Claire was positive that she was going to die.
She buried her face in her hands with her elbows resting on the rim of the toilet seat as another wave of nausea came over her. In an attempt to curb the sensation, she allowed her eyes to slip closed and focused on breathing slow, shallow breaths through her mouth.
Zombie guts, sewers, and the sight of her own blood after being backhanded by a Tyrant were no big deal. Nausea, on the other hand, felt more like a death sentence than a symptom as far as she was concerned. With a groan, she ran a hand over her face and was surprised by the feel of the heat of her own skin.
Did she have a fever?
Claire pressed her palms to the sides of her face and swept them downwards to find that the backside of her neck was slick with sweat.
She probably would have cursed aloud had her body not blindsided her with nausea so severe that she heaved hard enough to make her eyes water. With a whimper, she wiped the corner of her mouth and leaned against the wall beside her.
How the fuck did she manage to catch a cold?
With the little energy she had, Claire managed to lift herself off the bathroom floor and stumble towards the door. Upon rising, she became distinctly aware of the weight of her head that had suddenly taken on a new heaviness, almost as if it were tightly packed with cotton. She braced herself against the doorframe and attempted to swallow her nausea, but was met with a burning sensation at the back of her throat.
Utter bullshit. Claire Redfield didn't have time to be ill.
Just as she managed to peel herself away from the door frame, Chris hastily barreled through the door, worsening the dizziness that had overcome her. She pressed a hand over her face, eyes held shut in an attempt to regain her sense of balance.
The sound of loud, exaggerated retching brought her back to reality, and she pulled her hand away from her face to watch Chris quiver with the force of his vomiting.
"Guess you're dying too." She observed aloud, voice hoarse and throat aching.
Chris whimpered pathetically in response before looking up at her with a dead, glazed over stare. His olive skin had taken on an uncharacteristically ashen appearance and he shivered, beads of sweat breaking out along his forehead. He seemed almost frail, which was the last word Claire would ever think of to describe her brother.
"Fucking shit." His voice was barely even a whisper, rough for all the wrong reasons and followed by another sudden episode of vomiting.
"Can you...get Jill?" He managed to ask, breath coming in harsh pants.
Claire rolled her eyes and immediately regretted the vertigo-inspiring action.
"You know I'm dying too, right?" She asked.
Chris looked up at her and watched the color drain from her face right before his eyes. The next thing he knew, she was roughly pushing him aside to dry heave into the toilet.
"This is why you wear a coat in winter." Jill reprimanded teasingly from the doorway, a sympathetic look on her face as she regarded the two of them. "Your poor immune systems have been abused all season because of your stubbornness."
Both Redfields felt their cheeks burn, but wrote it off as a side effect of the fever rather than embarrassment.
Sherry was poised on the edge of the counter, legs freely swinging back and forth as she watched the contents of the pot on the stove simmer gently.
"Does soup really cure sickness?"
It sounded kind of silly to her. If soup was truly so therapeutic, her father and the rest of Raccoon City could have easily been saved. How could a bunch of bits of vegetables floating in a pot suppress the zombie apocalypse?
Jill laughed as she stirred the concoction. Sherry was definitely the daughter of scientists if her inquisitiveness was any indication of that. Nonetheless, Jill had grown fond of her in the short period of time she had known her, perhaps because Sherry reminded her of a younger version of herself in some ways.
"Soup is a placebo...it sometimes makes you feel better because you think it does." She shrugged. "And, you know, soup is a lot easier to throw up than most things."
Sherry wrinkled her nose in disgust, but she couldn't disagree. She'd definitely rather throw up fluids and soggy vegetables than a solid meal.
"What do you think is wrong with them?"
She knew firsthand that it wasn't the G-virus and she had seen enough people experimentally succumb to the T-virus to know that it certainly wasn't a manifestation of its doing, either.
"Well, it is flu season." Jill remarked, smiling as she added, "Or maybe it's just the long-term sequelae of the plague that is the Redfield stubbornness."
Sherry snickered to herself. Even she had noticed the stubborn streak that ran through the Redfield gene pool upon meeting both Claire and Chris. Based on the ways Leon and Jill reacted to their antics, Sherry had determined that their stubborn nature was both a blessing and a curse depending on the situation.
"I wish soup could have saved Raccoon City..." Sherry murmured, "But then I guess I wouldn't have gotten to meet Claire or Leon...or you and Chris!"
Jill paused mid-stir to process the comment, but quickly resumed with a sympathetic smile.
"Yeah," She admitted, "That would have been nice."
That would have been the icing on the "what-the-fuck-has-the-world-gone-to" cake, wouldn't it have been? A pharmaceutical company's artificially produced zombie outbreak cured by homemade chicken soup.
"Whatever that is smells delicious."
Leon had found his way into the kitchen after having shamefully overslept. It wasn't like him to sleep so late and he feared the commentary he was bound to receive from Chris, but was relieved by his absence from the room.
"It's soup!" Sherry explained excitedly. "Claire and Chris are sick!"
He fumbled the glass he had retrieved from the cabinet.
"Claire's sick?"
Even saying it aloud didn't help it make any more sense. How could Claire Redfield get sick? And, more importantly, sick with what? He felt his heart skip a beat as he contemplated what he'd even pack for the next raid on Umbrella to retrieve some obscure, highly guarded antidote.
"Jill said it's probably flu." Sherry clarified, but it didn't quite put him at ease.
"Flu? What flu? The flu?"
His worried expression was equally touching and entertaining to Jill. She tilted her head to the side as she looked up at him, blue eyes practically twinkling with humor.
"Yes, Leon. Influenza. The flu." She laughed, "You can relax now. No one is turning into a zombie in this household."
Leon raised an eyebrow as she turned back to the stovetop to tend to the soup. He hadn't said that aloud, so how could she have known about his worries? Was Jill a...mind reader?
He hoped to both heaven and hell alike that she wasn't.
"Well, in that case...soup should help." He coughed as he headed to the fridge, feeling strangely nervous. "My mom used to always make it for me when I was sick."
Sherry frowned. Was she the only person in the world who didn't know about soup's apparent magical properties? Her mother had never made her soup before.
"What is your mom like, Leon?"
Sherry was curious to know. Claire had told her stories about her parents, but Leon hadn't spoken much about his.
He chewed on a piece of ice from his drink as he thought about it, lowering himself into a chair at the table nearby.
"Well, she's just...a mom, you know?" He cringed at his own explanation. Sherry didn't exactly have the best idea of what a mother ought to be like...and, really, what did he even mean by that statement?
"We don't talk much." He figured that explanation would somehow make up for his poor description. "She worked all the time when I was growing up, so we didn't spend a lot of time together. I don't really know what she's like."
It seemed kind of pathetic when he said it aloud but, in his defense, his mother hadn't made much of an effort to discover what he was like either.
Sherry seemed to accept the answer and shifted her attention to Jill.
"What is your mom like?"
Jill shook her head. "I'm not sure either. My parents didn't actually love each other, so...I never really got to meet her."
Leon felt for her. Sherry, on the other hand, found her statement confusing. Why did they have a kid if they didn't love each other?
Well, that was a stupid thought. She wasn't even sure if her own parents loved each other.
"Do you think my parents loved each other?" Sherry wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answer, but her burning curiosity wouldn't allow her to keep the question at bay.
Leon coughed once more and Jill sighed.
"I think your parents probably loved each other." Jill said softly, "I didn't know them, but, from what I heard, they had to care for each other. Sometimes, though, loving someone and being in love are two different things. I don't know if your parents were still in love, but it sounds like they loved each other...in their own way."
Naturally, Jill's words only served to inspire more questions from Sherry.
"Have you ever been in love?"
There was a sense of amazement in her voice as she asked and Jill laughed at the sight of her, eyes wide with awe and fingers tightly curled around the end of the counter in anticipation.
"I have."
Sherry stroked her chin in a theatrical gesture and Jill prepared herself for the impending interrogation.
"But how do you know if you're in love?"
Jill gave the pot of soup a final stir before removing it from the flame and set it aside to cool. She leaned against the edge of the counter and crossed her arms over her chest as she thought about the answer to her question.
"I think love probably feels different for everyone."
It wouldn't be enough to satisfy Sherry's insatiable interest, so she continued.
"To me, love is something that happens accidentally. It's not like a romance novel or a Hallmark card - it happens suddenly when you least expect it. In the blink of an eye, the person you've already known becomes the person you love because you suddenly realize that you hate it more when you're apart than you love being together."
Leon suddenly found himself standing at attention, his mind intently studying each and every word that she spoke.
Jill laughed - a soft sound that splintered with emotion as she spoke.
"And then you start to miss them even while you're with them because you know that, eventually, you'll have to be apart again. Love takes you hostage - it makes you think about them all the time, but...it's not as bad as it sounds."
She shrugged, but the smile on her face remained.
"Love helps everything in your life make sense. Even the horrible parts start to make sense because you realize that it all had to happen in order for you to meet the person you love and it makes everything so worth it. You're suddenly alright with the suffering that's already happened and you're not worried about the suffering that is to come because you'll have your person there with you to help you through it."
Jill returned to the soup to give it a final stir before portioning it into bowls.
"And then, one day, home isn't a place anymore because you realize that the person you love is your home. Nothing can even compare to making you feel as comfortable as they do because they're suddenly warm, safe, and worn in all the right places as if they were made for you."
She lifted the bowls onto a serving tray and paused.
"But, you have to be careful...love can warm you from the inside out once it lights the hearth of your heart, but it can also burn down your house if you don't tend to it properly and allow it to get out of hand."
And with that she whisked her way out of the room in order to tend to the sick. Sherry leapt off the counter and was hot on her heels, firing at her with a thousand more questions.
Leon leaned back in his chair and let out a long, slow breath at the realization that dawned upon him.
He, Leon S. Kennedy, was absolutely, unequivocally in love with Claire Redfield.
He hoped that both his hearth and his home were prepared for whatever came next.
The fluff makes up for the disgustingness of this chapter...right?