RE: Inclination
A/N: Again, thanks to everyone for reading and for reviewing. I've been hip-deep in Darkside Chronicles lately. Yet another attempt at shoring up the Capcom plot holes.
The more I write, the more of this there seems to be to write, and the story's taking some turns I hadn't expected. Mostly because, let's face it, a lot has happened to them before this story even started. More note at the end.
May 2006
Leon stopped the yacht some time after that. She must have been dozing because she only noticed when the wind stopped rushing in her face. When she turned to look at him, she found him holding his cell phone and staring behind them. Staring into the darkness that the absence of the sun had surrounded the boat in.
Turning as well, she couldn't see the island. Night had settled in fully while she'd been sleeping beside him.
They weren't going back. Whatever was there to be found, whatever answers were hidden in that facility that TriCell left behind… now wasn't the time for them to learn. There were other, more important things to deal with.
"Now we should check on them," Leon said.
Something had changed in his voice. Claire wasn't too surprised. She wagered that if she spoke, just then, her voice would be similarly transformed. Claire knew where her highest priority was, but despite that... there was more. If thoughts could have taste, her knowledge of her own priorities, at that moment, was not anything she wanted to accept. The knowledge, the truth that her own self left an aftertaste that was too bitter to admit, even if she had no choice other than to acknowledge it.
It was the same aftertaste from Harvardville, handing that gun back.
A younger, saucier version of herself was sneering at her from the other side of that memory. The impulsive, leather-wearing version of herself that she only let out now when she had to. The fighter that Chris tried to smother in her, even though he'd been the one to instill it into her. The fighter had caught that gun mid-spin after the kick and done what she had to, the fighter was the one that struggled to keep on breathing.
That part of her spat every time the aftertaste burned the back of her throat. That part of her was also the part that wanted, the night on the bed when the door interrupted them, to follow Leon into the bathroom. That part of her saw no problem with pushing him against the tile, even if he was preoccupied, and giving him something better to think about.
Frowning, Claire nodded at him.
She didn't want to be close to Leon, feeling like that. She didn't want to stand beside someone who could fight and…
The ladder passed away and she was down on the deck and opening the door to the cabin before she'd realized she was moving. The bitter taste of her own thoughts was like bile threatening to spill whatever was in her empty stomach onto the deck. She moved quickly. If Leon was following her, she didn't hear him. Whether that was because she didn't want to or because he really wasn't, she didn't know.
Curled up on the couch, the children were asleep. Oscar was staring at the walls. She remembered the reaction, she'd seen it before on the faces of survivors that she'd counseled. The people in San Francisco, the families of the victims in India. It was one that she had not been allowed to have after Raccoon City. The whole of her shock had been stored up until after Rockfort and Antarctica.
January 1999
Chris couldn't stay with her, of course. No one could stay with her, and the feeling of loneliness didn't help the shock of the past months. How long had it been, sleeping with a gun under her pillow or a knife in her hand? How long? Since September, at least.
No, that wasn't fair.
She hadn't been sleeping.
After getting her back to her apartment, Chris had stayed long enough to be sure she wasn't seriously injured. Beyond the cuts and bruises, that is. He had to ignore the distant, empty look in her eyes, she saw him forcing his jaw and setting his lips. He did that sort of thing when he was doing something that he wasn't happy about, the sort of thing that was like taking bad medicine.
Other people might have found it… cold, but Claire knew it for what it was. Chris had no options in regards to her. Chris was a marked man, she was sure of it now. Umbrella had marked him, tagged him for destruction, and he was doing the best thing he could with that given truth. He was fighting them with everything he had in him.
An empty voice from somewhere inside asked if she was next. She'd missed the first part of the semester was over by the time she'd gotten back, and she'd missed the end of the last one. 'Just gone for a day or two' had turned into months that she wouldn't see again.
That wasn't entirely true. She saw those months every time she closed her eyes. She lived those hours, felt that fear, every time she heard a noise that was unfamiliar in her apartment, or whenever someone followed her when she headed down the sidewalk. She lived what she'd been through, sweated with fear, and gripped the handle of whichever weapon was closest her like it was a hand with a pulse that could soothe her with its steady rhythm.
It didn't help that once Chris had gone, once the bruises to her torso had begun to fade and all the swelling had gone down it became obvious that she'd done something terrible to one of her ankles or knees. Rehab didn't make her feel any better, no matter how many times Leon or her good friend Alyssa tried to tell her it was physical therapy.
Because everything was underwater. All the shock she'd been bottling, all the stress she'd shrugged off, been able to ignore because of purpose was back, and pushing it aside had only given it time to grow. Claire knew she was a strong person, she didn't wonder about that. She didn't crack under pressure, she cracked after it.
And when she did, the tears came. It took weeks before it happened, weeks of staring at the walls, her eyes lingering on the cracks in the paint that she'd marked down on her move-in checklist. When they came, they were hard. Claire wasn't even ashamed or embarrassed of them.
She was too empty to feel those things.
Her mind, dejected, turned frantic. The underwater feeling of everything got worse, and she struggled against it. Struggled to tell herself that she was alive. Struggled with the fact that no, she hadn't died. Other people had, but not everyone.
St-
Not everyone. Leon had lived. Chris had lived. Sherry lived.
Desperate, she let her mind latch onto the ones she'd saved, and not the one who'd died to save her. She couldn't talk to Leon, she didn't dare reach Chris so soon. Her mind supplied for her all the things she had to think about right alongside the ones she didn't want to.
She ate microwave food to keep things from smelling alive in her apartment, because if it smelled alive it would end up smelling dead. She avoided things like the produce section, fresh markets, and sometimes even restaurants. At night, if she'd gone out, she went home, ate the tasteless cardboard food, and cried her way through it.
It was a hard struggle, but in February she managed to calm down enough that she could call Leon. He sounded tired, but other than that, he sounded well. Sherry, he promised her, was as safe as they were. As safe as she could be made by either of them.
He didn't know any more. There was silence on the line, silence between them, and then he asked how she was.
All Claire could do was cry.
The shock had been bottled so long, the stress, that she couldn't do anything but cry. Leon let her, and though the line was silent while he did, his silence was infinitely better than the empty echo of her own tears in her empty apartment. Still, he listened. He accepted. She cried. For a long time, at least until March when she finally finished the rehab for whatever was wrong with her ankle or her knee, she did just that.
May 2006
A part of Claire hated the three, near catatonic survivors for it. They didn't have to wait, to store up more hurt and illogic. She would never know if the crying would've happened the way it did if she hadn't waited so long to do it. She couldn't know if that was her normal reaction to it. If that was just the way that she was about that sort of thing.
No, it couldn't be. Harvardville certainly hadn't dissolved her into tears. And the difference there was… what? That she wasn't worse off with wondering in the following months? That she knew that Chris was fine, that Leon was alright, that Raani was safe with her family?
Leon didn't seem to react the same way, in either instance. In any instance. He didn't talk about it. He seemed, her bitter mind supplied, perfectly fine.
She wondered if that was how Leon had gotten about that sort of thing. She couldn't tell if he just wrote it off as another day on the job, or if it was something that he stayed up nights over. Her bitter, self-hate told her that he was fine and that she was the one with the problem.
Claire was numb as she moved to the grocery bags, gathering food to give them all before she went over to rouse the children. Leon didn't join her at first, and that was fine.
An annoyed, angry part of her was asking if this was it. If this was all there was to an outbreak, if this was all she could do.
No, it wasn't all she could do, it was all she was allowed to do. All she was allowing herself, and all Leon was allowing them to do. She tried very hard not to be bitter about that. She was still kneeling in front of the children. Nicholai wasn't looking at her, but Emily reached out and touched her arm.
That brought Claire back to the present, for a moment. "Claire," Emily said softly.
The childish voice, she had to remind herself, was not Sherry's. It wasn't Raani's. She had to let Emily be a different child instead of just another one of the children affected like this. It wasn't healthy of her to start thinking of all the children that went through this sort of trauma as the same.
Hell, she warned the other counselors not to do it. That had been a large argument in all the staff meetings in San Francisco. Why couldn't the counseling be more standardized? What good was it doing to put kit gloves on with these children?
Then, Claire had been very vocal about the importance of individual attention. Then, she had warned them against ignoring any of the symptoms of shock and grief that might be varying from child to child. It was important, Claire knew – she'd decided it when she'd taken the position – not to let there be a standard survivor child.
Or a "standard survivor".
That was the professional Claire in action. That was her passion focused, refined into fuel about this sort of situation. About the tragedy and the hurt. That was the part of her that put the gun away and took a briefcase to the office every morning, the part of her that only took her motorcycle out on weekends and was courteous of her neighbors.
Professional Claire was the flesh that had grown on the skin and bones of Survivor Claire, but underneath the exterior, when she was cut to the quick, the survivor was the one who bled. Kindness was never lacking, both the professional with her briefcase and the survivor with her HP and her motorcycle had that.
But the survivor, over the years, had picked up an angry, resentful temper to go with it. It didn't flare up often, but when it did-
"Claire, are you ok? You're pale?" Emily's voice sounded scared.
Looking down at the girl, Claire smiled. "I'm fine, don't worry about me."
"She just needs a snack." Over the course of her contemplation, Leon must have joined them in the cabin of the ship, because his voice was just over her shoulder.
Turning, Claire looked up at him, and found that he was rummaging through the groceries they'd gotten. He seemed to be contemplating something, so she let him. She moved over to check on Oscar, carrying a candy bar with her.
The fat man snatched it from her hand and shooed her away wordlessly. Claire left him alone, left him to the luxury of his withdrawal into shock, and glanced at the children.
Emily was sitting up, but Nicholai had gone right back to sleep. Claire knew she needed to talk to them, that someone needed to talk to them, but her own bitter resentment of the situation… No, she would be honest with herself at least. Her own resentment of their presence was too strong. She hated herself for that, a little, even as she admitted it.
The cabin was too close, they were too close. Claire turned for the deck, making sure to close the door behind her.
She leaned against the ladder, looking out into the darkness that had spread across the water while she slept. In that instant it felt like the whole world was made of darkness. How could she resent other survivors? How dare she begrudge them their lives like that?
She felt sick to her stomach.
The door opened, quietly, and Leon stepped out. It had to be Leon. The others wouldn't be collected enough to make a move, yet.
He didn't say anything, just extended a candy bar into her vision.
"Leon…"
"You'll feel better if you eat."
The more I write about Claire, the more I get curious about the way she pulled through all of this. Someone at some point in a review pointed out that this Claire is feisty. I guess I agree, but there's a reason for it. She's got bravado down pat, and I realize she's also a nice person, but one has to remember that with the nice (shall we say 'sweetness and cherry pie'??) there is also the motorcycle and the handgun. Also, early Claire - RE2, CVX - is motivated by loneliness and worry.
I hope the flashbacks in the last couple chapters have been filling in some of what happened to this Claire in the break where we aren't given any Capcom/Game-related information on her.