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He’d known, from the moment Hunnigan pulled him into her office and spoke in a hushed tone, that this was bad.
Worse.
He once believed there was nothing Claire couldn’t handle, but he’d come to understand the truth in time.
There was nothing she wouldn’t handle.
Not if someone needed her to.
But all that weight still built up on her shoulders, and even she wasn’t made of steel.
Snow Fall, Maryland, once a small town of 2500, gone in the blink of an eye.
Claire, who got there on a Tuesday afternoon.
Before she should have, according to his bosses.
Intentionally, if he knew her.
Trying to save whoever she could from the wreckage before it even stopped falling.
An infection that breached the empty government promises playing over a crackling PA, and the plastic, bright yellow “Quarantine—Safe Zone” tape across the Snow Fall Elementary doors.
Hunnigan said the other DSO agents can’t say with certainty what happened.
Someone had already handled it by the time we got there, their report said.
Filed four days ago.
Three more had passed since he left the DSO headquarters like a bat out of hell, the look he gave Hunnigan enough to keep his phone from ringing, and slammed into the stagnant, whiskey-soaked air of Claire’s apartment.
Three days of darkness.
Three days of stillness.
Three days of silence.
He tried making demands first. Grief wrapped in anger that slammed down like a water bottle onto a nightstand.
Then pleading. Soft voice, soft hands, soft eyes. Something that felt like his 21-year-old self was at the reins, promising optimism he couldn't guarantee. A tattered jacket that still fit, if only barely.
Finally, faking normalcy. Breakfast, daytime TV, dinner, sliding into her sheets with the neck of his t-shirt wet from his shower.
She barely blinked at the effort.
Food went uneaten. Hair went unwashed. Time drug on mercilessly.
Apathy held Claire in its grip as if it owned her. Its fingers dug into her windpipe, twisted her muscles into knots, replaced sharp, fiery thoughts with wet cotton.
It was like watching the sun fall out of the sky.
Leon entered the room carefully, afraid of any harshness that would rattle her heart around anymore than it already had been. He looked at the array on her nightstand lit up by her bedside lamp, acutely aware of the sunlight not ten feet away, kept at bay by blinds that seemed like they’d forgotten how to open.
Sighing softly, he wiped his palms on his thighs to clear his periphery, and sat on the edge of the bed so his knee brushed against her curled-up back. He ran his hand over her hair, not through, and he listened to her shaky, muffled exhales for a moment before he trusted his own voice.
“Claire,” his voice was firm, but kind. “I need you to look at me.”
He kept his hand steady even as his stomach jumped to his throat, and he almost let out a strangled gasp when she actually did.
Her body moved slow, surrounded by a lethargy that it couldn’t decide if it wanted to leave and, once it had, was almost too heavy to crawl out from underneath. Her bones creaked in protest, the mattress shifting inch-by-inch underneath her, until her eyes found his face.
Bluer than he’d ever seen them, surrounded by the redness of her skin from days-old sobbing that kept sneaking back into her. An entirely new shade.
It splattered onto his heart like paint, dripping down his ribs and staining immediately. A color he loved like breathing, and a color he never wanted to see again.
“Hey,” escaped him before he could think about it. Small, breathy, with a lopsided smile that few people had ever seen. The weight of relief lifted him like a wave, though it was short-lived the longer he looked at her.
Face swollen, dried blood crusting over her lips, eyes like a fractured mirror.
He fought against the instincts telling him to look away because she wouldn’t want anyone to see her like this; because he didn’t want to see her like this.
Someone had to bear witness to this pain.
To her.
She deserved at least that much.
Air stilled around them like the stars that hung in the sky, heavy and expectant. His gaze lingered for one moment longer, through the rise and fall of her chest, the brush of her lashes against her cheekbones.
The thought that guided him clicked into place like a lock over his chest.
What would Chris do?
Leon didn’t know if he answered it correctly, but a history of battlefield conversations and whispers in smoky bars echoed in his mind to guide him. Chris’s wish for Claire, for her world, always.
Trust.
Safety.
Someone to catch her when she fell, or jumped, or, more and more often, was pushed.
The words lit him up like the last ember in a charcoal fire. Something he didn’t realize still lived in him until it was given voice, and it hadn’t gone quiet since.
He cleared his throat gently, and skipped the preamble.
“I’m going to wash your face,” he started, eyes cutting to the lavender bowl full of warm water. “Then we’ll get your teeth brushed. That’s it.”
Claire’s gaze traced the corners of her room, and then her eyes fell shut.
Not an okay. Not a nod. An answer all the same.
Without allowing himself another moment to think, he reached forward and grabbed the washcloth folded next to the bowl. It was old, thinned out in some spots, but worn soft with time. Hopefully something familiar.
He soaked it into the water and listened to the splash as he rang the excess out. Shifting a hair's width closer, he leaned over her, but didn’t lean in, just enough of the yellow table light sneaking around the shape of his body for him to see what he was doing.
Like one would something precious, something priceless and irreplaceable, he tried to wash her clean of a weight she should have never had to carry.
Feather-light strokes across her forehead and down her cheeks. Ghosting over the bridge of her nose. His thumb caught the divot below her mouth, and then followed its line upwards until only the pink of her lips remained.
A breathy moan escaped her when a drop rolled from the corner of the washcloth over the delicate, bruised skin of her undereye. Colder there than it must’ve felt on the rest of her face, Leon realized, and he dipped the cloth back into the bowl to get it warm again and then left gentle dots from her inner corners to her temples.
She was a statue, and he was determined to memorize every curve, every shape, every freckle and dimple and scar. The way the light caught the deep auburn of her eyebrows, and settled into the negative space beneath her jawline as he wiped one side and held the other steady.
He’d only called her Angel once, just after Sherry gave the red leather jacket back with the promise that the angel on the back would protect her like Claire had protected Sherry. Grief flashed over her face louder than night when he said it, and he pulled her in for one last hug before they both let her go.
She looked like that again now.
Promises she couldn’t help but keep, even when they hurt her.
Grief sewn into her features.
An angel.
He said nothing.
Setting down the wet cloth in favor of another, even softer, dry one, the white stood against her skin like something holy.
“Almost done,” he whispered, desperate to cure the clanging in his chest before she opened her eyes again.
He pressed the dry towel against her cheek and let his whole palm cradle her, thumb at her nose, her earlobe velvet against his ring finger.
Her eyes twitched but otherwise stayed shut.
It was her hand, wrapping quietly around his wrist and anchoring him there, that stole his breath. He flinched at the chill of her touch, and then his weight fell into it like it belonged there.
His breath barely scratched along his throat, and he refused to shift his hand on her jaw at all as he continued his ministrations to dry her face. What began as method morphed like mud into clay sculpture: thick, malleable, undeniable. Hands on skin and pulses underneath fingertips.
Fabric that caught Claire’s freckles and left behind something that was a little easier to live in.
“Okay,” Leon said, smiling again when blue met blue, less like glass than it was ten minutes ago. Her fingers slid down his arm before finding the top of the comforter, and he turned to the table as he heard her freeing the other.
He looked back at her when the bed began to shift, and immediately his hands found her back and shoulder as she sat up for the first time in days.
“You’re okay,” he said softly, any fear of being overbearing having died the moment he rooted through her bathroom cabinets. His thumb brushed over her back as her body adjusted under its own weight, and left her like a firework leaves the sky once she leaned back against the headboard. Her shoulders fell, chest heavy on the exhale, and he could only gaze at her for a second before the weight of words unsaid pressed in on him.
The cold metal handle of her toothbrush grounded him as he squeezed on a tiny ball of toothpaste and handed the whole thing over. Knee popping as he unfolded his legs, the floor met his feet and he busied himself with clean-up, the vibration of the brush ebbing and flowing as he walked to and from the bathroom, a fresh, shallow bowl of water in hand.
She coughed when the brush hit her tongue at an awkward angle and he jumped for a tissue to keep any foam from dripping onto her shirt. Her narrowed eyes found him and he couldn’t hide how loud his heart beat, just pressed the pads of his fingers lightly into her chin while the air grew slightly thicker with knowing.
Her hand pushed past his to hold the tissue as the toothbrush buzzed a few times in quick succession to signal it was through and he took it from her, swirling the bristles in the bowl a few times, and then giving it to her to spit into. A shiver ran through her as she sat back up and opened her eyes, landing immediately on the cup he was already handing her.
He’d never stopped learning how to read her.
He found the water bottle he’d set down days ago and cracked it open the moment her eyes cut towards it, the plastic crinkling in her grip as the empty cup thudded against the nightstand.
Something warm yet slippery slid around his chest when he looked at her, drinking like he’d wished she would for days.
She finished with a sigh, a deeper breath than he’d seen her take in a long time, and he grinned small but stayed quiet.
Her body adjusted around itself for the second time, and something like a spark flashed in her eyes before exhaustion overtook it. The thing slid around again.
Not true relief—the world still too heavy for that. And not pride—both of them old enough to see it more as an enemy than a friend.
Ease, maybe.
Just for that very moment.
Gentle.
Possibly too precarious for the world they live in.
But enough to know the sun would rise, and one day, probably soon, she’d be strong enough to open the blinds again. To trust. To jump.
And to run a certainty through him like a live wire that he’d keep himself strong enough to fill.
To witness.
To catch.
All that she deserves.