Title: Conviction
Series/Disclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil. I just like to pretend I can write fanfiction about it.
Pairing(s): Albert Wesker/Chris Redfield
Story Theme: Without You - Breaking Benjamin
Summary: Hunting Albert Wesker was as natural as breathing for Chris - but maybe his reasons for such a relentless pursuit aren't as simple as he likes to think.
Author's Notes: So, a while back I played Resident Evil 5. I got pretty obsessed, loved Chris and Wesker as characters but thought I'd finally met two characters who I didn't think would slash. I even told a friend of mine, "They're great rivals, but I don't think they'd work too well together."

Silly me.

I struggled for a plot line after a while. Grasped at straws, fought with logical and illogical ideas, read other fanfiction - some inspiring, some instilling doubt, and some just plain weird. I wrote some crack for them because it was all my brain could come up with, thought it was fine, walked away and left it at that.

And now, here I am, working on something serious and something I hope is seriously great. It's complicated and messy, it's psychological and physical. But I've analyzed, considered, examined, written, erased, walked away, and come back several times before settling on this idea. This idea that I really want to know makes sense outside of my own head and this idea that I'm proud of. It isn't completely original, I've gotten some inspiration from wonderful authors all over the spectrum, but then again, what is entirely original these days?

Either way, I hope you enjoy.

- x - x - x -

Fate was practically telling him to do it – and not in such simple, breathy suggestions as signs or a trickle of wind that pulled him towards one fork in the path over another. It was screaming in his ear, calling to him with every hiss emitted by bubbles of lava that were bursting around his place on the slab of hardened rock. Each pop was like a miniature explosion in his ear, sending up welcoming curls of smoke that threatened to singe his arm as he stretched it out over the illuminated, molten earth. All he had to do was relax his fingers and it would gladly give Chris's ashes a home within its inflamed embrace. Drop him. It was so simple, so easy. Let him go and he couldn't interfere again, he couldn't show up at the most inopportune times to ruin months, years of work. How dangerous could ashes be?

But it was almost too simple, too easy. For eleven years the man had pursued him like an annoying, unwanted puppy - ruining plots that were only intended to advance humanity and generally being a nuisance. No matter where he went, what he tried to do, he never questioned that Chris Redfield was somewhere along the trail. At times that had been such an asset, so useful to him, but this had drawn a line, snapped the final twig into a thousand pieces and Albert Wesker was not amused anymore. His eyes flicked briefly towards the fallen bomber without losing his grip around Chris's throat. The heat of the volcano undoubtedly ruined his precious Uroboros, or was in the process of making it un-salvageable – without a suitable host it couldn't even wail in its dying agony. A prodigal child murdered before meeting the world.

Death was too fair.

He felt Chris's consciousness like a tremor through his arm, despite the fact he'd hardly moved save for a hand gripping weakly at the blonde's offensive wrist. As though startled, Wesker turned and threw him across the small section of rock into a wall created by a slightly higher mound of solidified magma. With a grunt the operative fell back to blackness, a breath leaving him in a pitiful half-sigh as he slumped to a useless pile of muscle again. His partner was no better off anyway, lying off to the side with one arm trapped somewhat awkwardly under her light weight – but Wesker could have cared less about Sheva. She was annoying, yes, but it was no personal vendetta against him and if he disappeared her mission would end here, in Africa.

But Chris would continue to follow.

Without the other's body in his grip, he was suddenly aware of his own vague sense of weakness. Like throwing him had ripped out his adrenaline pumped organs the same way a bee loses its insides in a final defense maneuver. He was not so near to death, however, that he was about to pass out or collapse. The worst of it was the Uroboros that had been burned from his body by his slip into the lava, which had also left much of his skin charred. Even to him his ability to stand, to function at even half of a human level, was impressive. The acknowledgment of that feat was enough to make him walk forward and plant his boot against Chris's neck. Much of his clothes had burned away as well, splotches taken by fire and some sections melted to his skin, but he paid no attention to it. He was surprisingly used to pain.

"Self-righteous fool," he repeated, having said it on nearly every confrontation they'd had in these last waning hours that should have been the eve of humanity's Gensis. Chris's head slid back almost encouragingly when he shifted his foot, sorry he couldn't feel the brunette's Adam's apple and wind pipe the same way he had when they were against his hand. He wanted to feel the intricacies of the other's neck crush beneath his grip. He wanted it to reverberate all the way up to his shoulder and he wanted that feeling on his hands for the rest of his life. To live every day knowing that it was done not because he'd left it to someone else, but because he'd ended it, this eleven year game of fruitless tag, himself. That was what they both wanted, wasn't it? It was almost amusing how different they were, yet they both craved so desperately for the other to just drop dead. Though Chris's drive was so much narrower, his ambitions so short sighted. As if killing Wesker would fix the world and make it so rainy days and crying children could never happen again.

Pathetic.

But the idea of ending this in a way that was appeasing to Chris made his stomach churn with even more rage. While it was true that it would be easier to kill the agent, to just leave his body to the ashes for his friends and family to mourn over, he was hardly affected by what was easy. People with low standards wouldn't have desired so strongly to recreate the world, they wouldn't have made it as far as he did. No, what was easy was the least important part of this decision. He wanted Chris to suffer, completely and totally, for all these foolish transgressions based on morals that he clung to like a child with a cherished blanket. More than that, he wanted to hurt him and everyone around him more than death ever could.

Because death was too simple, too easy, and too fair for Chris Redfield now.

And because Chris had messed up yet another plan, had ruined humanity's salvation and the new, better existence it could have had. There was nothing left of Uroboros now, but Wesker was not going to walk away empty handed.