At this point, NaNoWriMo is defunct XD But I'm enjoying writing this, and I even got back onto Let Me Live with a fresh mind.

Enjoy!

Both Claire and Leon stared at the doctor right as he stared back at them. Claire could've sworn she saw the tiniest of smirks as he looked at Leon, and made the decision to hastily break the embrace apart. She didn't need people thinking she was in a relationship with him. He was an old friend and nothing more.

"I've decided to give Mr Redfield a steroid drip. I'm not sure what good it will do, or how effective it will be, but there'll be no harm in trying if you're fine with him having it."

Claire's blue eyes lit up just a little, and she looked at Leon, who simply shrugged at her.

"It's your call, Claire, he's your brother." Leon spoke. She looked over at Chris and watched his chest inflate and deflate artificially. The doctors said the other week that he wasn't brain dead, and more checks since then had confirmed it. Physically he was not dead. His brain was still active. That didn't mean he was getting out of this with nothing detrimental; he could still be brain damaged.

He was just incredibly weak; so weak that he was still down on his notes as Do Not Resuscitate. What was there to lose? Literally nothing. If he was going to die then he was going to die, simple as. But if there was even a slight glimmer of hope, a tiny, miniscule chance that maybe, just maybe, he could be carefully brought back around, then why would Claire shrug off that opportunity? She slowly inflated her own lungs as the machine blew air into Chris'.

"Yeah. Alright then." Claire slowly exhaled her words, but she couldn't quite contain the fuzzy warmth of wishful thinking from her voice, and Leon immediately detected it. He gently squeezed her arm and smiled in approval of her choice, and guided her to the seat she had been so accustomed to. The doctor nodded and left the room, leaving the two Raccoon City survivors to stare at Chris once again.

Leon grimaced as he panned his eyes over the many pieces of life support equipment; he had totally ignored them in his haste to scold Chris. His gaze reached the end of the bed, then slowly moved up, back to Chris' face, and finally down to Claire.

"You're tough, Claire."

Claire simply shook her head.

"Against bio terrorism, maybe. But I'm not tough in this case." she snorted. Leon squatted by her side and tilted his head, studying her face.

"At any point you could've ran from this."

"How can I run from Chris though?"

"Exactly. You couldn't, because that's what you've ingrained into yourself. Deep down you know you don't want to abandon him. But nothing was stopping you from running and never coming back. Literally nothing at all. You came here and you endured this," he gestured to Chris, "every day for...however long it's been. You've lost so much sleep, you've put your work with TerraSave on hold, and I think we're all grateful for them to be so compassionate. We all know how close you two are, everyone knows, you both might as well have it in your bios, and it must hurt you so much to see him like this. But you stayed and you didn't once try to run. I'm willing to bet he knows that."

Claire rolled her eyes and heavily threw herself back in her seat, slouching.

"Why does everyone tell me that?!" She dropped her tone to mimic a male voice; "Huh duh he knows you're here, Claire," and then reverted back to her normal voice, "He doesn't. He fucking doesn't. Really. He's in a fucking coma! No one in a coma can hear anything, Leon! People are just saying that to make me feel better! Well, it was nice the first few times I was told it, but it's fucking tiresome now, and I'm fed up with it!"

Claire slammed her tightened fist into her thigh out of raw frustration, feeling the hot pain radiating through her leg, and Leon allowed her to breathe forcefully, angrily, without interrupting her. He shuffled in his squatted position and clamped his fingers together.

"We've been in this game for a while now, haven't we?" Leon began, his eyes fixed on a little scuff on the floor by Claire's feet, "We've both lost friends, colleagues...some have lost family. Remember at Harvardville? That woman I worked with, Angela...Curtis Miller was her older brother. I think the age gap was very similar to the one between you and Chris. And, well, you know what became of him. Curtis, I mean."

Claire scratched her nose with the same hand that was a fist moments before.

"Some of my friends and colleagues...I lost. Some even only a few months ago. I lost the President. But for those who didn't die straight away, a lot of them were in a coma. Some of those in a coma did eventually die, but not all of them. The ones that recovered? Most of them said they could hear people talking to them. A few said they thought it was more akin to dreaming and can't remember words that were said, some remember what was said to them, clear as day."

Leon stood up and stretched to his tip toes, trying to run his blood back down into his feet. He walked to the end of Chris' bed and narrowed his eyes at the Captain.

"Chris strikes me as the kind of guy who would very much remember what people have said to him." He looked at Claire. "What you have said to him."

Claire began fumbling at her jacket's cuffs, fixating on the metal zip there.

"I truly believe it, Claire. Never stop talking to him, because you never know what he'll remember. Can you imagine the shit he'd give me after what I said to him? He'd rip my hair from my scalp, I'm calling it right now." Leon grinned, tossing his hair playfully.

Claire chuckled.

"You did call him some pretty colourful things, Leon." she said with a raised eyebrow. He grinned and her wryly.

"I know. That's the intention. Let him tear my hair out, let him snap my neck, I don't give a shit."

Both of the doctors walked in, one carrying a tray filled with various little medical pieces, the other with a large IV bag of clear fluid.

"Sorry, Ms Redfield, but we're going to need to use your brother's hand as a pin cushion again." one of them smiled. They lightly lifted Chris' hand, and unpacked a sterile cannula. Nope. Claire was NOT watching that. She turned her head away, but her eyes moved slowly up to Leon's face, who was still smiling at her. What the fuck was with that shit eating grin, though? Oh, Leon, never change, she thought.

The younger doctor moved away from Chris and took the IV tube from his senior, inserting it into the now embedded cannula.

"The steroids will almost immediately enter his system, and it will take an hour or so for the bag to empty. Oh, looks like he'll need some more nutrition." said the young doctor, removing another bag from the stand.

Wow. Claire never even realised that the tube in her brother's nose was supplying a slurry of liquid food to his stomach. Ugh. She didn't want to entertain the thought of other bags attached to him to catch the run off of his bodily functions. She also feared to think how much muscle had wasted away up to now. Man, he is gonna be pissed if he wakes up.

No. When. When he wakes up. There's no other reason for this steroid drip, right? They must know something. She couldn't work out why they had changed their minds at the last minute, right as his life support was about to be cut, but for now, she'll take it. She lifted her eyes to his lifeless face. She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"You look like you need a coffee."

Claire and Leon sat down on a beautifully varnished wooden bench in the hospital gardens, surrounded by delicate flowers and scented shrubbery, all colours of the rainbow. She placed her little napkin of cake on her lap and held her to-go coffee to her chest, inhaling those amazing beans. She twisted her head about gently to gauge which flowers, if any, she knew the names of. Her list ended at only one entry; sunflowers.

"I've always kind of been fond of petunias," Leon suddenly said, pointing to a flowerbed opposite them, "probably because it was all that my grandmother would have in her yard. Those hydrangeas too, I love how there's different colours concentrated in one area. This is great for a hospital to have. Refreshing, even. Certainly takes away that dull mood of those corridors and rooms."

Claire couldn't help but stare at the agent in surprise, and he looked back at her in puzzlement.

"What?" he asked, tilting his head in his typical fashion.

"I just know what sunflowers are. I didn't expect you to know the names of flowers."

Leon laughed, not at her, but at himself.

"You know what those are, right?" and he pointed a little further from where they were sitting. Claire squinted her eyes at the flowers he was referring to.

"Oh, yeah, they're roses. But yellow? I thought roses were only red." Claire quipped. Leon chuckled again.

"Honestly I'm not surprised that you're not clued up with flowers, Claire, you never did seem like the type of girl to like them." Leon scanned his eyes over the rose bushes. "Red represents love and romance. That's why they're associated with Valentine's Day. Yellow typically represents friendship. White roses tend to represent purity and innocence. Kind of why you might see them at weddings. Orange is like a fire; full of passion and energy. If I ever gave you a bunch of roses they would be a bouquet of yellow and orange."

"What the fuck, Agent Kennedy." Claire gasped, gobsmacked by his knowledge of roses and their colour meanings. Claire widened her eyes at him, but she wasn't entirely sure which part shocked her the most; the knowledge of roses, or the colours he'd give her? Or even actually giving her flowers?! He laughed yet again.

"My mom was a florist. She made stuff for weddings, funerals, parties, christenings...pretty much anything that involved flowers, really." He sipped his coffee and smacked his lips. "I used to help her sometimes, and she used to tell me all the flower names and their meanings, representations...she was really passionate about it."

"Was?"

"Yeah...she...er...she passed away after my little excursion to Spain." Leon idly thumbed the cardboard coffee sleeve.

"I'm sorry, Leon."

"Don't be sorry, Claire. She had a good life. She was kind of classed as an old mother when she had me; she was in her late 30s when I was born. She had to quit her job, her passion. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's not long after Raccoon City got destroyed. She kept to her floristry work for a little while but eventually her shaking became too much. She couldn't keep steady enough for the little details. She handed her business over to one of the younger women there. After the shaking and stiffness set in as it did she went very rapidly downhill. I'm...I'm glad I got to be with her when she died, and in a way I'm glad it didn't drag out for decades like I've heard it can do."

"Is your mom's business still going?" Claire asked, but she hoped the answer wasn't a bad one. She was relieved when Leon nodded.

"I still keep in touch with Tilly, the woman who took on the business. My mom used to teach flower arranging classes, and Tilly was one of her star students. I'm glad my mom's legacy lives on in flowers."

A two little birds flitted past the pair and disappeared under some shrubs, and the RC survivors sat in silence. Claire took a little bite of her cake, but pulled a face. Leon had bought her fruit cake, it seemed; she hated raisins, but of course after his emotional outpour about his past she just didn't want to tell him that she hated fruit cake like she did.

"I know what it's like," Claire started, "to lose a parent. Both, in fact. I was only a little girl. I've spent more of my life without them than with them." Leon looked at her face, yet she stared ahead.

"I'm sorry about your family too."

"Like you said, don't be. It can't be helped. They're gone. Nothing can bring them back. I just had to learn to live without them."

"At least you had Chris back then."

Claire sighed. "Yeah. I did. He was the strong one, I just spent the rest of my childhood being a brat and making things hard for him. It wasn't until he put me in my place one day that I changed my attitude."

"What did he do?"

"He used his military CQC training on me. I tried to stab him in the leg with a metal meat thermometer, " Claire gestured with her fingers a long pointed object, "Purely out of bratty rage. He wouldn't let me go to a friend's place. I was already grounded, and I gave him hell, telling him I wish he were dead and that I hated him and that he should go fuck himself. He snapped. He had me in a chokehold, disarmed me and pinned me face down to the floor. Worst I got was a sprained wrist, but, you know, he was acting in self defence, after all. He said to me in a really low voice, "I got dishonourably discharged so I could take care of you, don't make me regret it." I came to my senses and stopped being a pain in the ass after that day."

"So it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows between you two?" Leon asked. Claire shook her head.

"No. And it was because of me. Because of my stupid behaviour."

"But it got better, right?"

"Oh definitely." Claire nodded.

"Good."

They went silent again as the Sun sank slowly behind the hospital building, and the little solar lights slowly began to brighten around them. Claire sipped more of her coffee and hunched forward, letting out a sigh. She had been terrible to Chris when she was younger. She'll have to apologise to him when she gets the chance. What a total bitch I was, she thought. She closed her eyes and remembered vividly that day when he incapacitated her after she tried to stab him. The more she remembered the more her ribcage burned with her own self hatred, her treatment of her older brother, all because she couldn't control her own temper. She had no excuses.

Leon shuffled to her and put his arm around her, and she reached to her shoulder to grasp his fingers.

"I hope everything will be ok in the end, Claire. For you and Chris." he whispered. She squeezed his fingers, perhaps a little too tightly; she heard one of his knuckles crack, and apologised. He simply breathed a laugh, and squeezed her fingers back.

Claire had left her helmet in Chris' room; she really needed to go home and get some sleep, but at the same time she didn't want to leave him. As his relative she was absolutely entitled to stay overnight in his room, albeit in a rickety reclining chair with that plastic casing over the cushions. Her and Leon turned the corner in the corridor and were surprised to see the younger doctor pacing impatiently outside of Chris' room. Leon looked at Claire, but her gaze was straight ahead.

She ran quickly to him, Leon having to break into a little jog to catch up with her, and the doctor looked up at her in shock.

"What's happened?!" Claire demanded. The doctor ran a hand through his sandy coloured hair, his head wobbling side to side.

"We don't know! Just...just go in and see!" he exclaimed. Claire burst through the door, her heart racing wildly, sweat beading on the back of her neck, and she saw the senior doctor sitting in the chair, both hands to his mouth. Leon ran in after her and bumped into her back, and she stumbled forward. He quickly caught her and stood her up.

"Ms Redfield, I need to confess something. I opted for steroids so you could have another day or so with your brother before he passed." He gasped.

"What?! You mean you didn't expect anything to happen?! You didn't expect him to get better?!" Claire shouted. The doctor stood up and bobbed his hands, gesturing for her to calm down.

"No, I didn't expect anything to happen. But look at Mr Redfield."

Claire's furious eyes moved from the doctor to Chris. She stared at him for a few seconds.

"What am I looking at?!"

"Listen. What can you hear? Or not hear?" said the doctor.

She looked back at Chris and listened to the beep of the heart monitor. The peaks were stronger, faster, and she felt a strange feeling inside of her as realisation slowly descended upon her.

"Wait...the ventilator?" Claire whispered to the doctor, and she looked back at Chris; there was no tube in his mouth, only a clear plastic oxygen mask. She watched his chest rise. And fall. And rise. And fall again. But the ventilator wasn't operating. She slowly looked back at the doctor, and going by Leon pulling her closer to his chest, he knew it too.

"Your brother began breathing on his own about ten minutes ago."

*Inhales*

Go Chriiiiiiiiiis!

Ok, so, yup.

Did you think I was gonna bump him off? Did I have you in the first half, huh, huh?!