." Claire's smile widened a little and she shifted so she could tilt her head down the hallway. "Ready to get going?"

Steve took a deep breath and nodded, holding onto her arm. "I guess," he muttered, looking back in the other direction (almost like he wanted to run.)

"Stop me if I start talking to a wall or yelling for my dead parents again, will you?"

"Absolutely," she replied, smirking and moving so she could drape her arm around his shoulder. "I'm pretty sure the walls aren't great at conversation, anyway. Dunno why you're wasting your time talking to them."

He followed her lead down the hall, a little slowly as he was still a bit unsteady on his feet.

"I like them better than most of the other people around here," he said under his breath, reaching up to rub his eyes again, wearily.

Claire was all right with taking it slow, keeping Steve's pace as opposed to moving more quickly on her own. She didn't want him collapsing on her or anything, after all.

She smiled a little at his comment, tilting her head slightly as she considered that.

"Yeah, a lot of the people here are dicks." She knew Steve counted her boyfriend among his dick quota, but she wasn't really put off by it. She knew full well Leon could be a dick sometimes. She just had the tenacity to call him on it.

"'Dicks' is an understatement." But of course Claire probably knew that Steve didn't trust anybody farther than he could throw them (without the aid of a mutant virus) unless they'd somehow ingratiated themselves to him. Even that was a very small number of people.

Sometimes he thought it was sad for him to be this age and already completely paranoid. And then he remembered how right he usually turned out to be.

"I heard there's a shrink here now too."

She was actually a little sad for him, that it was so hard for him to trust people. Then again, she could also understand where he was coming from. His life lately had hardly been anything nurturing and warm. She hoped that would... get better, soon.

She glanced over at him when he mentioned the shrink, and nodded her head.

"Yeah, I heard that too." Not that she had any intention of willingly seeking the guy out. She wasn't a fan of psychiatrists. Which largely stemmed from when her high school had insisted she go meet with one right after her parents had died. It added up to a whole lot of her sitting in a chair and glaring across the room while answering most questions with a short 'yes' or 'no.'

Still, if Steve wanted to go see one, it'd probably be good for him.

Steve frowned and reached up to brush his hair out of his face, staring resolutely at the floor.

"I don't want to. But I should probably go," he muttered, slipping his hands into the pocket of his jacket. "I know I'm a fucking headcase. As if they needed another reason to lock me up somewhere."

If he was even himself long enough to go see the shrink. He shoved that dark thought to the back of his head the second it popped up.

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Delirium Trigger [closed]

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