"Long time, no see, Steve."
Clear.
Claire.
Clear.
- Hearing those words was, he somehow knew, the first tangible experience he'd had in…
...sheesh, he somehow knew that it'd been a long time.
He didn't know how he knew.
He did know he should be dead. And waking up, now, didn't feel like waking up from a dream. He was coming back in from somewhere much further away than that, and yet there's none of that...
...blur. None of that blur to the edges you get in the moment after waking up from a dream where you're just not entirely sure you're awake yet.
So he recognized that voice fully and instantaneously. Just like they'd been talking not one sec ago, except all of a sudden, it was lower, and harder.
Kinda more like she was humming a playful little tune than singing it.
...Dang, that must be how he knew. He knew. That simultaneous recognizing something and... processing the change in it.
His eyelids battered open - quick shut again at the brightness of the light over him. He winced. Tried again, slowly. Bit, by bit, by degree, his vision adjusted enough to the interplay of lights and darks within their range for him to parse a shadow looming above him as a human head. And then make out the features.
Similar, but different.
He wasn't afraid of a good ol' cliche.
Claire looked like an angel - a halo of light behind her and all. He wanted to smile, and wasn't quite sure why he couldn't. He was happy to see her. He would have been even if he hadn't already known her, probably. She was pretty-as-hell as ever. Same hair, same eyes, same spunky-smart smile.
But, like her voice, just barely different. A degree of hardening to her features. The kind that comes from…
...time.
"Claire?" he tried to say, barely able to hear himself through a painless kind of rust.
Her lips quirked - he wished again, even more, that he could... remember how to smile, right now - and she hummed in off a soft laugh, "You're looking as young and fiery as the day we met, Prince Charming."
Just as he couldn't quite smile, strangely, he found himself unable to quite enjoy it as much as he did very, very much want to, even knowing she was teasing. It almost felt like it'd be risky to try to, over the remaining feeling of uncanny distance, wait, come back! that… the voice saying it had imbued it with.
He levered to sit up, eyes blinking fully-clear (Claire?), and felt as painlessly stiff as his throat had felt painlessly rusty. Traces of vertigo swirled slow in his head. He tried to say her name again, ask her what happened in stammered, muttered W-words.
She giggled.
"I know what you're wondering," she said. Easy, soft, a hand forward, like she was telling a puppy to stay…! Stay…! Steve ever-so-slightly cocked his head while at the same time giving her a small amount of unplaced hey! in the hardness of his brow and pout of his mouth, with zero perception of the irony. "...Hope you don't mind buckling in for a few hours once you're off this table and into some clothes, 'cause there's a lot to catch up on."
Months after waking up, Steve was now alive, and running, and still not really used to being those things or, well... anything.
Pfheh - he was pretty sure he wouldn't ever be. Ever.
Heck, it wasn't even really in a bad way. There was a thrill to it. It was like he'd died trying to fight his way out of hell and come back a hero in some kind of comic book, or the first installment of an adventure movie.
First installment.
The world was... a lot now.
So was Claire.
And he wasn't ready for it.
Yet.
Heck, it was enforced. It wasn't like he was nothing… "more", either. He'd been advised to be mindful of how often he leaves the compound. Plenty of days, he just looked sickly; other days, his skin tinted green, his veins and knots in his muscles throbbed and stretched like straining ropes just underneath, he felt himself sweat and his vision blur and shine too bright as if smeared with grease. It didn't panic him anymore, though he always felt the low-hot churn of unfairness that Alexia'd left a life-changing mark on him even after they'd both died; made him into some kind of "thing".
Even on the days that he couldn't step out, though, Claire visited. Came by to hang out.
Almost all the damn time.
Sometimes, it was business. Sometimes, it was keeping him further in step with the state of the world. He didn't always like those days. It made him blush - he could feel it - thinking about all her new friends, or - hell, the old friends he never knew she had, even. Not only was she doing well for herself, she was rubbing shoulders with secret agents. Her own brother was the freakin' epitome of a man; since Steve had met her, big bro Redfield had saved the world more than once.
That didn't feel fair, either. Not only had they been forced to go separate ways, she'd gotten to grow up without him.
He was a kid to her.
The girl of his dreams was talking to him like a kid.
Yet other times… she talked to him like a kid, if one digged, as it were.
Sometimes, they just shot the breeze. Answered the questions neither of them had had time to ask about each other all those crazy years ago. He knew her favorite bands now. He knew what kind of career she'd planned for before the world so openly went to the dogs. He knew what food she liked and what actors she'd had crushes on growing up - he, of course, returned with the actresses he'd most liked to fantasize about, although he of course didn't put it quite that way. Sometimes, on his good days, she takes him out to get burgers.
...It was swell to feel like they were equals. And, heh - that's another thing he kinda felt scummy for. There he'd been putting distance between them, the first night they'd known each other. Now here she was, undeniably authoritative, and to feel like he even freakin' could be accepted as an equal to her was all he wanted these days.
And she humored it, and gave him that equal from time to time, and he was thankful for it, from someone in a world he was, for now, an obsolete mess of mismatched parts for.
She gave him someone to grow with.
...Heh - who knew: once he had his land legs back, maybe he could try his hand at being the Knight in Shining Armor again. She'd seen he wasn't afraid of a fight or crappy with a gun. She knew people. Maybe she could hook him up with… phase two of a hero's retraining.
Till then, though, he had to admit it felt good having a guardian, too.
Claire had a newfound appreciation for Steve, and she'd by now for-sure realized it wasn't out of sympathy.
Did she feel bad for him?
Of course she felt bad for him. And of course the time she'd had to reflect off and on and remember every person she'd ever known or lost only enhanced that. He'd often been a major pain in the ass, and she thought she understood most of why now, from the perspective of someone seasoned post-her own more confused days. Not that she thought she was some kinda old lady now.
But the seasoned thing was the deal.
She always looked forward to going to see Steve because it was a little of a retreat. A step back into a part of her life that wasn't better, wasn't worse, but was… different .
He'd been in her memories for so long that he felt like an old friend. He still looked just like the memories. The times they got to shoot the shit felt almost like reliving memories she'd never made in the first place. They talked like young friends - freshly about things that she had already talked to death with Chris and Moira and many another friend with years ago.
She knew his crush on her hadn't faded. She didn't mind that, either.
She thought it was… cute knowledge, as much as she realized thinking about it that way only emphasized that she was acting as something of a mentor to him now.
On his end, though, didn't it imply that she was still… the same teenybopper in a biker vest from Rockfort Island to him?
What was so refreshing about being around Steve wasn't that it made her feel younger. 'Gain, she wasn't an old lady. She didn't feel old. Heck, she didn't even feel entirely adult at times - c'est la vie, particularly of a younger sibling, she wagered.
But being around him made her feel like she was in a world that was less… old.
When she was with him, she remembered being the girl fresh off the run from Raccoon City, fleeing from gunfire in Paris, wandering from a prison break to a gothic palace to friggin' Antarctica after a life of… at least a former standard of normalcy, measuring the heights of her toughness and wits fast.
She saw him make confused faces as she spoke and explained terminology from the ground-up, recounted her knowledge of international incidents, and she remembered that it wasn't even that long ago that there was a world that didn't so much as think it needed a B.S.A.A., or a TerraSave.
She remembered when none of this was… just simple Tuesday. The details of her memories sharpened and enhanced. She could feel the echoes of the blood pumping through her veins again, and the full satisfaction of feeling an end in sight.
...It had been a long time since she'd felt quite so much like an adventurer.
Someone who'd really seen and been through everything, could tell unspeakable tales, had walked out through the fire and come out the other side a brighter phoenix than before.
She remembered to be proud of herself…
...and then take off the yoke and rest for a while. Laugh over burgers as if the world was idyllic enough to truly feel able to laugh about literally anything in.
She was happy to have her new old friend again.
Written for the 2020 Annual Chocolate Box Gift Exchange on AO3.