Note: Here's a quick little intro, churned out by one-half of this fanfic duo. Who knows where it's going (probably somewhere that involves a higher rating?) Thank you for reading!
Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be;
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee;
Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Prayer to Persephone"
She wakes up screaming.
She wakes up with fire in her throat and smoke in her lungs, and for a moment, she can't remember how to breathe.
She was dreaming again. Flashes of things - snow and ice and bone-deep cold. Musty basements and winding hallways. Creatures reaching through the dirt, grabbing at her ankles. Tentacles around her throat.
"Stop," he says, and his hands are on her shoulders, fingers digging into her biceps. It's a bruising, crushing grip.
A month ago, he would have shattered her bones.
"Stop. Breathe."
"Can't," she heaves. One word. It's thick on her tongue and it tastes like ash. Like the cigarette she tried in tenth grade.
She can barely see him in the dark. He's just a shadow hunched over her. His fingertips find the dip of her throat, and rest there, counting her pulse.
"Two hundred and ten," he says. To himself. Maybe to her, but it's fucking useless information.
Pulse is two hundred and ten.
Basal body temperature is one hundred and sixteen.
White blood cell count dropped to twenty-five thousand. A sign of adaptation.
Adaptation, her ass.
"What have I told you?" he says, but she's choking on her own fucking breath, each gulp of oxygen is stoking the flames, so she can't really answer right now…
He sighs. He gives her shoulder a shove, and she's strong, stronger, but not that strong. Not right now, at least. She flops backwards against the pillow. The fabric is drenched with sweat.
"What...have I told you?" He looks down at her, with eyes so narrow they look like a snake, or a cat, or something that isn't human, hasn't ever been human. Flaring slits for pupils. Red and gold all over.
She focuses on them. That's what he told her: focus on something. When the waves hit - when she's aching, when she's shivering, when she's doubled over because her blood is on fire, literally, she's got to pick something and focus on it. Every detail. Every single detail.
She can't see shit in the dark, so tonight, it's his eyes.
She hates them. Oh god, does she hate them. She's never hated a pair of eyes more in her life. She didn't even know it was possible...but maybe it's just because his are so fucking stupid. Reptile eyes that flicker in the shadows.
Hers haven't changed yet. Not sure if they will. She hopes not. It's not like hers are special - they're okay, they're fine, they're a nice shade of blue and she can see things and they work the way they're supposed to - but they're hers.
She doesn't want them to change.
He said he got headaches at first. Bad ones. Left him reeling, wincing at the light. It's funny. Having eyes that are nothing but a swirl of flame, and the light makes them burn.
She takes another breath, a little slower this time. There's still pain, but the edge is gone. All that's left is dull heat, like a sunburn that hasn't healed all the way yet.
His fingers are back on her throat. She hadn't noticed that. She feels them when she swallows. He's holding them there, looking at his watch. Not the fancy Cartier bullshit he wears out in the world; just some basic, nameless thing with a glowing face.
"Good," he says, after several seconds. "The recovery is quicker now."
He leans back in the chair he keeps near the side of the bed.
Her bed.
Whatever.
He's watching her. His eyes flash and flare. At first, it drove her crazy - him staring, and staring, and staring, and watching every fucking move she made, every little twitch of her muscles.
She's used to it now.
Whatever.
"Did you dream again?" he asks.
She takes a cautious breath. It comes out as a wheeze.
"Why do you care?" she croaks, with a voice that sounds like she's been swallowing fistfuls of gravel.
"I need to know how vivid they are." His arms are folded just below his chest. His finger taps his elbow. "If this is causing cerebral edema…"
"Jesus Christ." She rolls her eyes, and stares up towards the ceiling. "Pretty vivid, I guess. I don't know."
"Pretty vivid, I guess." He sneers a little at that. It's his sneering voice. Thin and nasally and like a splinter in her skin, one so small she can't grip it to pull it loose.
"Yeah. That's what I said." She exhales again and she's surprised a little puff of smoke doesn't leave her lips, the way her chest feels right now. "Can you...leave, maybe? So I can go back to sleep?"
She doesn't know how long he's been in here, sitting beside the bed. Longer than she'd want. He's in and out all night, every night. Watching. Measuring. Taking notes. Adjusting things in the suppressant he gives her…
Fuck.
She glances at the clock on the nightstand.
Just after midnight. A shot every six hours.
She sighs. She turns her head away from the clock, away from him.
After a month of injections and blood draws, her arm should look like a heroin addict's. But the skin is still pale. The veins are still round and full.
Full of something.
She hears him unclip the case that holds the little injections of stuff. He told her once, early on. Something to dull the edge. Something to make her more manageable.
She's forgotten what he said. But she remembers screaming at him. Clawing at him. Her vision turning red.
The smell of burning hair.
He clears his throat. An expectant sound, waiting for her to cooperate.
She isn't really a model patient. She doesn't fight him now, not anymore. But she stays still - very, very still - and tries to ignore her throbbing, angry nerve endings.
"It will only get worse," he says, when a minute or two or ten have passed. And he won't let many more pass after that. He'll pin her down the way he did the first week. Shove the needle in her neck while she writhes and yells and says she'll kill him.
She probably could. Maybe. If it weren't for the fucking shots.
She turns, looking him square in his shadowed face.
"I don't want it," she says.
He lets out a short breath. He removes the tip from the syringe. "It's not up for negotiation, I'm afraid."
Of course not.
She doesn't remember the moment she changed. The moment the t-Veronica virus slipped through the thin barrier of her skin, and made itself at home in her blood.
She remembers plenty of other things. The smell of gunsmoke and rain and dark, wet earth. A frantic email to Leon while Steve leaned against the wall, arms crossed, face twisted into a frown. Wesker with his boot on her shoulder, crushing her to the ground. The plane, and Steve's shoulder, and Steve's voice, and Steve's body...
...then waking up in a lab with electrodes on her chest and on her temples, and a needle in the crook of her elbow, and a monitor beeping and buzzing beside her.
Nothing in the middle. That drove him fucking nuts, the first week he kept her here. That big, blank gap in her memory. Gray and hazy. No answers to any of his questions...not even a hint about what might have happened.
But here she is.
Infected.
She thrusts her arm out, letting it flop over the side of the bed. He lifts it by her wrist, very gingerly - not soft or gentle or delicate, but like she's a Molotov cocktail. All glass and napalm. He works quickly. Alcohol drying on her skin. The dull sting of a needle. Something cold rushing through her veins, numbing the fierce roar of the virus.
And then he's on his feet, and he's clipping the case shut, and he's moving the chair back against the wall.
All fucking business.
"As always, Miss Redfield, it's been an absolute pleasure." He turns to leave. "I'll be back at six in the morning."
"Can't wait," she mutters.
She was scared of him at first. Certain she'd die. Certain she'd say the wrong thing and he'd snap her neck. Or he'd chain her up and torture her. Or he'd cut her up piece by piece, just to see if the pieces grew back. Or he'd pump her full of all kinds of experimental junk, viruses and toxins and parasites...
After a month of this shit, of all this nothing, it's hard to be scared anymore.
And besides all that, she's an asset. More useful alive and coherent than bleeding out on an operating room table.
He sighs. He crosses the room. It's almost always four strides. Sometimes five.
He pauses at the door, his back still to her. "I know you much prefer to wallow in self-pity," he says, his hand on the door, "but I'll remind you that the sooner you accept your circumstances, the easier this will be."
It's nice of him, looking out for her like this. Sharing words of fucking wisdom. Seven Habits of Highly Effective Viral Carriers.
She rolls over. Hugs a pillow to her chest.
Doesn't answer.
The door closes behind him quietly. The lock clicks into place. And the other lock. And the heavy steel bar. A rhythm she's gotten used to.
Her circumstances.
Her circumstances.
It sounds so clinical that way. So clean and sterile. So unfortunate.
A poor little girl having a rough time.
She's stuck. She's fucking stuck. With him. She's a million miles from home, and no one knows, and no one's coming.
And even if they did come, he'd kill them.
And even if they got through him...they'd find a B.O.W. instead of her.
She'd cry, but the tears scald her cheeks.
For two weeks, she refused to eat.
Have it your way, he told her. It won't make a difference. And it didn't - she barely felt a thing. Two weeks was like skipping breakfast.
She eats now. Not much. It's not the same...everything tastes burnt. Everything around her is fire, fire, constant fucking fire.
She chokes down a spoonful of something custardy. She can swallow it quickly enough to keep from tasting it, but it still seems a little sweet. Vanilla-ish.
Kind of.
You'll get used to it, he told her.
He's a fucking sack of shit liar.
He doesn't know what this is. Doesn't know what anything is. Doesn't know why she's still alive. Doesn't know why her blood burns and her skin turns to ash. Doesn't know how to control it, even after she's spent a month as his lab rat.
She's got a rough red mark on her wrist. He tells her not to scratch it.
She does anyway.
It would be healed by now, if she stopped picking. It's where the handcuffs snapped in place the first few days. A neat little ribbon, from nights spent chained to the bed, screaming and swearing and promising to make his life a living fucking hell however she got the chance.
The metal started to melt against her skin. He took them off.
"Joint pain?" He glances up from the monitor. He's sitting across from her, a doctor interviewing his patient, typing away as she answers.
Or as she shrugs dismissively.
"Headache?"
She scoops up another spoonful of the pudding. Custard. Whatever. She stares at it.
"Chills?"
She turns the spoon over. The substance slides back into the ramekin, landing with a plop.
She hears him sigh. She looks up, and he's got his sunglasses off, his hand across his eyes, his elbow on the desk. When he speaks again, it's very slow.
Very, very deliberate.
"If you...do not give me the information I need to stabilize this virus…"
"Nothing's changed since yesterday." She taps the spoon against the edge of the white ceramic. It echoes in the sterile examination room.
They go through this every day. Every damn day of her life - or what's left of her life now.
She's always been bothered by routines. Wake up to a blaring alarm clock. Dig through the drawer in her dorm for Pop-Tarts. Find out her roommate, Jenna, ate the last pack of strawberry. Grab blueberry instead. Choke it down. Pull on some ratty shorts and an old t-shirt. Head out to class - Biology, Psych, Spanish, Modern Lit, whatever. Pull a four hour shift at the diner. Maybe five. Maybe six. Eat cold, limp fries for dinner. Drag back home. Fall into bed. Start over.
She'd hated it. She'd hated every second of it.
She never imagined she'd hate something more.
He types something into the computer, frowning at the monitor. He pushes the chair back from the desk, and gestures towards her flippantly.
"Stand," he says, as he rises to his own feet.
She sighs, setting the ramekin down just a little too hard, and the spoon rattles. She pushes herself up from her chair, her posture arrow-straight. Her chin tilted up, eyes on a blank patch of the wall.
She never...ever...thought she would hate anything more than waking up at six in the morning and dragging herself to the library before an exam.
But she never thought she'd have Albert Wesker telling her to strip every goddamn morning. Like clockwork.
Pants and shirt. She slips out of them, kicks them to the side, her gaze locked on the white concrete. Just pants and a shirt, that's all she has to shed. He's real clinical about it, too - he checks her skin for abrasions, for lesions, for angry red burns that aren't healing right, and he rarely says a word.
"Arms." He says that. A short, barking command. She raises her arms above her head. He walks a slow circle around her, eyes on as much of her skin as he can see.
He pauses behind her.
"I'm going to touch your shoulder," he says.
"Whatever," she says. It's really fucking sweet of him to give her a heads up when he's about to put his hands on her. Really fucking thoughtful.
She feels his fingertips just above the blade of her left shoulder, to the side of her bra strap. His skin is cold against hers.
"Do you feel anything here?"
She shakes her head. Her ponytail swishes from side to side, hair tickling the base of her neck.
"This one may not heal," he says, to himself, to her, to the damn scar. He walks back around to the desk, settling into the plush leather chair. "It tends to happen with preexistent tissue damage."
Cool.
And then he's back behind the monitor, typing furiously, lost in a swirl of notes and numbers.
Great.
Normally he'd prep her for some kind of test now. Tell her to toss on a gown, draw some blood, take some blood, leave her staring at a centrifuge while he works. But today, he doesn't say a word. Doesn't even look up.
Maybe, after a month, he's finally run out of theories.
Maybe she's stabilized.
But he doesn't say that. He just types, and types, and types while she stares.
Shifts her weight.
Curls her fingers to a tight fist, then flexes them, feeling a joint pop.
He finally glances back up at her, lifting one hand from the keys, and gives her a quick wave-off. "Dress. We're done here."
She glares, bending down to pick up her clothes. She shoves her legs through the jeans, wriggling them up her hips. She yanks the shirt down over her head.
"Well." She smooths down loose curls of hair. "It's been fun. Awesome. Can't wait 'til lunch."
"I believe I said you were dismissed." He talks in a low murmur, without looking up.
She glowers at him.
He raises his eyes again, and he glowers back. "Rest assured, I'm as eager to be here as you are. Now if you don't mind…"
And that...that gets her.
Thirty fucking days of him. Of this place, this lab, this dreary, sterile, windowless hell. Thirty days of pain, of fear, of anger, of invasive prodding and probing, of stripping down to her underwear while he stares at her, of chemicals in her blood, of bland food, of burning, thirty days of fire.
Thirty days as a prisoner.
And he's the one who doesn't want to be here.
"Fuck you," she mutters, reaching for the custard. Ready to take it back to her sad little room, and eat it in her bed, and grind the ramekin into dust.
He's quiet. He finishes typing a note into the computer. He reaches out, flicking off the monitor's power button, and then looks up, offering her a cajoling smile.
"Come again?" he asks.
She stops, hand hovering over the unfinished dessert.
She spent a semester in high school on the debate team. She's pretty good at enunciating. So she leans over, both palms planted squarely on the desk, gets as close to her face as she'll let herself. Looks him dead in his stupid fire-and-brimstone eyes.
"Fuck...you."
He clears his throat, very delicately. He places his fountain pen back in the little silver cup. He folds his arms across the top of the desk, the half-smile still wedged tight in the corner of his lips.
"I'm sure this is all...astoundingly difficult for you," he drawls. "Only nineteen years old, condemned to a life spent as a monster. What a pity."
She sneers down at him. Her lip upper curls away from her teeth. She wishes they were razor-sharp.
"Tell me something, Miss Redfield." He rises again, brushing some invisible dirt from his pants. "What do you imagine would happen, if you were to escape?"
She lifts her hands from the desk. Crosses her arms. Uncrosses them. Hooks a thumb through the belt loop in her jeans.
Don't listen, she tells herself, tugging at the denim. He's pulled this bullshit before. He's tried to worm his way into her head, past her defenses. Make her question everything.
Don't you dare listen.
"Do you imagine some tearful, touching reunion with your brother?" He pulls his sunglasses from his pocket. "You think he'll take you back with open arms, is that it?"
He holds the glasses up to the light, squinting, and uses a small square handkerchief to wipe the lenses. "You imagine starting back just where you left off."
Bullshit. It's all bullshit, it's all mind games and manipulation and bullshit...
He slips the glasses on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose. "You realize...the government wants you. Black market brokers want you. Countless organizations want you. And you think your dear brother will keep you safe from them?"
She inhales. Exhales. A bitter huff. He gives her that same fake, fleeting smile, with quick twitching lips.
"I can't help but wonder if he'll even see you as his sister now." He glances down at his watch - back to the fancy one, all silver and diamonds - and strides past her. He wrenches the door open, stepping aside, gesturing for her to exit. "Or as just another twisted creature."
She can feel herself shaking. Feel retorts rising, boiling, branding her tongue. None of them are sharp enough to pierce his skin.
She hates him.
God, she hates him.
She hates him, and she needs him, and he knows it. And there's nothing she can say to change that as she hurries across the room, choking down all the frail insults she could hurl. Choking back tears - angry, vicious, frustrated tears.
She'll never let him see them.
Never.
He grabs her shoulder as she passes. There's no warning this time. She tries to jerk away, and feels flames licking beneath her skin. Feels a sudden swirl of smoke in her bones.
He leans down close, tightening his grip. "I promise you, Miss Redfield," he hisses, her name like hot steel plunged into water. "Right now, I'm the least of your worries."