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For a giant abandoned facility, there’s an abysmally low amount of hiding spots.
No blind corners. No secret doors. No half-blown-out crates to crouch in.
It’s that lack that finds Claire and Leon in a rusted-over broom closet, paint flaking off the walls and landing on their shoulders.
There’s just enough room for them to sit. Claire has her back against one wall, Leon the opposite, and their knees brush whenever they breathe. Electricity sparks between them like a flint. Low. Hot. Dangerous.
Leon shoves the instinct as far away as he can, clearing his throat and tilting his head back against the wall, eyes closed.
“Why’d we let her convince us to do this again?” He murmurs, trying not to be heard beyond the metal door.
“Because it’s her.” Claire answers plainly. The butt of her gun digs into her back but the scrape of it along the wall when she adjusts makes her freeze. Blowing out a breath, she settles back to how she was, blinking at Leon when he returns his gaze to hers.
“You think she’ll find us in time?”
“Only if you keep talking so loud.”
He rolls his eyes but he hears the teasing buried underneath the edge of exhaustion. He can’t blame her—twenty-eight hours spent in the woods, a mansion, another underground lab. Anyone would want a meal and a shower. A cigarette. A drink.
Instead, they gave Sherry fifteen more minutes in the pipes, every breath echoing against creaking metal, every footstep anticipating the floor to break underneath them.
“Please?” Is all she said. Didn’t say what, didn’t say how.
“She’s 28,” he exhales.
“You’re 37. Your point?”
“I still see a 12-year-old when I look at her.”
That garners a real smile from Claire. A laugh huffs out of her chest, ponytail tangling where her hair rubs against the wall.
“Me, too,” she whispers. “I think we always will.”
Something familiar wedges itself in her throat. Too small to cough up. Too big to swallow. She taps along the seam of her jeans, and he watches the waves roll off her, waiting.
She still has a hard time looking at him when she says it.
He’s never once asked her to, even when anger was hot on his skin.
“I hate that things turned out this way.”
The words land softly, out of place in such a crumbling, desolate place, but they always manage to knock the wind out of him.
Not an apology.
The truth.
“I know,” he says, unsure if it’s comfort or absolution or just acknowledgement. A chill runs through him, heavy on his nerves. “Does it feel like everything we’re doing is making up for lost time?”
Claire finds the shiny DSO badge clipped onto his pocket. The edges of her vision turn TerraSave yellow.
Her hair tickles where it lands when she tries to blow it out of her face.
“Kids raising kids.” She murmurs before she’s even realized she had the thought. His eyes narrow.
They’ve tried to have this conversation before. She’s never mentioned that.
“Huh?”
Swallowing, she meets his eyes and holds his gaze, a wall of certainty behind all the hairline fractures he can see. She speaks easily, like she’s turned this thought over in her mind more than once.
She has.
“We were kids in ‘98, too. You were barely legal to drink, I wasn’t at all. Walking out of there… the motel room. Kids raising kids—that’s what that day was.”
“So?” He feels his stomach tighten like it does before hell breaks loose, but Claire’s voice stays even, like she’s reading a list of facts from a report.
“So I don’t even know if we can make up for lost time. If we’re—if we’re supposed to.”
Her features soften, and the list gives way to emotion.
“Whose fault it is that there’s even lost time to make up for.”
It hits him like a punch.
The gray area.
It’s the first time since she left to find Chris that he’s seen her in it. For so long now, Claire’s existed in the black or the white; it’s that exact thing that’s strained their relationship almost to its breaking point.
The thought fizzles when a different realization settles on him, sticky and uncomfortable against his sternum.
“You blame yourself for what happened?”
“I know you do.” She counters, walls slamming upwards, but he knows the screws are loose, and he trusts himself to be the one person to catch them when they fall. He doesn’t take the bait, pushing onward firmly but with concern.
“That’s not what I asked, Claire. You left to find Chris. They found me and Sherry. Do you blame yourself for that?”
Her eyes fall to the stains of mud and guts on her jeans, tracing them like she’ll find an answer there. When the words finally sink in completely, her voice goes small.
“I don’t blame myself for going to find Chris, no.”
Leon nods, no malice or judgement.
One step at a time, then.
“And for what happened to me and Sherry?”
For so long, he’s taken the brunt of this grief. Let the government push and pull him until the leash choked. It’s strange to think about anyone else understanding that, even her.
It’s harder to think about her staring at her reflection like he’s stared at his, and why neither of them have thought of this before.
“Yeah.” She finally admits, barely audible but like a yell to him. “I—I mostly just try not to think about it. It’s usually easy, considering.”
Her admission is like a knife in his throat. Memories wash over him like a flood: days and nights and buzzing fluorescent lights that gave him a migraine. Seeing her again when she got back. That stupid chip, and everything he couldn’t say to her then.
“I don’t,” he exhales, and the words come out faster and looser than he ever could’ve imagined, like a hand sliding across a vanity.
Claire stares, the words shocking her system.
Leon blinks at her, and his hands tangle and then untangle on his knees as the words settle.
His eyebrows raise just enough to let her know that that’s his piece—there’s more, if she wants to hear it, but there’s no going back on his truth now.
“Why not?” She asks, almost softer than he’s ever heard her.
His shoulders are heavy when he shrugs, like the weight that’s been there for years has adjusted somehow and he has to get used to it again. A thin stream of light cuts through the slat in the door, dust floating all around them, probably getting into their lungs, but he can only focus on how it catches her eyes.
He dreams about those eyes.
Determined as they were in that gas station.
More pain buried underneath the surface now.
“I tried,” he confesses, and hears her sharp intake of breath, how her pupils widen and she fights to get them back underneath her control. His only mercy for her is continuing, so he doesn’t let that linger. “After I was done training. When you first got back. You… you weren’t okay, and I saw that, but you were free. And you had Chris. And then. The chip.” He holds his hands up to stop her before she starts. “You know why, now, but you didn’t then. And all part of me could think is that you would’ve known if you were there—if you’d stayed. Or that maybe neither of us would’ve been in that situation at all.”
Claire opens and closes her mouth, searching for words but only finding betrayal between her teeth, heavy on her tongue.
They both know everything she could say.
They’ve both chopped up their thoughts, trying to make them fit a reality that just didn’t exist.
Maybe it could’ve. Maybe it never would’ve, no matter who went where.
Somewhere down the hall, there’s a steady trickle of water from a pipe that must’ve shifted, or broken.
Maybe that’s just the nature of release.
“But it never stuck,” Leon concludes, quiet, all the air rushing out of both of them. A sharp laugh escapes her before she swallows it down so it can’t echo, and she shakes her head.
“I don’t understand.”
Glancing at the door and then his watch, taking a moment for the silence to swell—no footsteps down the hallway yet—he looks back at her with a lopsided smile.
“It’s like you said, we were kids.”
“But you said you blame yourself—”
“So did you.”
The words land softer this time, more certain. Claire’s not sure she’s caught up and she searches his eyes for the last piece to slot into their puzzle. He gazes back at her, chest rising and falling evenly, and speaks after another moment, his pinky brushing hers.
“It’s been a while since I asked you. Do you blame me?”
“No,” she answers immediately, barely keeping back a scoff. “Not—never for that.”
The walls don’t press. The air doesn’t burn. It all comes together quietly.
The truth blooms wide in her stomach, and she finds herself reaching out to rest her hand on top of his before she can stop, exhaling slow.
“Sometimes when I see you,” she starts, her voice low, “I still see the rookie. The kid that was smiling at me through the fence while we were getting poured on.”
His hand flips so they’re palm-to-palm. Calloused skin, but gentle fingers.
“Sometimes when I’m with you, I feel like him again. And I look at you and you’re 19.”
Tears shine on Claire’s lashline, her lips pink where she presses them together, and she nods.
He nods back, giving her hand a squeeze and then pulling back softly. Space for each of them to sit in on their own.
Words they both know the other wouldn’t take back, even if they could.
Steady breathing fills the air. Their eyes meet every few moments, hearts beating louder and then quieting again when they retreat back into their thoughts.
Bullets.
Keys.
Mouths.
Knowing something is there but not knowing what it is yet, just that its presence means something already.
Claire shifts first. Her boot slides against the uneven ground, neck rolling out once to stretch the knot beginning to root at the top of her shoulder.
“How much time does she have left?” She whispers, a lilt in her voice he can’t help but follow. His watch bears new scratches, but he makes out the time easily enough.
“Three minutes. Think she’ll find us?”
Nodding, she looks at the door handle a few inches above them, pictures it opening the door to a different closet. An apartment, maybe, or Chris’s house. Somewhere after.
Footfalls reach them not a minute later, and they share an easy smile as the noise grows gradually louder. She blinks once, long, and then memorizes his face as she feels him doing the same.
“I think we always will.”