Work Text:
“Who else is going to love someone like you that’s marked for death?
Who else is going to be with you when you breathe your last?
Who else is going to take my place and hold and keep you safe?
Who else is going to stay?”
- Emma Ruth Rundle, “Marked For Death”
……………………………………………
Leon didn’t fail. He was reliable, he got shit done, he was going to keep going at something until he came out on top. It was what had made him an upright and helpful person in his early life, and nowadays his refusal to quit, his refusal to die made him invaluable to the government that owned him. He could be sent to do anything, and he would do it. He didn’t ask questions, he just did, and he did well. More often than not he came back unscathed and steely-eyed, no worse for the wear, moral anguish aside.
Occasionally, however, he got his ass kicked. He got his ass absolutely handed to him. It didn’t stop him from doing what he’d been sent to do, it just meant he limped and held his guts in and bled a lot more while he did it. This was one such occasion.
It was 4:30 AM, and Leon was hanging over the sink in his bathroom. He’d been back in DC five hours; some of that time spent at Walter Reed getting patched up and debriefing. Hunnigan had looked at him like he’d done something to her; he didn’t blame her, after all, she’d had to listen to him getting his ass kicked on the op and struggling along. As was her custom, she asked if he needed an out, an evac, support—as was his custom, Leon refused, teeth grit, pushing on. They could evac him when he was dead. He’d rather shoot himself in the foot than have someone come in and have to save him. He’d never hear the end of it. Over the years he’d been shot, he’d been stabbed, he’d been infected, he’d had all manner of unfortunate and painful shit happen to him.
Still he went on. It was all he knew to do.
He looked up from the sink into his mirror; his stubble was at that point more a beard, and the eye not blackened spectacularly had a sleepless circle under it. The side of his face was scuffed deeply, and his lip was split. He had cracked ribs, split knuckles, more scrapes and bruises than he could count, and he’d been stabbed in the leg. One of his ankles was a limping kind of fucked up, and in general he felt like he’d been hit by a truck.
The government had given him two weeks to recuperate. He wasn’t exactly in fighting shape. With enough determination and amphetamine, Leon knew he could go out and do it all over again right then—if you ate enough go pills, the pain went away, and you were just filled with teeth-grinding focus and rage.
He hung over his sink, feeling blank and empty. Two weeks. He could not get on a plane like this. He didn’t care about how he looked; that was the rest of the world’s problem if they had a problem with it. He thought of how his body felt, and thought of being crammed into a seat in economy. He thought about scaring the shit out of the well-heeled people in first class. Absolutely not. He would drive. It wasn’t much better, but it was more tolerable than the sardines in a can experience of commercial air travel.
He’d been commanded to rest and follow up at Walter Reed if he needed anything. He almost never went back. Walter Reed was a shithole and Leon generally tried to spend as little time there as he could.
He could rest just as well in New York as he could in his Spartan apartment in DC. He just needed to get there, first. It was a 6 hour drive. The government go pills had not worn off yet. Leon limped to his bedroom to begin getting his things together, both legs protesting at use. He had a long drive ahead of him. He felt like Odysseus returning to Ithaca, a memory of reading done years ago as an unmotivated, unbothered teenager.
He was lightyears from that teenager as he hobbled around his apartment in the darkness, broken.
………………………………………………
Four hours in, Leon had started to question his sanity. The amphetamine was wearing off, and his brain felt like a piece of taffy that had been stretched too far. The toll roads blended into one another, and he felt too tired and banged up to react to the aggressive driving of New Englanders. He was almost there; two more hours and he’d be on Long Island--this godforsaken island, Claire often referred to it as.
His pain meds were wearing off as well, and he became pointedly aware of the fact that both of his legs were fucked up. The leg operating the gas pedal and brake throbbed with a sizeable rip of a stab wound; the leg operating the clutch had a blown out ankle. When he walked he somehow limped on both legs, unsteady as a toddler.
He had not texted Claire upon his arrival back to the States, due to the hour. He had not texted her before setting out on this fucked up version of Odysseus’s journey home. He was going to arrive midday; she’d be at work in the city. She was going to come home to a battered man on her couch, or in her bed, whichever he fell onto first.
He had a key. Spending two weeks beat to shit at Claire’s house seemed preferable to spending two weeks beat to shit in his solitary existence in DC. He contemplated alerting her to the fact that he was doggedly making his way to her house under the waning influence of substances given to him by the government; he’d already made one bad decision by starting the drive, he wasn’t going to make another by splitting his attention between the road and his phone.
On he drove, using the last of his determination to make it to the suburbs of Long Island.
…………………………………………………
It was shortly after noon when Leon arrived to Claire’s house in Long Island. He pulled into her driveway, up close to the house. He got out of the Jeep, feeling like he was going to collapse, holding his bag. He was almost there, he was almost in the home stretch. Woodenly and haltingly he made his way to the front porch, both legs screaming at him to get the fuck off of them and become horizontal on something. He unlocked the front door and stepped into the quiet stillness of Claire’s house without Claire.
He’d made it. He could rest. He could let the mission after the mission end. He dropped his bag by the front door and headed for the bedroom. Claire’s bed was, as ever, an unmade mess, her pajamas thrown over the mussed sheets and blankets from where she had changed that morning. There were the remnants of her usual nightly glass of water next to the bed. Leon picked it up and slammed the rest of it thirstily.
Heavily, hissingly, he lowered himself onto the bed and let his head drop back on the pillow. He fished in the pocket of his coat for the bottle of painkillers and drew it out. He popped the lid and put one into his mouth, swallowing the large pill. He wished he hadn’t drank all the water; wished he had some more, but sleep was coming for him fast and hard and he no longer felt he had to fight it.
Leon fell asleep in Claire’s bed, boots on, coat on, journey finally over. Odysseus was home.
…………………………………………………
He was aware of pressure, of movement, of being jostled. His eyes snapped open. His brain was a swirling mess of exhaustion, pain, and narcotics. Processing things was difficult, but he tried, and he was aware that Claire was in front of him, sitting next to him on the bed, her face dully horrified.
“Jesus Christ, Leon,” she said lowly, apprehensively, once he looked at her and had focused enough to process what was going on somewhat, “the fuck happened to you? You drove here like this?”
“Op went sideways,” he said, and his throat was a level of dry previously unheard of. He needed water. “I wasn’t getting on a plane like this.” He tried to swallow and it felt like trying to swallow a cotton ball.
Claire looked like she didn’t know what to do; like if she had her way, she’d just start screaming, like that was a fitting response to the situation. “Leon,” she said, tiredly. “You look like hell. What are the clothes hiding?”
He looked back at her, blinking slowly. “Broken ribs. I’ve got a hole in my thigh. Bruises. My ankle is fucked.”
She sighed, and reached out to smooth at his hair gently, like she was afraid she was going to hurt him. “What kind of a hole?” she asked. “A gunshot wound?”
“No. Knife wound,” he replied. “Claire?”
“Yeah.” She reached over and picked up the bottle of pills he’d left next to him, next to the bed. She studied it and then set it back down. She looked back over at him. She was beautiful. She was a sight for sore eyes.
“Would you get me some water?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, and pushed herself up from the bed. She was still wearing her coat, her keys in her other hand; evidently the sight of the Jeep and his bag by the door had left her in a rush to figure out what the fuck was going on. She walked out of the room and Leon heard her keys jingling. A minute later she returned with a glass of water, still in her coat. She came over and sat down on the bed again, and Leon began pushing himself up onto his elbows, wincing. She handed him the water once he was sufficiently upright and he began to slam the glass. He was more dehydrated than he’d thought. The water felt like heaven.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asked tiredly, watching him drink the water. He polished off the glass and she took it from him.
“Help me pull out some stitches at some point,” he said, dropping back onto the bed.
“Leon,” she gusted, half exasperation, half concern.
“It’ll be just like old times,” he said. “Just like when you were 19. Forever taking care of my battered ass.”
She went back to smoothing at his hair. “Are the ankle injury and stab wound on the same leg?”
“Of course not,” he replied dryly. “I wouldn’t be excelling if I didn’t make sure every part of me was fucked up.”
“How did you manage to drive here?” she asked.
“The government has pills that make you go fast, the government has pills that make you go slow,” Leon said. “The fun thing about the fast ones is if you have enough of them, nothing hurts.”
Claire looked weary. “You’re a fucking idiot,” she said with a sigh. “You should not have driven here. That’s what, seven hours?”
“About six. I already did it,” he said.
“How long before the government expects you to be ready to go out and do it all over again?” she asked, her face still weary.
“Two weeks,” he replied. “I’m sure they won’t send me out again right away. They’ll have me playing nice in a suit in DC. They’ll send some other sap.”
Claire set the empty glass down and brought her hands up to her face, rubbing it as if she was presented with a particularly difficult problem she didn’t know how to solve. She stopped rubbing but left her hands on her face, peering at him over them. “What do you need?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Maybe more sleep. To not move a lot. To have you sleep in this bed next to me. To look at your pretty face.”
“You need to get out of your clothes,” she said, still looking at him over her hands, not distracted by his sweet talk. Claire was like a dog with a bone when she wanted to be. “I need to see what I’m working with, here. I need to see the full tale of the tape.”
“You just want me half naked,” he said dryly, looking up at her from the bed with pain coming at him from so many avenues it felt like an assault.
“Easy, killer,” she replied back just as dryly, dropping her hands. “No rush. But I need to see this hole. I’ll decide if stitches need to come out at some point.”
“Doctor Redfield,” Leon joked tiredly. “Nurse Redfield.”
She managed a quirk of her lips at him, but her eyes looked apprehensive, worried, unsure. “I’m a piss poor excuse for medical staff, but I guess I’m what you’ve got. You’re here. Jesus, Leon, I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe they turned you loose like this. You should be in a hospital. But you’re here.”
“I’ll take here over Walter Reed,” Leon said.
………………………………………………………
Leon was too tired to sleep. His brain was in that odd state of exhaustion, confused by the presence of uppers and downers in his system, where he knew he needed sleep but could not manage to achieve it now that he was awake. His brain was short-circuiting, even if his body begged for rest. He laid there in the bed and heard Claire moving around the small house. He heard her making phone calls, heard her walking around. She’d left him to his own devices for about an hour, evidently assuming he’d gone back to sleep. If he’d been a good patient, it was what he would have been doing. He was, as he ever felt, a problem.
She looked shocked when she appeared in the doorway to the bedroom some time later and found him looking over at her.
“Why are you not sleeping?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Brain’s confused.” He started pushing himself up with a hiss and a grunt. His ribs protested with everything that they were, loudly. “You want to look at wounds?” he said, voice tight.
“I said no rush,” Claire said, coming into the room quickly. “We don’t have to do it right now.”
“I’m moving,” he said, voice strained. “Let’s do it now.” He pushed himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, every part of his body screaming at him. He tried to bend over to his boots and jerked some; that was apparently a no go, as the pain meds wore off.
Claire moved in front of him. “You’re a fucking mess, Leon. Let me help,” she said. She knelt down and began unlacing his boots, pulling them off his feet. “Which ankle is bad?”
“The left,” Leon said, and indeed it was protesting mightily at her pulling off his boot. “I had x-rays. Nothing’s broken down there. I think I tore some shit. I don’t know. I was not in top form at Walter Reed. It’s kind of a haze.”
She pulled off his socks and pushed up the leg of his jeans, inspecting his ankle gently. “Maybe it’s not broken, but this thing’s about twice its normal size and colors it shouldn’t be,” she said, then gingerly set his foot down. She looked him over from the floor, evidently trying to figure out how to approach the problem of his clothes.
“Here,” he said, and began haltingly to push himself to his feet, “look out.” He stood, unsteadily; both legs protested at any weight on them. He felt wobbly. Claire stood and braced him, looking at him in concern. He reached down and undid his belt, and Claire continued to brace him. He did have to balance on her to manage to get his jeans off, opposite legs threatening to go out from him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. She pushed his coat off, and he pulled his shirt over his head with a sharp intake of breath, letting it fall to the ground. Claire looked him over; at the dark bruises blooming across his skin, the various scrapes. She crouched down to peel dressings back, and inspected the long, stitched shut jagged wound on his thigh.
“That’s not a stab wound,” she said. “That’s someone who tried to open you from head to toe.”
“Tried,” Leon said. “I’m fast.”
“Not fast enough,” she said, tiredly.
“I rallied,” Leon said. “You should see the other guy.”
“This was almost an artery,” she said flatly.
“Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” Leon said, tottering on his feet some.
She stood and continued to look him over, letting him brace himself on her, and then sighed. She leaned up and kissed him gently. The split on his lip protested, but he could overlook it. “Alright, hardass,” she said. “You can lay back down now.” Lowering himself back to the bed also caused his body to scream in protest, but Leon did it, becoming horizontal again. She gazed into his face. “Your eye is more swollen than it was earlier. I don’t know if it’s going to swell shut or what. I should probably get you some ice.”
“That was the final injury,” Leon said. “The final fuck you. On top of everything else, I had to get punched in the face, too. At that point I was just pissed off. More pissed off than hurt.”
Claire sat down on the edge of the bed next to him again. She laid her hand against his neck, her thumb rubbing over his jaw. Stupid, dangerous decisions or not—driving under the influence of substances or not—Leon knew he’d made the right choice. Being here half-broken and damaged was infinitely preferable to being half-broken and damaged alone in the darkness of his apartment. He supposed at his core he was no better or different than he had been at 5 years old—he wanted a woman to kiss it and make it better. He’d traded his mother for Claire. Typical male bullshit, he told himself. Claire gazed at him, her face gentle. “I worry about you,” she murmured, her thumb smoothing over his jaw still. “I always do. You showing up at my house practically in pieces does not help.”
“I’m a miserable and well-trained son of a bitch,” Leon said. “I could be in pieces and it wouldn’t stop me. I always come home.”
Claire’s face didn’t change. “Until you don’t,” she said, quietly.
“I did,” Leon said. “I’ve had worse.”
Claire’s eyes were immeasurably sad; just like always, she could usually arrange her face to display whatever she wanted it to, but her eyes did not obey. They showed what was really going on within her. Leon looked up at her, and to his alarm, her eyes grew watery. Sure, being broken at Claire’s house was preferable to being broken alone, but that meant she had to see him broken. In his drug-addled post-op haze, he had not considered how she would feel about him being broken in her house. He’d just wanted this, her hand on him, soothing him; he had not contemplated how looking at him taken down several notches would feel to her.
“Hey,” he said, emphatically. “Relax. I’m fine. I’m always fine. It’s the only way I know to be. Come here,” he said, scooting over with a grunt, creating space for her.
“You’re all banged up,” she said, and her voice was high, halting.
“I’m not so banged up that you can’t come here,” he said, spreading his arm, indicating the space next to him on the bed. “C’mon.”
Claire swallowed and shifted her position, laying down next to him, gingerly curling into his side, her fully clothed, him wounded and in his underwear. He wrapped his arm around her and drew her close, and leaned his head against hers. “Of all the shit in the world to worry about,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve been hacking it for years. I’m not stopping anytime soon.”
“You’re human,” she said, and Leon felt the wetness on his skin. The tears were falling. He felt like an ass; he’d been so selfish to want to be in Claire’s presence that he didn’t consider that seeing him half dead might have been upsetting. “You’re not invincible.”
“I’m not,” Leon acknowledged, lowly. “But I am fucking good. You don’t need to worry about me.”
“Sure,” she said, and her tone was sarcastically casual. “Let me just shut it off. No worries.”
They laid there for long minutes, Leon holding her. A few soft sniffles escaped Claire. He didn’t know what to say to her; he never wanted to upset her, or make her cry, or do anything to her that put her out in any way. He supposed he should have considered that before he collapsed in her bed, injured and spun out on things that made him move, things that made him feel no pain. Not for the first time, he wondered why she put up with him, why she’d given him a key, why he was laying in her bed. She deserved someone normal. She did not deserve a broken piece of government property. He thought of her going about her day in the city, oblivious, cheerful, working hard at her job, unaware the problem of him had taken up residence in her house like a harbinger. Leon often felt like something that had happened to Claire; her life had been one thing, and then he’d bulldozed into it with his unreadable, distant bullshit. He was acutely aware that him being there was definitely something that had happened to her. He hadn’t asked, he’d just shown up.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re okay. It’s okay. I can leave if you want me to.”
“And drive yourself back to DC like this?” she asked incredulously, her voice tear-clogged. “I don’t fucking think so. You’re here.”
He let her lay there and shed her tears, and he stayed quiet. Times like this the words were right there on the tip of his tongue; he loved her so much it made him insane, loved her so much he’d drive six hours while injured and out of his mind just to be in her presence. He found that like usual, he could not say them. It was the last vestige of power he had, the last vestige of self-defense—he could not lay himself so bare in front of her. He feared she would wound him in a way he would not recover from. So he kept his mouth shut, and held her, and let her lay there until eventually the wetness on his skin lessened some.
Eventually she lifted her head and looked at him, and her face was somewhat damp and blotchy, but tears were not actively falling. “I called out of work tomorrow,” she said. The moment had passed; she was back in her right mind, in controlled Claire get-shit-done-mode. “I think you probably need help getting around, now that you’re not so full of government meth and whatever the hell else they pump you full of that you feel no pain.”
“Maybe,” Leon said. “I could probably manage on my own.”
“They gave that shit to the Nazis,” Claire said. “The state-sanctioned meth. Back then it was called Pervitin. It was a problem. They had all of Germany eating that shit.”
“You get used to it,” Leon said. “It’s a staple of the field. You have to be able to go without sleep somehow. I guess it’s one thing when you’re making it in a trailer park, but it’s another when Uncle Sam hands you a bottle of it and tells you to get out there and police the world.”
Claire sighed. “Are you hungry?” she asked. She pushed herself up some and looked to the bottle of pills next to the bed. “You’re probably due for pain meds. I worry about pumping you so full of conflicting substances it causes a problem. Rock stars die this way, but of course they slapped some bandaids on you and shoved you out the door.”
“I don’t really need the pain meds, if I’m just laying here,” he said. “It’s the trying to move around that necessitates them. I’ll take one when I need it.” He reached up and smoothed his hand over the crown of her hair. “Food, maybe. I haven’t had any of that in a minute.”
Claire nodded, her eyes looking focused. That was a problem she could handle, even if the problem of him lying in her bed like an invalid drove her to tears. “I can cook something,” she said. “I can go look in the kitchen and take stock of what I have.”
Leon continued smoothing her hair, and smiled faintly at her. “I would drag myself out of this bed for some food from that Indian place you’ve taken me to,” he said. “You know, the one like twenty minutes from here? I’m in no shape to lay waste to a buffet but I’d eat whatever you brought me.”
Claire’s face expressed a dilemma. “I just paid my mortgage,” she said. “And my student loans. I have about two dollars in my bank account until payday.”
Leon looked at her mildly. “Nobody said you had to pay for it,” he said benignly. “Get my bank card out of my wallet in my pants down there and go get it.” He looked at her hesitant face. He was in her bed crippled; he was putting her through it. He never wanted to put her through it. He wanted to do things for her. He wanted her to keep letting him come back. He wanted to love her—he just didn’t want to say it. “Go ahead. It’s fine. Pay your mortgage for six months. Pay off your fucking loans. I don’t care. Do whatever you want with it. You’re letting me be injured in your house. You didn’t ask for this.”
Her face was unsure, her mouth open somewhat. “Leon,” she said, “I don’t expect anything from you. I don’t know where else you would have gone. From the sounds of it, if you showed up in Michigan like this, it’d put your family members in the grave.”
He let his head drop back, and he looked at the ceiling. “I’m serious. I don’t give a shit. I put you through enough. Spend the government’s money on something worthwhile. I showed up at your house beat half to death. Get yourself something out of it.”
She sat up, looking over at him. “You’re on drugs. Literally. Make decisions to turn me into a kept woman once you’re clean,” she said, but her tone lacked fire. She just sounded resigned, concerned. She leaned down and grabbed his pants from the floor, digging into the back pocket. “I’ll go get you whatever you want, but I think you should think twice about trying to wipe out my student debt.”
He looked down at her. “I think you should just do what I’m telling you to do and run with it.”
“I think you’re full of bad ideas,” she said, obstinate. “What do you want from the Indian place?”
“I dunno,” he said. “You’re the expert at Indian food. You’ve been to India enough. Get me stuff that doesn’t suck. Get yourself food too. If I’m going to haul my broken ass to the coffee table to eat you’re eating with me.”
Claire gazed at him with an exasperated look on her face, his wallet in her hand. “Alright. I’ll go get it. Do you need anything before I leave?”
“For you to come here,” he said, beckoning her to him. She leaned down and they kissed simply, quickly. She leaned back and looked at him, smiling faintly.
“Go on,” he said. “I’ll be here.” She stood from the bed and he reached over and slapped her ass once she was standing. She turned and looked at him in tired amusement. “What? I’m injured, not dead. My brain’s still intact.”
“You’re something else,” she said. “You’re a fucking trainwreck.”
“I’m wasting away,” he said. “For once I don’t mind you driving 90 miles a fucking hour somewhere. Get gone, sweetheart.”
“Alright,” she said in an undertone, looking at him. Her face was part tenderness, part frustration. She gazed at him for a long moment, then turned and walked around the foot of the bed, out of the room, his wallet in her hand.
Leon settled into the bed fully. He felt like warmed over, painful death, but he was there. He’d made it. He could relax, or relax as much as he ever did. It was a shitty way to get two weeks off, but he supposed there was a silver lining to everything, as long as he didn’t make a habit of almost getting killed. She was right—he had nowhere else to go. She was the thing he clung to in order to make his life tolerable, to make it halfway legitimate. He was a fucking trainwreck, internally and externally, and yet she looked at him like there might be something halfway redeemable under the ruin of the years. He did not deserve her, but he was greedy, and determined. He was going to keep taking it as long as she kept handing it out.
He heard the front door open and close, and he was alone in the house, Claire out and determined to take care of him.
Odysseus was home.