Ok huge thanks to Raven; you comment blew away the writer's block I have had with the last two chapters. Everyone else thanks I didn't know if it was good or bad and I still haven't slept in the past week, seen the sun set and rise every night.
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Even stronger support comes from primate studies: social isolation impairs the immunity and health of monkeys, and animals put into stressful environments that would normally suppress their immune systems are buffered from that happening if they are in the company of friends.
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers ~ Robert M. Sapolsky (aka my pysch book)
(this doen't really fit with this chapter but it makes me think of Harper and it could fit if I stretched it)
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I stood over looking engineering. I could hear Harper auguring with one of the new crew guys. Harper and I had been together for more than a year now. In that time we had had few crew members come and go. I was always in charge and Harper had found his nitch as chief engineer. I had never assigned him the job, he never took the command of it but everyone saw it. Harper was free to go at anytime but the mudfoot stayed. He was being to fill out. He would never be fat I could tell that about him, but he was no longer painfully thin. He was still a twig though.
Customers and crew member saw him as an easy target because of his size. In the year and a half I had known him I had seen Harper defend himself against enough people to know he could handle himself. He wasn't a fighter. We both knew that. He avoided them at all costs, but when fighting broke out he always managed to duck, dive, roll, and pled his way out of danger. I had also seen him put a knife through a guys hand, weld a person's foot, and kick where people shouldn't many times. He fought dirty, not surprising given his size but surprising given his personality. I had found Harper to be kind, generous and his dead pan humor a bright spot in the tougher times.
Two months after Bobby I hired a guy to be our muscle for a run; he turned out to be a low life creep. He hit Harper repeatedly behind my back. I knew what was going on; facial bruises don't leave much doubt. What I remember most about it though was Harper after one beating barely able to stand cracking jokes about his career as a beauty queen being ruined to me. He always had a smile on his face.
A fake smile at times, but there where times when I saw the real Harper's smile shining through. When he repaired a part so badly damage everyone thought it was past hope or the time he redesigned the senors so we could scan twice the distance before. There were also those times when the smile was so fake it hurt. The times when I would come into his quarters at night, after the screaming from his nightmares were so loud the whole ship woke up. I stopped waking him because he would just smile and say it was about some horror flick he watched as a kid. We both knew the truth but he never shared. I cleaned out the old closet that use to be my bedroom as a kid and gave it to Harper. I said it was because he was staying around longer than most of the temporary crew.
The real reason was so that the temporary crew didn't lynch him for waking them up at night. The closet was right next to the captain quarters. Once my parent's bedroom, then just my father's, now mine. I was also the closest to Harper's quarters and first to hear his cries at night.
These days when he woke me up I would go down the hall and just sit on the floor next to the mattress on the floor that severed as his bed I would hold his hand, play with his hair and try to calm his fears. I found myself going to his room some nights even when his screams didn't wake me up in the night. The screams only came when the nightmares were bad. No screaming didn't mean that Harper slept peacefully, once a month I would check in on him and see him sleeping quietly. His wild hair was starting to remind me of Rafe.
The sound of crashing parts woke me up from my thoughts. I looked down to see Harper picking himself up off the ground. The crew hand, Tim, I think, was standing over him. We, I had hired Tim to assist Harper for the next cargo run; it was just the three of us for now. He was twice Harper's size and had more muscles than your average body builder. I lend over the rail and yelled at the pair trying to break up the fight that was forming.
"Hey, break it up."
"I would but your mudfoot started a fight with me."
"And that's why he is on the ground bleeding."
"Hey he started it, doesn't mean I didn't finish it."
"I find that hard to believe, go to the main room there's some wiring in there that needs to be looked at." The crew member grabbed the railing pulling himself up onto the ramp next to me, making it a point to stand next to me, showing off his large stature. He walked out giving me the look of death the whole time.
"Boss, I'm sorry about that, that guy just went off I swear I didn't start that fight…"
"Harper can it. I know you, and I know you didn't start that fight."
"Thanks"
"Hey we been in this thing together for a year now, Tim been on board for two days. Who does he think I am going to trust?" Harper nodded and climbed up on the ramp next to me. I lightly but my hand on Harper's back and lead him along the ramp. He didn't jump today. It was iffy touching Harper, some days I could, some days he would tense up under the simplistic touch. I knew that he had been hurt on earth. Maybe that was why we fit so well together, we both had our pasts.
"So what repairs are left before we head off this time…"
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"Out, now!" I yelled at crew hand Tim. I had found him pumbling Harper in engineering this morning. Harper was a mess but what I was able to gather from him before he passed out from the pain was he caught Tim stealing parts. I had managed to get Harper back to his quarters and resting before I went to deal with Tim. I found the guy leaning on the bulkhead outside of Harper's room.
"So what lies did the mudfoot tell you?" He said in a cool voice.
"He said you where stealing parts."
"Total lie, I caught him stealing parts; he said he would pin it on me if I didn't do what he told me too. I told him no and he went after me with a knife."
"So where is this knife now?" I knew Harper carried a knife but it was still in his boots when I took them off, after putting him in bed.
"How am I to know? I knocked it out of his hands and he started going after me with his hands, clawing at my face."
"Your face looks fine to me."
"I know how to dodge, runt didn't."
"So you beat him till he couldn't move, the kid may have internal bleeding. As is he can barely move."
"Severs him right."
"No one deservers that, get off this ship now."
"On this dive of a station?"
"Yes, no one goes after my crew, especially Harper."
"What do you see in that mudfoot?"
"More than I will ever see in you get out." Tim's face changed and fast as lighting he swung at me. At first I just thought that Tim had hit me but then I feel warm liquid running down my side. At that point my thoughts were a jumble but I knew that I was going to die. I backed up to the bulkhead and slid down the wall holding on to the knife now sticking out of my side.
"You're not going to see much of anything anymore woman," Tim said as he spat on me walking down the hall. "Worthless women, let emotions get in the way, sentimental fools," I heard him mutter as he walked down the hall and out the airlock. Tears started down my face. I was going to die, alone and bleeding on the deck of the Maru.
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Never in all the years I'd lived in our select family had I known the few I'd experienced tonight, the vulnerability, the sheer terror. And there was to be no sudden relief from it. No sudden sense of safety. Only that relief which weariness at last imposes, when neither mind nor body can endure the terror any longer.
Interview with the Vampire ~Anne Rice
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~yup I am cruel, but I promise I will update soon, only 2 finals left *dances around room*