trans_9 | And I'm breakin' on the balcony [Closed]

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And I'm breakin' on the balcony [Closed]

After Stacy's announcement that she was going to allow the crew members access to the memories of their home worlds being destroyed, Claire had been unsure if she wanted to go, or not. She hated not really knowing for sure what had happened, but part of her was also worried about what kind of consequences that knowledge might have. There was also the slim possibility that it was all fabricated, as well.

She was having a lot of trouble coming to a definite stance or conclusion on the whole thing.

So, she did what she usually did when she had a big heavy topic she couldn't sort out by herself. Stewed about it for a bit longer before going in search of her ~~husband~~ boyfriend.

There were probably a dozen places he could be, but she decided to start with his room. She paused when she got to his door, exhaling slowly to psych herself up, and raked a hand back over her hair, pushing her bangs back, while she lifted the other to knock on the door.

"Leon? Are you in there?"

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"Yeah," came his response from the other side of the door.

Yes, shock of all shocks, he was in. Though not really much of a surprise, the lighter workload caused him to keep semi-regular hours. He was almost behaving like a normal human being, albeit a normal human who still has 30+ hour days.

Old habits die hard.

The door opened, though Leon wasn't there on the other side to greet her. He was actually in the shower, cleaning up after a workout earlier, and trying to clear his mind in the process. Claire wasn't the only one with a lot to think about.

"I'll be out in a minute," he stated through the door. "Unless you care to join me?"

She was a little surprised not to be greeted by Leon when the door opened, and poked her head warily into the room before she heard him again and smirked a little.

"Tempting," she replied, stepping into the room and habitually looking around a little before making her way over to the bed and sitting down on the edge. "But I'll just wait." As nice as it'd be to get distracted for a while that wasn't really what she was here for.

Not that there was much in his room to look at. Just a few datapads lying around, and a few extra straps and holsters scattered about. Generally speaking, he didn't leave his weapons lying around in the open when he wasn't in the room to keep an eye on them personally.

Old habits die hard.

"Suit yourself," he called back to her.

A few minutes later, he emerged from the shower, wrapped in a towel. He stopped briefly to properly greet his girlfriend with a kiss, then headed over to the dresser to pull out some clothes. He had an inkling that whatever Claire was here for, it would probably require pants.

"So what's up?"

Claire really wished it didn't require pants. Still, she waited for him to be at least slightly dressed, politely averting her eyes. She could at least pretend she was ladylike, sometimes.

After a moment she sighed again, looking back over at him, settling into serious conversation mode.

"So what're you thinking about the idea of getting our memories of whatever happened to us back?"

Leon paused when she asked that question. Leave it to her to just dive right into a topic like that.

This would definitely require pants.

He didn't respond at first, remaining silent as he finished getting dressed. When he was done, he turned around and leaned against the dresser. He remained silent another minute or so longer, before finally giving her the only honest answer he could.

"I'm not sure."

She wasn't really the type of person to tiptoe around a subject she wanted to talk about. She wasn't that good at making small talk, and it was usually blatantly obvious when she attempted it. So typically, she just didn't bother.

When he answered her she blew out a breath, nodding her head.

"Glad we're on the same page, then."

Leon made a thoughtful noise, then moved to sit next to her on the bed.

"It's not that I don't want to know. I do, I just..." He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.

"I've had enough uninvited guests poking around my brain already." The Nightmare King. Saddler and las plagas. GLaDOS. Stacy. "Whatever's been taken from me can't be given back that easily. And whatever they show me, I don't know if I'll ever believe it to be the truth."

"That's about where I am, too," Claire replied, a little miserably. She glanced down at the floor for a beat, before leaning her head against his shoulder, sighing again.

"I hate not knowing, though. I can't even clearly remember what I was doing before I woke up on the ship, and that just.... it bothers me." She made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat, pressing her lips together briefly. "But like you said, there's no way of knowing whatever we see is the truth."

"I guess it all comes down to how much we trust this ship." Which, at the moment, was not all that much. And definitely not enough to risk his daughter.

And speaking of...

"Sherry wants her memories back," he told Claire.

Her head snapped back up from his shoulder at that, and she looked at him, horrified.

"No way." She squeezed her eyes closed, bringing a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose before shaking her head and looking up at Leon again. "She's been through too much, that is absolutely the last thing she needs right now."

"I know. Which is why I told her, in no uncertain terms, that there was no way in hell that was happening." He figured he had been right in the call on that one.

"She wasn't exactly thrilled by that."

"I'm not surprised, it's not like we say no a lot." Claire sighed, falling backwards on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. She folded her hands over her stomach, frowning deeply.

"I'll talk with her later and see if I can help her understand why we don't want that for her." She had a feeling with as short on words both Leon and Sherry were that a full understanding was probably not reached, beyond 'this is something you're not allowed to do.'

That's because Leon didn't think there needed to be more of an understanding beyond 'this is something you're not allowed to do.' So he just shrugged a bit at Claire's offer.

"Alright."

He continued thinking about this whole memory issue for a moment longer. He then turned his head slightly towards Claire and asked, his voice slightly quieter, "What if it's all true?"

He really didn't know if that would make things better or worse.

She was silent for a long moment, still frowning at the ceiling. There were a lot of different things running through her mind, and it took her a bit to figure out how to respond to that question.

"Then I guess we're pretty much stuck on this ship for good."

Leon made a noise at that. Exactly what that noise meant was unclear, but it was more on the displeased side of things.

"And lose all hope of ever going back."

That thought didn't really sit well with him.

"Maybe that's why its so easy think I'm being lied to. At least the then there's hope." That his family isn't dead. That he has a home to go back to. That things aren't as bleak as they seem. That they're up against something they can win against.

Claire's brow furrowed, and she tilted her head so she could look at Leon, before pulling herself up again, simultaneously scooting closer to him.

"There's always hope, Leon," she replied quietly, sliding her arms around his waist from behind and leaning her chin against his shoulder. "As long as we're alive, that's still something."

"True," he admitted, leaning his head against hers. He closed his eyes, taking a moment to quietly enjoy the comfort of having her there. It wasn't often that he'd allow himself such a moment, but Claire had ways of making him do things he wouldn't normally do.

"It means we can still do something." Even if he didn't know what that something was, yet, beyond 'keep holding on.'

She silently nodded her head a little, closing her eyes as well. There was a lot of uncertainty on the ship, but she was grateful for the few sure things she did have.

"We'll get through all this," she said after another moment of silence, leaning her head back against his. "And, you know. If I've got to be one of the last surviving people from earth... I'm really glad you're here too."

He smiled, and nudged his head against hers.

"Thanks."

He was grateful for her.

"We need to do this, you know. The memory thing. Even if it turns out to be a massive line of shit, it's the closest thing to answer we can get right now."

"I know." She was a little anxious about it, but that couldn't be helped. There was really no telling what they'd see, but it wasn't exactly in her nature to run away from the unknown, just because it might be ugly.

"At least chances are pretty good whatever it is won't make us crazy." They'd lived through zombie outbreaks. There probably weren't that many people who could claim relative mental stability after coming out of something like that.

He smirked a bit. "Don't you mean crazier?"

Leon never claimed to be sane. He could function in his role as an agent just fine, but as a person, he tended to stumble a lot. There were a lot of things he never really dealt with properly, and possibly never could. Not to mention that his definition of what was 'weird' had been warped greatly.

Claire rolled her eyes to the ceiling, smiling a little and squeezing her arms a little tighter around Leon briefly, patting him lightly on the chest.

"Right. Because we're already pretty nuts."

"Our lives certainly are." Zombies, biohazards, corporate terrorism, and government conspiracies. And now they live on a ship made of meat.

"Though, this--" he gestured back and forth between them "--you? And Sherry? Worth all of it."

She leaned to the side a little, lifting her chin up so she could look at him better. Smiling softly, she shook her head.

"You're corny as hell, sometimes." She let out a quiet laugh, leaning in to kiss his cheek. "But I couldn't agree more." She liked to think that they would've eventually sorted out their feelings for one-another, if they'd never been brought to this place, but she didn't know for sure. And they certainly wouldn't have had Sherry.

He'd rather have a crazy life with them, than have any kind of a life without them.

"It's part of my charm," he informed her helpfully as he turned to look at her, and gave her a kiss. "Besides, I need something to set me apart from every other action hero out there."

"I think by looks alone you stand apart from most other action heroes," Claire smirked, reaching out to tug on his hair gently. "The corniness just kind of adds to the whole effect."

He laughed a bit, his head tilting with the tug.

...And after a brief moment of restraint, he reached up to fix his hair.

"It's not like I could keep up with the snark anyway." He shrugged a bit. That just wasn't the kind of guy he was. "That was always your department."

She couldn't help her smirk widening as he fixed his hair, and she outright laughed at the snark comment.

"It takes years to get as good with snark as I am." She shifted around a little, leaning her arm against his shoulder. "But you do okay holding your own when you need to." And it was pretty much a valuable skill to have when in contact with one Claire Redfield.

It was a survival trait, and had he not developed it, she probably would've been able to talk circles around him.

"Only when I'm with you," he told her, and reached to put an arm around her. "You always did have a way of bringing out the best in me."

Claire adjusted to him putting his arm around her, leaning her head against his shoulder again.

"I'm glad," she replied, her smile softening. "Can't have you being Mr. Serious Business all the time."

"It's kind of a job requirement, though," he told her. Though he could just as easily argue that it was a survival mechanism he adapted.

"Yeah, when you're working." She smirked, reaching up to pat his face with her hand. "You know you can't pull that crap with me." He'd never been able to keep a totally straight face around her, even before they'd been dating.

He rolled his eyes some at the patting. "That's because being with you is never work." He tilted his head a bit. "Except when there are zombies." Technically speaking, since showing up at both Raccoon City and Harvardville were job related.

"Though, even then, it's not like I ever thought of you as just another part of the assignment." Well, he tried to think of her like that in Raccoon City. He wanted to consider just some civilian that he had to keep safe. But she saved him as much as he saved her, and by the end of that night, she was well on her way to becoming the best friend he ever had, and a whole lot more.

"Even back in Raccoon when you kept trying to tell me what to do?" Claire smirked, briefly trying to mask it but ultimately failing. She'd always thought he'd done pretty well given the situation, in retrospect. At the time she'd appreciated having someone else in the mess with her, but at the same time she'd been endlessly irritated with the attempts at professionalism.

It was just about hard-wired into her system. If you were authority and attempting to assert yourself, she would rebel.

"Okay, mmmmmaybe not those first few hours," he admitted, with a somewhat sheepish grin. "It took me some time to warm up to you." Those attempts at professionalism had been keeping him from freaking out. It reminded him of what was important, and kept him focused on the task at hand. He was grateful for her for that, and for her companionship, but the fact that she wouldn't listen to him, though, irritated him to no end at the time.

"Yeah, ditto." She smirked again, shifting so she was leaning a little heavier against him. "I could tell you were green because I grew up around cops, and you just bugged me for a while." She shook her head, exhaling in a quiet laugh.

"And now you're probably closer to me than anybody."

He knew that 'probably' was there in deference to Chris, so he didn't take offense.

"I knew what I was doing, at least in terms of being a cop." So much so that he was going to be part of the team that would replace the recently disbanded STARS unit. "The whole zombie outbreak on the first day kinda threw me off my game. And having this mouthy, hardheaded teenage girl to deal with didn't exactly help matters, either," he teased.

"When I first met you, I never would've thought that you'd be everything I never knew I needed."

Though, in retrospect, he should've seen from the start that they'd end up so close. Practically from the start, the two had a back and forth kind of banter that was so natural, one would think they had known each other forever.

There was something really nice about hearing him say that. Claire had never really been one of those people who was spectacular at spelling out their feelings with words, but things had almost always seemed easier with Leon. This hadn't exactly been the conversation she'd expected when she first came into the room, but conversations with her and Leon hardly ever went just as planned.

She quietly smiled for a moment, before lifting her head up to lean in and kiss him.

"I love you." As hard as it was to admit to her feelings sometimes, other times it just felt like the right time.

As much as Leon tended to bury his feelings, to the point where some observers would think that he didn't even have any, he never could do that around her. So he didn't bother trying to hide the soft smile that spread across his lips when she said that.

And in case Claire couldn't tell from the way that he had kissed her in return, he told her, "I love you too."

"Oh, good. Because this would be really awkward right now if you didn't." She couldn't help but joke a little, grinning. She reached up to brush her hand over his jaw, leaning in to kiss him again, and keeping her face close when she broke away.

"Seriously, though. Thank you."

Considering how he tightened his arms around her, odds were that he wasn't going to let her put any distance between them anytime soon anyway.

When she thanked him, though, his eyebrows furrowed a bit curiously, though that smile never faded. He reached up and brushed some of her hair out of her face.

"You don't have to thank me for anything." And if she wanted to argue that point, she'd have to wait until he stopped kissing her again. Which might take a minute or two.

Claire was actually okay with that. She knew full well she could be difficult to be around sometimes, and she appreciated that he stuck around. She wasn't going to force him to accept her thanks, though. Especially not when there was kissing to distract her.

After a moment she shifted herself closer and into his lap. As far as she was concerned all the serious talk of the night was over and done with.

Considering how closed off he could be and how much he worked, he appreciated that she stuck around. If anything, he felt like he should be thanking her. But that discussion could be had at another time. He wasn't about to stop this.

For now, he was quite willing to stop worrying about reclaiming old memories, and focused on making some new ones with Claire.

Edited 2010-06-09 07:44 (UTC)

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And I'm breakin' on the balcony [Closed]

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