Chapter 8: Come Clean
With a pillow secured tightly beneath his head Leon lay starring up at the ceiling in his darkened bedroom wondering if what had just transpired was real or imagined; truth or some wondrous fiction. Of course, the ceiling contained no answers and the crumpled portion of the mattress next to him certainly hinted in one direction more than the other but still it was hard for the young officer to believe that what had just happened was nothing more than a dream. It all seemed too good to be true.
As with all things that seem too good to be true Leon was able to only remember snippets of the event for the whole thing was too great to comprehend in its entirety. He could remember lusty moans and loving words drifting into his ears. He could remember the reassuring feel of warm flesh pressed up against his own, threatening to turn his blood to fire. He could remember the sensation of fingers twined between his and pleasure like none he could recall. He could remember making love to Claire Redfield.
Even thinking it made the young man shift uncomfortably on the bed, not because he was ashamed of the act but simply because the act itself seemed too impossible. Never would he have thought such a thing could occur even if they were both to live until one hundred.
'Still,' Leon wondered, tucking his hands behind his head, 'was it the right thing to do? She said it was, that it's what we wanted – and it was – but still, did I say something to force her into it? She was so fragile before that maybe I just suggested something unconsciously and she took it the wrong way or something. If it's what she wanted then why isn't she still here, sleeping next to me? Did I do something wrong? Did I hurt here while we were…were…shit, why does everything have to be so freaking complicated?'
It was useless to wonder about such things, Leon knew, but that did nothing to quell his worries. He had even gone so far as to ask Claire the questions swirling in his mind as she lay beneath him, her hand squeezing his with surprising strength. Was she sure about this? Was he hurting her? Each new query had just been met with a smile and a joke about how he never should have gotten involved in police work: he simply couldn't focus. At one point Claire had even suggested he should have become a lumberjack, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Despite all her smiles and quips Leon still could not shake the feeling that he had seen something else hidden behind her gray eyes and the last time she had hidden something from him it had led to a trip to the emergency room.
Light filtering in from beneath the bathroom door clued the officer in to Claire's location, as did the sounds of cabinets banging open and shut but Leon still had enough honor not to go barging in on a young woman while she used the facilities – no matter how concerned he was for her. While he might have been able to control his body from leaping up out of bed and finding out what was going on the officer could do nothing to keep his thoughts from wandering. What was she doing in there? There was nothing all that harmful in his medicine cabinet aside from a half-empty bottle of Aspirin and some Dristan he used when ever a cold struck him but then again he had woken up and she was already in there – who could know what she had done while he was still asleep.
Shaking his head Leon tried to silence the nagging whispers. No, he had to trust her, now more than ever. He had to trust her not to hurt herself…what a thing to do. He couldn't possibly worry over her every second of every day. Leon nodded to himself – it was the honest to goodness truth and he would just have to – the sound of water filling the bathtub suddenly caused him to spring from under the sheets and knock at the bathroom door. A hot bath was a good way to relax – and a good place to cut your wrist again too.
"Claire?" He said tentatively, pressing his ear against the door. The sound changed then, going from the steady rush of water into the tub to the fierce spray of the showerhead. Leon breathed a sigh of relief. "Are you alright?"
"Y-yeah." Came the timid reply on the other side as Claire cracked open the door and Leon could see she had draped herself in his bathrobe. The garment was obviously two sizes too big but it did nothing to diminish the gentle beauty of her face. She smiled up at him then, a sad smile, almost apologetic. She must have known he had been worrying. "I…I just wanted to get clean."
Leon nodded, smiling back. He knew what she meant. Over the past couple days they had both been forced to come to grips with things they had never before been aware of but especially Claire. She had lost her brother to a horrific illness, the one person in her life whom she had admired more than anyone, had thought invincible lay dead now. Grief and fear had formed a blanket over her, nearly suffocating the girl and leading her spiraling down a path that had almost led to her own death. He had been able to pull her back from the brink of that precipice – or so she claimed – but that in turn had only led to another challenge for the young woman. She had to come to terms with her feelings for him and vice versa.
'We made it though. We're survivors and that's what we do. We make it.' Looking into those misty gray eyes Leon knew it for truth. There was a great deal of anguish and pain in Claire's eyes – there probably always would be – but there was something new there, something he hadn't seen in a long while. The old Redfield determination was back, a swirling storm that seemed able to brush anything aside. No matter what was thrown in her path the storm in Claire's eyes said she would withstand it. There was pain there, yes, but it was no longer her master. Claire was in control. She was a survivor.
So much had still gone wrong though, good had come from it in the end, true, but so much disaster had crashed down around them. Like the survivors they were though they had pushed aside the rubble of that disaster and emerged back out into the sunlight once more but they were caked in the dust – all the fear, all the loss, all the worry – of that calamity and it made Leon's skin itch. Yes, he knew exactly how the young woman felt. He had felt that way after Raccoon City, after the Umbrella HQ in Germany. It was sickeningly familiar.
"I understand." He said and turned back to his room when he felt her soft fingers close around his shoulder.
"Wait." Claire said, her voice as gentle as her touch. "I…I don't want to be alone. Not anymore."
Again, Leon smiled. He knew that feeling too. "You aren't, Claire. You aren't."
Within moments the couple stood beneath the jet of the shower, tendrils of steam curling up their exposed forms as if trying to clothe them. Warm water coursed down their skin, matting hair to their heads and stinging eyes briefly when one of the pair happened to look up. Leon was hardly of any of it though. He could not hear the sound of the water or feel its caress all that existed was him self and Claire breathing slowly against his chest. There was nothing else in that moment.
Perhaps at some other time he would have found something lewd, something sexual in the girl's nudity but not now. All he felt now was mystification at what he had done to deserve a woman so beautiful and pure as Claire Redfield pressed up against his chest, her arms twined around his back. She was like a sculpture, one that God had chosen to breathe life into and make real, a piece of living art and yet she was still more than that. Leon decided to simply give up trying to describe her. There were simply no words to describe Claire Redfield.
Once, what seemed an eternity ago, while on a plane ride to Utah with David Trapp and the other rebel S.T.A.R.S. Leon had thought a great deal about his feelings towards the younger Redfield. For as long as he could remember the officer had always thought that wanting to be with another okay but needing to be with someone? That seemed somehow unhealthy. Need implied compulsion and compulsion implied a loss of free will, of choice and so he had done everything in his power to keep their friendship as just that – because Leon was scared he needed Claire.
Only now, with the girl cradled in his arms, did he realize what a fool he had been. Need was far from unhealthy…it was how love worked. You could not want to be with someone unless you needed him or her on some level.
Leon needed Claire on many levels. He needed her for comfort, for support, for the assurance that she was the only person out there who could keep him from getting a big head. Was that really as terrifying as he thought it would be? No, because she needed him for all the same reasons, wanted him for all the same reasons: no free will had been lost, no choice had been sacrificed. Want and need could sometimes be the same thing…it was just how love worked.
"Let's just stay like this." Claire muttered against him, stirring Leon from his musings. "Forever, I mean."
He laughed hard, shoulders shaking. "I don't know if that's such a good idea. I get all pruney pretty easy. Yeah, I know, it's gross."
"I don't care." Claire sighed, leaning more heavily against the young officer. "We can get gross together."
"What would we do for food though?" Leon grinned, not meaning to make it into a game but unable to help himself now that he had started. "Forever is a long time to go without eating."
"We'll install a garbage disposal." She countered as he ran a hand through her hair, smoothing back the wet locks. "If they could figure it out on Seinfeld I'm sure we wouldn't have much trouble getting it to work."
Leon found himself laughing again it felt so good to laugh after crying for so long. There was something pure and wonderful about being able to hold someone close and joke freely without a care for anything. There was something clean about it.
"Leon," Claire said and this time her tone was serious. Unconsciously the young man found his arms tightening around the girl's slender form.
"Yeah?"
"This…this can't have a happy ending, can it?" She replied, looking up at him with those misty gray eyes. Leon felt his heart breaking as he looked into their swirling depths, so many emotions stirred in those dark clouds. She had seen too much. Far too much.
"A happy ending," Leon repeated the words, mulling them over in his head as they rolled off his tongue. Claire's brother, her only remaining family, the man that had saved her from certain death in Antarctica was gone. She'd never hear his voice again, never see him smile…never joke with him again. He was gone forever and there was not a thing either of them could do to change that. Could she ever be said to be truly happy again? "No." He said at last and it pained him to do so. "No, it can't, but that doesn't mean that it can't have a good ending. Sometimes we try to hard to be happy. We need to try just to be content with what we have. With the people in our lives."
Claire looked up at him then and amazingly she smiled. With the water streaming through her hair, down her face, she looked radiant. No, Leon thought, it had nothing to do with the water.
"That doesn't sound too hard." Claire's smile widened and she laughed. "You should write a book or something."
"Me?" Leon chuckled, pulling Claire in tight against his chest once more. "No way. I failed English."
For a long while – two hours perhaps – the pair of survivors stayed planted where they were, wrapped safely in each others arms, allowing the steaming flow from the shower to wash away the sins of the past; peel away layers of pain and grief, anxiety and fear. Together they came clean of the demons they held within, of the nightmares that plagued their minds and souls, letting all the filth of the years to run down the drain beneath them.
This is where the tale of the survivors ends and by no means is it a happy ending. The world is too cruel and harsh a place for any happy endings to exist but there is still joy and peace in the end of their story. Together they have shrugged of the evil of the past; together they have changed by washing themselves clean of regret and failure. Together they have found solace in one another – a bastion against darkness and fear. Together they have found love – an emotion stronger than any other humans are capable of. Together they have survived.
Author's Note: Here's the last chapter as promised my Readers. I hope you've enjoyed this fic and will continue to read Three Days In A Nightmare, which will have an update soon. Read and review when you get a chance, it's your feedback that keeps me inspired and reading. Thank you, enjoy.