The Goliath Protocol:
Chapter Forty-Five:
Alive
Jill was a hard nut to crack. She kept her cards close to her vest. She required a little bit of needling to get her to really open up.
When they opened a bottle of wine after Logan went to bed one night, she put those pretty toes he loved on the chair beside her at the kitchen table and told him about a little girl no one wanted. She talked about Delta and her time in the desert. She started to talk about Wesker and backpedaled.
Leon, sipping the red wine and finding it an adequate substitute for the whiskey he'd left behind, waved a hand, "Come on. Out with it. Until you say it - it's still in you like cancer."
So, she said, "I thought he was...just incredible, ya know? Driven. Determined. Smart. He ran the unit with such..." She waved her hands. "Dedication. He was easy to follow because you believed in him."
She blew out a hard breath and shook her head. "He was a master liar. You had that in common."
Leon winced and laughed lightly, "Ouch."
"Ah," She conceded, "He didn't do it to protect himself. He did it to get what he wanted. And he did. He got us all to follow him. When he betrayed us..."
She trailed off and reached for a grape. Jill snapped her teeth around it, and Leon picked up one of her pretty feet. While watching him, he rubbed the arch between those brilliant fingers and made her release the tension. "He made damn sure it was clear who he was at that moment. When we found him again in Russia, he was something else. Done. Not human. A monster."
She lifted Leon's glass to his lips to let him sip while he continued to rub her foot. He winked and had her laughing softly, "Seems a small price for slave labor."
He encouraged, "Go on...finish it."
She gave him a considering look now. "Chris poured himself into the fight. He was in it like nothing I'd ever seen. I lost touch with anyone in the world I'd known before that. He was all I had left. He started to pull away about the time we found Wesker in Russia. Started forgetting I was there. Started overlooking me. I had no friends. No family. He had Claire. They got tighter as the years rolled on. I got further away."
Jill loved looking at Leon when she talked. Loved it. He just understood. That look on his face? It wasn't pity. It was commiseration. She confessed, "I wasn't me anymore."
And now he nodded.
And he just said, "You were what they'd made you."
Her eyes flickered with a softness that came from a connection. She smiled sadly, "Yeah. I was nothing. No one. I wasn't rising through the ranks. I wasn't important to anyone. I was window dressing or an extra piece of furniture in an already crowded room. No one cared if I was there. No one noticed when I wasn't."
Leon amended softly, "...invisible."
She held his look and agreed, "Yeah. At the very least, superfluous. If I died, who would care? The world would go on. Claire and Chris would still have each other. Chris would have the fight, which...was all he cared about anyway."
Jill sighed and shrugged with old pain, "I was done when I went out that window to save him. I was so tired. I was finished fighting. Taking Wesker out would end it. It would give Chris back his life. It would finally give me peace."
His hands stilled on her foot. He scanned her face and accused softly, "You were ready to die."
Jill nodded, shrugging again, "I was okay with it. Who cared? I had no one. Chris and I had sex before the Spencer Estate. Just once. It was the first time in years he even looked at me. He was drunk. I was there. I took advantage. A goodbye fuck, ya know?"
Leon held her look, and she almost felt the urge to apologize when she told him, "I didn't think about getting pregnant. Why would I? I'd been a goddamn eunuch for years. I wasn't on birth control. I wasn't fucking anyone, so why would I be? I spent six minutes under Chris getting rutted on like a hooker he'd paid to get his rocks off and went out a window because...it would be over. It would all be over."
A long moment passed. She held his look but her eyes filled with shame. "I didn't know I was pregnant. I'd have...I don't know what I would have done if I'd known. But I wouldn't have jumped."
Quietly, he answered, "Because you'd have had something to live for."
"Yeah," She laughed wetly, "...stupid, right? Selfish. Weak."
He pulled on her foot. He kicked the chair between them aside and tugged her foot until she came forward. He put his hand out to her, and she laid hers in it. And then he lifted it to his mouth to kiss its back.
Jill laughed, and a tear slipped down her cheek. "Charmer."
He laid her open palm against his cheek and put his hand atop hers. "Feel that?"
"...stubble?"
His gaze was direct. Her lashes fluttered as she dropped the jokes and tried again, "I do. I feel you."
"Yeah." He nodded once and told her, "I've been trying to drink myself into the grave for years. It's not the most direct path. It's weak. It's cowardly. It's passive-aggressive to the point of being bullshit. If I wanted to be dead, why not just eat a fucking bullet and be done with it? I didn't need something to die for, Jill. I needed something to live for. Whatever came before...this is where we are now. This is it. This is the fight. It's not bullets and bodies and death. It's right here, right now. You're not alone anymore."
She made a slight sound of pain. Her lips trembled. She shook her head at him. "I don't want to be another thing you resent, Leon. Or something you regret. Or something you think you have to protect."
He tilted his head in her grip, "Then what do you want? Right this second, what do you want to be?"
She smiled at him sadly, "Jill. Just Jill. I just want to be me. I don't know who that used to be. I can't remember anymore. But I know who she is when I look at you. Because who I see in your eyes? That's all there is. Just me. Whoever the hell that is. She's not much, but she's what came back. I think you deserve better than that."
He turned his head, kissed her palm, and told her, "I have never, in my fucking life, deserved anything...not a damn thing. I got lucky. I got screwed. I got revenge. And I'm still here. I'm right here. I can't think of anything in the world I want more, right this second, than you. Good, bad, ugly - gone. Whatever this is? This is it, Jill. You wanna go out a window? I will follow you down. That's what it means to be Jill. To be my Jill. I don't care who you were before. I don't care. Whatever you are now? That's who I want. I will never deserve you. But that's what I can offer. Me. And what's left of me after all this time. You have to decide if it's enough."
They stared at each other in the low light from the hood above his stove. After a handful of moments, she put him out of his misery and avowed, "That will always be enough. Don't you get it? Whatever I am...I'm better beside you. That's all I know. And it's enough, Leon. It's more than enough."
He cocked his head at her, "Is it? I asked you once - what do you want from me? I'm asking you now. What do you need from me?"
Without missing a beat, she demanded, "See me. Just see me. And when I'm gone? When you go...don't forget me. I can't be another thing you forget."
His heart broke. His eyes glazed. He pressed his mouth to her hand and tried to put everything he felt into this next single set of words. He gave it everything he had and vowed, "I will never forget you. If I went blind tomorrow...I would see you. Just you. Just this moment. Because this one right here? It's all we have."
Yes, she thought wildly; he had the words. He'd always had the words. For a woman sobbing over scars in a bathroom. For a woman standing on a rooftop locked in shattered memories. For a woman with nothing to believe in. He had the words.
And if she died tomorrow, he had her heart. It was the last piece. The only thing in the world that was hers to give. Just her. Just Jill.
It wasn't enough.
But just maybe, it was enough for him.
When summer heat edged into fall, Jill finally understood what the bards had spent a lifetime singing. The ties that bound tugged tighter and tighter. The world turned. The days passed. They got closer and closer to what she felt, in her guts, would be her last shot at redemption.
Where he'd made a life out of running, Leon handled stopping like he handled fighting - ultimately, no limits, no end. He made no promises. Not the kind that she could hold against him if it all fell apart. He didn't swear to love her forever. He didn't sing to her about eternity. He was just there when she doubted herself - pushing her on when she wanted to fall apart.
She accessed pieces of her memories. She remembered faces and names. She remembered things she'd done and failed to do. She got glimpses of herself resisting, herself in the water trying to die, and herself standing against the man who eroded even that last desperate stand. Wesker never hit her. He never put his hands on her at all.
He broke her without lifting a hand.
When she challenged him, he used Excella. Excella and her shock rod. Excella and her laughter. Excella and her needle.
Jill woke in the middle of the night screaming, flailing, fighting - and he just gathered her against him and rocked. Like she had for him once. He just rocked her until she quieted. She wept wildly in his arms, and he let her talk.
The more the therapist worked with her, the more she gathered from her shattered past. She remembered sitting in the grass with Logan. She'd been ready to touch his hair and smile at him. She'd started to, and Wesker hit the button on that device.
She'd instead dropped that hand and scolded the boy for playing with butterflies. She preached constant vigilance at the boy until he knew no joy. Wesker rewarded her with a knife and sent her to kill a pregnant woman who'd once worked for Umbrella.
Jill took Logan out for ice cream like a band-aid on a bullet wound of regret.
And when she slept, he was always there.
A snowflake drops onto Jill's nose and snaps her out of her reverie. She shakes her head and realizes she's not on the P-30. Not here. Not now. What day is it? What year? Is she in Eastern Europe? No? She feels like maybe it's Moscow.
"Merry Christmas, Jill..." He's there. He's always there.
He's sitting there watching her - flute of blood or wine in one hand, remote in another. But it's the wrong one. It's not the one for her device. Not yet. Not yet.
"A gift?" Jill sneers, "Didn't see you as Santa."
Wesker quirks a corner of his mouth. "Even I can be magnanimous. Open it."
He kicks it toward her. The package hits her foot and stops.
Her hands shake as he tsks at her slow response. "Go ahead. Don't reject my generosity. It bores me."
She opens the gift, and the paper is loud in the silence. Her shaking hands tell her he's low dosing her on the P-30, keeping just enough to leave her in withdrawals when it's gone. Is it killing her? She hopes so. Maybe her heart will just give out and leave her dead. Finally. Freely. Completely.
Inside the wrapping was a Bible. It's old and well-loved. She gives him a dark look, "What? Your story?"
He laughs lightly. "The word's of fools, it seems...but alas...a holy gift for a holy night."
Jill snaps, "Are you comparing yourself? You're not a god...you're not even a man."
His eyes flare happily. "Defiant to the end, no doubt. But open it. Surprise yourself."
Jill does and drops the book. It falls to the floor with a flutter of pages, and Wesker taunts, "Mmm. Found the surprise quickly. Yes. Redfield found his way too close, you see. He was less than a village away. He was bleeding. He was dying...as mortal men tend to do. He found his way to a church and from there, to a man with the lord's word in his mouth."
Wesker sipped his bloody drink and laughed, "He begged the pastor for faith, you see. Faith to keep looking. Faith to go on. The pastor told him to write first in the bible what he fought for and the other what he needed from God to keep fighting."
Wesker shrugs a shoulder and sighs. The book flutters, and the words haunt where they remain in Chris' heavy scrawl: For Family. For hope.
Wesker smirks happily. "He asked God for hope to find you, you see. Hope to keep searching. Hope to cling to when it seemed so bleak."
He rises from the chair and drops his boot on the book. "When Redfield asked God for hope..." He leans in and flashes teeth in a razor, showing leashed evil, "I told him no."
Jill slaps him in the face. Her hand rings. It echoes. He lets it happen as she gasps desperately, "I will be there the moment you see the truth."
His eyes flash with excitement. "What truth is that?"
"You're not a god." She gets in his face and snarls, "You're a joke."
"That jokes on you, Jill. It always was. Because I know where your faith ends...where your story ends...with me, eventually, you'll get tired of fighting it. And the world will become what it should have always been...mine."
She didn't believe in God; she thought as the dream awoke her sweating; she wasn't holy. There was no heaven. There was no white light. There was just moonlight on lakes like silver-made liquid. And the sunlight on poppies turned red with summer. There was twilight in the blue of Logan's eyes and sunrise on Leon Kennedy's hair - turning it gold graced with copper.
There was hell; she knew that for sure. She'd lived it. She'd survived it. She was in it when she wasn't alongside the other person who'd done the same.
Maybe he'd meant to break her when he'd put that bible in her hands. Maybe he'd meant to remind her it was hopeless and he had all the power, and she was done; she was beaten. But he'd strengthened her resolve. He'd reminded her what she was doing. She was alive. She was still here.
She'd never stop until he was dead. Gone. Beaten. Forgotten.
He'd never be forgotten as long as he haunted her in that mirror and watched. She shifted to see the long reflection on Leon's dresser. It echoed back her face, tired and surviving. In the moonlight, the blonde hair behind her dark didn't have sunglasses attached. It wasn't Nordic pale and slicked back from a face leveled in lines of disdain and arrogance. It was soft, genuine, propped up on pillows where he'd fallen asleep with those little glasses perched on his nose.
Her fingers traced the little lines beside his eyes and the ones at each corner of his mouth. She trailed one over the strand of gray at his temple. It was more white than gray. Blondes tended to turn snowy instead of smoky. What was he now? 37?
It didn't matter. He was perfect. Each line, edge, strand of turning hair, and emerging evidence of age on his face made him beautiful. Because there was nothing cruel in him. There was no madness. There was no evil. No malice. No contempt for a world he'd tried to save. He was a man standing in a storm without hope of stopping it with his fists up, trying to catch the wind and force it back.
At the bottom of all that broken pain and regret, he was a man who still believed that mercy and love existed. In his fucking guts, he still believed that people deserved a warrior. He was that warrior.
And he mourned every single person he couldn't save.
And she knew- she knew - that as long as one person, just one, held on - hope was never really gone.
She straddled his lap where he slept. The files and folders around him rustled grumpily. He made a slight sound of amusement where he roused. "...mmm...now? Let me just wake up a little first."
He smiled.
Her hands scooped all that hair out of his sleepy face, gripping his ears as she simply said, "I love you."
The amusement on his face slid away. He didn't touch her. But he didn't look away. He kept those silver eyes on her face in the moonlight as a grumble of thunder echoed somewhere outside. She repeated, "Don't talk. Don't joke. Don't say anything. Just let me do this. I love you. Tell me you don't know that."
When he said nothing, she went on in hushed tones, "If there was ever somebody, anywhere, who made me believe in me - it was you. It was you, Leon. Any time I doubt myself, I think of you. Because when you look at me, I don't feel broken - I just feel...loved."
His eyes turned glassy in the light, and she laughed wetly, "Yeah, like that. That's how it feels. You don't have to say it. You don't ever have to say it. I don't care about that. I don't care if you even feel the same. Because that's how I feel when you look at me. Loved."
He was silent for so long that she finally prompted, "...you can talk now."
He didn't. He caught her face in his hands and rolled her beneath him on the bed. The files grumbled again as they were scattered. He loved her among the bones of her past while the papers fluttered and crumbled.
And when she crested, he held her.
And there was no one in that mirror but her and him.
He was the only blonde in the glass haunting her now.
And she'd happily live with his ghost for the rest of her life.
The Osprey on the lawn waited. Jill knelt to kiss her son. She held him close and told him what she always told him before she left, "It's almost done, Logan. I'll be home soon. I love you."
He nodded, solemn, a little boy watching his mother go off to war.
He kissed her mouth and made her smile. "I love you. Fight hard. Be strong."
She gave him a watery laugh. "...tough guy."
She rose, and Leon laid a hand on his shoulder as she made her way to the Osprey. "This won't take long, pal."
Logan nodded sagely. "You'll come back?"
He glanced down at him and returned, "If I can, I will come back...if I don't, Logan, if I can't...promise me something."
Logan gave him solemn eyes. Leon crouched and took his shoulders. The boy held his look and Leon urged, "Don't give up. Ever. Don't give in. When it's hard, and it'll get hard before it ever gets easy, keep going. When you think you're done. When you think you don't have anything else...you keep fighting. Trust yourself, you hear me? No matter who else comes through your life, always trust yourself. If something feels bad...if it feels off...it's wrong."
"...like my Dad?"
Jesus. Leon held that look. "Like your Dad. Do the best you can to love him. Try. But trust yourself if it feels wrong."
Logan gave him a look too old for a boy that age. "In the lab, we had code words...so we'd know we were still...there. Still us. Maybe we need a code word."
Leon nodded, eyes steady on that eager face. "Yeah. What's the code word?"
"...Wolverine."
Leon laughed lightly. He gripped that little face. He nodded, and his eyes glistened with emotion. "I like it. Wolverine never gave up."
"...like you. And my mom."
Logan hugged him and made Leon close his eyes for a moment as the boy declared, "Fight hard. Be strong."
Leon nodded. "Wolverine."
The boy squeezed him so hard and vowed, "Wolverine."
Quietly the boy avowed, "...I love you, Leon."
Jesus. Did it ever stop feeling like adrenaline in the heart to hear it? Probably not. He figured any idiot that took that love for granted deserved a kick in the fucking crotch. "I love you, too, buddy. Be good, you hear me? Show Claire how to fight like less of a girl."
He nodded sagely. Claire rolled her eyes.
Leon dropped a kiss on that soft hair and started off as the boy shouted after him, "Stay safe!"
As he passed Claire, he told her, "I left Matilda in a box in the safe in my bedroom. And my grandmother's wedding ring. The deed to the property is there as well. The code is the date of the fall of Raccoon City. See that the boy gets it...and the ring goes to Eva."
She gave him a soft look and a brief hug. He let her go, and Claire vowed, "Consider it done."
Chris waited at the bay doors. He shared a look with Leon and started forward. Onboard, Jill watched him kneel in the grass. The boy nodded at whatever he said. He hesitated and then hugged him.
She smiled softly as Chris awkwardly patted his back and rose.
Claire came forward to put her arm around the boy's shoulders. Chris boarded and secured himself. They waved until they were specks in the grass.
In the Osprey, Chris held her look and bobbed his head. She returned it. He flipped his hand over, and she slapped it, palm down. He winked and turned his attention to the air beside them.
Jill turned to Leon beside her.
He was something in that big ass vest. It didn't suit him like it should. It made him seem bulky when he was usually swift and lithe. She flipped her palm over, and he gripped it, flipped it, and kissed the back.
Her eyes sparkled. He winked.
She dropped the hand and gave Kevin an answering gaze of narrowed eyes. He mimed vomiting and made her roll her eyes. She was hoping he was back to 100%. It was hard to know with these men who didn't know how to go down and stay down. She knew Chris wasn't quite there.
That he'd insisted on going irritated her.
But not even boulders or volcanos could stop Chris Redfield when he got going.
As the world stretched around them, Leon stated over the din, "Give that boy what he needs."
Chris and Leon held eyes until Leon threatened, "Shit or get off the pot, Redfield. I mean it. That kid needs a father."
Grumbling, Chris returned, "Looks like he has one to me."
They held eyes until Leon simply answered, "You ever known a kid to suffer from too much love in his life?"
"You admitting you love my kid?"
Without missing a beat, "You're goddamn right I am. Get in the fight or get the fuck out. Either way, I'm in."
He saw the question all over Redfield about the woman beside Leon. He wanted to ask, he did, if Leon loved his woman too. He wanted to demand an answer. He'd asked him to protect his family once. What did it mean to discover Leon was part of that family...in a way he hadn't ever really imagined?
He wasn't even jealous. Some part of him...was glad. Where he'd failed so far to be what Jill needed...what the kid needed...Leon had surged in to a hero like he hadn't expected. He hadn't done it for friendship or some noble sentiment...he'd done it for love. And he was right.
You could never have too much in your life.
What he couldn't give, Leon could. Chris stuck out his hand. They shook as he told the other man, "Thank you."
Leon felt that arrow into his chest as he returned, "...no...thank you."
Because there wouldn't be a kid without Redfield. There wouldn't be a woman sitting beside him. Whatever his failures, Redfield had gone into that lab and saved her. He'd gotten her pregnant and gotten her out. And he'd made damn sure she lived. It wasn't a perfect story and it was riddled with regret and failure...but she was here. The kid was here.
And somehow? Chris Redfield had given him a family.
Into the engine's roar and the chaos of wind, she told them, "When this is done. When it's all over, and I've taken the last ones down. I'm done."
Chris arched a brow. Kevin nodded with a half-smile. "Good for you."
She laughed lightly. "I have to be. I can't keep up anymore. I'm not mentally capable of it. Sometimes, you gotta know when it's over."
Chris held her look. She tilted her head, "You disagree?"
He shrugged. "To each their own, Jill. You know that."
From the front, D.C. bellowed, "Good for you! Damn the man!"
Damien chuckled, "Fuck the police!"
Nadia snapped, "Wrong sentiment, idiot!"
Jill turned her gaze back to Leon, "...thoughts?"
He said nothing. He just waited a moment and flipped his palm. She slapped it, he winked, and she leaned back against the rig to relax. It was time, she thought with a roll of fear, to put down the sword.
You just had to know when the fight was over.
She had a life waiting for her. She was ready to live it.
And let go of her past.
On the ground, Claire mused, "So, what do you think, buddy? Wanna have hamburgers?"
Logan watched the Osprey disappear into the sky and returned, "Claire?"
She held his hand as they watched the sky swallow the people they loved. "Hmm?"
"Are you happy I'm here?"
Surprised, Claire looked down at him, "Logan..." She breathed, "I'm thrilled."
He held her eyes and smiled and it didn't quite reach his own. He was Chris' son, but that look on his face? It was all Leon.
"I will protect you, Claire. Whatever it takes."
And those words? It was all of them. It was Leon and Chris and Jill...and her. It was all of them. And he was. He was the best of them all.
"Me too, honey. Me too."
Logan nodded. He stood there, so small in Leon's leather jacket, and Claire had no doubt that someday...he'd fill it out. And he'd wear it well.
Just like the man who'd given it to him.
And given him a shot at a future.