I know I should
have been working on my other story but I was at work and I had to do something
to distract myself from the utter boredom. I'm not sure what this is but maybe
you'll enjoy it.
Lucas walked into MedBay sucking on his finger. He had cut it trying to trim some wires and now he needed a bandaid. Waving the nurse away he opened the first aid cabinet and pulled one out. With practiced ease he deftly applied the bandage without it sticking to his other fingers or becoming twisted around. Looking up he saw that the nurse had left the room.
He was in the process of walking out of the room when a bottle sitting on the counter caught his attention. He picked up the bottle and inspected it. It was full of tiny pills. Medicine was strange stuff. It saved millions of lives everyday yet at the same time it held the potential to be deadly. Lucas was possessed bye the sudden urge to swallow everything in the bottle.
He stared intently at the pills in his hand shifting his hand to listen to them rattling against the plastic sides of the bottle. Lucas wondered where the urge had come from. Nothing had happened recently that would make him feel suicidal. There was no reason for him to feel this way. His life was going fine. He had free reign of the science facilities allowing him to accomplish amazing things with his experiments. Some of the scientists were a bit hostile but Lucas did not blame them and the senior crew more than made up for it. Bridger and Westphalen were like surrogate parents to him. So why was the pill bottle so enticing?
SeaQuest was his home and he felt safe here, almost happy. It was not that he felt unhappy. He just was not exactly happy. He was used to it though. It was lonely her sometimes. No one really understood him except maybe Darwin which was a very depressing thought because as great of a friend as Darwin was the fact remained that he was not human. Others tried to understand but he was too different. Lucas had never really been a child. He did not think like one and he did not feel like one. He had always taken care of himself and he could out think an adult any day of the week. He knew he was not an adult though. Sometimes he was glad because adults did stupid things and he did not want to be that stupid. Lucas did not like being ignored and insulted though and the only way to change that was to be an adult. He worried occasionally that since he had never known how to be a child maybe when the time came for him to be an adult he would not know how to be that either. Usually Lucas was proud that he was unique but occasionally he wondered what it would have been like to be normal.
Staring at the bottle he felt the tiredness welling up from inside him. He was so tired. Sometimes Lucas wanted nothing more than to close his eyes and go to sleep forever. He was used to the fatigue that dwelt in his core. Often he did not notice it, forgetting that it was there for days or weeks at a time. Other times it grew so great that he felt as though he was made of lead. Those were the times that Lucas wished he would die. All the rest of the times he simply did not care. He was content with his life and wanted to keep living it but if someone had told him he only had a week to live he would not have been upset.
At this moment though death was calling to him, enticing him with its whispers of sleep. The pills he held could bring this sleep. The fatigue would be washed away forever. Lucas would never have to wake up. He wanted to take them. He needed to take them. Lucas closed his eyes and imagined the cool oblivion. Opening them slowly he signed with regret as the image of his friends came to mind.
His live was going good and the tiredness was not so great that he could not handle it. There was no reason for him to do this right now. It would hurt his friends needlessly. Later when the fatigue consumed his soul he would regret this decision but the pills will still be here then. He did not need to do this now. Even as he was staring at the bottle the wave of fatigue was dying back down to where he would hardly notice it. He still wanted to take them though. Holding them in his hands was so seductive. He longed to taste them and wait for reality to blur until it was gone.
Gently, regretfully Lucas placed them back on the counter. Merely releasing them from his grasp eased his longing. He turned and walked out of the room. The increasing distance working to further break the spell. By the time Lucas reached the hall he had almost forgotten the pills. His need to take them was gone as suddenly as it had come.
Entering the lab Lucas hurried to his station. He made quick work of cutting the rest of the wires and was soon soldering the wires onto a mother board. Across the room Kristin set down the experiment she was working on and came over to inspect Lucas's progress. Placing her hand on his back she leaned over to get a closer look. He grinned up at her beaming at her nod of approval. Yeah. Now was a good time to be living.