Chapter 4: Fading Light
Leon looked over at the girl riding along in the passenger seat of his Jeep and immediately felt guilty. Claire looked so forlorn, so hollow just sitting idly smoothing back loose strands of hair. Her eyes were red and puffy, lips tightly pressed and pulled thing. Her skin, usually a vibrant and beaming, a reflection of the energy and vitality in the girl, was as white as snow. Each time she reached up to tuck her auburn bangs behind her ear he noticed a tremor shoot through her hand and up her slender arm. Leon couldn't help but wonder why he didn't feel that way.
'Well, he wasn't your brother for one, genius.' His mind told the officer vindictively as he drove down the icy street a little too fast. 'He wasn't even really your friend. Friend's don't typically stare at you as if they'd like to hang you by your feet and use you for target practice. Friend's don't typically stand over your shoulder, watching every move you make even if you're just trying to watch the news to see if they mention your name in it. Maybe you don't feel anything because you're happy that Chris is gone? With him not watching over you like a hawk maybe you can finally make a move? Is that it Kennedy?'
"Shut up." Leon told the voice in his head through gritted teeth, his voice so low even Claire who was seated beside him didn't hear a thing.
It was preposterous to think that Chris' death could have brought him happiness. He may never have liked Claire's dangerously overprotective brother but he had respected the man a great deal, respected what he did and what he stood for. Besides, if it hadn't been for Chris Redfield then Leon wouldn't even be alive to be considering why he felt nothing at the man's death.
No, that wasn't entirely true either. He felt something...but it wasn't for Chris. The young cop felt the weight of guilt, sympathy, sorrow and regret pressing heavily on his heart but these emotions were aimed towards Claire. He felt guilty that he didn't know what to say to ease her pain. He felt sympathetic for her loss. He felt sorrowful that the girl, his closest friend, had lost the only family she had left. He felt regretful...Leon wasn't quite sure why he felt regret hanging over him like a dark cloud but he was certain that's what the feeling was.
'Maybe,' Leon thought, taking a sharp right, 'it's because they loved each other a lot, more than most siblings do anyways, and the last few years they had together were less than happy. They were either separated, wondering if the other was alive or off fighting Umbrella together and then, just when they thought things might be looking up Chris got sick. God what must that have been like? Watching his strong body wither away, watching as the treatments did nothing to shrink the cancer, only crush his spirit more, all the while knowing he's the only family you've got left. The only one of your blood left on the planet. Claire, you're stronger than I'll ever be.'
Taking his eyes off the road, the young officer glanced over at the last surviving Redfield and thought was about what a revelation that must have been for her. Being the last surviving of anything certainly had to send you for a loop. How could she cope with that knowledge? How could she just sit there, so calmly, playing with her hair or looking out the window? Why wasn't she breaking down or cursing God's name or doing anything but looking so cool? Realizing he had no answers for his questions, Leon thought it best to simply focus on driving.
Getting out of the hospital had been no small feat. The group was moved the main reception hall of Saint Jude's, a tactic Leon thought Doctor Burke had used simply to spare them the sight of having to see Chris' body wheeled out under a white sheet. There they had all sat for what must have been hours, reminiscing over the things Chris Redfield had done in life.
Rebecca laughed as she recalled the time in the Spencer Estate when she'd maced the Alpha with a can of bug spray. Becky told them that at the time of the incident she had been torn between embarrassment at what she'd done and fear that Chris was going to lock her outside the storage room she had been hiding in for destroying his sight.
"Then he smiled up at me through all the tears streaming down his face," Rebecca told them with a small smile, "and said 'Forget about it. Not a bad weapon actually.' I thought I was going to faint with relief." The girl had chuckled then but Leon could see tears of her own forming in the deep blue pools of her eyes.
"That's nothing." Barry said with a wide grin, his rumbling tone making Leon think an avalanche was going on in the man's throat. "I remember one night when me and him were walking down the street after watching the Raccoon Bandits play a game. So, we're just walking back to his car and some guy comes tearing up the pavement behind him and slams a purse into his arms, I never saw the poor guy look more confused and then this lady comes chasing down the street after him and sees Chris holding her purse. Let me tell you, I thought his eyes were going to bug out of his head when she called him a thief and kicked him in the crotch. I was laughing too hard to give him a hand up."
Everyone had laughed at that, the image of Chris Redfield splayed across the pavement clutching his groan and wailing in pain simply too comical not to enjoy. There had been more stories from Barry and Rebecca. Some were funny, some were sad but all made a point of what a good man and friend Chris had been to them. Claire and Jill however, had remained strangely silent laughing and smiling whenever a humorous moment was recalled but keeping their thoughts to themselves otherwise.
'It's too soon for them.' Leon realized as he turned onto the street that would lead to his studio apartment. 'They knew him the best, they loved him the most, he only died a few hours ago and they're still trying to deal with that. The shock of it is probably too near to go about recalling all the wonderful things the man did. They're probably just beginning to accept, really accept, the fact that he's gone.'
After awhile everyone grew quiet and the awkward silence announced that it was time to be leaving. Barry and Rebecca tenderly escorted Jill back to her car, saying that one of them would stay the night with her just in case she needed anything. At first, Leon was surprised that the pair seemed to be ditching Claire for Chris' wife and then the realization of what they were doing hit him. It made him feel more startled than angry.
'They knew they didn't have to ask me, they knew I'd take care of her.' Leon thought, feeling some small amount of annoyance at Barry and Rebecca's assumptions. Sure, he would never have imagined of just ditching Claire but...that still didn't give them the right to simply assume he'd watch over her that night. Leon sighed as he pulled into the underground parking garage of his apartment complex, thinking that his getting angry over Barry and Rebecca's actions was actually rather stupid.
"Do you want me to take you home?" Leon had said gently as the others were filing out of Saint Jude's.
"N-no." Claire had replied after a moment's thought. "I just don't want to be alone tonight." Her eyes flared as she realized the possible implications of her statement. "Well uh, I mean that...I didn't mean that..."
Leon had laughed, raising his hands to quiet her stammering. "It's alright, I know what you mean. Don't worry, I promise to be a perfect gentleman and take the couch."
Leading the way through the underground parking lot, up the elevator and down the hall to his apartment Leon shouldered the door open and stepped inside. There wasn't much to look at in the studio apartment aside from unopened boxes and bags. A tacky blue sofa rested in front of a TV that stood atop a milk crate. Two offshoots took up space on either end of the apartment, the one on the left leading to the kitchen area while the right would lead down into Leon's room where more boxes and a mattress laying on the floor rested. If one thing could be said about Leon Kennedy it was that he was a notoriously lazy mover, Claire had even joked at one time that he would be better suited to teamster work than enforcing the law.
"Well, this is it." Leon said flicking on the light in his bedroom. "I know it's not much but, well, you could probably tell from the tour I gave you that this place is hardly the Ritz."
"It'll do fine, Leon." Claire replied with a slight smile. "Thanks, I really appreciate this. I know it must be an inconvenience."
"Hey, it's no trouble at all, really." He replied sincerely, touching her lightly on the arm. "You can stay as long as you need to alright?"
"Alright." She nodded.
"Okay," The young officer replied, turning to go, "I'm going to fix myself something to eat. Can I get you anything?"
"N-no. Not right now, thanks." Claire answered, easing herself onto the edge of the bed and starring at her feet.
"Uh, alright. Well, if you need anything just give a shout." Leon said, scratching the back of his neck. It felt awkward to just leave now. Shouldn't she want to talk about everything that had happened? Why was she so quiet? Realizing that he was just standing there in the doorway gawking at her, Leon quickly snapped out of his daze and headed towards the kitchen still feeling the worst was yet to come.
Leon was having a great deal of trouble trying to sink away into sleep that night. Not just because of the situation with Claire, his insomnia also had a physical component to it as well.
'Damn couch,' the officer thought rolling onto his side and pulling the blanket up around his shoulders, only to land on another lump. 'Bargain my ass.'
Not only was it a rather gruesome shade of blue but the piece of furniture was dreadfully uncomfortable. It felt a great deal like what he would have imagined sleeping on a valley of hills would have felt like. There were lumps and rolls and springs jutting out to stab him in the sides. Needless to say Leon was wide-awake when he heard the sounds coming from down the hall.
'Claire.' The thought leapt into his mind as he kicked the blanket from him. Clad in only his shorts and t-shirt the young officer cursed himself for a fool for not having worn something warmer to sleep in and rubbed his arms to keep warm. His bare feet slapped a steady rhythm against the hardwood floor as he raced down the room, the sound of choked, ragged sobbing filling his ears.
Easing the door to his makeshift bedroom open, Leon quietly slid inside, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Claire sat with her back leaning against the rumpled mattress she had taken off her boots but was still dressed in the same clothes she had worn all day. She gripped a small photograph between two shaking fingers, her red eyes focused solely on the picture as fresh tears welled in her eyes and sobs brought her breath in heavy, irregular gasps.
Maneuvering his way stealthily around so that he came up behind Claire, Leon looked over her shoulder at the photo that seemed to cause her such heartache. Even in the blackness of the apartment he could see the images of a Chris Redfield and his sister, wide grins splitting their faces as they smiled for the camera in the photo booth. The eldest of the other in a headlock and Claire smiled as she pulled at her brother's strong arm.
The picture couldn't be more than a couple years old but the two of them looked so much different. Chris, strong and healthy, nothing like the pale, hollow image of death he had been in the hospital. Claire, her smile so bright, filled with the light of youth rather than the darkness of grief. Leon wondered how two people could change so much in such a short span of time. In one day, the girl he had known for just over half a decade had been destroyed.
"Claire," he said tenderly, uncertainly, taking a seat beside her. She turned her gaze at the sound of her name, looking a little startled as if she had not even noticed him. Then her swollen, wet eyes fixed him with a look of such lamentation, such irreparable sorrow that the young officer trailed off.
'What do I say to her?' Leon wondered, all the emotions in Claire's gaze piercing his heart like a spear. 'Do I ask if she's okay? She's clearly not. Do I ask if she needs anything...besides her brother? I doubt a glass of water is going to help anything. Jeez, why can't anything just be easy?'
"Listen, Claire," Leon began again, turning his eyes to the floor, as he was unable to meet that stricken gaze. "I don't know exactly what to say. I wish I could think of something that would help but I guess I'm too dense and I just keep drawing blanks so just tell me what to say and I'll say it."
"Just tell me he's not gone!" Claire said, doubling over as a sob coursed through her. Leon wrapped an arm around her shoulders to steady her and pulled her in close, resting her head against his shoulder. "Just tell me it's not real. I don't want it to be real."
"I know," he soothed gently, tightening his hold on her as if that would quiet the sobs threatening to break her in half. "I know. This may sound cliché, Claire, but it's true. He's not gone. Not as long as you remember him. You've done so much together, remember all the things you did, all the things you said, to one another and it'll be like he's still here with you. Chris would never leave you Claire, not permanently. I didn't know him that well but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he loves you and if you remember that he'll never really be gone."
"I don't want to have to remember!" She screamed, clutching his shirt violently, but Leon knew that her anger wasn't directed towards him. It was directed at everything else.
He had felt much the same way when Ada died – when she'd let go. For so long he couldn't even get out of bed and when finally managed to get past that stage everything he saw brought up feelings of rage and regret in the pit of his stomach. Nothing was furious with everything: with the sun for shinning, with others for not knowing his pain...with himself for living. That was the most frightening thing of all, to feel guilty that you had survived and were able to go on freely with your life.
'I never want you to feel like that Claire.' He thought silently, holding her close, wishing her crying would subside. Women like Claire shouldn't have anything to cry over, they should be shielded from feeling pain. 'It's the loneliest feeling in the world.'
"Claire," Leon said again after her ragged sobbing and muffled cries of woe had relaxed, "I know how you feel, honestly I do. You know what I was like after Raccoon. You tried to help me but I shut you out, I tried to deal with everything on my own and eventually I did but it was hell. Please, don't shut me out like I did you. Let me help you. You aren't alone in this...even if you feel that you are. Promise that you'll let me help."
"I-I promise." She replied after a moment's hesitation, wrapping her arms around his neck and sniffing deeply as she buried her face in the crook of his neck.
"Don't quit on me." Leon whispered softly into her ear.
Claire didn't say a word, only tensed against him. The silence dragged on for hours, the two sitting holding each other, and for Leon the absence of any sound was the loudest noise of all. It was the sound of someone keeping secrets, keeping a plan hidden, one he feared a great deal.
He remembered the secrets he had kept inside after the Raccoon incident, fantasies of cutting his wrist while locked away in his room. The bite of the blade across his wrist and then the sweet ecstasy as the blood leaked out of his veins, taking his life with it. How glorious it would have been to just slip away into a peaceful sleep, away from pain and grief and guilt, forever. The fantasies had only ever remained that though, there was always something holding him back from making the swipe across his wrist when he had the cold steel of his pocketknife pressed against his skin.
'I always swore I'd do it, swore I'd just make the cut without thinking about it but I never could.' Leon thought, gently rocking back and forth with the emotionally shattered girl. 'There was always one memory that got through and then more would follow it. I'd remember Claire's hand on my arm, warm and soft, and then her voice asking if I was alright, if I wanted to talk. I'd look up at her then and she'd be smiling down at me. Her face seemed to glow when she smiled at me and everything lit up. There was no weight too heavy, no pain to strong to smother that light. Even when I told her to get lost, she'd take a step back as if I slapped her across the chops but that light was still there. Half-stone and half-gold.'
Recalling Claire's smile, the kind that made her whole face crinkle pleasantly, brought back memories of light and warmth but there was no light or warmth where Leon was now. There was only the darkness of the night and the frigid cold of the hardwood floor beneath his bare legs. Claire was there though, everything shouldn't seem so dark, where was that light of hers, the light that had kept Leon alive when he had been in the darkest of places?
Suddenly, everything about the room in which they sat seemed wrong. The blackness was too thick, too total, banishing away the light. The chill of the night bite like a vile beast, consuming the warmth of life and exhaling with the icy breath of death. Silently, Leon urged Claire, broken and destroyed, to smile, to assure him that there was indeed light at the end of the tunneling. But she didn't smile, she only sat there hugging him without a sound. Keeping secrets.
Author's Note: Here you are my Loyal Readers, another chapter and another to come soon. Stay tuned for the update to Three Days In A Nightmare, which should be up by Tuesday. I thank you for the kind reviews and hope you will keep posting them, they are the inspiration that keeps me writing. To those of you who flame though, I will now institute a new section at the end of each chapter entitled "The Extinguisher" in which I will try to explain my methods to you and address the elements of my fic you did not like. Hopefully this will educate you and show you why I did what I did. Please do not take this as encouragement to flame though. Positive reviews keep me going however, I will attempt to extinguish any flames I get.
The ExtinguisherDevilMan, you seemed to not enjoy Leon's inner monologue, feeling that he would never be that "weak and stupid". I would like to point out that Leon is not your character so you are in no position to say how he would think. Nor is he my character but the best thing about being a writer is you can take an already existing character and add depth to their personality, changing them to better suit your vision. I made Leon "weak and stupid" or trouble in my words, so that there would be more depth to his personality and thus become a more intriguing character. If he were ready to face any problem and come up with a solution then he would be a boring character as there would be no internal challenges for him to face. This way his challenge is presented by an internal source where as Claire's comes from mainly an external source (her brother dying). In this way, both the main characters have their own demons to overcome and I feel this makes for a more interesting plot. I thank you for your criticism though and hope that you will continue to read and review my work in the future. I also hope you have found this somewhat enlightening.