A/N: This is the sequel to Window, my other story. I am trying to make this able to stand on its own, so you don't necessarily have to read Window to enjoy this.
Review if you have time, k?
The Beginning
We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them.
-Bosola, The Duchess of Malfi
A slender pale body finally sleeps in a real bed with real pillows for the first time in years. Three hours ago Albert Wesker had burned to death in a volcano.
Three hours ago she had pulled Chris and Sheva to safety, finally free of the damn chest piece and P30.
Her dreams are not restful.
The desk is just as she remembered it. A stack of papers waiting to be filled out, a mug of coffee still half-full, catnip bag still half empty. The desk of a S.T.A.R.S. member.
A gold plaque reads Jill Valentine.
"Hey Jilly." The ragged undead form of Joe Frost sits in her chair Al the station cat in his lap, smiling with the half-mouth he has left. "You did good Jilly. You're ready."
What?
The cat's smug red-gold eyes watch her unblinking, purring like a small engine.
The sigh makes her long blond bangs flutter. Wesker is dead. Her captivity is over. When would it be enough?
"Joe, I'm done. It's over. What more can I do?" Another figure shuffles out of the corridor to her left, a thin ruin in a puffy yellow vest. Brad Vickers' eyes are a decayed filmy white.
"What heroes do Jill. Save the world." The undead smile gleefully at her frustrated face. A slimy hand grasps hers, pressing a small object into her fingers.
A coin.
"Don't forget, we will always be with you. Now wake up Jill."
A black cat curles itself into a ball by the face of a coma patient in the Racoon City Hospital, purring like a small engine.
The girl had pushed a co-worker out of the way of an oncoming car, suffering broken bones and massive head trauma three months ago.
The wounds hadn't been fatal, but the doctors could not explain why she wouldn't wake.
The slow steady beeping of the heart monitor changed for the first time in three months, the rhythm jumping faster, echoing in the small dusty room. Blue eyes closed for so long flickering open, squinting hazily around the dim room.
Wha...?
The ear-splitting scream echoing down the hallway had nurses running frantically into the small room, expecting something terrible to have occurred.
On the small bed sat a small woman with three inches of blond roots showing, a black cat clasped to her chest. Staring at the arrangements of fresh flowers and cards on the bedside table, most of them signed "We miss you Jilly, wake up soon, ok?" by various members of S.T.A.R.S. Staring at the plaque stating Racoon City Hospital Award for Doctor Smith.
Members who had been dead for years. A hospital wiped off the face of the planet.
But...but they're dead. This...can't be... What...?
"What day is it?" The voice was a dull rasp, unused for months. Confusion and stark terror in those wide blue eyes, face deathly pale.
"Its August 1st, 1996 Miss Valentine." The lead nurse's voice is quiet, compassionate. Such a shock it must be to wake up here, to not remember the past three months. Poor girl.
It can't be. No. Not again.
For the first time in recorded history Jill Valentine faints, Albert the station cat still clutched to her chest. Still purring like a small engine, red-gold eyes smug.
The nurses never figure out how he got in. The doctor's never figured out why Jill Valentine's hair changed from brown to blond a week after the accident.
An ancient silver coin is clasped tightly in her left hand.
Half a town away another set of blue eyes flickers open irritably.
Captain Albert Wesker has never had stranger dreams.
Why the fuck would he dream he had the damn station cat's red-gold eyes? And why was Officer Valentine blond?
Fucking cat.
The way forward is sometimes the way back.
-The Labyrinth
A/N: Different, yeah? Good different I hope.