Work Text:
To anyone else in the optometrist’s office, it’s just a moment’s pause before Steve responds. But Claire catches the pain in his expression as Steve sees himself in the mirror, and quickly pulls him aside once they’re left alone to peruse the selection of glasses.
“Everything okay?” she says, as they sit down at a table. Steve keeps the last pair of glasses clasped firmly in his hands.
“Nothing gets by you, huh?” he responds, melancholy bleeding into his usually cheery demeanor. “Remembered my dad, that’s all. We went to go get him a new pair of glasses, just like these.”
Of course – that photo of his family is also seared into Claire’s memory.
“It’s one of the last things I did with him. Ray-Bans were big at the time. I said I’d fork over the extra cash as an early birthday present, but he chose the same pair he always wore. Metal half rims…”
A long sigh. Steve opens and folds the glasses repeatedly. “We had enough. We didn’t have much, but it was enough. I still don’t understand…”
He’s not just talking about the glasses anymore. Claire puts a supporting hand on his shoulder.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she says. The response is a small nod.
“I thought I hated him, back then,” he whispers, watching his own reflection in the rectangular lenses, “Thought he ruined everything, just for some quick cash. But Mom wasn’t doing that well, and then that message at the training grounds…”
“Would you feel better knowing the truth?” Claire thinks back to all the Umbrella files retrieved and stored for the trials. Steve’s father was a small blip on their agenda, but surely they had some documentation as to why he and Steve ended up on the island.
Steve seems to pick up on her train of thought, but shakes his head. “Umbrella probably interrogated whatever reasons they wanted out of him. But I don’t want to read that. Not yet.”
He takes a breath, putting on the glasses and looking in the mirror with tired eyes. “And now, I don’t know what to feel. I pushed all that away, and here it is. Staring me right in the face again.”
“I think that’s fine, Steve,” she says. She couches her words in her own experiences – that lingering pain of blaming yet not blaming someone for killing her parents. “It’s okay to not know. And sometimes, I don’t think we ever know what to feel.”
“Yeah… and I won’t figure it out at the optometrist’s,” he says, bittersweet smile on his face.
“I can tell why he chose half-rims though,” Claire replies, hoping to lighten the mood, “They looked good on him, and on you.”
“Guess Dad had the last laugh after all. God, I think I picked out aviators for him.”
Claire quiets her laugh just in time – she doesn’t want to cause a commotion. “The aviators you picked today didn’t fit you either.”
“…I take offense to that.”
“I know if you really wanted them, you’d ignore me and get them.”
“Ah, well,” He takes another look at the mirror. Time has rounded out his sharp teenage features, and she can see even more of his father’s face in him. And yet this time, his response isn’t so pained. “I’ve got my mind set on these.”