In the courtroom, nothing felt real. It wasn't that it was some sort of happy, fun, magical dream-land, it was that it wasn't real enough. There was supposed to be blood, fire, death. There was supposed to be begging and admissions of guilt at gunpoint, there was supposed to be utter defeat and bitter, confused victory. The faces of the men sitting smugly on the witness's stand were supposed to be contorted in pain, in fear, in realization.
There was supposed to be justice. Real justice. Old, wild-west type justice.
Claire didn't feel good about the people she'd killed. But God help her, she'd kill more, if she only had the chance. It was a real Catch-22, the situation she was in. There she sat, all composure and strappy-high heels, makeup and smart skirt; all she really wanted to be was covered in dirt, breathing heavy, staring down guns at the fuckers who'd done this to her.
They did this to her. They did this to all of them. To everyone. It wasn't just her, it was hundreds and thousands and even millions of people they'd done this to.
Her hand, clasped in her brother's, twitched slightly. Chris tightened his hand, perceiving sadness or fear—Claire knew it for what it was. It was an itchy trigger finger, a hand that wanted to fly up and out and around the necks of every single person sitting on or around the defense's bench.
No normal person thought this way. No normal person wanted to have revenge so badly it made their hands twitch. Redfields weren't normal. When Claire's hand twitched again, it was because she was tightening her grip, knowing that her brother understood. Somewhere out there was a sick bastard named Wesker, with Chris's name written all over him. This didn't necessarily make Claire feel good, but she knew things were what they were. If Chris ever found Wesker, he'd kill him. The law could do whatever they liked about that—probably throw Chris in prison—but Chris would kill that man.
Claire wanted someone to kill. She wished, in a perverse fashion, that she had some sort of arch-enemy affiliated with Umbrella that she could tag and take down. It would have made dealing with her helpless rage a lot easier. Any kind of focus, any kind of purpose…any of that would have helped.
As it was, all Claire had was testifying and sitting in the courtroom, looking pretty, attempting to ignore the way men stared at her. Let 'em look. Let 'em look, long and hard.
She'd killed people. Something inside of her was gone, and she burned with desperate inner fury. Let men look. She wasn't the kind of thing you took home to mother, anymore.
And damn them, doctors and lawyers and officials who told her this was all normal, that this was a part of the process of getting better. Post-traumatic stress disorder her ass; paranoia and depression and anger issues even more her ass. Claire knew what she felt. She knew what she was capable of. Those people, they didn't know her. They tried to give her pills, tried to recommend therapy. None of that was what she needed.
She wanted things she couldn't have. And in wanting them, she didn't want them. It was wrong to want such things, even if she wanted them with all her heart. To merely watch a judge tell someone they were guilty—which hadn't even happened yet—that wasn't good enough. To watch someone bleed to death slowly, that was good enough—but god fucking damnit, it was wrong and Claire knew this.
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Claire didn't believe in all that religion bullshit, but the sentiment rang true all the same. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, Claire's brain couldn't help but remind her.
Oh Jesus, fuck, couldn't they just call lunch recess, already? Days in and days out she sat in the courtroom, watching people lie, watching defense lawyers lie artfully to protect, watched the prosecuting governmental lawyers attack as fiercely as they could. Give everyone a gun and let them settle it for themselves. Give her a gun and let her settle it for them.
To think at one point she'd perhaps been a little bit of a pacifist, a girl going to college with dreams of who knew what—maybe being an English teacher, maybe a French major. Maybe even a dual major. She hadn't even known. She probably never would.
Sure, she'd go back to school. But something inside of her was gone, and some things would never be the same. Never again an English teacher, never again a French major—now maybe something fiercer, something with more poignancy and impact.
What that was, Claire didn't know. But her little-girl dreams of college education didn't seem fitting anymore. Hooking up with guys she met at parties and sitting in diners until four am, eating greasy food in hopes of warding off the hangover, frantically worrying about group projects…it all seemed so foreign to her. To think that she had been normal once didn't even seem right.
The inside of her mouth was bitter, metallic. Chris's hand was tight around hers but she could barely feel it. Claire uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, one of her heels tapping against the floor slightly.
Claire was scared she didn't know who she was, anymore.
Commotion, from the front of the courtroom; thank God, the lunch recess, finally. People began to stir. Chris was staring at her deeply, gauging her level of okay-ness. His eyes moved from her, across the man named Billy Coen, to where Jill Valentine was sitting. She'd come in late and been unable to nab her usual spot on the other side of Chris. She looked visibly shaken, and Chris's eyes darted back to Claire, almost apologetic and comically torn. Who needed him more—his baby sister or the woman he loved?
"'S'okay," Claire said, her voice sounding deceptively pleasant and feminine to her ears. "Go see her." Chris nodded slowly at her in response and stood, inching his way between the seats to Jill, whose face was immediately grateful in a quiet way.
It was cool. Claire could handle it. She was a big girl. She just needed to go outside and get some damn air, that was all.
Her heels were clicking across the marble floors loudly, quickly, with purpose; she moved quickly and her hips swung, she knew it, and people were staring. Who cared. Fuck 'em. Let 'em stare. She wasn't what they thought she was, at all. She wasn't just some cute, short little redhead with freckles and great tits; she was a one-girl army, someone who'd killed people and done things government agents couldn't do, someone who'd felt loss and anger more deeply than anyone had.
God. She'd killed people. And she felt like she could do it again.
Her hands were shaking. Her legs, at first so purposeful and strident, deposited her on a bench in the hallway, the echoes of the draining courtroom making the high-ceilinged walkway sound like an auditorium. Claire was alone; no one had even made it that far yet. She'd more or less bolted from the courtroom.
Sighing, her eyes skipped across the marble floors and then up the wall, vaguely seeing the paintings of Important American Figures doing Important Things. Up to the vaulted ceiling her eyes went, and then they moved over to the doors at the end of the long hall.
The door became strangely watery.
Pressing her shaking hands together, Claire took a shuddering breath and began the process of willing the threatening tears back. Who was she, anyway? Fuck, she was just a kid—a little girl, really. Where had all this rage come from? Where would all this rage go? Why wouldn't it just go away? She couldn't feel like this forever. It was going to break her down, break her apart to feel like this forever.
A shuddering exhale. Claire was dimly aware of the fact that she was regulating her breathing, bordering on hyperventilating.
"Vrooooom." That was Leon, next to her. He'd followed her, spotted her, found her, or something. She was still looking at the doors at the end of the hall. "You set a new world record for time out of the courtroom. Congratulations."
There was a second of silence before Leon perceived that something was up, that Claire wasn't okay. This made her just want to get up and run—honestly, who sat down like a little blubbery child and hyperventilated?—but she was frozen in place, her brain stuck in the same repetitive bullshit it was always stuck in. Why wouldn't it all just go away?
"Whoa. Hey." Leon's fingers touched on her shoulder gently, carefully, brushing aside some of her loose and slightly-curled hair. "Claire. You okay?"
Her carefully regulated breathing—oh hell, why couldn't she just admit that she was fucking hyperventilating and holding in sobs?—hitched a little and she hiccupped loudly. The questioning fingers on her shoulder turned into a firm yet friendly grip. "Okay. C'mon. Let's get you some fresh air."
"I'm fine," Claire insisted, even as Leon ushered her up pointedly. Her voice was warbly, cracking. "I'm fine." Treacherous stray tears ran down her cheeks, and she kept her head angled down, away from Leon. She couldn't even tell if he was looking at her or not, she was so flustered and confused.
"Let's just go outside," Leon said, his voice concerned at her side. She kept a curtain of her hair between them, even as a tiny hiccupping sob escaped her. Leon ushered her along more quickly, the hand on her arm turning into an arm around her back. "Okay. Okay. Almost there. We're almost outside, Claire."
The hiccups were turning into outright stifled cries, her breathing spiraling rapidly out of control. Leon pushed open one of the doors ahead of them and held it open as Claire walked through it, suddenly unsure of what to do with herself. She paced back and forth in front of the doors for a moment, then began to walk along the side of the building, hands on her hips, wild tears streaming out of her eyes. Her path was unsteady, jagged, fraught with some kind of pent-up energy. Crying quietly, she made a beeline for another bench in the distance, aware of Leon hot on her heels. She plopped herself down onto the unyielding wooden surface, keeping her face turned away and her eyes facing inanimate objects.
She was crying. She was freaking out, for lack of a better term. The bench jolted slightly as Leon sat down quickly, his hands on her shoulders, turning her around forcefully to face him—only Claire wouldn't allow herself to look him in the face. She was Claire. She didn't turn into sobbing wrecks. She was supposed to be stronger than this, some kind of tough wonder-girl.
She'd killed people.
A soft gasping cry escaped her, except she kind of mostly choked on it since she couldn't really breathe.
"Claire. Claire. Calm down. You're hyperventilating." Leon's hands were smoothing over her shoulders, her arms, quickly, almost frantically. "Claire. Claire. Listen to me. Slow down and breathe. Breathe through your nose, take deep, slow breaths."
She heard him but couldn't hear him. The tears still came.
"Claire. Breathe. Just stop for a second and take one good, long breath through your nose. Jesus, Claire, you're going to pass out. You're white as a sheet. Through your nose." He was tilting her head back slightly, more or less forcing her to suck in air through her nose, even as she gasped. "There you go. C'mon, one more. There you go, just like that. Breathe slowly, through your nose." His hands, impossibly gentle, brushed the hair away from her neck and shoulders, her face. "Thatagirl. Nice and slow."
"I just—they—I want—" The voice that came out of her mouth sounded unfamiliar to even her, wild and scared and fierce, like a cornered cat. Leon gripped her around her shoulder again, pulling her to him, hugging her tightly. "They—"
"I know. I know, Claire. Just hush and try to calm down." His grasp was so comforting, so knowing. Claire sobbed, her hands balling into fists, her face twisting with the effort of holding in angry screams, her muscles tensing and relaxing in rapid succession. Leon held her through it all, his hand grabbing one of her tightly balled ones and working it into an open palm, linking his fingers through hers. Still she cried, and she was dimly aware of the fact that he was rocking her like a small child, shushing her all the while.
"I know. I feel the same way," Leon said, his voice against the top of her hair. "I feel the same way, Claire. It's alright."
Eventually her tears began to fade, her body feeling exhausted with the effort. She'd had a good long cry, several minutes at least. Quieting, she fell semi-limp in Leon's grasp, sniffling fiercely and blinking at the ground, suddenly feeling very stupid and confused. "I'm sorry," she breathed. Just like that, it was passing.
"Sorry? Jesus, Claire, what're you sorry for?" he asked, giving her a quick squeeze. "It's okay. That obviously needed to come out of you, and it did. That's okay."
"I'm just—" Claire brought the hand that wasn't still loosely entwined with Leon's up to her face, wiping away trails of tears—of course, by now, the makeup she hated wearing was probably smeared and runny and disgusting. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that."
"You think I thought you did?" He asked her in disbelief. "No more apologies—I'm not upset or inconvenienced, Claire."
"Ugh. How ridiculous," Claire said by way of reply, as she wiped her face, still keeping her face turned away from his. "Big bad Claire Redfield, crying like a little baby. I mean—you shouldn't have to play nursemaid to me, here. No one should."
"Stop." Leon started to turn her face up from the ground towards him and Claire resisted, feeling rather ashamed that anyone see her in such a state. "Hey, none of that, either. Look at me." Claire settled for at least moving her face upwards some and fixing her eyes on his shoulder. Leon seemed to accept this and sighed. "Don't feel like you have to hold stuff like that in all the time. No one is going to be annoyed or put out if you need to lose it for a minute."
Claire pursed her lips. "It's dangerous to let all that out," she said slowly. "If I let stuff like that out, I'm gonna act on the things in my head. I can't do that."
"It's dangerous to hold all that in," he corrected, albeit in a gentle manner. "You'll turn yourself into a ticking time bomb if you try to keep it all stuffed down inside of you."
"Everything about me has changed," Claire said, dimly aware of the fact that their conversation was incredibly disjointed, jumping from one subject to another. "I'm not the same person, Leon. I'm completely different and it's not different in a good way."
Leon sighed. "Nothing about you has changed, Claire."
This statement succeeded in raising some manner of strange ire within Claire, and her eyes finally snapped over to meet his, narrowed in accusation. "Are you blind? Everything about me is—"
"Nothing important about you has changed," Leon interrupted, his voice a notch louder and very firm. "You're still you. Bad things have happened along the way, but you're still you."
"I'm…violent. I've killed people and I'm capable of doing it again."
"You are nothing less than what you were when you came to Raccoon City, and you are nothing more, fundamentally. You're still you." Leon shook his head slightly and kept his eyes locked on hers, pointedly. "I'm not convinced you're some kind of cold-blooded monster now, Claire, and you're not going to convince me of it. Why are you so bent on convincing yourself of it?"
She didn't have an answer for that, not one she wanted to voice, anyway. She could say that it was because believing that she was somehow devoid of a consciousness and pity made it easy for her to explain why she had murderous thoughts, why she was filled with all-consuming anger. Claire didn't know if saying that would make any sense, or if it would be right.
"You're letting those people in that room back there do what they want—which is make you feel like you're the one who did something wrong," Leon went on, his voice low and almost urgent. "You're letting them have that power over you, and they shouldn't. You shouldn't let them."
"I can't go back and unkill all the people I killed," Claire said, once again skipping to another topic abruptly.
"But you would if you could, and that's why you're not changed, Claire. You may not feel like it, but you're still human after all. Hell, you wouldn't have killed anyone in the first place if you hadn't had to."
Sighing, Claire let her eyes wander from Leon's over to a tree near them. "I didn't have to. Nobody made me do those things. I did them on my own, my own free will," she said, her eyes still on the tree.
"Bullshit." His use of the word, as pointed as he'd made it, turned Claire's eyes back to him in confusion. "I call bullshit. That's a pretty short-end-of-the-stick type deal to hand a person, you know, most of the situations you got dealt through this whole thing. Sure, you could have not killed anyone, but then you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me. Anyone who's got a choice between being hunted and murdered and doing something about it is going to choose to do something about it, Claire. You got handed ultimatums, Claire, you didn't just decide to go out and start randomly slaying people. I don't think the citizens of Raccoon City would have left you alive for very long if you'd decided to negotiate with them instead of killing them. The same goes for Umbrella employees."
His face softened a little and he looked at her like she was a particularly difficult jigsaw puzzle that he was attempting to solve, all the pieces laid out on a kitchen counter, only the corners built. "I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to sit idly by and watch you rationalize yourself into condemnation, even if you are. To me, that's letting them win, and I'm not about to let them win you after all the shit you've been through to keep yourself unconquered."
"Leon…" She sighed, faltering a little under his direct gaze. Her eyes fell to her hands in her lap, loosely clasped together. "You can't fight the battle for me."
"I know. I can fight it for me, though." His face was blatantly honest and direct. "Like I said, I'd take it as a personal loss. You, Sherry, my family, my friends—you guys are…" Leon trailed off for a moment, unsure how to continue. "Think of it as Risk. You guys are all things I hold, things that are important to me, things that I consider mine. You all have your own battles to fight, but I do too—and my major battle, whether or not I want it to be, is with Umbrella. Losing you to them, even in mind, would be like losing…"
Part of Claire was somehow offended at being likened to a possession, but most of her saw where he was coming from—even if her independent values bristled a little at being treated in such a chauvinistic, old-fashioned way. But she could still definitely understand what he meant; there were people and places in her life that were hers, and if people fucked with them, then they were fucking with Claire. "…all of Asia? You know, in Risk?"
Leon broke his determined face to hazard a little smile at her. "Nah, you don't want Asia. Asia's the kiss of death—too big, too many fronts to defend. If you can't hold Ukraine, you're screwed." His face grew a little serious again. "Losing you to Umbrella would be like being unable to secure Australia early in the game, or losing North America in the middle of the game. North America gets really important as time goes on, you know."
Claire hazarded a tiny smile of her own, despite Leon's newly serious look. "I can't believe I'm being compared to strategic land masses. If it weren't so goddamned weird and chest-thumpingly male, it might have been kind of romantic, even."
Leon's face lost its seriousness as if he was snapping out of something and then wore an oh please smile and an eye roll. "Yeah, well, now you know why I don't have a girlfriend. I'm still eleven years old in my head, playing Risk in my cousin's basement. But hey, I got a smile." His own smile widened. "Claire Redfield is no cold-hearted killer if she can find humour in jokes about board games, for Christ's sake."
Claire had to hand it to Leon—the man had an uncanny knack for being that down-to-earth nice guy, the guy who could talk sense and even some cheer into anyone, no matter what their situation was. Sure, the doubt and fear and anger were still in her head, but they were pushed out of the limelight for the moment. Had Leon always been so capable of putting rational thought into people's heads? No, of course he hadn't, she knew that; he'd come a long way since the confused, nervous, easily flustered cop he'd been in Raccoon City. "I'm not entirely convinced. I think it'll take me a long time to be entirely convinced, if I ever even reach it. But hey, even a killer can smile, you know."
Leon was serious again, his hand on her shoulder, his finger pointing at her. "Seriously, Claire, no more of it. You're tougher than that. Don't just roll over and let them make you feel like that. It's only going to make you crazy." He dropped his finger. "Believe me. You'll be crazy."
"I've always been crazy," she informed him, shrugging slightly. "It just didn't bother me before. But still…" She had to cave for the moment. He wasn't going to drop it, and neither was she. They were both good at that, being stubborn. "…okay, okay. I get it. Hold Ukraine, and make sure not to lose North America in the middle of it all. I'll work on it."
"And don't give up land unless you know you can retake it whenever you want," Leon added, obviously talking about Risk but obviously not. "You can give it up as a feint, lure people into thinking you're running scared, but don't do it if you're actually running scared. Do it because you're going to come back later and stomp the shit out of the opposing army, when they've been lured into thinking they're sitting pretty."
"Okay," Claire said, nodding at him in perfect seriousness. A twinkle arose in her eye, though, despite the relative lack of levity in the conversation. "Promise me that tomorrow you'll teach me a life lesson that's somehow related to Parcheesi or Mouse Trap."
Leon barked a laugh, looking away and shaking his head, running his hand along his jaw. "Fine. But only if you promise me you're going to go get cleaned up. The smeary raccoon-eyed look doesn't do you justice."