Five Times Kissed
Carla/Chris
"I work here," she insists as they walk through the bitter-cold basement of city hall. It's an old bunker-style building. Remnants of trench warfare and it's bitter, bitter cold. The nerves in his fingers are numb. Married to the trigger of his gun as Alpha Team slowly and surely cuts through wave after wave of these monsters. He can't even call Las Plagas out on acting like this- it's a completely different breed.
"As what?" Macaulay. He's naive in a social way, everyone knows it and it pisses Piers off. He stays right by the woman's side- who looks neither pleased nor unhappy to be in this situation. She lacks expression. It's as if they had found the one person in the world that didn't give a genuine shit there was some kind of apocalyptic event going on. She had her own gun, talked like she'd seen all of this hundreds of times before. It put Chris on edge.
"A Secretary."
And even Piers was itching to drop her off somewhere as soon as possible- and Piers isn't the paranoid kind of person.
They stop at a blood spattered office for a medical break, the person formerly residing in it now in flames on the floor. Andy had sprained something. Alpha spreads out, covers the room, locks and closes the door. The woman sits on the office desk., Finn on her one hip, and Piers hawk watching her from the wall. If he has to shoot her, he will- but nothing has given him a reason to other than the fact he simply doesn't like her in the least.
Chris wants to know why, so he approaches her as she fiddles with her own pistol. It looks like a wicked weapon. Looks modified and as if it fits in her hands perfectly. She has such confidence in it he's certain that she's blatantly lying about everything. He doesn't know if she's who she says she is, if she's what she says she is. It all seems wrong. It's as if he's looking at a photograph and finding that the image had been blurred just a little bit or warped just enough that the entire picture was ruined.
"So where'd you learn to shoot?"
She looks up from what she's doing, loading her pistol with a smack of her palm.
"Fiancé."
"Oh- I didn't know you were…" he trails off, awkward.
"I hate him."
That was blunt, but congruent to her entire personality. She racked her gun. She's too professional at this for a secretary.
"Well you're not wearing a ring."
She stares at him like he's stupid. Her mouth in a thin, unreadable line. The woman must have emotions of steel. He's met battleworn shells of men with more visible emotional range.
"I wonder why…?" she coos. Suddenly her words are sticky sweet and conjuring up erotic pictures. She's playing with him- he knows it but can't do a thing about it.
"…Right, well, we should get moving."
She hops off the desk, passes him, and in passing brushes her lips along his cheek, "We should."
Her skin is hot- it feels like he's been brushed by the business end of a flame and not the lips of a woman at all.
His hair stands on end, and Piers readied his gun to shoot her right there and then. He looks furious.
It's the first time she'd kiss him. And afterwards he felt dirty.
They run through the market, swathed in the smell of rotting, fly bit meat. All the bones of old produce lied in boxes, exposed for bloatflies to crawl in and reproduce. The juices of long-dead fish roll over the plastic bins they were being kept in, raining onto the pavement in steady drips. The first maggots had already hatched, and they were getting fat- dropping from the overfilled trash bins like rain.
A sole catches the mush of an insect, and there's a loud squelch.
Chris grimaces, "This place's been hit a long time ago."
Piers spits on the ground, "Must've quarantined this off a couple weeks ago to stop it."
"That bitch has been working on this for that long."
They don't call her Ada at this point. She's "that bitch". They're the last ones standing- she's killed everyone.
He squashes another fat maggot under his boots, brushes by a tub of- what looked to be pork, and it catches on his belt, spilling. He swallows the gag that follows when the sludge alarms scavenging rodents.
Who knows what's infected at this point- he's never seen an open bazaar where all the produce had liquified.
"Captain-!"
Piers throws his hand up, points- Chris barely sees it but there it is. The outline of a woman in a red scarf, walking away through a kingdom of diseased meats, the puddles not touching her skin through the high-heeled boots of hers.
They charge after her. She runs.
Out of sight. It's at a fork in the road- a processing plant with two entrances and she could've gone through either one. They can't lose her but he hates the idea of splitting up.
"We'll split up, meet in the center."
"No, Piers."
"It's either that or she gets away and nobody wins. I'm with you until the end Captain, the sooner, the better."
There's a dark look on both of their faces, but Chris in that moment can appreciate without the surroundings, the loyalty and companionship of his last man standing.
"Alright… Just keep your earpiece on."
"Roger that."
Piers heads in first. Chris follows.
The inside's not much better than the outside. The meat that was to be processed is hanging on hooks, defrosted. It's a sea of decay, and Chris keeps his head down and his gun up, piercing through it.
It's a long road out of Hell- isn't that the truth?
He slams through boney carcasses, flies explode in inky clouds from the flesh. The light's dimming as he gets further into the haze of hanging meat. The outlines and shadows of the bones become more gray, less red. It's harder to see anything. Even with the flashlight on the tip, it's hard.
"Piers, you see anything?"
"Negative. Just an empty factory."
"Wish I had that luck," he mutters, jabbing at the shadow of a dripping dead animal. There's no movement in the meat field, conveyer belts. The glow of the exit sign flickers like a flame, lighting exposed ribcages.
"I'm heading for the exit- I think she's gone."
He feels a patch of air move at his neck as the words leave him.
He whips around, he's met with something with white, glazed eyes. Eye to eye with it- her. That bitch. She hangs upside down, her heels fast on the conveyer bar, her scarf hanging upside down. It's the same blank expression he gave her half a year ago, completely stoic and unable to be broached. She hangs from a grappling hook- has the strength to remain as still as she is.
"Fuck-."
She reaches for him and he's paralyzed with shock because it doesn't seem to be real and he's had a hard time telling what's real and what's not.
Her free hand grabs his chin. Her perfume cuts through the smells of meat and he feels sick. Her lips brush him again, this time against his. And he realizes that she is absolutely not human.
"Poor Chris. You really hate me, don't you?"
That bitch isn't human.
He jumps back and raises his weapon to pound bullets into her like every other dead-eyed zombie he's met, but she moves like an animal, disengages the hookshot. It whizzes, and she drops, landing like a cat and darting off. His bullets land in other rotten things around her, and he hears the wet tapping of her heels as she flees- evading him.
"Captain?!"
"Piers- over here, I saw her- she fucking ran!"
Piers runs to him, "Jesus what happened to your mouth?!"
There's red- it's not lipstick smeared on his lips, he swears and mashes his mouth against the fabric of his glove.
"Dammit!"
Piers's funeral's one of the nicest ones he's been to in his long years of attending funerals and renting tuxedos for funerals. The kid- and Chris considered him a kid- is memorialized, a ceremony held in Spanish Springs, Nevada. His mother demands a headstone be placed in the local cemetery, and flowers cover it. Jill comes with a bouquet of oriental lilies, roses, and a comforting shoulder. She looks wonderful in a mourning dress and a gray shrug and Chris holds her hand the entire time.
He says a few words about him, as much as he can with a straight face, but he shakes his head and excuses himself.
Stupid ambitious kid wanted his ashes flown up to space.
Always a dreamer- now there's no ashes to carry on. Jill's the proactive one. She gets a reservation from a UK company, a public launch event for the kid.
Some company called Stardust Ashes.
We're all made of stardust.
All of them. The next month, the launch is scheduled. Piers's grieving mother never shows for it. Jill and Chris wear their fatigues and carry a flag. Some of the rest of the BSAA gather with them. It's a spectacle. A rocket canister lifting off with their memories and well-wishes.
A sending for his spirit.
He salutes as the rocket lights up the sky. Jill follows him. It's beautiful, and beyond the banister separating the launch sight, he knows wherever Piers's soul is, it's smiling at him.
'Hey take this as letting go,' he hears Piers say, 'Go to the bright future for me.'
"Alright."
He finishes the salute. Looks beyond the horizon.
Something red flies in his vision, among the smoke and fire. It takes a moment to make it out, the thin whip of a ribbon.
The violin shape of a woman in a suit and a red scarf, staring up at the sky. A ghost back from the dead.
His heart seizes up. A grip like a fever rushes through his body.
"Chris, Chris what the hell?"
Jill grabs him by his wrist and he apologizes profusely, "Sorry, Sorry. Jill I need a sec."
She looks at him, stern. That "Don't do something stupid, Chris." look. That's been going around a lot.
His movement down the steps of the platform they were on caught the eye of the woman across the landing. She looks right at him, he feels her weird eyes puncturing through him like the bullet that should've killed her. Right in her heart- that shot was no accident.
If they're all made of stardust, she's made of the empty spaces between the stars. A great, enormous vacuum that just somehow has human shape and form.
She feels nothing- no remorse from what he can tell. She justified everything with vague abstract concepts. He can't even begin to empathize with her.
After everything was said and done and the cleanup of China began, it was Derek Simmons who was blamed internationally and nationally. He became one of the most hated men on the face of the earth postmortem. Amazing the kind of stuff the media digs up after the fact.
Derek was disowned by the Simmons's. He had a fiancé- she was missing and presumed murdered by his hands. A couple papers started to like the rumor of him being a sex offender holding political office, and a deeply disturbed example of why society needs more workplace detection support.
Chris thinks it's all bullshit- except the fiancé.
No, that woman, he's convinced, stands a couple feet in front of him after he marches over there, Jill trailing him.
He draws back, ready to punch her- it's his only thought to inflict as much pain and suffering on this monster as she's caused- and she in bitter irony has outlived everyone who tried to do the right thing.
Carla sidesteps him, he tries to hook her and she ducks, grabs his wrist.
Jill jumps on him faster than he can imagine and has the strength enough to throw him off Carla, tossing him hard on the ground with an absolutely furious speech.
Carla is impassive and cool as ever, brushing off her suit while Jill makes apologies on his behalf.
"That bitch killed Piers!"
Carla, for a fraction of a second, smiles.
Jill is absolutely furious with him. She doesn't catch it.
She makes the rest of the BSAA escort Chris out, shakes Carla's hand. They hit it off immediately.
Salt in the wounds.
He sheds tears at the unfairness of it all when nobody can see him, in their car. Jill drives them back to HQ, parks, and has a long talk with him. She's a strong person, but she has her own tears that escape her eyes. He needs help. He really needs help. Or she can't help him anymore because she's not enough.
It breaks his heart. He agrees to go to an assigned therapist. Take a leave of absence due to medical concerns. It's all laid out in that car. And Jill gives him a kiss before she gets out.
"Look, Chris. You can get through this."
"What if… Jill, What if I was telling the truth?"
"About that woman-? Carla?"
That's the name she's going by now.
"Yeah. Jill… she killed so many people. She's… She's worse than Wesker. Wesker… at least you knew where you stood."
Jill looks pensive, she bites her lip. That's a sore subject for both of them. She closes the car door.
"You think she's Ada Wong?"
"No… I think she thinks she's some kind of… BOW or something that looks like Ada Wong."
"Chris… that's…"
"Yeah, I know, but Jill, it's not the stupidest thing I've ever said."
She sighs, "Yeah I guess. Look, I'll see what I can do. I have to report you right now."
"Great."
They smile, and both of them laugh, over stressed.
The process takes twelve hours, but everything is more or less set in motion. Jill drives him back to his apartment, her eyes red and puffy from sleeplessness and grief. They agree to crash in the same bed- and it's nice after… everything that's happened.
Chris almost feels comfortable, a sense of closure, sleeping back to back with his best friend. He was drifting off.
And then he heard a knock at the door- turned the light on.
"Hey you hear that?"
"… What? No."
"Knocking?"
Jill was quiet, she listened dutifully, "No, I don't."
"I'm gonna check, ok?"
"Okay. If you're not back in five I'm coming after you."
"Roger."
He schlumps in his nightclothes down the stairs- maybe it was just a sound he imagined?
But he opens the door and he's face to face with her. Again.
He tries so very hard not to be a reactive individual, to not punch her. She's trapped in a suit that's modest and revealing all the same. Her suit is designer, she smells potent and perfumed.
"You," he hisses out.
"Hi Chris," she replies, "I didn't think I'd see you again."
"Bitch. Get out."
She stares at him, he sees the pit of human and supernatural evil in her eyes. She does not move. She crooks a single finger like it's flint. Sparks his flames and rage.
"Maybe you'll understand someday, Chris," she sighs, and lifts up on her toes, takes his lips in her mouth, and bites his lip. It's like being drawn into a hot iron.
He rips away, shocked, and a chunk of his lip leaves with her. He looks again, to see her licking her lips and vanishing as she does, quickly and violently into the shadows. Pivot and click, click, click. He's let her go.
Jill runs down, "Oh my God. Chris, oh my God, your mouth."
He sits on the couch, pale and horrified, staring at the still-open front door.
Therapy's hard. The hardest thing he's ever done. There's a talking part of it, there's a diet change part of it, there's an exercise regiment. The changes are difficult to commit to, but at least he's habitual and the schedules suit him fine.
It's just really hard. The worst part is the medication. It makes him feel plastic sometimes, killed a lot of appetite.
It's painful- his behavior gets worry and irritation from Jill. She's over a couple times a week, they take turns cooking and trying to plan outings. It's like a second chance at a peaceful friendship that they never got to have all their lives. That part is nice, but the rest of it is not.
Today, he's to swim, drink a protein shake, eat a light breakfast, a light lunch, a balanced supper.
He starts swimming laps in increments of 200 meters build. It's been decided that workouts help his anxiety and mood levels. He loses the beer gut a couple months in- and there's no sign of that bitch anywhere.
Life, for once, is looking up for him. He has a scar on his mouth and Jill's been on a witch hunt after tying Simmons to the woman Ada Wong. Apparently, she's attracted the attention of Ada Wong- and even stranger, it's the "real" Ada Wong.
Chris swims and thinks about the situation despite the doctor prescribed idea that he should clear his mind and think about the future- not the past.
Ada Wong, there was a "real" woman, there was a "fake" woman. She provided the BSAA with some information that's damning to Derek Simmons in particular. Derek Simmons killed a lot of women to create the monster who had been haunting him. Over twelve thousand- and it takes a very sick kind of person to do that.
Especially when the purpose was to marry her- at least, that's what he assumed was what happened.
Carla's first conversation with him comes back about her betrothed and how she hated him.
He finally understood a little bit of the story. Angry woman gets revenge on an asshole.
And half the world he owned with him. The BSAA exchanged a release on the name Ada Wong from the most wanted list after the interview. It was more bargaining between political organizations than anyone had ever seen, and very few involved were willingly cooperative. Still, a serious threat to security was on the loose.
Apparently, the cleanup crew had rummaged through the Quad Tower and found one single drawing of hers- a self portrait apparently drawn in bleeding ballpoint. It wasn't anything special, but from that and a business note she had left to still-unnamed associates, experts drew a psychological profile of this… monster woman.
He's yet to read it. He doesn't want to know.
Jill has, and she said she's scared what would happen if she's allowed leeway into power, but they have no idea where to start looking for her.
He wanted to suggest using him as bait. She, for some reason has fixated on him- he thinks. Wants to personally make his life hell.
He finishes the laps and kicks at the pool, thinking. It's a pretty lousy start to a day.
"Hey Chris," Jill calls from the fencing. It's the pool of his complex, and he got her a guest pass- she's always checking up on him anyways.
"Hey! What are you doing here?"
Jill takes a swig of lemon Snapple and tosses him one, which he catches.
"Your therapist told the board you were doing well. You'll probably be able to head out into the field again if you are up for it in a couple months."
"- Really? Wow. I didn't think I did that good."
Jill shrugs and kicks off her flipflops.
"Jill, why don't you just move in? You're always here anyways."
She twists the cap off her Snapple, "The first human-made object to break the sound barrier was a whip."
He looks over her shoulder.
"O-kay."
"I like my own place sometimes."
He can't argue with that. She likes alone time- library time and her own personal hobbies. One of them being to read Snapple cap facts.
"I gotcha. I'm just saying if you ever consider it, it's an option," he unscrews the cap of his drink.
"Thanks Chris," she kicks at the water and leans over his bicep, "A nautical mile is 800 feet longer than a land mile."
"Nice."
She takes his drink from him, "Meaning you probably have a couple feet left," and pushes him in.
Months later, he improved. Physically, mentally. Grief counselors came and went and he made a sincere effort for Jill more than anybody else. He quite drinking completely. Two months sober and he was proud of that. Sharpened up his skills for the field, and felt a lot better than even when he temporarily was in charge of Alpha.
HQ had a mission for him and the rest of Delta Team. It wasn't Alpha or Beta first response work, and it didn't seem serious enough to go to either of them. It was a routine search of a company that might have accidentally gotten involved with warehousing BOWs in Anchorage. Lots of talking with people and not a lot of combat. Jill, acting as an adviser in a non-combat role had actually gone ahead to speak with the CEO and give the greenlight for the rest of Delta to flood in.
Delta had four other members on it, all very extroverted. Sribana Mindi, a Hindi woman with a sunshine personality (she reminded him of Merah, rest her soul), and who was an electric shot with a rifle. Thomas Glass, an American South boy with an accent- he was a computers expert. Samuel Doplis, a transfer from the European Branch, and Circe Jones- and he loved and knew Circe for a long time.
Delta was a party, that's for sure. Their job was to inspect the building, talk with people, and Chris, Circe, and Jill were going to do a sweep with Doplis on the cargo, and Sribana covering them. Thomas was their eye in the sky- gifted with computers and everything to do with coding. A real wizard. Overall, a very simple mission and they all took it with seriousness.
Mindi was sucking on a coconut lolly while interviewing the building security experts, a habit she'd been reprimanded for but she couldn't kick. Chris oversaw it with Jill, both of them in suits, making sure procedure was followed.
"And you didn't notice any clients out of the ordinary calling either?"
"No, all we have that's oddly suspicious is one private number that called front desk once and hung up."
Sribana sighed, "I don't know, Sir. It sounds like a dud. Nobody saw anything come in that looked odd, and they already had dogs sniff out the warehouse and the shipyard."
"Stay focused, Mindi, we've got detectors and experience and that's why we're here too."
"Yes sir," she said, the lolly now just a dissolving stick that she tossed in a waste bin.
Chris liked her. She's a good kid. They all were, though Doplis was a bit gruff. They called Delta together, described the layout of both locations with it's points of patrol and methods of checking metal cargo crates.
Circe looked morbidly thoughtful the entire time. She hadn't said much on the flight up, and didn't have her heart in what her head was in. She wanted to be home with her kid- Chris guessed.
Not out here in the bitter cold of a warehouse, checking crates for biological weapons. Chris went with her as her partner, Circe checking crates with a stick on detector and Chris holding a gun in case of emergency. Nothing yet and so far everyone had reported in clear.
"Circe, is something up?"
She pulled the detector off a crate and spat a, "Box 23049 Clear" into the comm line.
"No, something's not, Chris. I'm just doing my job today."
"Okay. But if something is wrong, you have to tell me."
The dam broke, and Circe sighed, "It's Amelia. She has a fever. And that stupid vaccination scare is going on… Then I had to leave."
"Oh… I'm sorry."
Doplis, "Clear. Mindi will you spit that fucking thing out and stop sucking it over the comm."
"Sorry!"
Thomas, "That's the last of them on your end, Mindi, so you should join up with Doplis, you're clear to head down now."
"I don't want her!"
Chris moves to the next one, and the next. Everything's clear. It takes hours, but nothing unusual is showing up in X-rays of the boxes or their scanners. They reconvene and review for the shipyard. a different creature entirely. Harder and easier to mess up. He goes with Doplis, Jill goes with Circe, Mindi keeps watch from a high point on the warehouse.
Samuel Doplis has a British accent, he's rough. Used to be a sailor back in the day and he's the oldest one of their ragtag troupe. He's also undoubtedly superstitious and wears a cross exposed against his fatigues. Underneath his shirt he's got a lucky rabbit's foot. Chris likes Sam. He's very cut and dry and no-nonsense. Doesn't get the jokes that Mindi likes to tell, and that makes them funnier.
"I don't like that sky," Sam says. It's a bit pale green and the clouds cause it to look like it's perpetually night, "Some kind of evil sky."
"I think it's just Alaska," Chris offers.
"No, that's bad luck there," he repeats, kisses his cross, and they begin their search of a small ship. Deck to bottom. It takes hours. They check on Mindi every couple of minutes, because she's the one under a heating tarp bundled in the elements.
"I'm a Popsicle, if you're asking. You have three minutes left before we have to call it quits today."
Thomas agrees, "Yeah, it's going to drop even lower and the thermals aren't going to save you then."
Jill sighs, "Right, well we've got nothing on 112-."
"Same on 033," Chris adds.
"It's a dud," Mindi says.
"Here's to hoping," Thomas adds. They agree that that's enough. They have to come back and all meet at the middle of the dock, freezing cold. The water's solid enough to skate on around the ships, and they look like tombstones in a field of snow. Not a movement but the occasional loose rope being tossed in the wind.
"Hey, Mindi," Thomas interrupts, "Twelve o'clock. I've got something I can't make out on the dock."
"Huh? Oh my god-."
There's a moment among the group. They all look in the same direction. See a spot of red against the white.
"There's a woman wearing a dress?!"
Chris and Jill look at each other through the fur rim of their parkas. They have the same thought.
"Jill, get Delta out of here."
Jill shakes her head, "If that is who you think it is we need everyone here, Chris."
"What are you talking about?!" Circe interrupts.
Chris motions for them to form around him, and they do, with hesitation.
"She's getting close," Mindi stammers. Sounds like the lolli's out of her mouth finally.
Chris walks North as the mist rises from the ice. He sees the spot of red, and then it grows inch by inch until it's a stroke and a sore. Red scarf, black skimpy dress. Boots.
Carla. She's smiling and not a hundred yards away.
"Fuck…"
"Mindi," Jill says, "We need you to take the shot."
"What?!"
"Just do it!"
She does. A crack sounds out, the big flag of red bursts in movement, and then falls. Carla crumples.
"Alright, Delta, follow me," Chris says, shaky.
Everyone was shocked.
"What the hell just happened?!" Thomas yelled.
Jill has her pistol out. She's ready to make sure that bitch is dead. A bit of revenge for everyone.
Chris approaches the corpse, she's alive and in pain. Bleeding from the stomach.
Circe's stone faced, but Doplis seems ashen.
Jill lifts her pistol, and there's a noise that starts from Carla- a slow, ugly laughter. Her body spasms, she cups the wound in a shaky hand, bashes the pistol away from her face.
"I can't die, Chris. I can't die- but everyone else…"
It's her last sentence. Jill spatters her brains over the ice while the others look away. Chris stands over the body, solemn, and Thomas screams at him to explain himself.
Her face is half gone, blood runs into her dilapidated mouth. This is revenge.
"It's over," he says to the body, kneeling by it, "I feel sorry for you, Carla."
Circe misses her baby, Doplis prays. Jill looks angry.
And Carla's hand shoots up, and snares him by the throat, her hand coated in blood. It chokes the life out of him.
Half a face, her jawbone exposed, the wet muscle glistening inside, mouths and screams, "You will be!"
Her body explodes. The skin spatters in all directions and what is left is a mass of bone and long, white tendrils that lash at everything, clinging to her skeleton and a vague shadow of her figure.
"NO!"
It's chaos. Her body was destroyed. Shots from Mindi started barraging the monster.
Jill and Chris shot, but Carla- the monster that was now an abomination, shrugged it off.
Doplis was struck in the chest. A tendril buried between his ribs, and flung him onto the ice- cracking it. Circe dodged it the first time, and was caught the second. Chris tried to run, cut the tentacles in the mass that tightened around her. But they tightened and tightened, until he heard her bones crunch.
Jill grabbed him, Circe's blood sprayed onto them.
"We have to RUN!"
She was right. And then, she was slammed by a whipping tendril, tossing her onto the ice. Carla's body was grey and hairless, as if it was melting and her features had become nondescript. Her back was split open, and the polyps that had burst from it extended and swam through the air.
He's the last one left, he tries to shoot, and she walks closer.
He tries one more thing.
He runs at her with all his might, grabs her around the middle, and jumps off the dock. They break the ice and burst into the sea. The shock of cold forces him to black out, and he holds her midsection as if his life depends on it. She screams and screams underwater, Mindi's bullets pass by him. One hits his shoulder.
He dreams he's at home with Jill. He's just woken up.
He rolls over. He kisses her.
She's so warm. Her tongue is so warm.
He pulls her closer.
Carla breathes into his lungs as he lets go. And she sinks and he floats to the light.
Amelia's entering kindergarten. She's in the custody of her aunt Jill, who retired early due to a serious injury, and spends her days with her surrogate daughter living the kind of life she should've had before the very first biological outbreak in Raccoon City.
Chris wishes Piers were alive. Circe joined him. Another funeral. Another tuxedo.
Poplis too. Mindi's being treated for PTSD, but she's due to be back in action soon. Carla's nowhere to be found. She's been missing for years.
"You've got cancer," says his doctor, more or less. He nods.
He's not going to fight it. He's ready to go after… all of this. He tells Jill and she's adamant he receives treatment for it- that his smoking caused it. Maybe.
He doesn't want it.
He feels worse and worse day by day, but he gets to see Amelia grow up to kindergarten- the spitting image of her mother, and that's nice. Jill makes him read to her- hoping it'll instill a will to fight back in him.
It doesn't. He reads Goodnight Moon to Circe's daughter, and goes home, and drinks.
The BSAA officially retired him with pension. The both of them can die out in pasture now.
He ends up in the hospital, breathing with a machine, not dying like a hero.
He thinks.
At least he took Carla down.
At least he did that.
Jill's in and out with Amelia, tissues and flowers, Claire has been there the whole time. It's an end to a life he never asked for. If he could do it over again, he'd ask for a normal one without the consequences of loss and pain that came with being a soldier. A life without regret.
He wishes he married Jill.
He wishes a lot of things.
Claire hugs him- she has to go to work. She's giving up too, just like him. But he hopes she's got it in her to fight a little longer and harder than he did. His nurse comes in, gives him more morphine.
He's dying and alone. Never how he thought it would be.
The hospital is yellow and white at all times, and his vision is leaving in blurred spots, so surroundings are never as they appear.
"You have a visitor," a nurse says to him. Claire's at work, Jill took Amelia to school.
A woman comes in, a red scarf. His heart monitor rises. He can hardly speak to refuse her.
Carla stares at him.
She's ageless. He hopes he'll die now. Like waking up from a nightmare, ripping himself free.
"Poor Chris," she says, walking her fingers up his bone-thin leg, "What have you become?"
He strains away from her.
She crawls into bed beside him, lies beside him. She's so abnormally warm and he's freezing.
"Shhh. It's alright."
She takes off his oxygen mask for him, the thing helping him to breathe. He's a skeleton underneath.
She kisses him. Slow, quiet- even closes those dead eyes of hers.
"Go to sleep, Chris," she says, holding an object close enough for him to see it.
A needle.
"You'll feel better in the morning."
She injects his IV bag, she leaves him. His heart rate drops to zero.
His body bursts into flames.
A life without regret.
She leads her charge, newborn monstrosity, out the window of the hospital. They crawl down.
He's a hulking beast, a wonderful thing.
She loves him immediately.
"Chris, now you're going to be part of the winning team. With me."
There's no objection. For the first time in his life, he's blissfully happy.