Remembrance
AN: This is a Chris and Rebecca friendship/hurt and comfort oneshot. I hope it isn't too awful, I feel like the tone became less serious as I went on but I'll let you be the judge! Reviews and constructive criticism accepted and appreciated!
Chris's ears continued to ring for what seemed like hours after the Arklay Mansion erupted skyward in a plume of flame, the world suddenly enveloped in heat and light.
The remnants of their ordeal reduced to splintered wood and ash strewn about in the summer breeze, the trees not reduced to dust shaking spasmodically from the force of the nuke, their trunks swaying back and forth, leaves skittering to the forest floor.
He presses his thumbs against his eyelids and rubs them back and forth until colored spots pepper his vision, as if he is trying to ward away the images that are forever burned into his brain.
To his right Jill's head is nestled against his shoulder. His partner is sound asleep, the adrenaline and fear that had kept them both awake and on edge finally receding into exhaustion. Barry is across from him, constantly ejecting the .44 magnum rounds from his Colt Anaconda, palming each one and re chambering them. Chris knows he is keeping his hands busy so he doesn't have to focus on what they've just endured.
"So much for protect and serve, huh?"
The voice is so hushed that Chris almost does not hear it over the whirring of the helicopter blades. His eyes look over at his youngest companion, the medic of S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team Rebecca Chambers.
Her brown hair is mussed, face grimy and ruddy with streaks of tears and blood mingling to stain her round cheeks. Blue eyes are gazing straight ahead but Chris knows it is not the cabin of the helicopter they are seeing.
"Weren't you getting some rest, Rebecca?" Chris voices his concern, realizing how much longer the young woman must have been awake, as he found her cradling Richard in her arms in the hallway leading to the mansion's attic.
She shakes her head almost imperceptibly and Chris realizes that any kind of sleep would be a restless, fitful one. He wonders if she too sees the rotted hands reaching out from the shadows, hears the lost, hungry moans and wet footsteps.
Chris makes sure Jill is comfortable before gingerly lowering himself to Rebecca's level. His hand extends forward to her face, to offer some form of comfort.
"Five men," she mutters, voice thick with a mixture of sadness and self loathing.
Chris looks at her in confusion.
"There were five men with me when we started this mission, Chris."
She raises her left hand in front of her face and begins ticking them off on her small fingers. "There was Enrico, Richard, Edward, Kenneth, and Forest. All experienced, all talented, all dead."
Rebecca grasps his hands in hers and Chris thinks of Claire, motorcycle riding, precocious, sarcastic sister of his that could just as easily be sitting across from him now. "All the rest of Bravo team died tonight doing their jobs."
Her voice is shaky as her blue eyes search his for an answer."Chris, why couldn't I do mine?"
"Rebecca…" Whispering her name is the only thing he can think to do, and he knows it offers little consolation.
The medic looks at him again, the earliest rays of light throwing her face into profile; there were shadows under her eyes and the pink choker around her neck is dirty and torn.
"Over the course of two nights almost all my friends are dead. They protected me and what did I do in return? I couldn't save anyone." Chris notices her hands are rifling through the materials in the small supply bags she had attached to her belt as if to affirm that they were there, they had purpose.
"Gauze for packing wounds, bandages for sealing them and applying pressure, disinfectant, sutures… all these supplies, Chris, I should have been able to do something."
"Rebecca, you couldn't have done anything," He says, his voice earnest in his belief. "Those…" he is hesitant to call them people because he knows the shuffling, moaning carcasses have long lost any traits that made them human, "things, the monsters and experiments, none of us were equipped to handle."
He thinks back to the first zombie that he encountered in the mansion hallway, kneeling over Kenneth Sullivan and ripping out his throat as the chemical specialist gurgled and choked his life away.
"One of the first ones I killed was Edward." Chris is snapped back to the present from his reflections at her admission, mind stumbling wearily away from the hallways adorned with old style photographs and those many dark rooms with darker secrets.
"It still looked like Edward. It had his face, his eyes, wore his uniform. He- it….it was eating another one of those things before I was noticed. I tried yelling at him, demanding him to stop but he kept lurching at me with his arms outstretched and making this sad, lost moan"
Her head ducks down and Chris notices two things; tears are streaking a path down her dirty face and her fingers are clutching at a pair of dog tags he had never noticed before.
"And I shot him. I was the person responsible for keeping him alive, and I put a bullet between his eyes."
The Alpha team member is surprised as Rebecca falls against him with a heart wrenching moan, her small body shaking with unsuppressed emotion. Chris's arms protectively, instinctively circle around the middle of her back, his fingers touching the large, frayed rips in her shirt and the dried blood from her encounter with the screeching green beast.
Barry is dozing, the picture of his wife and daughters resting in his large hands and Brad is quietly piloting the helicopter, any indication that he was listening impossible to discern from his impassive expression. He wonders if they realize yet how deeply the foundations of their lives have been changed.
"Rebecca, listen," he tells her after a few moments and she has calmed down, "these feelings are normal. This fear, this self-loathing, this raw grief at seeing a teammate- no," he shakes his head, remembering the funerals of his allies in the Air Force, "a friend die is normal."
"It should have been me…" she mumbles into his vest, "all of them deserve to be on this helicopter, returning home to families and lives, not me."
Chris roughly jerks her away from his chest, holding her shoulders with perhaps more force than necessary. "Don't even think about talking like that."
"But-"
He cuts off any further protest. "Rebecca, I know how you feel. Everyone we lost on this mission, each and every one of them was a helluva of a soldier, a great partner and even greater friend. You and I both know none of them deserved what happened to them but we were up against something we couldn't even dream of facing."
Chris thinks of Forest, eyes gouged out on the mansion balcony, and Richard, saved from the giant snake's venom only to be devoured by the giant shark, an afterthought in rippling, bloody water.
Rebecca is speechless and for a moment, through her own watery vision she thinks she sees tears in his eyes.
"So you grieve, alright? Feel that anger, that pain, all of those "why me and not him" pangs of guilt. You harness those emotions and live for them. Don't let anger at yourself and the pain of their deaths cloud over the sacrifice they made for us."
His grip has loosened, arms falling limply at his side as, emotions of sadness and fear clawing in his chest and for a moment he wants to scream. Instead he bites the inside of his cheek and takes a shuddering breath.
"We're the only ones left in the world who know what our friends have done for us. So you have to promise me something, okay, Rebecca?"
The young woman wipes away the last few tears from her eyes.
"Don't ever let our friends become just a memory. Always remember Richard's smile, Edward's friendliness, Forest's cockiness."
A brief smile spreads across her face as Rebecca nods.
"We have to remember what Umbrella has destroyed, the things it has taken away. We have to make sure no one else ever witnesses what we did. That no more lives are ruined."
"Yes sir!" She responds, and once again he finds her suddenly in close proximity, close enough to where he can feel her heart beating rapidly inside her chest. Her small arms are thrown around him and her (surprisingly warm) face is pressed against his shoulder. Chris had never really thought about just how small Rebecca was until she was in his arms.
"Thank you, Chris, for everything," she says in graditude, her mouth drawing into a shy yet almost conspiring smile.
"I won't ever forget what Bravo team did for me. I won't forget what you did for me, either," she whispers in his ear.
The only evidence he would have of her kissing him on the cheek is the fiery blush on her face and the sweet tingling feeling of her lips against his skin.