I'm A Tumbleweed
a Resident Evil one shot.
This one shot takes place after Resident Evil Extinction. It isn't mine, because if these films were made by me there would be significant changes, such as Milla would be wearing more clothes and death wouldn't come so swiftly to the good looking males in the films. Written at four thirty am this morning. Oh, and the title doesn't really make sense but it was the only one I could justify.
I'm A Tumbleweed
It's been four months and she doesn't know it. Time has blended over the years, molded and folded and creased so that there's no telling how long it's been since she's seen real civilization, real people. She sent Claire and her crew away, to Alaska, to hope. Six weeks, six months, six years – who knows? It's all a jumble, a tumbleweed of events and minutes that she remembers and maybe doesn't, and it's all in there somewhere.
It's been four months, two days, six hours, twenty four minutes and fourteen seconds since the explosion, and she knows. She looks up at the sun everyday and ticks off another day on her belt, another day, another day, to remind herself that when this is all over and everything is finished and she can go up to Alaska and find them, the humans, the people, she'll be reunited with everyone except for him.
She does it so she doesn't forget that he's dead.
And it hurts. Every tick mark on her belt and every time she picks up her knife to make it. Every time she takes the moment to look up at the sun, a bright orb in the middle of the bright blue, cloudless sky, it hurts. It more than hurts most days – it burns, it aches, it scorches down to the very core of her. It filters through the mess that her mind is and picks out everything. It picks out every moment they spent together, that exact moment when she realized that this man might survive, might actually be worth saving, is actually handsome; that moment when she realized that the feeling of her heart dropping into her stomach then flipping up into her throat when she saw him after the months of absence on her part wasn't normal.
The harsh sunlight makes scrap metal of her memories and finds that exact moment when she fell in love with him, before she even knew it herself.
It's been four months, one day, thirteen hours, fifty minutes and thirty seconds since she threatened Umbrella and she doesn't know it. It's been four months, two days, four hours, six minutes and fifty-six seconds since she's seen human beings and she doesn't know it. It's been four months, three days, sixteen hours, forty-two minutes and six seconds since she felt his skin on hers, since she felt her lips on his, his hands round her waist, their arms around each other, holding on like she's drowning and he's her life vest and she can't swim and she knows.
Because every moment is like being hit by a train. Because every minute is like getting her skin burned off at close range. Because every hour is like having brain surgery done without anesthesia. Because every day is like –
She stares into blue eyes in the mirror. The buzzing of the light above her head fades out and she can see him, briefly –
'Extinction isn't easy,' his voice tells her. His apparition doesn't move; his voice is in her head. 'I lived for you, Alice,' his voice whispers. 'But you've always lived for something more.'
'No,' she whispers to the mirror. The dirty woman in the mirror has tears streaking down her cheeks, making paths in the grime. 'I live…. I barely live. Please….'
'Alice,' his voice is everywhere, 'go to Umbrella. Go bust in the door and kick their fucking asses all the way back to hell, where they crawled out of. Alice. Alice, Alice,' his voice murmurs. 'I lived for you, Alice….'
She braces her hands on the sink and stares at the woman in the mirror and wills her away.
'Get away from me,' she mumbles. 'You aren't anyone,' she tells her reflection. 'You aren't who I want. I live for you, Carlos….'
She looks up at the sun and takes a deep breath, a cleansing breath to rid her thoughts of him, to rid her eyes of him, to rid her eyes of tears. She looks up at the sun to calm down, to clear her head, to get back to the mission. She gets back on her new bike and puts the shotgun back over her shoulders – a comforting weight on her back. A twist of her hand and the roar of the bike drowns out the sound of the silence that surrounds her.
But nothing drowns out the sound of his voice in her head. That, she knows, will remain there forever, a never ending reminder that she loved him, and now he's naught but a memory.
She rides off into the distance, a cloud of dust in her wake, as she heads for tomorrow.
Four months, three days, twenty-one hours, five minutes and sixteen seconds.