It started with a simple statement.
"I brought you some food," Dr. Rush offered her the tray. She stayed where she was on the bed, not looking at him.
"I'm not hungry." Her voice sounded dead. He set the tray on the table.
"Well, then how about some company?" He hit the button that made the door slide shut, heavy clanking of metal resonated through the room. It was a sound one would easily associate with prison. Then they were alone, with no meddling guard to hear their conversation and report it to Young. He moved so he was in front of her and pulled some paper from his pocket.
"I brought you some problems." He offered them to her.
"Problems." She repeated, still not looking at him.
"Well I thought you might want something to do, instead of sitting around being useless all day." He sounded more severe than he had intended.
Her head snapped up and she glared at him, more with anguish than anger, but he could still see it had stung.
She turned her head away from him and looked down at her hands. "You're just using me aren't you?" It sounded like a statement, but he knew it was a question. A question she really didn't want to know the answer to, because she knew what it would be.
"I tried to help you." He reminded her, setting the problems next to her on the bed.
"With the chair…" she shook her head, and looked at him again, "was it even real? Or for the benefit of everyone else?" Looking at her like this, hearing this question made him uncomfortable. He turned away from her, needing to detach himself from the emotions in the situation. He paced forward and tried to sound as convincing as possible.
"Of course it was real." There was silence, but he kept his back towards her hoping she would just accept his words. Then she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, a mixture of sadness and pleading evident in her every word.
"Then why does it sound like you're lying to me?" And then he had to turn around and look at her, still sitting on her bed, but her eyes held not the resignation that was there when he had first entered her room. It was replaced by a demand for veracity; she seemed to be trying to will the truth from his lips. This struck him, hard. He hadn't intended to become so attached, or attached at all for that matter to anyone on the ship. It made things so much easier when it was impersonal. But it had happened, he had formed a sort of relationship with her that would probably never go away. He tried to think of something to say, but he didn't get the chance.
"Do you find it harder to lie to me because we're friends?" She was calling him on his lie.
"Chloe…" he moved and sat down next to her, and then he almost, almost told her the truth. But then, when he turned to look at her, he saw the papers he had brought for her to look at: the problems that needed solving. And then he looked her in the eye and lied.
"It was real." She relocated her gaze from him to her hands and said nothing. There was silence for a while, and then Chloe laid her head against his shoulder. Rush bristled, the feeling of being near another person, like this, seemed alien to him. She showed no acknowledgement to his discomfort, and soon it started to feel almost like the most natural thing in the world, and he relaxed.
He felt he needed to say something, something that would make her less sad.
"I... haven't given up hope on finding a way to cure you." She smiled, and for the first time in a long while it seemed there was real warmth in it.
"Thank you."
Everything was fine. She had believed him. Things were going just as planned. It was all for the greater good.
But then why did he feel so miserable?