Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

VI:

Collision

Penumbra - the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Late Summer- 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

In the bathroom, Jill kept staring at her face in the mirror. Some days, she didn't see herself. She saw blonde hair and sunglasses. Everywhere she looked, blonde hair and sunglasses. The only way to stop that was to cover it up.

In her head, she heard his voice, "Even if you escape me, Jill, you'll never be free. I'm inside you now," his lips brushed the back of her ear as he spoke, as they watched her empty eyes in that mirror, "blood of my blood - all that you are...is me."

His blood was literally inside her. The P-30 made from it, laced with it, tethers of control and slavery. It was how he was able to command her - the host shared blood with the subject to form an unbreakable, unstoppable, unalienable bond. Even dead, even gone - he was still there. She spit water at the reflection staring back at her, and it slid down the glass, obscuring her face, but never the truth.

She'd gotten more from him than just his DNA, she'd gotten the bloodlust that came with that it. Her body had killed and maimed, tortured, and taken. The dark places in her head that offered solace had stared back from the abyss, forsaken. Sometimes, when the despair was deep and endless, she remembered the pleasure she'd hated at killing those he'd deemed a threat. Some had been actual monsters themselves, bad guys brokering bioterror without his permission to rain death on the world at their demand. Some had deserved to die.

But he'd had no right to bring it to them. He'd had no right to force her hand as his instrument. He'd had no right to stand behind her and make it all sound so, so reasonable. "Think of what you've done here, Jill...you've saved lives by taking theirs. The world will be remade into a worthy tribute to the only thing worth worshipping - a benevolent god who deems those who are worthy and those who aren't. Our new world will be filled with the just, Jill. I will be its creator, and you...you will be its shepherd - guiding the flock to their master...guiding them all to their source. Together, we will remake the world as what it should be and purge it of vice and waste."

His lips against the shell of her ear again, whispering, promising, damning. "Together, Jill. As one. Blood of my blood."

She stared at his face superimposed over hers in that mirror and cursed, "Fuck your blood, you dead bastard. I hope you rot in hell."

Sometimes, all she had was that small comfort - if there was a hell, he was there. And she hoped he was burning alive while the souls he'd murdered plucked the flesh from his rotten bones.

Leon caught her one morning through a crack in the bathroom door using something on her hair. It took him a moment to realize she was laying teabags on her roots. His eyes narrowed, studying her. After a moment of confusion, it hit him what she was doing - she was covering up the blonde that had started to emerge from the dark.

Leon tilted his head, unabashedly observing her. He'd heard she'd lost her pigmentation during experimentation. Apparently, the cryotank and P-30 had robbed her of melanin. It left her arctic blonde. She was Elsa from Frozen under all that hair dye and regret.

Without a word, he left the cabin.

Jill was reading through a copy of The Catcher in the Rye when the door opened later. She lifted her gaze, determining, "You've been gone all morning. I was starting to think you'd run for the hills."

Leon smirked as he moved into the cabin and sat a small plastic bag on the counter. "Out here, I'd be afraid of what I'd find in those hills."

Jill sighed. "The girl in me would like to pretend it would be fairies," she swung her legs to the floor and set the book on the little wicker table beside her, "the grown-up version knows those fairies would have claws and fangs."

Leon snorted. He moved into the kitchen area to pour himself a glass of water. Jill studied the bag. "Whatcha got there?"

Without looking at her, he answered, "Mocha Brunette, number eight-seventeen."

Jill tilted her head, blinking. "What?"

"I was guessing on the shade, of course," Leon shrugged as he put the water in the little campsite coffee pot they had, "but I think it'll come out close enough."

Jill narrowed her eyes. "You coloring your hair?"

He answered with his back to her. "Not today." The coffee pot started percolating, making familiar popping sounds as it heated up, "but I thought you might want to."

She froze. She stared at the bag. She was at a loss for words. He'd ventured onto the mainland to buy her hair color. Jill kept staring at that bag until he turned, coffee in hand, and informed her, "I'm gonna head up to my perch."

Jill said nothing.

The cabin door swung shut behind him as he left. She kept staring at that bag on the counter like he'd brought her back flowers. After a moment, her lips lifted into a smile. She covered her mouth with her hand and just laughed even as the tears filled her eyes with gratitude.

The tree rocked a little behind him. Leon offered the second pair of binoculars without looking at her. Jill settled down on her belly and lifted them to her eyes. Her hair was damp but dark again, the faded brown from before and the naked blonde roots covered.

She was once again Jill Valentine. He wondered if she'd ever accept the Jill she'd become. He wondered if she'd ever let go of who she'd been. When faced with her fortitude and desperate grasp on the past, he asked himself - could he? Had he? Would he ever?

They were both still holding on to what they'd lost, like children to toys they didn't want to share.

But the simple gesture of that purchase had gotten her to break even further out of her box. She was up here in his perch beside him, and she never came up. She'd let him in with the dancing. She'd gone out of her way now to be with him.

It was progress. It was good. And it reminded him that it was ok to break that box. Maybe he, too, had been waiting for years to do it.

As they scanned the horizon, they didn't talk. They didn't need to. The lack of words said everything.

And told the story of their growing connection.

"William DaFoe is eating another donut."

Jill turned her binoculars in Leon's direction. This close, his patrician nose looked like the beak of a sandpiper. Jill chuckled at the thought and changed her direction toward where he was looking.

This many days into spying on the workers at the blown-up lab, they had familiarized themselves with faces. There was William DaFoe who was always eating donuts and somehow still, magically, managed to stay slim. There was Rocky, who was always fake fighting the air while he stood guard outside the building. There were Beavis and Butthead, two nerds that laughed a lot as they dug through ashes. But no one, not a single one, that seemed important enough to be the Big Cheese.

Jill studied the donut and remarked, "Hmm. He's changing it up - jelly today."

"I know," Leon returned, "Maybe he got sick of those powdered ones for once."

Jill snorted and scooted a little closer to him as she angled her binoculars more toward the burnt building. Beavis and Butthead were once more laughing as one pulled pieces of metal from the debris. Jill studied the fat one and determined, "Beavis needs to lay off the fried chicken. He's turning into a chunkster."

Leon chuckled, "Maybe he has Dad bod."

"How do men get Dad bod? I mean, seriously, you don't even have the babies. Why do you get fat afterward?"

Leon considered that as he watched Rocky go for a second round against his own shadow. "Sympathetic weight gain?"

Jill snorted.

"Hysterical pregnancy?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Maybe we just get comfortable thinking you love us no matter what."

She lowered her binoculars and glanced at his profile. "Do you really believe that?"

He shrugged. "Why not? I like the idea that someone can love you no matter what."

"Have you ever really seen that happen?"

He surprised her by replying. "Sure. My parents did. I'm glad they died together in that car accident when I was eleven. Because they would have been half alive without the other one."

Jill kept looking at his profile. He didn't say it like it still hurt. He said it like it was just facts. Quietly, she prodded, "Where'd you go after they died?"

"To live with my Dad's best friend." He watched William DaFoe drop jelly on his tie and curse. "Oddly enough, he's the reason I'm in this gig. Retired cop turned C.I.A. director turned President."

Jill blinked twice. Surprised again, she murmured. "Adam Benford was your Dad's best friend."

Not a question - a statement of fact. But Leon answered anyway. "Since the Academy," he shifted his binoculars toward Beavis and Butthead, "He was always a guy who was gonna change the world. Big ideas, big brains, big presence. He kinda took over the room when you entered."

Jill kept looking at his profile as he added quietly, "He'd have been a helluva President...if some asshole hadn't put a bullet between his eyes and ended him."

Softly, after a moment of silence, Jill offered, "...it wasn't your fault."

"Sure it was," he returned, and it sounded so off the cuff. As if it wasn't the most painful failure of his adult life, "It was my job to run security. It was my only job. And the one damn place I didn't look was inside my own men. I assumed absolute loyalty from the Security Service. I was too busy making sure the garden was covered and protected from threats. And the goddamn snake was already in the building."

Jill was quiet for so long. Finally, she remarked, "I didn't know I was playing house with Nostradamus."

Leon finally lowered the binoculars. He turned his head to look at her. The wry lift of her eyebrows had his mouth twitching as she added, "Nice to meet you, asshole. You predicted the world would be over by now. I think you deserve to get your ass kicked for lying."

Leon pursed his lips. He finally let out a chuckle and hip-bumped her where she lay beside him. "Only you would make light of my complete and total disgrace."

Jill shook her head. "You didn't fail anybody. You did your fucking job. Nobody, Leon, and I mean nobody is omnipotent. When he died, what did you do?"

Leon held her eyes as he muttered, "I hunted down his fucking killer and put him beside him."

"Exactly," Jill returned in a cool voice, "Exactly. You aren't his fucking killer. Derek Simmons was. And Helena Harper is serving life in prison for it. You did your job. Stop blaming yourself for what you couldn't control."

She rolled back to her belly and picked up her binoculars. Leon studied her until he finally said, "How in the hell can you say that and not realize it cuts both ways?"

She stopped lifting them to look back at him as she answered, "Because I give good advice, I just suck at taking it."

He laughed. He reached over and tucked a strand of errant hair behind her ear. The humor on her face softened as he murmured, "Makes two of us, Valentine. What a fucking pair we are."

"Yep," she agreed quietly, "just a couple of assholes still in a fight we have no hope of winning."

"And still trying to catch that forgiveness we probably will never believe we deserve."

She smiled sadly. He echoed it. Into the long silence, she finally cleared her throat and joked, "Jesus, what a couple of sad spies we make. Let's get back to business here."

"Absolutely," Leon teased, "We wouldn't want to miss Rocky's third attempt to fight his own farts."

Jill snorted. Leon took up his place beside her. Their hips bumped and the sides of their legs aligned.

And neither moved away to get more space.

Over the next couple of days, Jill kept following him around to get him to talk to her. She'd needle at him until he spoke like his voice soothed her. He'd try to make conversation, and she'd demure, avoiding conversations that touched too closely to her own past.

Leon finally snapped one afternoon, "Talk to me."

Jill glanced up from the book she was reading. "What?"

"Talk to me. Tell me about you."

"What about me?"

"I don't know," he slapped the dish towel in his hands down on the counter, "Where were you born?"

Jill arched a brow. "New Jersey."

"Ok. The city?"

She shrugged, "Down by the shore."

"Mom and Dad?"

Jill finally set her book in her lap. "Both. Like most kids."

"What did you want to be when you were a kid?"

Jill tilted her head at him like he'd sprouted a second one that was speaking gibberish. "I don't know. Alive? Why?"

He shook his head. He drummed his fingers on the counter. Finally, he snapped, "You don't talk."

"I'm talking right now."

"No," he drummed those fingers harder, "You don't talk about anything that matters. And if you do, it's like you recoil right after. If you reveal anything at all that matters, you panic and retreat. Why?"

Jill pursed her lips. She didn't answer. He demanded, "See? Happening right now. You want me to spill my life story to you, but you won't talk to me. You won't give me anything. Why?"

After a moment, annoyed now with the needling, Jill snapped, "Why do you care? Huh? Why do you care where I came from? What I did? Who I was? Why does it matter? That girl? She's dead. She's gone. This is what you get, Leon." She spread her hands wide and gestured at her body, "This is all you get. The rest is none of your fucking business. Take it or leave it."

They glared at each other until he tossed his coffee cup in the sink with a clatter and declared, "Fair enough. I'm gonna go keep watch."

He left the cabin. Jill sat breathing hard in the chair. She lifted her book and found her hands shaking. She didn't want him mad at her. She didn't want him upset. She didn't want to talk about what had come before.

Why? Because she wasn't that woman anymore. She'd meant that part. Talking about who she'd been meant admitting she was still in mourning for that version of herself. And she didn't want to mourn what came before. She just wanted to fucking move on from it.

If he didn't understand that, then they had nothing left to talk about. Everyone was always trying to pry into her past. She wanted it exactly where it was, behind her. She was tired of people looking at her like a broken thing in need of healing. She just wanted to leave it where it was.

But it wasn't like he'd ever pried. He didn't. He just talked. He talked and talked and eased her mind with it. He shared. He made her laugh. He brought her hair dye and danced with her. He was her friend.

He'd become her friend. Maybe her only real one. Because he seemed to accept her as she was. He wanted her to talk to him. He wanted her to share. Because maybe it made him feel a little less alone when she did. He wanted her to purge that shit, she knew that, because he was hoping it would purge the poison of a past she couldn't forget.

She wasn't ready. But she was afraid that fear would signal the end of their friendship. She was afraid it would signal the end of whatever they'd found here, in hiding, with each other. She was paralyzed with the fear of that.

She tried to talk to him throughout the rest of the day. He grunted or shrugged. He didn't say anything at all. She tried the next day too. His responses were clipped and short - polite, but never personal.

As he passed by her to head to bed one night, Jill blurted, "I'm sorry."

He paused. He kept his back to her. She tried again, "I'm sorry, " she rushed into the opening, "I'm sorry. I don't know how to do this."

"Do what?"

Softly, she declared, "Be friends. I don't know how to do that anymore."

He glanced over his shoulder and returned, "Don't worry about it. I don't, either. So, we just hang here until this is done and get on with our crappy lives, right? No big deal."

Jill worried, her hands at her waist as he added, "It's ok, Jill. Seriously. I'll see you in the morning."

She stood there after the lights went out, wishing she had the words to just talk to him. But she was afraid of what she might say. And that fear kept her standing there long after the silence closed around her.

The nightmare woke him. Leon gasped, awake, the moonlight streaming into the cabin to cast him silver and shadow. He rubbed at his face, the beard sliding against his fingers. He hadn't shaved since they'd arrived, almost two months now. Two months of waiting it out, watching and learning, and seeing the island settle again after the lab's explosion.

Daily, he could be found in the eagle's nest he also used for hunting, perching up in the trees, eyeing the mainland, and documenting and studying behavior. He'd learned routines and faces, actions and reactions. He could tell the lab was under construction to be rebuilt; he had pictures taken from satellite drones of faces and car tags.

Nightly, he found himself sitting beneath the stars with Jill, talking. He talked of things that mostly didn't matter. Polite conversations and getting to know you on his end with little from her. Small talk, for the sake of sound, when silence was too loud. They rarely talked about important things. She'd been so careful around him to avoid the pitfalls of it.

In wigs and disguises, they occasionally ventured mainland for supplies. They wandered the woods to pick apples and fruits, and Leon would talk about the foliage and relay useless information about their origins. Jill always listened, looking interested, and she was either a good faker or she really enjoyed how his mind could fob off even the most mundane of details.

After their pseudo argument a few days past, things had been tense. They rarely spoke at all now. And when they did, there was nervousness on her side. He was sorry to have hurt her, but he was rapidly coming to care about her so much that he wanted her to feel the same. He wanted her to want to share with him. He wanted her to open up, so he could open up, too. So, he could get closer to her.

He wanted to be close to her, and he hadn't wanted to be close to anyone in years.

Panting, sweating, he lay on his cot where he'd been sleeping and gathered his breath to him. The nightmares always fractured upon waking. They never stuck around to linger with more than feelings and ominous tendrils that tethered themselves to his shaky resolve.

The jingling of his phone drew his hand to the floor to clutch it, lifting it to check the message.

Safety secured. Cleared for duty 0800.

He turned his legs to the side as Jill's slumberous voice asked, "...you ok?"

He glanced at her cot in the darkness and grumbled, "Yeah. I'm good. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

She said nothing, likely already asleep and taking him at his word. He rose, his back aching a little with the movement. He was almost entirely healed now. The scar had formed, puffy and pink, but that, too, would fade with time.

He headed out of the cabin, the scent of sea and coming autumn ripe and robust on the tongue. The leaves rustled as he headed down the mountain to the shore. Some scattered as he walked, falling patterns of gold and green, orange and red - a litany of a bygone era, begging off to the end of summer and saying goodbye to sunny days and cloudless skies. The chill felt good on his clammy skin, reminding him he'd never been a fan of summer anyway.

The heat often left you with brain fog, cloying the mind like cobwebs in a dusty room.

He preferred the rich scent of fall and the promise of coming winter. Winter meant quiet, cold but not dead. No. Just...sleep. Hibernation. A time to contemplate and renew yourself and the world around you. What waited beneath the snow was simply slumbering, looking for the moment the spring would be sprung and the cycle of life continued.

Each step led him closer to the water, which rippled dark and deep in the cloudy night. A grumble from that sky told him rain was coming. But not yet. Not now.

He shed his jeans and slid into the water, and it closed around him like a chilly hug. Still warm enough from the heat of the day to hold a suggestion of summer but cool enough to remind you the nights would soon be too cold for ocean bathing. When his feet lost their rocks, Leon slipped under the foamy waves. They frothed up and around him as he sank, as deep as he could go, down, down, down where the water was black and still - undisturbed- and uncorrupted.

When his lungs signaled he'd gone too far, he surfaced, shooting toward the sky like a bullet. He erupted from the sea, a selkie shedding its skin, becoming a man again after the call of the waves had abated. He circled in the water, his hair streaming around his face, obscuring his eyes from the vast, weeping sky.

Soft rain peppered his face as he floated on his back, eyeing the moon, tucked into her clouds like a woman gathering her lovers to her bosom to hold. She winked at him, silver and flirty, promising pleasure and joy if he just kept looking. He'd been looking at women much the same way all his life. Always with a sense of wonder and delight at the beauty they so mysteriously offered, sometimes in glimpses, sometimes in passing, sometimes in coy flirtation.

On the shore, a voice called, "Tell me."

Surprised, Leon floated downward, bobbing in the water like a cork. Jill was cast in shadow, eclipsed by clouds and moonlight, wearing a tank top in white and matching panties. Pure, somehow, but provocative because of that simplicity that was woman. He watched her and shook his head.

She urged, "Please?"

He waited, feeling the urgency of that request. She always wanted him to talk. She rarely did so much herself, but she was trying now. He shook his head again: no. Jill shifted on the shore, her arms wrapped around herself, looking pensive.

They eyed each other like warriors waiting for the other to strike first.

Without a word, Jill came into the water. It closed around her as she moved. She floated toward him while Leon remained, bobbing, watching her. The water covered that white and turned it nearly translucent. He could see the impression of her nipples when they broke the surface.

She reached him after a few strokes of her lithe arms. Her dark hair streamed around her face as his did. Softly, she encouraged, "Now? Was it bad?"

He shook his head again: no.

A flash of annoyance on her face made his mouth quirk in a smile. Tone tense, Jill demanded, "Talk to me, damn you."

He didn't. He floated toward her. She didn't back away. His hands lifted and scooped the hair from her face. They lingered to thread through her damp locks, and his thumbs angled under her chin, pushing her face up to the moonlight and the soft rain.

He saw the flicker of panic in her eyes a moment before she echoed him. Her hands lifted, slipping through his shaggy hair, curling behind his skull to peel it back from his face. They twisted, anchoring there, thrusting a little bit of pain into his scalp that made his breath catch.

Her tone wasn't gentle now but commanding, "...talk to me."

He shook his head: no. But she caught him in mid-movement and cursed, "Bastard."

It made him grip her tighter, his thumbs digging just a little into the soft place beneath her jaw. She gasped, eyes flaring, breathing coming faster. He pulled her closer, his biceps bunching, her breasts brushing against his chest in that little soaked tank top. He inclined his head toward her, and she tugged gently, almost slowly.

Eyes open, his mouth slid against hers, lips brushing. When his tongue glided out to trace along the seam of those lips, she parted them, and it sank between to claim her. Hers slid out to join it, swirling in her mouth, seeking entrance to his. Wet, like the water, and undemanding, like the winter waiting for spring.

When the kiss broke, Jill gasped, a little madly, "...damnit."

Leon's mouth turned up as they locked and held eyes in the moonlight. She accused, "You son of a bitch - I don't want to want you."

He lowered his mouth to speak against hers, and it was so, so low - like a bear grumbling, "How's that workin out for ya?"

Lips brushing, Jill demanded, "...just don't stop talking to me. Ok? Keep talking."

A wild demand from a woman who'd once told him the sound of his voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Leon rebutted as her eyes fluttered closed, "Takes two, Jill. Two. That's how this works."

And she gushed desperately, "...deal."

They kissed again, mouths brushing and sealing. Each one sunk them deeper, deeper, deeper - like the water around them that was cold but enticing, offering solace and embrace even as it promised endless depths. He had no doubt she was the same - cool, dark, mysterious...inviting him in, deeper, deeper, deeper until he wasn't sure where he ended and she began.

He carried her from the water; Jill locked around him like a vice, holding on as he walked until he laid her back on the patch of warm grass in the grove beside the beach. The canopy of leaves and stars both twinkled and lured, offering lights and privacy, as if they needed it here - away from the world, isolated, and able to lose themselves in the other.

The cold cloth of her tank top slid wetly against his chest as he inclined over her, elevated with his hands beside her head in a pushup motion. Her hands slid down his sides, around his hips, down his ass to draw him between her legs. The soles of her feet slid against his calves, finding purchase while he kissed her, each plunge of tongue and pull of lips more intoxicating than the first, more tempting than the last.

The tank top slid over her head, tossed away into the starlight. The panties drawn down her legs as he freed her, questing his mouth against the inside of her thigh, along the line of her leg, amid the taste of her ankle. His mouth roved as he roamed back up her body, all supple slick hands and sucking mouth and teeth. He swirled his tongue in her belly button and over her hip, down the crease in her thigh, and across her taut ribcage. Full and heavy, her breasts cupped in his palms, spilling over the sides as he mounded them to his mouth to swallow their flavor and feast on her nipples. He buried his face into their wealth, rubbing his jaw and beard over her tender flesh, hearing the whimper of want from her desperate mouth.

Smooth, silky, slipping the skin of battle-hardened warriors to become something more here, sweeter, softer, needy, wild, and free. She tunneled her fingers into his hair to hold him against her breasts, watching his mouth savor and suckle, slickening her nipples until they glistened in the moonlight as if coated in magic. With her breasts so tenderly mounded together, his face slid against them, seeking hers, seeking her mouth. They shared a wet kiss over those ample peaks, his palms and fingers molding her to him, her hands cupping his ass to roll her hips toward the jut of his erection.

When the kiss broke, he lifted, and her right hand ventured over his hip to his groin, dipping against his pelvis to grip his ready dick in her velvety grasp. She milked him, digits delving, tracing, and taunting, along the shaft and the flared hood of him, against the weeping slit. He echoed her, fingers venturing through her folds to find her swollen, slick, and ready. He tested her anyway, dipping his middle and ring finger inside her, thumb swirling lazily against her clit. When her thighs trembled, and she gasped wildly into his waiting mouth, he eased his hand away, and she guided his girth into its place.

With little encouragement, he surged into the snug confines of her slick center. She thrust up to take him, hips and thighs pushing, eager sheath claiming. Hilt deep, he held himself there and lifted, looking at her beneath him. Her eyes were open, filled with languid need, locked on his in the light rain and flickering shadows. Two shades of blue by day, two shades of silver by night - both made somehow ethereal in the perfect storybook center of their moment on this island. It couldn't be real. It shouldn't be real. It was too romantic for that. It was too much like a novel written by a woman bereft of passion.

It shouldn't have been so utterly perfect.

And then Leon started moving, and Jill, Jill moved with him, rising, riding, drawing him down into her as he plunged -the rhythm like the ocean behind them, rushing in, retreating, and rising again to leave its mark on the shore. No quick bang; this was a facile, fluid, tender fuck. He gathered handfuls of her hair to hold her to him; she gripped his ass to force his body in as far as he could go until there was no space between them, no divide, no difference. Her neck craned back for his mouth, his elbows shifting in the grass to find purchase and go somehow deeper, tighter, further...more.

He'd been with more women than he liked to think. He'd flirt and bed them. He'd pleasure and please them. He'd leave in the morning with no regrets. He'd never, in all his time since before Raccoon City, been with one like this. He'd never been with one who held his eyes while they fucked, and never wanted to see one while he did.

Fuck - a stupid word for this. This wasn't fucking. He could call it whatever he wanted. He could attach a dirty word to it and try to cheapen it. But it wasn't fucking. It was more than that—much, much, much more.

And for the first time in his life, he wanted to know what that more was.

When they lay together, curled like two pieces of the same puzzle, he spoke against her ear, "We're in the clear. In the morning, we can go."

Jill clutched him closer, her face against his neck. "Then we go."

Ask me to stay, he thought, ask me to stay with you. Ask me - anything.

She didn't ask, but she didn't let go of him, either, and they fell asleep in the warm grass with no space at all between them.