The man, not the legend.

"What if my body doesn't take to them very well? Then what happens?"

Steve's no sucker. There's always a downside. But he doesn't seem upset about the explanation. Rather, it helps him understand what questions he should be asking.

"..Thanks for the juice, by the way."

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Then I give you an antibiotic to kill the lot, and we try a different grouping.

*So matter-of-fact. She doesn't seem upset that he has questions, either, if that was a worry.*

It's unlikely to disagree with you, though; while your immune system's showing some strain, it's still there and active, and the colony set you'll be getting is formulated for Earth-descended omnivore hominids. Ah, they'll also be your first line of defense against harmful bacteria in food, from spoilage or different sanitary conditions than you're used to.

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"You're welcome. I know it's a lot to take in, and if you need time to think about it that's fine. But I really recommend it. It's helped me so much already. But then again, I do seem to be collecting these treatments. I've had three already this year."

And again, perfectly fine. Perfectly healthy (physically) (except for her eyes) (that he can see). "And no, I'm not a hypochondriac, I just like to be able to go places."

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"I guess that's fine then. No reason not to." If it stops this from happening as often, who is he to argue, really. And to be honest, trying to follow exactly what they're talking about is hopeless.

Maybe Verity can show him how to work his new brick electronic device since he's stuck in his chair? That doodle app she has better be on his.

"So...are you a doctor too then?" Exactly what Samus' job is is lost on Steve at the moment.

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*Samus gives Verity a puzzled glance.*

Three?

*Steve's accession gets a nod, and the next thing she digs out is a small kit that should be quite familiar to Verity by now; a case marked with something not unlike a caduceus, inside which are another hypospray, a bottle of liquid for it, and another bottle with a few green pills. Samus loads the former and gets out one of the latter to put on Steve's plate. His question gets a shake of her head.*

Nothing like that, I've just had to patch myself up often enough that I've picked up the basics.

*She pauses a beat while she considers that statement.*

The basics for where I'm from. Now, full disclosure, you're going to feel a little bad for a few days after this shot because of it. It takes your body a little time to adapt to the new antibodies. Ready?

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"You, Blaze, and I got a flu shot back home." She gives a little shrug. It didn't seem like a bad idea to get the flu shot while it, you know, existed?

Yes, she remembers this routine and watches quietly. Samus' awful answer gets a sigh. "She has plenty of training for this kind of thing. And yes, some first-hand experience. Anyone who can talk shop with the doctors where she's from should be trusted with what's basically over-the-counter stuff for them. When she says 'a little bad', trust me, it's not more than getting a vaccination from the doctor. A little soreness, you might be warm, but honestly right now you probably won't notice."

If Steve's finished his juice she'll take the empty glass and pour the tea. "How do you take your tea?"

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"Guess they can join the club of whatever's already kicking my butt." Verity's right, with how he's been feeling, another day or two of this isn't going to make much of a difference to him.

And if it's worse, at least it will get better after? Samus seems like a good person, all alien comments and really blunt questions aside. Best to just let her do her thing.

The tea question makes Steve look up.

"I..uhm..I don't know? Milk and sugar, I guess..."

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Oh, no, Steve, no. These are your new armaments; your troops just need some time to retrain.

*He aspires to the army, so she suspects the military metaphor will be clear. While Steve and Verity work out the tea situation, she's unpacking other things: from the case that she had Verity plug in, a small box covered with vents that hums softly and creates a fresh-smelling (and sterilized) breeze, some lights that look a little bit like stunted lightsabers, some kind of filter, and a screwdriver. These last two she takes to whatever air conditioning vent the hotel has, unscrewing the cover plate and mounting the filter behind it before putting it back up.*

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The metaphor even gets a smile from Verity. She makes Steve's tea with plenty of milk and sugar. It's tea-flavored sweet milk by the time she's done. "I know tea is an unusual choice for us good patriots, but it's really very good for you. So for the next few days, you're going to want to drink tea instead of coffee. You'll still get plenty of caffeine, don't worry about that. Eat your soup before it gets cold."

She doesn't have to ask how Samus takes her tea, she just pours and fixes while Samus fiddles with the vents. "Those are air purifiers of some kind? Oh, housekeeping should be up soon to scrub down the bathroom and change the linens, that sort of thing."

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"As long as they don't mutiny." Steve sinks further into his blanket cocoon and sips at the tea Verity has prepared for him. It's not half bad, though it is mostly milk and sugar so it's hard for anything to be bad coated in that.

"I doubt I'll have much of a choice. you guys are waging an all out war on my room after all." Clean rooms weren't a thing in the 1940s. He vaguely wonders how he's supposed to eat his soup when she keeps giving him things to drink, but that seems like a poor argument to start, so he'll set the cup aside and start sipping at the soup broth.

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I doubt your own body will mutiny when you've just given it shiny new materiel.

*She smirks; Verity's remark gets a nod.*

I'll hold off on the SteriLites until they've come and gone, then.

*With a smirk, she turns back to Steve, gesturing to indicate Verity.*

You could probably think of her as your close-air support. Which I guess makes me, hmm... orbital artillery?

*Lasers from space that make your problems go away. It seems apt to her.*

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He'll work out how to alternate between meal and drink. It's one of those things people learn with time. Better he not try and argue with her about it, though; better he focus on the delicious healing things she's offering and leave her in a good enough mood to keep being the good cop.

"Right. I'm the one who'll swoop in for resupplies." She thinks that's what Samus is talking about? She doesn't understand military things. "Samus will sit above us all and watch and tut disapprovingly."

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But mooooooooom. Seriously so much sass going on. He'll eat his soup like a good sick person but man he is so not really hungry anymore. It's yummy. But his tummy isn't so happy.

"When she's not nuking from orbit." Steve wants to laugh, but that actually really hurts so he'll just laugh in spirit.

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*Steve's use of that phrase gets a sharply inquisitive look from Samus.*

That's an interesting phrase to hear from someone of your era. Be careful about bringing it home.

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Yeah, that's... odd, from him. "Don't. Don't bring that up at home. You think being a 4F is bad, trying being in prison."

Verity won't fuss if he can't finish his soup, so long as he tries. They can get more soup later. There's always more soup later.

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"Sorry? All I've done aside from hate my insides for the last week is watch tv." Steve shrugs. He doesn't even know what a nuke is, but Samus talking about suppression fire from orbit reminded him of hearing it.

"Is that like a swear?"

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"Nuke" is a truncation of "nuclear weapon," which the United States of your Facet will develop and deploy for the first time a few years in your future. It's a closely-held state secret, and Verity is right that the best you could hope for is to be jailed for espionage. They're quite destructive; the smallest are a high C or low D on the GalFed Threat Index.

*He doesn't know the Threat Index, she remembers, and so clarifies.*

One bomb could flatten an entire city, and kill hundreds of thousands of people in it, assuming sufficient population density.

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"And the radioactive cloud will poison hundreds of miles around the target," she finishes up quietly.

And then, a chilling thought, one she will not be sharing with Steve: without Cap, how many more will they have to drop to end the war? She busies herself with tidying up and hopes neither of them sees that look on her face.

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"They wouldn't..." They're not really doing that. Hundreds of thousands of people? "That's a level of civilian casualty that's unacceptable by anyone's standards." Right?

Right?

"That happened in your world, Verity?'

Edited Date: 2015-11-11 02:04 am (UTC)

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When an army is garrisoned in a city, and the port is a major naval installation, civilian casualties are inevitable.

*Her gaze meets his, level and calm. It's a grim truth, but war doesn't spare innocents, and even good causes deal splash damage.*

The first atomic bomb dropped in war on Earth killed roughly eighty thousand people with its initial blast, and may have been responsible for as many as another eighty thousand in the first year after detonation.

*She'll dig out a tank of oxygen, if Steve's having trouble breathing now.*

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Verity can't look at him quite yet, but there's a little nod. "Yeah. Twice. It's how we defeated Japan. It was horrible."

She wasn't there. She wasn't even alive. And she still doesn't want to talk about it. Please stop asking, Steve.

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And that's just something people say for the hell of it, now. Steve's done eating, thanks. He's done participating in society as a whole for the moment.

They wouldn't. Who would agree to that?

And the worst thought of all, the one that makes Steve just sink into his chair. He's glad Bucky is on the European front. So very glad.

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*Seeing the state she's put Steve in, Samus decides to try to offer a ray of hope.*

It was the less-terrible option. A run of medals-purple hearts?-was struck in anticipation of the casualties projected for the ground invasion. By Verity's time, seventy years later, they still haven't finished using the medals from that run for all of the wounds taken by your country's soldiers in seventy years of peace and conflict.

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That was supposed to help, Samus?

Verity takes the soup when it's clear Steve's done with it and puts it back on the tray, then she crouches down so she can look up at him. "We haven't done it since."

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