A/N: This is part of an on-going fic which will eventually fill all parts of my hc_bingo card LJ.
The story is set a few years in the future (approx. 6), and Chris and Jill are in a long-standing relationship with a daughter. In this story, the government has decided to rebuilt Raccoon City, and the story focuses on Chris, Jill, Claire and Leon's journey.
Warnings for this section: non-explicit mentions of rape/non-con. In this fic, I assume that there was something more sinister between Wesker and Jill while she was under his control, so be aware of that before you start reading. Also, sexytiems, but not graphic, only implied.
Everything out of the way? Let's go.
It's years after the end of it all that Chris learns to let it go. Emma is four, nearly five. The B.S.A.A are disbanded, cautiously, and they all learn to breathe a little easier. After all, what is there left to fight?
Chris learns to cut the crusts off sandwiches and starts to live his life in little moments, sees everything through preschooler eyes as his daughter begins to comprehend the world. He dreads the day that she'll start asking questions. When she was born he swore he'd never touch a gun again, and it grew dust in the safe, but he still unlocks it sometimes and looks, just to check he hasn't forgot what it means.
He never wants to forget how to fight, the rough mess of blood and sweat, and grit, and gun oil. He wants to keep Emma as far from this darkness as he can, but it's a part of him, of Jill. It is woven into the kith of their life, every moment of easy domesticity is backlit by combat, by a fallen comrade, by Wesker and his poison hands. Every lazy weekend is a celebration of how close they came to being something else entirely, every kiss as secret as their first.
He tells himself he ought to be proud that they survived, that he even has a family, but in the middle of his chest is a cold pocket of grief and panic he keeps bottled up for a rainy day. Claire could have died... Jill nearly did... They were all so constantly on the edge of danger, threat after threat, that adjusting to life in relative safety is alien to him. He watches the neighbours for signs of suspicion. He did a background check on Emma's preschool teacher. He can't let it go, not for one second. This is unfamiliar ground to him; now, he knows new fear.
At night, he kisses his way around the scars on Jill's body. There's something nourishing in the easy fact of losing himself in her skin, of the clumsy mash of teeth on teeth, that grounds him, keeps him from shooting things.
"Loveyouloveyouloveyou," he moves his lips on her collarbone, and all at once they're grubby S.T.A.R.S kids again, stealing looks over their desks. This is stupid, crazy, he'd thought, back then as he fell in love way too hard, I barely even know her.
Hollywood movies had forgot to tell him how grisly love was, how raw and singularly scary. He'd called Claire once, a few weeks before the Mansion Incident, and asked for advice. His kid sister had laughed, it was easy to forget she was only eighteen.
"Don't be silly Chris," she'd said down the phone, "how many girls do you fall for, on average, a week? You'll be in love with someone else next week."
She had a point. But this was different; this was Jill. Even now, he's still in awe of his feelings for her. He loves her in the forever kind of way in which he loves Emma, and Claire, but with Jill there is more, always more.
He sucks her toes in quick succession. He unzips and unwraps and worships her. He kisses her raw until Wesker's fingerprints are wiped off her body. He listens to her talk about Wesker, and those insane years. She tells it with jarring clarity, recalls with grim precision the way he brought her back to life, traced each of her veins around her naked body, placed skeletal hands on her with cool detachment.
It took losing her to Wesker for Chris to want her, really want her, in that forever way. He just couldn't wait. After Africa, when they were finally on U.S soil, he had gathered her up in his arms, blonde hair and scars and all, and said with his eyes tell me. "Did he touch you?"
She told him. She told him everything. The tests, the surgeries, the P-30 and how it pushed its way through her body, pumping towards her heart. Wesker and his eyes that told her a thousand horror stories, and the way he would nurture and tease and push and lick, until she curled on her side and begged for emptiness and oh god.
He buried his face in her neck, breathed in, breathed out. She still smelt of the sterile hospital and of that vaguely gritty type of sand they had in Africa. He'd pulled off her standard B.S.A.A issue windbreaker, helped her out of her slacks, plucked off her socks and her underwear, taken her by the hand into the hotel bathroom. She was compliant and cold, tears drying on her cheeks.
"Trust me," he said, and she did.
She hadn't had a shower in three years. Living in a sterile testing chamber, there wasn't much need for washing. And later, Wesker had preferred her unwashed, grimy and dirty and chained.
Chris turned the water on, way too hot and way too rough. He scrubbed her knees, her palms, washed her hair until he was sure the hot water could strip the blond dye. It didn't. She stood in silence, thinking of Wesker's hands all over her. Chris was washing her with the vague determination in which people scrub door handles in a new house. It was the first time he'd seen her naked, but she wasn't thinking about that. His hands were chaste as he washed her, and tears of anger near blinded him as he worked.
Later, when Jill was dressed in a puffy bathrobe from the hotel's concierge desk, they lay cramped in the single twin bed. Chris had his arms round her, still, and refused to let go. She clung to him, her lifeline.
"You can go home soon," he said. The hospital in D.C had discharged her, and she was free to go whenever she liked. The hotel had been Josh's idea. Chris had to remember to thank him.
"Go where?"
She had a point. After three years, her landlord had closed the tenancy. Claire had boxed up her stuff one weekend, and was loyally paying the fees. Her former apartment was now occupied by a group of young students.
He knew he should offer to let her move in with him, but his apartment was sparse and tiny, and messy beyond belief. It also only had one room. He knew he shouldn't presume that Jill would want to share, and yet don'tleavemedon'tleavemenotnow.
The next day, she appeared on his doorstep, backpack in hand and a sad smile on her face. "I didn't know where else to go," she said, and he was surprised that she actually felt the need to ask permission to enter his house. He held out his arms for her, and she had stayed there ever since.
It took her weeks to stop crying, months to stop flinching every time he accidentally touched her at night. He would wake sometimes to find her at the kitchen table, gasping and gulping down painkillers.
"Another bad dream?" He would ask, and she would nod. She woke up with a panic attack most nights, clawing at her own skin until she got out of bed for a walk. He would find her pacing around the tiny confines of his apartment, muttering under her breath.
He sat beside her. He watched as she got her body under control, slowing her breathing. He had never once witnessed a panic attack before Jill's. He had never seen the clutch of terror and loss of control as her body spiraled into panic mode, the ghoulish way that she would fret and shake until he was sure the P30 was taking her over again.
He learned to work with her, placing his hand on her back, rubbing in small, comforting circles. She allowed this contact without tensing up, but anything more would send her back into the heights of another attack.
"Chris," she would sob into his side, "what's happening to me?"
And it burnt him raw to hear it, and to know that what had already happened was something he could never fix, no matter how many nights he spent sleepless by her side, no matter how much she told him about Wesker's abuse, it was all done and dusted.
"I can't think," she said, "can't do anything. What if he comes back?"
Chris didn't need to tell her what he'd do to Wesker if he saw him again, if by some hellish stunt he'd managed to survive those missiles that he and Sheva had pumped into his body, as revenge for the caustic way he'd taken Jill. Chris felt the anger bubbling up just at the thought of Wesker surviving, an anger that was constantly just beneath the surface.
"I won't let him," Chris whispered, breathing out steam into the cold midnight air of his kitchen. "I wouldn't." I'd tear him up with my bare hands, I'd break him into a thousand pieces.
She looked at him, and sighed. "Don't leave me," she said quietly, "please." As if she even had to ask…
And that was it. He reached for her, pulled her into his arms. The perfect fit. Everything became a mess of tears and tongues getting in the way as he held her as tight as possible. "I won't, I won't," he chanted between kisses, and somehow they made it into the bedroom.
She flinched away from him, but he was steady. He touched her face, made her look into his eyes. "I won't hurt you Jill, ever. You know I won't." And they had made their way from there without words, with only rhythmic kissing and iloveyou's breathed out in quick succession. She tasted like smoke, like everything he'd ever imagined. She was quiet as they rocked on the bed. Ohmygod, he sucked on her wrist in awe, this is finally happening.
After they'd drank one another dry, she fell asleep with her face pressed against his chest. His mind was running a thousand miles a minute, thinking about Raccoon City, about the Spencer Estate, about the dumb way in which Jessica had fawned over him, and he hadn't even noticed, because Jill, always Jill, he was looking for her on that goddamned ship, vectoring towards her, always.
Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think? :)
Chapter two will be up in a few minutes xx