The court had recessed for lunch, but Leon wasn't very hungry. As a matter of fact, he was feeling a little ill. Listening to various members of Umbrella's upper echelon sit on the stand and try to justify all the bizarre and sick things their company had done over the years just plain took the hunger growl right out of Leon's gut.

Sitting outside the courthouse in DC, he found himself wondering where all the reporters were—then he remembered that the government had been keeping the news of the trial fairly hush-hush, knowing that a media storm of unparalleled proportions would result if the government made public the trial dates. The media would be allowed in and around after all the serious work was done.

Leon thought the whole thing was rather serious, but even the government had to make concessions to the media at times. It seemed likely the media would be allowed in for things such as the sentencing and verdicts, not the actual trial proceedings themselves. He looked out at the mass of steps in front of him, the traffic passing by below, and tried to imagine it crowded with hordes of people.

He sighed. Damnit, he had actually been hungry that morning, too.

"Hey." A slightly accent-tinged voice from behind him and the clacking of heels on the stone steps signaled Claire Redfield's approach. "You took off fast. I didn't even think I was going to get to say hello to you before you split for wherever."

"I had to get out of there before I went Hulk," Leon said, resting his elbows on his knees. The hot sun beat down on top of his head, permeated through his suit. "It'll be a miracle if we can make it all the way through this trial without someone standing up and shouting death threats."

Looking over and down, Claire's dress-shoed feet came into view on the step next to him. Leon looked up at her, having little choice but to let his eyes follow the lines of her body, shielding his eyes from the sun. It was the first time he'd ever seen her any fashion of dressed up; he had to admit, she cleaned up well. She looked right at home with the crowds of DC suits; she looked like someone's cute young intern or campaign volunteer. She also looked somewhat like a World War II-era secretary, not that there was anything wrong with that. Classy. Leon liked it.

"You're tellin' me," she said with a sigh, her voice strained. "Chris and I took turns holding each other back." Folding her arms over her chest she stared out at the traffic, shifting her weight and jutting a hip slightly. The black pencil skirt followed the lines of her body nicely. "The collective Redfield mood is pretty shitty right about now. Not only are we itching to punch some Umbrella face, we're being forced to dress up like we haven't since Dad died."

Leon smiled at little, even if it was kind of grim. He definitely understood the desire to grab the Umbrella officials and make them feel just a little of all the shit he'd had to go through. Maybe shoot one of them a couple of times, just for effect—how do you like that, you fucking bastard, now get up and run and keep moving and trying to stay motherfucking alive because that's what I had to do! "You get used to a suit, after a while," Leon said, despite the anger-laden fantasies running through his head. "I did. Chris should be kind of used to it, right? I mean, Air Force and all."

Claire snickered. "Recall that Chris got his ass booted out of the Air Force."

"Oh. Yeah." Leon patted the step next to him, ignoring the way the hot stone burned his hand slightly. "Have a seat, lady."

Claire smiled down at him, a little bitterly. "Can't," she said, and then added at his confused look: "Skirt and all. I wouldn't be able to get back up without makin' some kinda public spectacle of myself."

Leon nodded. "I see." This was the first time they'd seen each other in about two months; Claire had most recently been living in Richmond, Virginia, but had gone back to her home state of Alabama with Chris to "take care of things"—Leon figured it entailed visiting family and friends who had probably thought them dead. Really, he wanted to stand up and hug her, but he knew her well enough to sense her moods—Claire was not in a Hugging Mood. She was irritated.

And funnily enough, a mere two months in Alabama had brought back a little of the accent she'd had when he'd first met her, the accent that still clung thick to her brother's voice.

"So," Leon began after the silence, "you guys go back down to Alabama to see your people? Have a good time?" It struck Leon that he didn't know much of Claire's family history, other than her and Chris and what she'd mentioned moments ago about her father being dead. "Mom and stuff?"

She favoured him with that same little bitter smile. "Don't have a mom." Her voice was firm, snappish. There was a moment of awkward silence, before her face softened a little and she sighed. "Sorry."

Leon was attempting to figure out how to extricate his foot from his mouth in the pause that followed her apology. "No, it's okay. I probably shouldn't…uh, be asking, really."

"No, really. It's okay. You're just being polite—there was no reason for me to get pissed at you." Apparently Claire had decided to chance making a public spectacle of herself and very carefully lowered herself to the step next to him, wrapping her skirt tightly around her thighs and stretching her legs out, crossing them at the ankles. "I do have a mom, somewhere—she took off right after I was born. No Dear John letter, nothing. Just a missing suitcase and a few other things gone. I was three months old."

"Shit." It seemed to be the best thing Leon could think of at the time—compared to Claire's family life, his was downright pleasant and normal. His parents were two hard-working Irish immigrants who'd settled in Detroit and set up shop, bringing with them their first child and were quick to have more. His father had been a cop in Belfast, but had opened an upholstering shop in America, where Leon and everyone else in his family had worked growing up. With the exception of his only older sister dying in a car accident when he was eighteen, Leon's family life had been fairly smooth. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have asked if I'd have known."

"If you'd've known. Which you didn't, so quit apologizing." Cracking her knuckles, Claire looked up at the sun squintingly, as if silently asking it why, exactly, it had to be beating down on them so directly. "You'd figure I wouldn't really care. I mean, I never knew the lady, so what's it matter? Chris is the one who should really have a problem with it—he was six when it happened. I mean, she was really his mom."

"Well, but still." Leon shrugged and took the opportunity to remove his suit coat; he was starting to bake inside of it. "Even if you never knew her, it's still rough. I think you're entitled to still be a little touchy about it."

Claire took a cue from Leon and removed the grey cardigan sweater she'd been wearing over a plain, short-sleeved black shirt. "I'm not, usually, and that's the funny thing. I think I'm really irritated in general, about everything." She moved to rub one of her eyes and then seemed to remember that she was wearing makeup, and made a noise of irritation as she let her hand drop. "I don't want to see these people stand trial. I want to kill them."

Oh, he could definitely understand that. "I know," he replied quietly. "Me too."

"I've never hated anything or anyone so much in my life," Claire said, and gave a short bark of a laugh. "It makes me feel sick, you know? I'm supposed to be a civilized human being, right? Going back to college and all that? It doesn't feel right to me that I want to—" Trailing off, she made some sort of vague choking motion with her hands. "—I don't want to just kill them, Leon, I want to destroy them. I want to make it long and slow and painful and I want them to look at me and know that I'm doing it."

There was a moment of silence.

"Christ, it's sick. I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to think about things like that—it scares me that I do," Claire went on, looking over at Leon. "These people took something from me that I ain't never gonna get back."

More silence. "Your humanity," Leon supplemented, seeing Claire's nod. He knew. He felt the same way. There'd been a point in his life when he would have called a person a sociopath for having the kind of thoughts that he did, sometimes. It was a lot harder to deal with it when you were the one having the murderous thoughts. There was a lesson to be learned there, one that Leon had been confronted with repeatedly since Raccoon City—things are not always so black and white.

But he didn't necessarily feel good about the grey area, either.

"Are we just as bad as them, now?" Claire asked, looking back over at him. "I mean, are we monsters now, too?" Her still-so-young, slightly freckled face was etched with worry that belonged on a face much older. "Before I would never have been able to do...I mean…shit, Leon, I've killed people. Lots of them, in Paris. I would do it again, if I absolutely had to. Why are they on trial in there, and not me? At what point did I become just as bad as them?"

Meeting her eyes and shaking his head, Leon's face was grave. "No. You're not as bad as them. Never as bad as them. Those people in Paris would have killed you no sooner than they would've looked at you. God only knows what kind of weird shit would have happened to you down there at Rockfort. And the distinction here is this," Leon said, holding up a finger for emphasis. "They would have kept doing it. They'd been doing shit like that for years, Claire. Who knows how many people Umbrella's been responsible for the deaths of? They probably don't even know—and the difference between you and them is that you're sitting here right now, beating yourself up over what you've had to do—and they're sitting in there, trying to convince everyone that they haven't done anything wrong."

They looked at each other for a moment, wordless.

"You've got a conscience," he said, his voice softer than it had been before. "And that's why this is hard for you. Those people in there—" Leon jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back at the giant edifice of a courthouse, "—really, honestly believe that they've done nothing wrong."

Tearing her eyes away from his, Claire looked down at the cardigan in her lap. Her uneven fingernails picked lightly at one of the buttons, slowly but surely unraveling the thread that held it on. "Yeah, I know. I know all that. I've told myself that a million times. But that…it doesn't make it any easier. I still feel screwed up inside."

Nodding, Leon ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah. Listen to me sit here and sound like I've got my shit all figured out—I feel the same way. I know that's the truth, but I still can't help but feel like I'm just enabling myself, somehow."

"Uh-huh." Claire finally succeeded in picking the button off her sweater and despite having done it deliberately, swore a little under her breath before flicking it down the steps. "And in answer to your way, way earlier question: yeah, Alabama was nice. Real nice." She smiled over at him a little. "It was actually kind of…well, I guess funny to show up on my old friends' doorsteps and be all 'Surprise! Guess who's not dead!'" She was laughing slightly, spreading her hands out as if she'd just jumped out of a cake. "I mean, it was funny after all the crying and hugging and stuff."

Leon was laughing a little then, too. "You wanna hear some real shit? After I got into cahoots with the Feds, while you were in Europe, I finally got to go home and see my family and stuff back in Detroit." After Raccoon City, Leon and Claire had taken Sherry and lived a life on the run, existing nowhere but within their own little bubble. For all intents and purposes, Leon Scott Kennedy and Claire Babbie Redfield had been dead. "Anyways, it went pretty much the same way I'm sure your homecoming went, but my family had really thought I was dead. And why shouldn't they? I mean, Raccoon City was completely destroyed, and when they didn't hear from me after it, they figured the worst."

"Yeah?" Claire prompted, looking over at him.

"I have a headstone," Leon said almost proudly, cocking an eyebrow at her. "Beat that, lady. I have a damn hole in the ground in a cemetery with nothing in it and a tombstone sitting on top of it."

Chuckling, Claire shook her head slowly. "I hope y'all took some pictures around it and stuff. That's got to be one of the more surreal moments in a person's life." She cocked an eyebrow right back at him. "So, what's it say? 'Here kind of lies Leon Scott Kennedy—yeah, we expected more too, but what're you gonna do'?"

Knocking Claire on the shoulder gently, Leon allowed himself a grin. "Nah. It says the usual about being a good son and sorely missed, and how I can keep my sister company." He noticed Claire's questioning, semi-confused look, and shrugged a little. "My only sister—older—Malloreigh died in a car wreck when I was eighteen. Her plot's right next to mine."

Claire's face contorted briefly, but meaningfully. "Ah, Jesus. I'm sorry."

Leon smiled at her again and shrugged. "'S'okay. You weren't the one driving the car." Running a hand up through the back of his hair, he felt the slightest beginnings of sweat forming on his scalp. "That's why I decided to be a cop, y'know. Mal and her friend were coming back from some field hockey event thing at the community college and some guy who'd stolen a car and decided to smoke some crack before he did it t-boned them in an intersection. I mean…" He rubbed at his chin slightly. "Mal wasn't wearing her seat belt, and neither was Katie, but still."

"Her friend die too?" Claire asked after a moment, quietly curious.

"Yeah. She died in surgery—Mal was dead when they got there."

A gigantic sigh worked its way out of Claire. "Must've been rough. I…I don't know what I'd do if anything ever happened to Chris. Especially something like that. I guess I'm kinda of the opinion that we've made it through this much shit already—for something like that to ever happen would just seem unfair." Her eyes grew a little distant as she obviously pondered imaginary scenarios in her head. "I don't know what I'd do without Chris."

"Easy!" Both Claire and Leon's heads jerked back to look at the source of the sudden outburst, Chris Redfield himself. He sauntered down the steps while lighting a cigarette, plunking himself down next to Claire, effectively sandwiching her in the middle. "You'd mope for a while and then spend all my insurance money." He grinned at Claire's please look and bumped his shoulder into hers, roughly. "The fuck are you two talking about out here, anyway? Plans to kill me?"

Claire looked at her brother with a suffering look that made Leon laugh a little because of its over-dramatic nature. "We were havin' a relatively serious conversation before the comic relief showed up," she informed him, wiping at her forehead. "Ugh. Although I'm starting to wonder if maybe the conversation should be held inside instead of out here. It's hotter than hell out here."

"Oh, I see how it is," Chris drawled, exhaling a long stream of smoke into the air above his head. "Nobody likes a smoker. Either that or you're upset that I'm interrupting your date, Claire-bell." The older Redfield looked around Claire as she rolled her eyes and grumbled, wiggling his eyebrows at Leon. "Hands to yourself, Kennedy. I won't have you convincing my young, innocent sister to participate in various indiscretions--"

Despite Leon's laughter, he had dimly perceived that Chris Redfield was not entirely joking when he made comments of that nature—which was frequently. The man was intensely protective of his little sister, and Leon had the feeling that Chris had probably run off many a jackass suitor over the years. It seemed a likely scenario, with Claire being as attractive as she was and Chris as blustery. Chris Redfield seemed to be relatively old-fashioned about a lot of things, even if Leon didn't know him that well. Whenever Chris was around, Leon found himself alternating between trying to be the guy's friend and acting like a teenage boy wanting to make a good impression on his date's father.

Which was infinitely bizarre, because Leon wasn't sure why he felt that way, really. Sure, Claire was a good-looking girl, and Leon had recently been possessed of ample leisure time to realize this, but he didn't know why Chris put him so on edge. Claire was a good friend of Leon's—hell, a war-buddy, if anything—and yes, he was guilty of checking her out (who the hell wouldn't?), but this spoke more to Leon of the fact that he hadn't gotten laid in months more than anything else. He hadn't exactly had time to go out and actively pursue a sex life while he was spending twelve or thirteen hour days in a government office, attempting to orchestrate the demise of Umbrella.

He'd been ogling Claire a lot in recent months because she was around, and she was more than decent eye-candy. At this point in his life, she was the only female besides his mother that Leon had regular contact with. And more than likely, to put it simply, he was afraid that one day Chris Redfield was going to catch him staring at Claire's ass and deck him one that would be well-deserved.

Leon became dimly aware that a pseudo-argument was occurring between the two siblings while he had become lost in his mental proceedings. It sounded like Claire was delivering a severe dressing-down to her brother about sticking his nose in other people's business and always figuring that every guy she talked to was only out to bend her over a desk. Chris was nobly defending himself around cigarette puffs, reminding Claire that he was only looking out for her best interests and one day, when she ended up dating some douche, she'd wish that he'd been around to save her from it.

Huh. Claire, bent over a desk—there was an interesting bit of imagery. Leon's mind pondered it for about two seconds before he blinked, forcing the thought out of his head. It was time to start seriously thinking about taking just one night off and going out and trying to get laid.

"No offense, buddy," Chris was saying, and Leon suddenly perceived that he was being spoken to, "but I'm just looking out for Claire-bell here. She seems to forget that I am a guy, therefore I know what goes through almost all guys' heads."

"None taken," Leon replied with a shrug, sorely wishing that the irony of Chris making that statement didn't have to exist; that he hadn't just had some really interesting mental imagery—and good God, there it was again—of his little sister bent over a desk. "Yeah, guys are pretty much pigs," he said, looking at Claire. His face, he felt, was more apologetic than it needed to be.

"Oh, God," the girl in the middle heaved, throwing her hands up in the air. "Don't you start in on me too, Kennedy. All we need is Barry to come out here right now and it'll be like Three Men and a Baby all over again." Huffing, Claire struggled to stand without making a public spectacle of herself, cursing like a sailor as she did so. Chris stood and offered his help, which she finally accepted with more cursing. "I didn't think myself hungry before, but now food is sounding pretty good."

Leon nodded and stood to join the siblings, picking up his discarded jacket as he did. "Yeah. I wasn't very hungry either, but I probably should eat something."

"Anything to change the topic away from my innocent, pure womanhood," Claire groused, eyeing her brother disdainfully.

Chris, for his part, turned towards the courthouse and irreverently flicked his cigarette butt through the air, watching it bounce off a sculpted white column. "Yeah, yeah. Let's round up the gang and grab something to eat. Kennedy, you game?"

"I would be, but I am actually part of the consulting prosecution on this case," Leon said, staring back at the courthouse. "I should probably get back in there and go back to talking strategy with the other suits." Not to mention that he felt a little odd whenever he was around all the other members of "the gang"—all people who had known each other for quite some time, in one way or another, all of whom he had just fairly recently met. They liked him, and he liked them, but Leon couldn't help but feel like a little bit of an outsider—he really only knew Claire. The Ex-STARS and the people they'd met along the way had known Leon first as a voice over the phone, a somewhat mysterious government contact that managed to keep their asses out of hot water.

"Bummer," Chris sympathized. At that moment, Jill Valentine and Rebecca Chambers exited the courthouse, pausing only in their conversation to offer waves to the group on the steps. "Well, there's some of them. I guess we'll see you after the recess, buddy." Chris started up the steps, giving Claire a light tap on the arm to suggest she move with him. For two steps she did, then fell slightly behind her brother and turned to face Leon, who offered her a little smile and a shrug with his eyebrows. A corner of her mouth returned the favour.

"Thanks for not thinking I'm insane," she said, wrapping her sweater around her arm. "You seem to be pretty good at it."

"You're not insane." Leon jerked his head up at the group of people gathering in the shade of the courthouse's portico. "You'd better get up there before Chris comes down here and accuses me of trying to put the moves on you."

A chuckle escaped Claire as she waved her hand dismissively at Leon. "Oh, that. He's just being a dumbass. He doesn't really think you're on the make for me, he just likes to give you shit about it."

Leon nodded, once again wishing that the irony that was somehow present didn't have to be. "That's nice. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night with Chris hanging over me with a knife in his hand." A whistle came from the top of the steps; Claire turned to see her brother waving her up. "You'd better go." Leon stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks, jerking his head once again towards the group of people. "I'll see you in a while."

"Yeah." Claire nodded and waved a little, then turned and headed up the stairs towards the others.

And try as he might, Leon couldn't help but look a little at the fascinating way a pencil skirt made Claire Redfield walking away from him one of the nicer things in his day. He just hoped that Chris Redfield, from his vantage point, hadn't noticed that Leon had noticed.

………………

A/N: This is yet another of the scenarios I had rolling around in my head. I know it's not usually allowed for the prosecution and witnesses to be cavorting about or having contact with one another outside of the courtroom, but hey. There had to be an opportunity for dialogue somewhere, right?

This is another one of the scenes I've drawn up for when Leon starts to realize that maybe—just maybe—he has feelings for Claire, or that he is developing them. I have a couple more of these little one-shots that are related to this one; I'll probably add them as "chapters" to this snippet, since they're kind of related.

And in case you couldn't tell, I pretty much completely made up histories for the characters. I know that neither Claire or Chris have Southern accents in the games, I just kind of always liked the idea of a Southern Redfield family. Also, the Redfield parents have been added in. Leon's back story has been kind of ad-libbed too, but I feel that it fits all right. I guess I just wanted the characters to have a little more life to them, aside from what is mentioned in the games and in the Resident Evil Umbrella Archives book (which is bad the fuck ass, by the way).

Feel free to throw rotten fruit at me, here. I'm able to write again for the first time in about a year and I'm riding high, even if it is kind of a bastardized-I-Made-Up-The-Histories-High. Heh.