Knowing

Author's Note: Yup, I wrote something without Leon in it for once. I've been a little preoccupied with the Birkins lately. I have a massive soft spot for these two, as they encompass everything I love in a romance: it's canonical and doomed.

Edit: I'm just going to add here that I decided to write this after reading the Birkin Files from Inserted Evil. There's three things: Birkin's journal, A note from Annette and Birkin's psych evaluation. I thought it was interesting that all of them mentioned his family. If you haven't read them yet, you should check it out, though you don't need to read them to understand the story.

Enjoy.

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

-Carl Jung

The left side of the bed was empty, as always. Annette Birkin pulled the rest of the bedsheets over herself in an attempt to compensate for the cold left by the absence. She had decided a long time ago that she wasn't going to get upset about this sort of thing anymore.

It's near impossible to force a thought from your own mind though. Once a nasty and poisonous feeling takes root, it tends to grow vines and thorns. The emotions which frequented the left side of the bed included sadness, anger, and worst of all, envy. She pulled her pillow over her eyes, as if she could block out her own depressed musings.

It wasn't like she hadn't known what she was getting herself into when she said, "yes."

A life of a half empty bed and nights where you didn't really sleep. A life of writing notes as a substitute for phone calls and real conversation—we can burn notes, you can't burn phone records—and coming home by herself to that big, stupid, empty house they bought while they were playing at being a real family. A life of explaining patiently over and over again that no, she was not a single mother. A life of playing second fiddle to a loose collection of nucleotides and proteins that they called "G."

Yes, she knew exactly what she was getting herself into.

Though, what she hadn't realized then, what she knew now, was that her husband obsessively threw himself into every new project until he was satisfied with the results. Once the deed was done, he immediately moved onto the next challenge. She fit well into his litany of accomplishments.

Doctorate at 16, Developer of T-Virus, Husband, Father, Creator of G Virus.

Listed in order of importance.

It was easy to ignore these tendencies when they were younger. While no one could hold a candle to William's single-minded passion for his work, she was rather obsessed herself. She had spent her late teens and early twenties in a constant haze of caffeine, work, and the thrill of creating something new and exciting with the person she loved. No one else would tell her she was beautiful after three days of work on six hours of sleep and no one else would kiss her when her breath reeked like too many cups of coffee. They spent days in the lab, seeing who could go the longest without sleep, who could drink the most coffee, who could hold onto their sanity the longest. Annette could only win the last one.

The girls she had been friends with—once upon a time—in her graduating class told her that she was stupid for dating him. Bitches, all of them. They had either resigned from the company in fear or died by now; their faces added to Lisa Trevor's morbid collection. One of the perks of sleeping with the lab supervisor was never being assigned the dangerous projects.

She and William had gotten married young, barely old enough to buy champagne after it was all said and done. Twenty-one years old, lovesick and crazy. She was the only thing that could make him happy, the only thing that reminded him of his own humanity. He wanted to be normal, even if it was just for a few moments under the covers with her.

It was this desperate grasping for normalcy which lead them to having Sherry, a charming little girl which they were both terribly unprepared to take care of.

We're scientists, for God's sake. Of course we're capable of raising a child and providing for all of her needs.

They both tried as best as they could to make something similar to a family. Something normal. William had once told Annette that he could only absolve his sins when he looked at their daughter. His only creation that brought joy instead of misery. They adored her, but as Sherry got older, Annette found herself woefully incapable of being an emotionally supportive mother.

Making matters worse was the G Virus. William pulled it out of that pitiful Lisa Trevor girl, the one Annette couldn't stand to look at. He'd never before been faced with a problem he didn't understand, and it drove him absolutely mad. Her husband was flawed—this she could freely admit—and his biggest flaw was his egotism, at least when it came to intellectual pursuits. He couldn't bear not understanding the virus. His inability to understand it led him to believe that the virus had to be the most important finding of his career. After all, if it was superior to him, it must have been superior to any discovery ever made.

She joined him in his work, eagerly at first, and then with a more subdued enthusiasm as they failed to make a breakthrough. Ten years of fruitless research into the "G" Virus later, her worn sanity was all she had to show for it. Her husband hadn't been so lucky.

The longer he worked on it, the more obsessed he became. The past two months had been an absolute hell. William swore he was about to finish it, just like he had been swearing for the past ten years. Now though, he spent every single day in the lab. She hadn't seen him in a week. Umbrella Corporation suspected that the two of them had both caught the crazy and dragged her in for a psych evaluation. She half smiled at the thought, wondering if they had managed to coerce her husband into a psychiatrists office. He would probably force any mental health professional into an early retirement.

He was insane and brilliant, and she wasn't sure if she loved him in spite of it or because of it. Ironically, it was this passion for his work which brought them together that was now tearing her apart.

William was fully prepared to sacrifice himself at the altar of his own research.

It was midnight, but she was still half awake. Down the hall, she heard water running in the bathroom; it sounded like the shower. Sherry was long asleep. The only possible explanations were that William was home or there was a ghost in the house. The only plausible explanation was a ghost.

A few minutes later, the door to the bedroom creaked open.

"Sorry for waking you up..." came the hushed voice of her husband, creeping through the doorway, trying to not disturb her.

She sat up in bed.

"I was still awake," she yawned, not sounding terribly convincing. "It doesn't matter anyway, I'm just glad to see you." She could just barely make out his figure by the dim red light of their alarm clock. He was getting out of his bathrobe and putting on a ratty pair of pajamas that he'd owned since they were first married. His movements were slow and stiff; he looked brittle. He probably hadn't moved much in the past few days. Muscle atrophy was an occupational hazard. "So, what made you decide to come home?" she asked.

"Even I have limits, Annette," was his response, before he collapsed into bed. She threw some of the covers at him. "I'd been staring at the same cell under the same microscope for five hours, and I didn't get a thing out of it." He buried himself into the comforter, trying to hide his eyes from the light of their clock.

"A week without sleep is anyone's limit," Annette replied, absentmindedly.

"I slept a few hours," he mumbled.

"In your chair?"

"There are worse places to sleep. Remember the time you fell asleep on the dissection table?"

She was surprised he remembered.

"That was fifteen year ago; I can't be held responsible for my twenty-one year old self."

When his eyes adjusted to the light, William put his arms around her and let his head rest on her shoulder. It was comforting to finally have him with her again. They were a good team. Even when they barely acknowledged each other in the lab, she was constantly aware of his presence.

"I missed you," he sighed.

"Did you get my letter?"

"Of course I did. What did they ask you in the psych evaluation?"

"Weird stuff...how I would react if you betrayed the company, all sorts of things like that." She could feel him tense.

"The Board is getting paranoid," he replied in an even tone.

"Says the man who won't call me to tell me to have a nice day."

"You know how I feel about phone calls, Annette."

"I know, I know. All you ever say on the phone is 'yes' and 'no' anyway."

He was twitching. It was a habit she was used to—he could never stay still—but, tonight it was more pronounced than usual. His foot kept hitting her in the back of the leg.

"Are you nervous, darling? You're shaking."

"I'm fine. It's just sleep deprivation, that's all."

She didn't believe him for a second, but she ignored it. He would tell her what was bothering him when he was ready. For the time being, she tried to just relax and enjoy his presence, but his agitation was making it difficult.

"Why didn't you have to take a leave of absence too?" she asked.

"They tried to make me, but my research is too close to completion. I told them that after G is done, I'll go to a nudist beach for a month if it makes them happy." He laughed a bit at his own joke.

"Maybe we can take a vacation when your research is done." She might as well have said, "when the world ends" or "when pigs fly."

He rolled over onto his side and gave her a quick kiss.

"That sounds nice. I need to spend more time with Sherry... how is she, anyway?"

"Her teacher wants her to skip the eighth grade and go right to high school."

Of course Sherry was a genius, she was William's daughter after all. Their daughter worried her sometimes: she'd inherited her father's penchant for self isolation and her mother's quiet determination. Two traits that had—coupled with absent parents—lead her to grow into a very quiet sort of child.

"Absolutely not," he replied, steely serious. She hadn't expected him to be so opposed to the notion.

"Why?"

"She needs to have some semblance of a normal childhood. Skipping a grade is terribly lonely. I don't want her to end up like, well us."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Like me, I should say. I don't want her to end up like me."

He sighed heavily and she saw the fatigue in his eyes, bloodshot with pupils the size of pinpoints. His skin was more gray than sallow now, all the color stripped away by halogen lights and malnutrition.

"If that's what you think is best, then we won't let her skip eighth grade."

The two of them fell silent for a moment, but he kept shaking. She knew he had something else to say, but she could wait. Annette Birkin was a very patient woman. She would have lost her mind quite awhile ago otherwise.

"It was really hard to spend a week away from you," she finally said, looking for the words to fill up the uncomfortable silence.

"I didn't know what to do without you. I'm fairly certain all my other assistants have requested to be transferred as of this week. No one else knows how to run that lab correctly."

"I hope you weren't too mean to them, William."

"I only threatened to experiment on them."

She shook her head at him. Her husband wasn't a threatening man physically, but he was easily angered by incompetence and failure, two things that had been regular guests in his lab the past few weeks more so than ever. The fits of anger that she found to be pathetic and embarrassing were terrifying to anyone whose paycheck he was signing.

"I missed your company in more ways than one," she mentioned, steering the conversation away from the lab for once.

"Oh really?" he responded with a slight blush. It was cute, how he still got flustered over these sorts of things. She pulled at the waistband of his pajama pants, and he let out a nervous laugh. "I'm sorry; I don't think I physically can."

"Too tired?" she asked, trying very hard to keep the disappointment out of her voice. He was here, that was enough.

"I might die," he responded, only half joking.

"You're losing weight," she commented.

"I forget to eat when you're not around."

Annette shook her head at him.

"You look half dead anyway. Go to sleep."

"I see how it is," he laughed. "I'm useless to you, aren't I?"

"Mostly," she joked. "Seriously though, you're making yourself sick."

"I found some of my hair around my chair when I got up to leave."

"That's gross," she hissed. "You can't work if you're dead."

"Evidence from previous researchers begs to differ."

"You're hopeless. Go to sleep," Annette whined.

She felt bad for being so shrill with him, but his disregard for himself bothered her.

They laid there for awhile, neither of them quite falling asleep.

Annette tried to exorcise her worries, but as always, it failed. She wanted to just be glad that he was home, but the nagging thought remained, "how long will he stay?" It was paradoxically both happy and sad.

She let herself drift into a light sleep, William still twitching and muttering next to her. It was hard to ignore, but she managed to be asleep when he woke her up a few hours later.

"I'm leaving Umbrella, Annette."

"What?" she mumbled, barely awake. He had stopped shaking. This must have been what he wanted to tell her. "What do you mean, you're leaving Umbrella?"

"Once the G Virus is done, Umbrella has no intentions of letting me keep it... they're going to have me killed." He was unusually calm for such a stark proclamation.

"You're just paranoid, honey," she said, trying to make sense of his words.

"They did the same thing to Dr. Marcus. I know they're going to do it to me too." His voice began to waver. "Shit has really hit the fan, Annette. Wesker is cutting and running too. The company is about to go down. T Virus got out..."

"What?" she hissed. "That's impossible. Everyone would be infected."

"Have you heard about the recent killings in Arklay Mountains?"

She had. Annette paled.

"And Dr. Marcus came back to life."

She balked at this news. Perhaps her husband really had gone crazy.

"What the hell do you mean?"

"I saw him myself, Annette. Wesker and I found him in the old research facility. The leeches resurrected him. He's going to unleash more T Virus... I'm in a race against time to finish the G Virus. Once it's done, I'm going to sell it to the government, and we're going to get the hell out of Raccoon City."

Annette's pulse quickened. She wasn't sure how much of this was serious and how much was sleep deprived ramblings.

"We can move overseas maybe... somewhere far away. I'm so close to finishing the virus, I can feel it. I promise you, I know what I'm doing. Everything is going to be okay."

She nodded in response.

"Why don't we just leave now, if you're in so much danger? Just pack up and go, tonight. No one will know what happened."

He was silent for a moment, his lips struggling to form the words they both had already heard.

"I can't."

"Why not?" she asked. It was a stupid question to which she knew the answer.

She already knew he valued the virus more than his own life.

"Annette... I would rather die than see my life's work go to waste."

Silence.

"I know."

"Please, try to understand... you've seen the virus. This is the most important scientific breakthrough in history. It's perfect, and I won't let Umbrella take it away from me. That would be worse than death."

"Maybe we should send Sherry away for a while," Annette said, trying to form some sort of compromise.

"If the worst comes, she'll be the safest with you. I don't trust anyone with our daughter."

Typical paranoia. He did have a point though.

"I'm sorry... it was never my intentions to put you or Sherry in harms way. This G Virus mess, it's bigger than I am. I can't stop it; I have to finish it."

She felt entirely numb, but she trusted him. There was no other option.

Till death do us part.

"I'll never let anyone hurt you or Sherry, I promise," he said, before he fell back asleep, his soul purged.

Annette lay awake for a long time after that.

She woke up the next morning, alone on the right side of the bed. She checked the clock; it was nine AM. Overslept again. This time off was wrecking havoc on her sleep schedule, if she could call her sporadic hours of rest between working and taking Sherry to school a schedule. William was long gone, if she hadn't just imagined him there in the first place.

She got up and went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. There was a note on the counter.

Took Sherry to school this morning before I went back to the lab. I've been taking some precautions against any sort of disaster. Her locket has a sample of the virus in it. I managed to synthesize a suppressant for the virus as well. The formula is in your wallet, behind our picture. Try to memorize it, please. Forgive my absence for the time being. Things will be falling into place shortly.

All my love,

William

She sighed at nothing in particular. Alone again, just her and her coffee and her thoughts. Annette imagined how happy Sherry must have been to see William in the morning; she was a daddy's girl, even with his constant absences. Poor Sherry, no idea what sort of mess she had been entangled in from birth, no idea that her parents were slowly wasting away, no idea that her future was terribly uncertain.

Annette was scared for the future, but she would just have to trust her husband. He had promised her that Sherry would be okay, and she believed him.

As for her own safety, well, she had said "yes" all those years ago. "Yes" to that lovestruck teenager, grinning like he was out of his mind, begging her to come spend the rest of her life with him, knowing full well what madness lay ahead of her. Anything and everything could go wrong, but there was no turning back.

It wasn't like she hadn't known what she was getting herself into.