[…]

When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain,
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow.

Anything that touches.

[...]

— Mary Oliver, "Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way"

She was trying to tune into a news station on the battered radio she had found in one of the rooms. There were no other guests to claim it, nor any employee to take their money or to stare at their bloodstained clothes and wrinkle their nose at their putrid smell. There was nothing but ghosts in the vicinity of Raccoon City; not too close to hear the sound of the dead but still not far enough. But how could they not stop when Sherry couldn't take a single more step and Leon's skin kept turning the color of ash?

Claire conceded. Looked around every corner, every nook and cranny for a drop of blood, listened behind every door for the sound of dragged limbs or squelching meals. There was nothing and no one. She raided the place for anything she could find, forgotten clothes, toiletries, snacks, but found only junk, recently expired no-name brands. Junk would do that day.

They almost cried when they discovered there was running water. After all, it hadn't been that long since the world as they knew had ended. If they kept walking for one more day — and they would, they didn't even have to discuss it — they'd come across people, real life. But at that moment, all they could find was the traces people left behind, trash they had forgotten to pack away, cigarette butts, fingerprints on the bathroom mirror. It was something. Pieces of a bigger puzzle of civilization that they helped form with their dirt in the bathtub drain, their clothes that ran in the tiny laundromat. They grasped the salvation of their dignity and they said thank you.

The sound of static filled the space in the motel room. Sherry fought sleep on her bed, waiting. Leon stared at Claire's back and hair and at the golden glow of the setting sun the window cast upon her. It hadn't even been a day. Twenty-four hours ago, they all still had normalcy and coherent thoughts that didn't swarm their heads like maddening bees. Thinking was a danger, a curse, a monster they actively fought and to whom they almost lost. They listened to the static and waited, sitting in their forgotten clothes with no patterns. too big for every single one of them, just dull colors to cover up their wounds. They listened and waited, the blade of anxiety turning inside of them.

Claire stopped the dial. Not because the words that came out of the radio spoke what they wanted to hear, but because she found a song. A song possibly as old as Sherry, a song she knew. In what they could have described as forever, they had listened to nothing but groaning and hisses and each other's voices that became weaker and weaker with each passing second. The few others they had met had died. The melody flooded their senses like a broken dam.

She knew the words. Never personally liked it, a prom queen song, but she remembered it, and closing her eyes, she remembered a different time. She tapped her fingers on the table, recalling a once upon a dream when she had a happier family, a complete family, when she and Chris were just ordinary kids who didn't need to fight for themselves and each other. She opened her eyes when she heard Sherry giggle, barely registering that she was humming along, and when she turned to them she was smiling, singing about love.

How crazy it looked, how misplaced, but Sherry's eyes were full of light that shone on her as she approached the little girl, her laughter ringing like bells when Claire attempted the high notes. Leon and his lopsided smile on the other bed weren't ignored, Claire offering her hand and using his good hand to pull him to his feet. She saw him mouthing the lyrics and she smiled wider, looping her arms loosely around his neck, just lightly pulling him into an awkward dance in which he didn't know where to place his hands. Merciful, she opted to lead him, their joined hands dancing from one side to the other, their rendezvous ending in a twirl Claire instigated and Leon followed through.

She stopped dancing and singing as the song faded away, as some songs, the ones where the feelings don't end, ought to do. She had her hand placed on Leon chest but only because she had forgotten about it, the fade to black taking her with it, her energy, the last of her shine. She let her legs give in, flopping down on the bed, Leon following her motions like it was the only right thing to do.

Claire looked at Sherry and noticed the girl had fallen asleep and it was good, it was exactly what she had wanted. She clung to the jacket Claire had wiped clean as best as she could, her armor from a world that had gone mad, and Claire felt the blow of the responsibility for the girl's future and life and even her dreams, all at once. Could she comfort her if she had a nightmare? Could she do anything, right at that moment? Claire didn't even know to what sort of tomorrow they could wake up to. She wasn't even sure she could even sleep.

"I'll look after her," Leon said beside her. She had forgotten he was still there, still awake, still in contact with her. "You should rest, Claire."

"Yeah," she said mechanically. "Yeah, okay."

She crawled under the sheets and watched Leon's silhouette against the same sunset light that had basked her. The radio continued to play songs from a decade before. She closed her eyes and let Leon watch over them.

He leaned his head back against the nightstand between the two beds. From his privileged position on the floor, right in front of the door, he made sure there had been no disturbances, no noises, just the low lulling of the radio and the breathing of his companions. Maybe they should have gotten different rooms, he mused for the first time. They could have gotten two rooms and locked their doors. But what of the boogieman in the dead of night? He was real and they knew it, they had run from him, had faced him, had prevailed. However, where there was one it was bound to be another. What if they were attacked? What if, Kennedy?

No.

"Hey."

It was right just the way it was.

"Leon."

He looked up in Claire's direction. He could almost make out her eyes in the darkness, but not really.

"You're not going to sleep there."

He opened his mouth to reply but there came no sound. It hadn't occurred to him that there were other options but she said it like he was wrong to begin with. The story of his career in the Police Force.

He heard her sigh.

"Come on."

He lost sight of her shadow and heard the rustling of the sheets. He hesitated, knowing he shouldn't, but being even less inclined to argue with Claire Redfield. Although their relationship was only a day long, he knew it was the sort of battle he could not win.

When Leon closed his eyes, he was certain they were back to back. He had been told he slept calmly, waking almost in the same position he slept in. So why, in between the restless beatings of his heart and the ups and downs of his consciousness, did he wake, still in that endless black night, with Claire's back against his chest and one arm around her? Did he move or did she? He swallowed dry; terrified that he would ruin their unity and companionship over something he couldn't even remember doing. So carefully, even more careful than the way he had threaded through the haunted halls of the Police Station, he tried to pull his arm away.

And Claire, who had her arm over his, held him back.

Leon froze, at a loss, trying to calculate every possible outcome with a brain fried by exhaustion, saved only by Claire's oddly high-pitched, small voice.

"They..."

He raised his head slightly, meaning to look at her face, even if it was futile. He leaned in, holding himself up with his good shoulder, and clung to her every word.

"They experimented on children. And I can't..."

He felt her shoulders shake but the sound of her crying was muffled, choked back. He let out a small Ah, his heart breaking again into tiny, tiny fragmented pieces that might never put themselves back together, and he pulled her to him, making herself roll over so she wouldn't cry alone.

Neither of them should cry alone, not anymore, not over Raccoon City. He was determined to share that burden with the two girls, even if his own was bigger, a touch of fingers slipping away from his that he could still feel just like his shoulder, a scar that would never disappear. Did she feel the same, as she let her tears soak his borrowed shirt, letting that ever-present smile give place to the fears that consumed her? They were so young. They ought to have met where their friends met, exchanged gazes and not sighs of relief, discovered things about each other that had nothing to do with surviving skills.

Kissed people who weren't meant to die.

She held onto him for dear life and he was glad he met her, glad he stayed with her, because he felt everything, the same intensity with which she gripped his shirt, still so careful with the shoulder she had bandaged again when she was stuck being the leader, the point woman, the force he and Sherry admired. Sunshine in the rain.

The rain in her subsided. He wiped her tears away with his thumb before covering the hand that she kept over his heart with his own. The night kept the Claire Redfield that came undone hidden from prying eyes and he was glad for her. Cross his heart, nothing they said or did or felt could ever be disclosed to anyone else, not simply because he wouldn't tell but because it was coded in a way no one would understand.

Except for her.

It didn't take long for sleep to take him after he closed his eyes. There were no thoughts to be thought, just senses, the love song playing softly in the distance, Claire's breath on his collarbone, her legs entangled with his in an intimate message of exchanged despair.

One song followed the other, all the way to morning.

"Ready, sweetheart?"

She was herself again. The same beaming smile, the same ponytail, her old clothes all clean from sewer and dejects, everything in order except for the jacket that she insisted Sherry should take. She woke up before everyone, making Sherry giggle with the way she woke Leon up — there was nothing kind about it like the dance, just a poor startled man who bolted up after a pillow hit his face. She made sure Sherry and Leon had cleaned up, made sure Leon's shoulder was in a good enough condition, waited for them to finish the potato chips and the water that counted as their temporary provisions and then she was up, all set, opening the door to let the morning in.

"Come on. We have a long way to go."

And Sherry followed her, Leon holding her hand, both shielded by that reliable back that might as well have wings, for what else was she but the very symbol of the Redfield siblings, the legendary figure Claire taught her was called Valkyrie?

They left, back into chaos, Sherry walking between her favorite people in the world, the foundation of her concept of partnership, the ones that'd fight away her bad dreams.

The only Claire and Leon, who taught her how to dance.