Title: Second Thoughts
Fandom: RoboCop (2014)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for the first half of the film
Wordcount: ~1000
Prompt: question


She never stopped asking questions, even after it was too late, the papers signed, registered, and taken away.  She'd started by questioning herself, right there, right then, sitting in the room that was slowly emptying: now that OmniCorp had gotten what they wanted from her, they didn't need her.

"Did I make the right decision?" she'd asked, half to herself.  Regret seemed to shimmer before her, like some evil fairy, beckoning her into darkness.

Norton had looked up, his eyes magnified to a watery blue by his glasses, stopping from where he had been stowing his files in a battered leather case. "You gave him a chance, Mrs Murphy. The best chance." 

A chance. He'd sounded confident enough, but was it enough?  She'd asked for his records, all of them, and Norton had complied, forwarding the entire casefile, redacting only the OmniCorp proposal and specs.  It had bugged her, because she wanted to see, to re-read over and over again, now that she had time to breathe and read and think, what they would do to him.  But Norton had apologized, mumbling over the phone something about intellectual property and the lawyers and she'd relented.  The last thing she wanted to do was snare herself with lawyers again.

She'd gotten what she'd really come for anyway: the horrific list of injuries, the pictures, the prognosis if she hadn't signed their contract, if she hadn't signed their lives on this different course.

Clara stared at the picture, every morning, for the last four months, a strange ritual, one that tore her open, brought a hard knot to her throat.  She'd thought that after time the pain would fade, the horror would numb, but it never did. She didn't know if she looked to try to inure herself to it, or to reassure herself that that...that was no way to live.

It hadn't been enough, even then, and she'd sat up late at night, long after she'd put David to bed, researching burn recovery on the internet, reading testimonials. It became like a second job or a kind of obsession, inflicting these horror stories of families dealing with the long, slow recovery, months in a coma, just to keep them away from the pain of their healing bodies, then months of rehab, therapy, on herself  She waded into the horrors of these stories as though if she could make herself miserable enough it would somehow help Alex, all those miles away, as if it would somehow make his ordeal a little lighter.

And then there was the scarring.

She hated to think of it, it felt shallow and horrible and vain. But Alex had been such a handsome man, and she'd squinted at the picture of him, prone and unconscious on the hospital bed, studying the damage to his face, the way the one eye sagged already, warped and weak.  How could he live like that? What if David--only a child--was afraid? 

Clara took the file, pictures, everything, to specialists, every one she could afford. She took them and showed the doctors as though the decision was still un-made, as though that road was still to be crossed. If she'd made the wrong decision, she wanted to know; she didn't want them to soften the blow out of sympathy.

Maybe Norton had lied to her. He had to have lied to her: he'd promised full mobility, the ability to return to the force, sight, hearing, everything.  It had to be an overpromise.

But every doctor, every physical therapist she went to, said the same thing: that if anything, Dr Norton's prognosis, even for Alex Murphy, burn victim, was too optimistic.  A physical therapist had studied the prognosis, and then put on a face of forced cheerfulness that Clara prayed she didn't use in front of patients, and offered to teach her how to get dressed with one hand, so she could 'show your husband what's possible' and 'be supportive'. The burn specialist had spoken of years of grafts, growing skin and transplanting it, months and months in and out of medically induced comas, home health aids, and then he'd cheerfully brought up second mortgages and catastrophic insurance and financing.

Her heart had stopped. 

In all of this, she'd never thought of the money.  They had a comfortable house, a comfortable life, Alex had insurance but...not for anything like this.  OmniCorp had,mentioned money only vaguely, in full reassurances that he would get every possible comfort, every possible treatment, the best, top dollar, top of the line.  No dollar amounts mentioned. 

And none of these specialists not one, had mentioned Alex as anything other than an invalid. One had suggested, when she pressed, that he could maybe telecommute, in a few years, part time, a few hours a week, but that would have to be when he was 'lucid'.  Lucid. Because he'd be on painkillers, possibly psychotropics, for the rest of his life.

The way they spoke chilled her, because despite their expert, soothing voices, she could see an image of Alex, the man she knew as so vital and intense, restless and determined, reduced to an invalid, needing someone to schedule his medications, take him to the bathroom, every time, drive him anywhere he wanted to go, feed him.  A man is more than just a thing that breathes, she'd thought, sitting in the car, hands wrecking yet another tear-soggy tissue between them.  A life is more than eating and shitting and pain management. 

Wasn't it?

She could do it, if she had to. She felt a hard determination in her belly at the thought, but it dissolved, because...could he?  Was that any more of a life than what she'd signed him to? She knew he could endure the pain: he was a fighter. But could he endure the petty helpless humiliations of being this...lumpy thing all the doctors and experts saw him as?

In the end, it boiled down to one question, and she sent that question, every day, to Dr Norton, during those long four months: Is he suffering? And the answer to that, always a polite 'no' and a short sentence, beyond what courtesy required, if there was any progress, fed her hope. 'You were the first person he asked about'.  'He's dreaming: a very good sign'.   Tiny messages, short phrases from a stranger, from a man she had had no real reason to trust, but had thrown her husband's life, and all their hopes, blindly into his hands. 

They helped.  They kept her going, the knowledge Alex was alive, not suffering, not in pain.  That he was thinking of her, that maybe, maybe, he didn't hate her for what she'd done. 

And now, she heard the front door chime, and her heart was in her throat.  It was a cliche, but it really felt like that, or that someone had trapped a nervous, fluttering bird in her ribcage, and it was struggling for freedom.  She sucked a breath, moving to the door, trying to brace herself for his face, for what must be a latticework of scars, a network of cheloid damage, a ruined eye. She loved him, and she'd love him even ruined.

The door opened, and for a moment, she thought it was a shadow--a figure of black that seemed like some kind of ghost against the darkness of the street outside, taller than he had been, broader than he had been, dark and sleek and alien, but when she looked up at his face, all of that fell away, because it was...his face. Alex's, looking the same as the day he'd proposed to her all those years ago: no scars, no damage, his eyes clear and lucid and unclouded by pain.

And all the other questions, all the doubts, fell away for her: he was here, looking as nervous as she felt, and she leaned forward into his arms, not caring that they were cold and hard edged. They were Alex's, and that was the only thing that mattered.