"By the time I've finished with you,
you won't know whether you've been kissed or cut,
whether you were loved or butchered.
And either way you probably won't care,
just grateful you came close enough to touch."
- Warsan Shire -
The Ones
They never prayed, they never begged.
It would have been unworthy.
The imbeciles beg, or the weak.
Those who need an ineffable and transparent God who watch over them - over their sins, their shame.
Repent, and everything will be forgiven - even your worst action.
Words like those never existed between them: they couldn't.
They didn't have to.
And yet...
"I'm so sorry."
Three times these words had slipped between them; the first two were Alex, the last Albert.
Only one had been collected - accepted.
In the end, the most important.
1.
Six years.
One last night together, an incredibly cold morning.
For so long she had been away from Raccoon City (from him) so much she wanted to go back.
He touches her neck with his fingers, tightens.
Alex doesn't escape, welcomes his anger - his pain.
The S.T.A.R.S. office lies quiet, silent.
"I'm so sorry." she says, and Albert strengthens his grip, lifting her almost from the ground.
"I'm sorry." she repeats, and groans when his mouth finds her neck - he bends her, and bites.
He will hurt her, she knows that; at least how much she did to him.
He will torture her thoughts, her skin; he will destroy what he will find in the middle.
Alex tilts her head, listening to his hands on her hips, between her thighs.
"I'm sorry." she murmurs and closes her eyes.
Wesker holds her against him and thrusts.
2.
You can't ask forgiveness to the dead: they can no longer answer you.
Alex shakes - a vibration of repressed and absolute fury.
She stares to the African sky, its inconsistent clouds.
Tricell's facility no longer matters, overturned chairs and empty offices.
She brings a hand to her chest, slides with her fingertips on Albert's remains - ash and dust.
Obsidian and gold.
Behind her, her men are picking up what the BSAA didn't find of Wesker's experiments - of his life.
Las Plagas, Uroboros - tragedies already announced.
Alex diverts her gace, placing it on Excella's desk - split in two, decorated by the remains of one of the Infected.
"I'm sorry." she murmurs, and swallows "I should have accepted your offer."
I should have come with you. Here, in Africa. Preventing you from dying for the delusion of another man - Spencer.
Silence is already an answer.
3.
Crumpled sheets, reduced to nothing more than a blue punch at the bottom of the bed.
Damp skin, wet thighs; Alex fades under his hands, groans and bites and comes - a almost shy sound.
Albert is always amazed at what Alex seems to be hiding in those moments - how much the image of her bent between his legs doesn't match the gaze she reserves to him.
No shame, no limits - she doesn't know them.
She seeks him without shame, conquers his spaces.
She welcomes his hands along her hips, on the ribs - up to the soft curve of her breasts and around her mouth.
She licks his fingertips, closes her eyes - she bites.
Albert releases an indecent groan, thrusts in her - until there is more space to divide them.
He opens her thighs, raises on his elbows.
Wesker studied her face, her fragile beauty: her mouth, her expression.
He switches the positions, licks a string of blood and more.
He murmurs it in her hair, between his clenched teeth.
He perceives her stretching beneath him, clinging to his shoulders, tearing his skin with her small, red lacquered nails.
He smells her desire, her doubt; a flavor that lies on his tongue, in his heart.
He repeats it, again and again - until even he belives it. Until she belives in it.
Alex closes her eyes, comes; she takes him deeply with her.
Albert follows her without regrets.
"Do you feel this heart?
It's a rotten, corrupt thing.
This is something that shouldn't be here.
Not after what I did. That we did.
Yet it still beats. Drags in my chest.
And sometimes, I wonder why.
What drives it to exist - to try to look like the others.
And I wonder, in the clearest hours of the morning, when the night dies.
Then I understood. I saw it, Alex.
And I realized that this moment - this instant - was a good place to end our story.
Or to start it. "
"They shared the weight of memory.
They took up what others could no longer bear.
Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak."
- Tim O'Brien -