Chapter Text
The day had been quiet.
Far too quiet.
Claire moved through the house like she was trying not to disturb something fragile. She kept herself busy — or at least tried to. Folding laundry that didn’t need folding. Rearranging the same stack of mail twice. Wiping down the kitchen counters even though they were already clean. Reorganizing the pantry. Fiddling around with her own personal job with TerraSave.
Anything to keep her hands moving. Anything to keep her mind from circling back to the mission Leon was on. Anything to…. Not think of that damn infection that has came back with a vengeance this time.
Ranger followed her everywhere.
The Belgian Malinois padded at her heels. He was never more than a few steps away from her. Leon had trained him well for protection, alertness, and loyalty — but today, Ranger wasn’t acting like a guard dog. He was acting like he knew Claire needed company.
Every time she paused, he sat beside her. Every time she sighed, his ears perked. Every time she stopped moving, he’d nudged her hand gently with his nose.
“I’m okay, sweet boy” she murmured once, scratching behind his ear.
Ranger looked up at her with pleading eyes. He didn’t believe her. She didn’t blame him for calling her bluff. She didn’t believe herself either.
She tried to read some of her books. Even tried to actually watch a show for once. She even tried to eat.
None of it really stuck.
Her eyes kept drifting to the clock. Her mind kept drifting to Leon. To the last message he’d sent. To the way his voice had sounded — steady, but tired. To the way he’d said, “I’ll be home soon.”
Soon had stretched into hours.
Hours that soon turned into a couple of days.
Claire sat on the couch, pulling her knees up. Ranger settled at her feet like a warm, breathing anchor. She rested her chin on her hand, staring at the muted TV without seeing any of it.
She hated waiting. She hated not knowing. She hated the silence most of all, because silence meant she had too much room to imagine the worst.
Eventually, her phone buzzed and rang, breaking her out of her thoughts.
Claire’s heart stopped as she snatched it off the coffee table so fast that it made Ranger lifted his head in alarm.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she answered immediately.
“Chris?”
His voice came through steady, but scraped raw around the edges, like he’d been holding himself together for hours.
“Claire… we found him.”
That was all she got at first. She didn’t breathe; didn’t speak; didn’t move. Ranger pressed himself against her leg, sensing the shift in her body. Claire swallowed hard, gripping the phone tighter.
“He’s alive, Claire,” he declared to her— the words she never thought she would ever hear.
Her eyes closed and her shoulders sagged. A sound escaped from her lips — not a sob, not relief, but just something in between. Everything after that was a blur.
Extraction.
Stabilized.
En route.
She nodded even though her brother couldn’t see her. She told Chris “thank you” even though it wasn’t enough. Even though nothing would ever be enough, because alive could still mean: hurt, changed, shaken, and not promised.
So she waited with her phone still in her hand. Ranger’s head rested on her knee as his ears dropped, still concerned about her.
Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt and it was pounding so hard that it was the only thing she could hear.
Leon was alive.
But until he walked through that door —
until she could touch him, see him, breathe him in —
alive was just a word.