2. Winter Sleep
"Do you really think she was working for Wesker?" Claire said, taking a sip from the beer bottle. It was a cold evening in Washington D.C. and rain was pouring down unrelenting. The air was as cold as Claire's insides felt when Leon told her about Ada Wong's reemergence in his recent mission in a rural area of Spain.
"No doubt in my mind," Leon replied.
Claire put a gloved hand on his shoulder and put down the bottle with a clunk on the stairs they were sitting on outside Leon's apartment. "She saved your life, you know. She went through a lot of trouble to save you and Ashley both. She didn't have to. She went against Wesker or whoever she was working for to do so. It must mean something."
Leon nodded, slowly, feeling a little better. Claire had her way of reassuring him. Still, Ada Wong and her motives lingered in his mind. Although it had been nearly a week since he returned from Spain, he frequently saw figments of red in the corner of his eyes and her voice in his head when he slept. It was agony, and it made him feel weak. He didn't want to be captivated with the woman in the red dress; he just wanted to move on.
Noticing his saddened demeanor, Claire changed the subject away from Ada Wong and removed her hand from his shoulder. "I'm excited for tomorrow. It'll be like the old days."
She was referring to the anti-Umbrella organization they had both worked for along with Jill Valentine, Chris Redfield, Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers and other S.T.A.R.S members. Shortly after Umbrella's official collapse on the stock market, they had spent two years together in an unofficial extension of S.T.A.R.S closing down satellite facilities and underground labs much like the one in Antarctica created by the Ashford family. Most of their work was conducted in Europe, in cities like Berlin and Paris where Umbrella had huge factories still producing BOWs and the T-Virus.
Sharing the common bond of survivors and the similar goal to see the destruction of Umbrella Corporation, they had become a tight-knit group. Eventually the work dried up as the giant dinosaur became extinct, however, and the core of the group had all gone their separate ways; Leon worked with the government defense, Claire back to college.
Some stayed in contact, others didn't. Claire and Leon had been of the former, though their contact had been limited in the past few years to phone calls and brief e-mails.
"You shouldn't be," Leon said, frowning. "All of us getting together again means Umbrella is back, and Wesker is alive."
"I just meant it was nice seeing you again." She grinned. "You know, talking like this, like we used to on patrol." She turned to him and studied his face that was illuminated by the street light. He had aged a lot in the six years since Raccoon City; the shadows cast on his face made him look worried and troubled. Claire had no doubt that he was both at the moment.
"Well, in that case, right back at you," Leon said. He smiled a little, pushing Ada Wong out of his mind for the time being and focusing on the woman that was sitting next to him.
A comfortable silence followed. Claire picked up the Heineken bottle and peeled at the label a little with her fingers as they sat and watched the rain bounce off the concrete below. The city was getting soaked to her core. Rain always made Claire uneasy these days; it reminded her of Rockfort Island a little too much and how the Bandersnatches hid around the corners, the rain drowning out their erratic breathing and all signs of their presence.
"It rained in Spain," Leon said suddenly.
"How hard?"
"Drenched," he said. He took the bottle from her hands and took the last sip. "Could barely see in front of myself, and the villagers were chasing me and Ashley. It was the first time since I arrived there that I thought I was going to fail my mission. Ashley was screaming and somewhere in the distance I heard a chainsaw."
"Jesus," Claire murmured. She tried to imagine the hordes of villagers, but couldn't. It was just something you had to see for yourself, she supposed; Leon had described them initially to her as an invasion of the body snatchers, and then modified it to incredibly intelligent zombies, but neither description had helped realize them to her.
"I only survived because we found this bridge to a castle. We could barely see three feet in front of us and they were less than three feet behind us when suddenly, we stumbled onto a bridge. And as we were crossing, Ashley slid on the wet cobblestone and went down. It happened so fast, I barely had time to react. They caught up to her and one of them grabbed her so I kicked him in the knees, grabbed her, pulled back and threw a grenade I'd found earlier into the mob. That was the second time I thought I was going to fail my mission. For a few seconds, before the explosion, all I could think was that the grenade was a dud and we were dead."
"So, I take it you don't like the rain much either then," Claire said.
"No," he said. "I love the rain."
"You're weird then," she said, still thinking of Rockfort Island.
"If by weird, you mean tall, dark and handsome then yeah, I am pretty weird." Claire laughed at his lame joke as he stood up from the stairs and offered her a hand. "Let's go inside, it's getting cold."
"I should be going back to my hotel," she said. It was a statement lacking conviction, the type someone says when they want the opposite to happen.
"Come inside first," he insisted. He didn't want her to go yet. He was rather enjoying the mental absence of Ada Wong that Claire was inducing. It was nice to talk to a woman and get more than two sentences out of her before she disappeared to her next destination. "There's a MacGyver marathon on channel 30 and you have to watch at least one episode."
"I bet you think you're just like him," she said, standing and handing him the empty beer bottle. "Recycle this for me."
He took the bottle from her. "I'll have you know Hunnigan compared me to him once."
Claire raised her eyebrows, amused. "His first name is Angus. You don't want to be compared to a man named Angus."
"Let me guess, Chris used to watch episodes and you just happened to catch a few," he said.
Claire responded by rolling her eyes and pushing for the door, heading inside and leaving Leon to follow. By the time he shut the door, she was already in his kitchen, digging for popcorn and more alcohol.
Note: Reviews/feedback appreciated as always. I was a little shaky on what to put for the anti-Umbrella organization, as Capcom is always vague about it and often conflicting. There's Umbrella, there's Wesker's Umbrella, there's Ada's other organization she works for—and then there's the "good" groups that Barry Burton worked for, Chris is supposedly working for, and the government Leon works for. Therefore I decided to say they'd worked together for a short time, because hell, it could happen.