So slow to catch on

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Jill gave Leon a little push, then smiled. "Believe me, these things can last days." She assured him. "Besides, I want the chance to grill you myself."
"You doubt my suitability as a mother?" Claire asked thinly, folding her arms across her chest.

"If we want to get technical... Ada had Leon before Claire did." Jill replied, pausing to rub at her throbbing temples. "Now that Leon's okay, shouldn't we be focusing on finding the babies anyway?"

Chris shook his head. "I think maybe Claire would be better off if I just left all this to her and Leon. I wonder if maybe...between them...I'm just getting in the way."

It saddened Jill to hear Chris talkl that way, knowing how much Claire meant to him. "You never get in my way." She assured him gently as she wrapped her arms around him.

"I know." Chris whispered, wishing he truly believed this.
"Mr. Redfield?" A young man stood before them, a heavy looking package in his arms. "I have a package for you. I was paid to deliver it personally."
Chris glanced toward Jill and then back at the package. His stomach churned when he saw what looked like air holes punched into the sides. He wasn't sure he wanted to get near this box.

Jill saw the holes too, and carefully placed herself closer to the box than Chris, ready to protect him from any danger that may lurk within. "Who sent the package?" She asked suspiciously.

The young man shrugged his shoulders, clearly ready to be rid of the package. "I don't know." He said, again holding out the package. "Do you want it or not?"
Chris scowled at Jill, not really liking that she was the one trying to protect him.

Jill could feel Chris' eyes boring into her back, but didn't turn to look up at him. "Why would we accept a package, that clearly has something alive in it, when we don't know where it came from?" She asked calmly.

"I don't know!" The young man said, dropping the package before Jill could say anything else. He'd been in the motion of turning away when the package let out a sharp pain filled wail.

Jill sighed heavily, knowing she would regret it as she leaned down to begin opening the package. "Well you we're a big help!" She told her partner with a tone that practically oozed sarcasm.

"You acted like you had it all under control." Chris mumbled as he knelt beside her and began tearing away at the box. The young man was forgotten as the next thing he saw was forever burned in his memory.
His sister had given birth to twins. But here in the box that some stranger had mailed them, there was one living child and the other dead. The little girl that Leon and Claire had created had passed away during some point. And the boy...didn't look too far behind.

Jill couldn't move. She couldn't even blink to keep her brain from processing this horrific sight in front of her. It couldn't be real, was what she kept telling herself. In a childish move she finally closed the box again, then opened it, as though expecting to find something different. Her hands were shaking, though right then it wasn't clear whether it was out of rage, or overwhelming sorrow.

Chris could barely breathe. He wanted to cry, throw up, and scream with rage all in the same moment. "Get...Leon..." He managed to croak. "Get a doctor...get something warm..." He was just saying things, his mind drawing a blank on how to handle this.

Jill was trying to do all of those things as she scooped the little boy up and held him close to her own warmer than normal body as she went running in the direction of Leon's room, all the while shouting for a doctor to help her. It was all happening so quickly that she didn't yet have time to think about Chris being alone with the lifeless body of his tiny niece.

Chris' fingers shook as he lifted the tiny body from the box. She hadn't been dead that long. There was still an odd warmth to her body. He didn't know what possessed him, but he was soon pressing his lips over the tiny girl's mouth and doing whatever he could to breathe life back into her.

Tears ran down Jill's cheeks when she made it into Leon's room. The doctors had the nameless little boy and were working to keep him living. She had come straight to Leon, wanting him to know what was going on before Claire found out. It was as she entered the room and saw Ada Wong sat there that her sorrow turned to bitter hatred.

Leon was sleeping, the medicine taking hold. The last thing he remembered was telling Ada to leave. He no longer realized she was even there.

Ada and Jill were around the same height, and so when Ada rose to her feet to square up to Jill, they literally were nose to nose. "I should have known you would come back." Jill spat, though the anger in her voice was less effective with tear stains down her cheeks.
Ada simply laughed and turned away. "I'm the only one who was actually here with him! What's wrong? Did Leon's condition get in the way of your playing with your meathead boyfriend?"

Chris was fighting with a nurse who was trying to take the still lifeless infant from him. He was so lost in his grief he could no longer see that she would not be coming back.

"Well, if you care about Leon so much, you be the one to tell him his daughter is dead!" Jill shouted, shoving Ada towards Leon's bed before fleeing the room.

Leon jerked awake at Jill's shout, his eyes opening when Ada's body nearly tumbled on top of him. "What? What is it?" He asked hoarsely. "Claire?"

Chris was still fighting with the nurse when Jill came back to him. He was towering over the tiny woman, all but screaming at her not to touch them.

Ada righted herself, and already hated Jill Valentine even more for putting her in this situation. "We talked about this, Leon... Claire will never be coming to see you, remember?"

Jill was on auto pilot now as she positioned herself between Chris and the nurse, having been the one to quell his temper towards other many times. "Chris... She's gone, let them take her." She whispered, her own voice still shaking. "If they revive her now... The brain damage would be too much. It's been too long."

"Was that Jill I heard?" Leon asked, trying to push himself out of the bed. "What's happened? Where's Claire?"

"No!" Chris howled, jerking his entire frame away from even Jill. "She's still warm, goddmanit! You're not letting them kill her!"

"Jill came to say good bye, but I told her you ere sleeping. She said she and Chris were done playing babysitter to you, that you held them both back from their own happiness."

"Chris, sweetie... She's already dead." Jill whispered, her words unintentionally reminding her of the child she and Chris had lost. "Let her go, and we can go see your nephew. Okay?"

Chris knew that a large part of this was the grief he was still holding onto for his own child. But it also had something to do with the fact that this was his niece. He'd been dying to meet her for so long.
It wasn't fair that the first time he laid eyes on her was the last time. And she hadn't even been living then. It wasn't fair.
"What...What the hell have you done?!" Leon had appeared in the hallway and the only thing he could see was Chris holding onto a lifeless infant. "Give her to me!" He roared. "You're a fucking son of a bitch! You killed her! You both killed my daughter! Give her to me!"

Jill turned to face Leon, again intentionally placing herself between Chris and anger danger that may have been coming his way. It was a habit she simply would never break. "Leon, we did nothing." She told him calmly. "Whoever stole them... Returned them, and your daughter was already dead. You are lucky enough that your son still lives. He needs you."

Leon...the one among them who never truly broke did just that. His knees buckled and his shoulders heaved. A moment or two of silence gave way to broken sobs that filled the heavily silent hallway.

Jill was there in a heartbeat, her arms wrapping around Leon and simply allowing him to sob against her shoulder. "Claire doesn't know yet." She whispered. "You don't have to be the one to tell her... If you don't want to." She breathed.

"She can't...know..." Leon choked. "We have to make her believe...She can't...it will kill her..."
"He's right." Chris whispered from behind them. "We have to tell her there was only one. We'll bring her to see him...Tell her she lost alot of blood and she dreamed the whole thing..."

Jill couldn't agree to this. "She needs to know." She insisted, glaring at Chris over her shoulder. "Claire is stronger than you are giving her credit for. Certainly, she has been broken recently, but so much happened all at once. She needs some sort of closure to pick herself up and care for her family."

"You really think she will?" Chris snorted, still holding tightly to his lifeless niece. "She shut down when she didn't even know Leon's fate. What the hell do you think a dead baby is going to do to her?"