There had been a heartbeat there, once.
Yes, a drum of frenzied humanity that had been ever-beating within his chest- red blood and hot flesh, without scarring, without the framing colossus of hatred to muffle its pitiful ticking. Human. Natural. He had been able to step, then; had been able to walk without the ground breaking and quivering beneath his feet, without the world collapsing and coming apart at his fingertips.
Translucently blood-stained hands cupped together over his chest, now. The left of his breastbone was hollow, and in some baleful and unfed hope he then checked the right; though he knew that not to be possible. He wished to break the flat line of his once lovely heartbeat, to coil the pressed horizon into something more- ridges, as uneven and sharp as a cut of marble, or as soft as moss, any movement, anything, anything. Desperation to rip the blackness from him before it broke through him, broke him itself- because then it won, then he won.
A broken shard of glass brings him to stare at his own reflection, and his mirror image is as solemn and faceless as any other- a lack of empathy that should have only come with death, his features yet to ever betray the painful reality behind his eyes. Something occurs to him, something that he could say to himself and very well should; but he doesn't speak, only thinks. He knows better, and is well aware that his complaint would only fall to deaf ears.
You have made a monster out of me.
This. All of this. It is what he had asked for, but not what he had wanted.
Life had filled his sails, once; life. He had been enveloped by the trust of others, there had been fond echoes of his name; and there had been a time where he had been spoken to warmly, with low voices that rose and fell calmly. Spoken to without spite, malice, hidden intention- treating him as if he had been one of them, another being capable of affection. He had been able to answer their calls just as politely, because then, then; those cries had not been brimmed with tears, had not been infected with a hatred that burnt brighter and hotter than any magma that could ever have swallowed him, eager and hungry.
But then there had come a day that, with some persuasion, he had taken a good, hard look at what lie before him; the dying remnants of a society that could be so easily broken into and manipulated to his own desire. He had seen the blindness of his own species and the thought had been heady and delicious- to know that he could so easily seep through the corrupted cracks of his race's minds, to the screens of their televisions and the newscasters of their radios and the storefront signs that littered their streets. That it would be simple to drag the earth to its knees, to his bidding; kicking and screaming and spitting- it had been an attractive thought.
He realizes now that these ideas should have frightened him long, long ago.
He had never intended to kill, but it was quickly deemed a necessity of progress. He hadn't seen death as the taking of another human life; rather, a business transaction still in pending until the pulse officially stopped.
He had been a terrible, terrible fool.
The first shots had been fired in a laboratory. His fingers had nearly been intertwined with William Birkin's, then; when the magnum had slipped into his own warm palm, cold and weighted. Marcus had stood before them, only to fall with his hands clapped to his chest; sobbing out in confusion as he and William had laughed over his dying form. Had laughed as their fellow researcher's blood fell in knots and a ring of vein or two had cleanly snapped from his ribcage, and they had both smiled even as he and William played with their reeling prey. Pressed their boots to his chest, mocked him, taunted him; and then stomped, forcing bubbles of blood to the elder mans lips, a sickening crack to litter the air as his spine snapped below the force of leather soles and steel-lined toes.
They had stolen his research, his patents, his copyrights. They had stolen his blueprinted designs and potential inventions. They had warped his name into nothingness, and then sought out more victims to suffer the same fate; again and again and again.
It had felt so good.
And then William had passed; and he hadn't even the opportunity to bid him farewell. His friend came to him once more only as a name and a file over his headpiece, a cool and monotone voice informing him and everyone else in the GenEngineering department that their former colleague William Birkin was no longer to return to work. Annette, Birkin's wife, had cried; little Sherry B. had cried as well for the loss of her dear father, too young to fully comprehend and understand what death was.
But none had been as distraught as he, himself; calculating and vigilant Albert Wesker, who had simply sat down, shut his mouth, and suffered in a cruel and twisted silence. He was not allowed to cry.
That had been the day the world died, and nothing was learned.
There had been no salvation for him, then. There never would be any sort of help for his kind- the kind of men that loved the pleading look in the eyes of the dying, and loved the way their prey's lips bloodied when the last thing they ever whispered was his name, how much they hated him, god. It was right. There would never be a safe haven, a sanctuary, for those who only wilted at the loss of somebody they loved; and thought nothing at all of the others that they, themselves, had ruined.
A less-than-comely gaze averts to the torn World Atlas resting on the floor, within arms length of him. It was inaccurate, now. Several of those continents were gone, MIA. The paper was torn in several spots, old rips from years ago; punctured by hungering moths and heavy shoe-soles treading over the book carelessly. It now seemed silly, to look at a picture of a world that never really existed in the first place.
Earth, and speaking of.
He had always imagined a ribbon between himself and the Earth, humanity itself- a ribbon that tethered and interlocked with a chain. A slender but excessive bond that was always pulled and stressed to the very edges as they tried hard to break free from one another; and eventually he had thought himself so great and grand as to snap away from mother earth entirely and become something that just could not be. The chain could not have been mended and the silk of the ribbon was now destroyed; frayed at the end and cinched hideously in the center. He had taken his remaining length, unwound it from his own wrists and choked the world with that rope; turned against it all using exactly what had once held them together. And he, again, had laughed; laughed. A rich, lovely sound that reverberated through mankind's screams and drowned out the meager, suffocating, strangled cries of a dead, pained earth.
His eyes were now stained, stained as red as their blood had been, the paint-splatter crimson of his ill-prevailed victory.
He had been almost innocently oblivious. Ignorant. Believing himself to be a higher tier, submit to by all and challenged by not one soul.
And then.
' You're just another one of Umbrella's leftovers. '
There are times when he forgets where and when this was said, but he never does forget who had said it. Redfield. It had been humorous, then; but he supposed everything was somewhat funny when it seemed that it was not ever to be true. It had sounded, at the time (a time where he was a lick from so-called victory and a hairs length away from death all the same), like an empty threat; a last spitting and wailing of vengeance and hatred from the writhing tongue of his foe in the face of death. But now he realizes that it was a warning, and it was an expression of knowing. That beneath it all it had meant that Christopher had known a bit of his youth's situations and then some, and cared, and thought of it enough to recite it. Cared enough to warn him, a second chance of redemption and surrender before he decided whole-heartedly to kill him. Those words had been practiced, those words had been thought out carefully because he knew- Christopher always knew- how to halt him in his tracks, even if for a meager, blissful moment. Those words, as well, had been the last and only opportunity he would ever receive to save himself.
He hadn't listened.
Idly, his cold fingertips trace the breaks in the concrete below him. A small pebble nips at his knuckle, embedding lightly into the frail flesh.
Sitting here, Wesker supposes that he had once overestimated the strength of stone. This assumption was not unlike the way he once, always, had overestimated himself.
Those words had sent him into a rage simply because he hadn't understood them- blinded by an uncertain fury, launching a tantrum of stomping and screaming and lunging at Christopher; and his fit had served him nothing well. He advanced carelessly, murderously; only to crack the rock under his weight, and plunge him into hell itself.
It had felt like hell. Somewhere within him, he knows that's very well where he should be. Perhaps he's there now.
Smoke. Fire and magma that ate at his flesh and turned all that once was beautiful into ash and flaked blood; and he cries as he hits the lake of pure, unadulterated pain. He had watched diamond-dust skin melt into the cruel embrace of what he thought would be his end. It was unlike the burn of a coal or the sting he had experienced many times before, the sting of claws in his chest or bullets singeing his shoulderblades whenever he turned his back; and what was supposed to help him survive only worsened it all. Tendrils, sharp and slick and piercing inside of him like thick, supple cables pricked with needle's tips. Uroburos beneath his skin, shrieking tentacles that worked tirelessly to try and save their puppet but only served to move so quickly that they had ripped him in two.
And then the blackness had said hello, greeting him brightly for the very third time in his life; blissful and dark; a false illusion of peace.
...-
But, of course, it was not over.
As always, it had all been a lie; and there would be no relief for him.
So he lays now, here, battered and barely willing to take another breath of air. He is an animal, cornered and scared; no better than the cowering subjects in the cells he used to walk past every day, careless and arrogant and unempathetic towards their condition. He does not know where he is. He looks only at a torn page of a once tidily scrawled map, and the shards of glass that he sits in because he is afraid to look up; eyes wide and baleful and begging. Begging for nothing, for anything at all.
Eyes that were stained with the memories of a devil; eyes that, for the first recallable time in his life, are cleansing themselves with the same hurt tears he has brought upon so many others before him.
A sob, broken by the pain in his throat and the wound in his soft pallet; drowned out by the gradual giggling of the tortured souls within him. Haunting him.
He hears the laughter of thousands. Children who have lost parents and siblings, couples that have lost a lover, William and Marcus and Spencer- daddy- all laughing at him because he won. He got what he so gluttonously wished for, he won, and now he suffers just as they had, laying and grieving with zero chance of a savior at hand. A fool.
With his head tossed and his lips parted in resignation of his failure; with the way he fights tooth and nail just to breathe- he knows now that it always had been, always would be, the truth.
You're just another one of Umbrella's leftovers.
He was everything and nothing at all, just a disgusting stain in a history book.
His fingers twitch solemnly, apprehensively, over his fruitless, quivering chest.
There had been a heartbeat there, once.
But he would never feel it again.