1
"Chris."
The sound of her voice is so soft that Chris isn't sure he heard it. He hovered in the hazy limbo between wakefulness and sleep, feeling weightless as he remained shrouded in the thick blanket of fog that enveloped his mind. Somewhere, someone was calling his name, but he couldn't be certain as to who or where.
He remembers this-the heavy thrumming of rain against the window pane, a deafening crack of lightning in the distance, and the scent of burning wax and dust. Chris has survived this moment a thousand times, but has never once been granted the outcome he wished for most of all, an alternate ending in which he is the one to die.
It's strange, he thinks, to so desperately hope for death. Something about it seemed fundamentally wrong, the ultimate defiance against biology in spite of all of its attempts to program survival into his genes.
Chris doesn't give it any further thought; instead, he turns on his heel with a practiced precision to find pale blue eyes.
"Jill."
He breathes out her name and, if it sounds desperate, he doesn't really care. Chris knows how this story ends and he's going to savor every last line along the way. She isn't dressed the way he remembers. This time, she's wearing that damn wetsuit from the mission on the Queen Zenobia.
Not that he's complaining.
She looks different this time around and Chris thinks she might have been a mirror image of herself from their S.T.A.R.S. days were that fucking scar not peeking out from beneath her open zipper. He hates it, not because it ruins her skin, but because it reminds him of this. Chris is forced to remember his failure every time he sees it and part of him feels selfish for getting so bent out of shape over it because Jill probably hated it even more. He couldn't even begin to fathom the horrible things she had endured.
"We don't have to do this." He says offhandedly as he walks the perimeter of the dining room table.
A rumble of thunder murmurs from outside of the mansion and he isn't surprised by the sudden flash of blue light that envelops the room for a brief moment. Jill stares out the window with interest, taking in the storm as it angrily rages on.
"We can't just abandon the mission." She's always the voice of reason, even in his nightmares, and she follows up with, "What's gotten into you, Chris?"
Chris looks up at the chandelier above and counts the cobwebs in the dim flicker of candlelight. There's still seven of them, just as he had remembered, and he feels strangely accomplished for recalling the small detail.
"I just don't want to lose you again." He confesses with a sheepish smile on his face.
Jill takes a step toward him and he wonders if she might touch him. Her hand is suspended in the air, fingers curled forward as though she plans to take hold of something. She hesitates for a moment and he closes his eyes to focus on the increasing heat of her body as she draws closer.
He feels her hand against his chest. Her touch is light and he thinks about grabbing her by the wrist to tug her into his embrace.
"But you'll find me." She whispers hoarsely and Chris feels something tighten in his chest.
"Not really." He keeps his eyes closed as he shakes his head. "Not all of you. There's a part of you that's missing."
When he opens his eyes, she's looking up at him with those boundless blue eyes that make him want to burn down the fucking mansion and break the kneecaps of every last fucker in Umbrella or Tricell or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves nowadays. Something sad flickers across her face and she gives him the most miserable attempt at a smile he's ever seen.
"I'm sorry."
Her words somehow piss him off more. She shouldn't be apologizing for what that fucker did to her. It wasn't her fucking fault. If he hadn't have been so sloppy, she never would have thrown herself out the window in the first place.
In a way, Chris guessed he was inadvertently responsible for it all too.
"Don't be." He manages to choke out. "Let's just go."
Jill isn't so austere this time. She relents without fuss and, to his surprise, she slips her hand into his. He is taken off guard by the warmth of her skin, but it doesn't deter him in any way. Chris had forgotten how she used to feel before.
When they step through the doorway that once led to the lobby, they find themselves in the RPD locker room.
"This doesn't seem right." Jill muses aloud and Chris doesn't bother to question it because dreams are weird in that way, aren't they?
"Seems right to me." He says. "This is where I first realized that I was madly in love with you."
Jill lightly smacks him on the shoulder in a playful gesture and he shrugs.
"I mean it." He tells her. "After we got back from Arklay, it all just...dawned on me."
He watches her move with catlike grace to her locker and doesn't hide just how much he appreciates the way that wetsuit clings to her skin. Both age and P30 had changed her body and, though he still very much appreciated the lean muscle she now boasted, part of him missed the soft curves she once sported.
"You know, I thought about quitting all of this shit so many times." He's never told her this before, not even in his dream, and he somehow feels a little nervous about it.
"I thought about a lot of things." Chris says as he scratches the back of his neck, a physical representation of his shame for what comes out of his mouth next, "Cheesy things. White picket fences, a dog that never listens, Christmas morning creaks...you know?"
He clears his throat as Jill looks back at him over her shoulder.
"Really?" She asks, "You thought about those things?"
Chris laughs to suppress the choking sensation in his throat.
"I...was going to ask you to marry me after this."
He regrets the confession the very moment it leaves his mouth, but there's nothing to be done about it. Jill pauses while in the midst of picking a lock and looks back at him over her shoulder with a coy smile.
"What's stopping you now?"
It was a valid question that Chris fails to summon an answer to. He watches her make quick work of the padlock and it clatters to the floor noisily as she pulls open the door to the locker.
"Well…" He smirks even though her back is once again turned towards him, "Will you?"
Jill steps into the locker and Chris ducks in after her only to subsequently stumble out into her Raccoon City apartment. The image is nearly identical to his memory of it save for the woman reclined back on the bed. Amidst the hues of blue, grey, and white, a blonde Jill looks up at him.
"Are you sure you want to ask me that?" She lets out a sigh as she pulls down the neckline of her t-shirt, exposing the destroyed skin that had once been claimed by the P30 device.
It almost annoys him that she is willing to entertain the idea that he wouldn't over something so stupid. Although he grimaces internally each time he sees it, Chris has never spoken a negative word about the extensive scars on her chest. He loves her so fucking much and it's almost insulting to know that she thinks anything could ever change his mind about that.
He moves to the foot of the bed and places a hand on the bare skin of her ankle. She's built in such a willowy way that he's able to envelop the entire circumference of it with his fingers and it makes him feel a certain way that he can't describe.
"More sure than death and taxes." He comments lamely and Jill smiles even as she traces her fingertips along the raised flesh.
"I've always secretly wanted that too." She tells him, voice quiet and wet with tears that threaten to fall, "I hate that things have changed."
Chris opens his mouth to speak, but he fails to come up with a competent retort because really, she's not wrong. Of course Kijuju had changed the both of them, but, in most ways, she was still Jill Valentine.
His Jill Valentine.
"I still want it." He says softly, leaning in close to cup her cheek in his palm. His callused skin is rough against her soft flesh and he trails the pad of his thumb along her cheek to brush away and errant tear. "The stupid picket fence, the dog, obnoxious kids...all of it."
A smile tugs at the corner of her lips, but it soon begins to fade. Chris can no longer make out the features of her face and he feels his heart skip a beat as Jill becomes a blur of color. His hands move to her shoulders and he grips them tightly while he shifts his attention from her to the surroundings of her apartment in rapid succession. He can see the stitching in the quilt on the bed, so why can't he see her?
"Jill?" He asks, voice lifted in panic.
He feels her move beneath his hold and his fingers curl more tightly into her. Jill's slipping away and he watches her fade into a blur of color, like watercolors being rinsed clean in the sink. He shifts so his arm encircles her back and he pulls her close to him in the best semblance of an embrace that he can manage as she fades.
"I always lose you." He chokes out around something thick that's lodged in his throat.
"Maybe this is how it's meant to be." She whispers as the ghost of her hand travels the length of his spine.
Chris feels something catch in his chest. His eyes are burning and his lungs feel stiff as he struggles to take in a breath.
"I'm not ready." He whispers, but before he can hear her response, she's gone-faded into an empty space that feels more like a sinister presence than an absence.
Chris doesn't startle awake with a dramatic gasp and heaving breaths. Instead, he opens his eyes to find the darkness of their bedroom and he cringes at the feel of the slick layer of sweat that's formed along his body and plasters the dampened sheets flush to his skin. He runs a hand over his face and massages his temples with his thumb and index finger before turning his head to the side in search of Jill.
He knows it's real this time because she's still laying beside him, still looks the same as he remembers. Soft moonlight and the glow of the lamppost nearby filter in through the thin curtains of their bedroom and provide just enough light for him to make out the details that had gone missing in his nightmare.
Her lips are parted slightly as she sleeps, her chest rising and falling shallowly with eased breaths. Part of him wishes she could find the same relief in wakefulness as she does in sleep. It seems that Jill can only truly find rest during the moments in which her mind is idle, but he can never muster the courage to question what it is that lingers in her mind and keeps her on edge and it's not necessarily because he doesn't want to know.
No, Chris doesn't ask what ghosts haunt Jill's mind because he's afraid to get to know them. He cannot begin to fathom the horrors she had been subjected to while trapped in captivity under Wesker and the guilt that weighs down her shoulders might be too hefty for him to lift.
Rebecca once told him that pressuring her to tell him wouldn't be conducive to healing and he initially held onto that advice.
"You can't make her tell you, Chris."
"She will tell you when she's ready."
"Forcing her out of her comfort zone will only cause more trauma."
Now, he almost laughs at the memory because he wonders if Jill even has a comfort zone. She's only truly at peace while she's unconscious, but they don't know that about her. Everyone is too busy keeping her at arm's length and handling her with kid gloves as though she were made of poorly tempered glass to really get to know her.
They were afraid of her and even Jill knew it.
"I'm still dead, aren't I?"
Her voice reminded him of the ocean, turbulent and wet, and he wasn't sure that he had the strength to keep afloat. Hearing her sound so broken nearly shattered him, but he put on the best facade he could manage if only to save face. Jill had begged him not to force her to attend the BSAA's Christmas party, but Claire's insistence that it would help her had convinced him otherwise.
He was definitely regretting it then.
"What do you mean?" He asked, feigning ignorance.
Jill didn't look at him, but instead kept her eyes fixed on the crowd of people in the room.
"It's like I'm an imposter to them." She whispered. "I'm just a monster who crawled into Jill Valentine's skin. A wolf in sheep's clothing."
Chris watched a woman across the room whisper into the ear of one of her colleagues, compelling her to shift her attention from her glass of wine to Jill. They both watched her with the same interest one would regard a caged animal-curiously entertained, but still wary of it coming too close-and it served as a spark to ignite the flames of rage within him.
"Fuck them, Jill. They're just a bunch of pencil pushers who don't know shit about what really goes on in the world."
If it was meant to comfort her, it didn't. Jill only gave him an unconvincing smile in return as she slipped her hand into his and gave it a weak squeeze.
"Yeah," She breathed, voice unsure as she tried to convince herself, "Fuck them."
Chris decides he's awfully tired of letting everyone else try to dictate how he cares for Jill when they themselves are too terrified to step into the cage. It's a trait of humanity that's rattled him for a while, a pet peeve that earned him a label of being problematic amongst authority at a young age.
He almost rolls his eyes as he reaches out to Jill's sleeping form. Though she wasn't keen on the changes her body had undergone, he still thinks she's the most stunning thing he's ever seen. She's Jill, his Jill, despite the pale hair, battle scars, and whatever else she wrinkles her nose at.
Chris trails his fingers along the sharp edge of her collarbone to the curve of her shoulder. Her skin is so smooth beneath his touch that it almost pains him in a way because he doesn't know how something so perfect can be so damaged. It's a concept that he can't wrap his head around, a conundrum that keeps him awake at night like clockwork.
Jill stirs beneath his hand and he inwardly curses himself for disturbing her on account of his own selfish indulgence. He remains as still as he can manage, barely even breathing as he waits for her to drift back into her deep state of sleep.
She doesn't.
Her pale lashes part and she regards him with lazy, half-lidded eyes. She blinks the sleep away and makes a quiet sound in her throat as she shifts her hips and repositions herself more fully onto her side as she concerningly asks, "Chris?"
A smile threatens to break out on his face and he shakes his head as he tucks an errant lock of light hair behind her ear.
"I didn't mean to wake you." He says sheepishly, voice tender as he follows up the apology with a suggestion. "You should go back to sleep."
In response, she only moves closer to him. Jill tucks her arms in close and makes herself as small as she can manage against him. She buries her face in the heated flesh of his bare chest and lets out a contented sigh when he wraps his arms around her to pull her just a little closer.
"I used to try to imagine this to help me sleep at night." She confesses and then, as an afterthought, she adds, "Before."
He knows what she means-before she succumbed to P30. Before she lost herself. Before Wesker made her into a weapon.
Chris can't fucking stand it. He's been told a thousand and ten times that he's not supposed to feel guilty by a handful of people who hadn't had the loves of their lives sacrifice themselves and be made into weapons of mass destruction because of it.
But he still does.
"You can't hold yourself accountable for this, Chris!"
The fury in Claire's voice was sharp and she brandished it like a blade. Each word that she spoke was like a stab to the chest, but, in some way, he appreciated the ache. The burn deep in his chest reminded him that he was still capable of feeling something, that the numbness that enveloped him wasn't permanent.
"You weren't there, Claire."
He spat the words like venom, eyes narrowed into slits as he scrutinized her with a judgmental glare.
"I know you're good at what you do, Chris, and I know you like to beat yourself up when you don't deserve it."
Claire's words enraged him. She had a penchant for throwing her unsolicited two cents into the pot all the damn time when it came to her brother and, this time, he truly didn't fucking want it.
"I was sloppy, Claire!" He shouted, teeth gritting together as he hesitated between exclamations. "If I hadn't been so hot-headed, Jill would still be alive!"
Claire fell into a silence, rendered speechless by her brother's sudden outburst. Furrowing her brows together, she slung her purse over her shoulder and hesitated at the door in order to get the last word.
"Jill's dead, Chris." She said, voice shaking. "Nothing can change that, but I know she didn't die just for you to hide in your apartment and drink yourself to death. Don't let her sacrifice be in vain."
The slam of the door rattled him down to his bones, but he wasn't sure if it was from the force of the action itself or the enmity of the woman who had done it.
Chris just smiles as he languidly trails his fingertips along the curve of her back.
"You haunted me." He laughs a little as he says it because it sounds so fucking cliche, but it's the truth.
He can feel Jill's hot, moist breath against his chest as she breathes shallowly.
"I still feel like a ghost."
Sometimes, he wonders if she is.
Jill doesn't know what she's looking at.
No matter how many directions she turns it, she can't figure out what the subject of the drawing is. She sees the squiggly lines and the messes of color scribbled across the page, but it doesn't look like much of anything even when she squints her eyes and tilts her head to the side. If it's meant to be an abstract piece, it doesn't surprise her. She never was one to understand art anyway.
"It's really nice, Liv." She lies as she hands the paper back to the girl.
Olivia's beautiful, a spitting image of her mother despite the waves of pale hair that tumble past her shoulders. She's everything a little girl should be-messy hair, infectious laughter, and happy-go-lucky pastel crayon scribbles across whatever errant sheet of paper she can find. Being around Claire's daughter lifts her spirits, but Jill can't help but wonder about what could have been when she's around her. Maybe, in another timeline, she could have had a daughter too, one with pale blue eyes and her father's sideways smile.
"I'm gonna draw one for Uncle Chris, too!" She proudly exclaims, bursting into a series of giggles the moment it comes from her mouth.
Jill doesn't know what Olivia's chortling at, but she finds that she's laughing, too. She can hardly keep up with the girl as she bursts into a sprint, a blur of blonde and blue from the nautical striped dress she's wearing. Jill chases her to the kitchen and effortlessly lifts her into one of the chairs.
"What are you going to draw?" She asks as she drops into the seat beside the girl, chin resting on her hand in a curious pose.
"I'm going to draw Uncle Chris's favorite thing in the entire world." She says cheekily, her grin so wide that her dimples are on full display.
Jill raises an eyebrow in question and Olivia giggles again.
"I'm gonna draw you!" She blurts out before adding a spunky, "Duh!"
Her breath catches in her throat and, for a fleeting second, she feels dizzy.
"Not a day went by that he didn't talk about you."
Jill nearly choked on her wine, the sudden declaration coming mid-sip as she tilted her glass. She closed her eyes tightly as she forced herself to swallow the mouthful, buying herself time to process Claire's words. It was a topic she had hoped to avoid that night.
"I…" She fingered the base of her glass idly as she searched for the right response. Not surprisingly, her mind remained infuriatingly silent, all white noise as she choked out, "I'm so sorry, Claire."
If Claire hated her, Jill wouldn't have blamed her. Claire was the one who was forced to endure the torment she had caused her brother. It would only be natural for her to feel some sense of animosity for her over it.
Claire was stunning as always, even with her hair pulled back into a messy bun and an alcoholic flush across her cheeks. She closed her eyes and smiled while she shook her head.
"Don't be sorry, Jill. You saved my brother's life." She leaned against Jill, resting her head on her shoulder with a contented sigh.
"I love you more than words can express for it." Claire gushed, taking Jill's hand in her own and entwining their fingers together. "Promise you'll take care of him for me, okay?"
Jill coughs to force down the sob that forms in her throat.
"Make me skinny and pretty, please." She teases, ruffling Olivia's hair as she stands.
Chris and Claire had been called to an emergency joint meeting between the B.S.A.A. and TerraSave, leaving her behind to watch over Olivia until Leon's shift ended. It was a task she had been entrusted with often these days, but she was grateful for the opportunity to get out of Chris's house.
Though, really, the old Jill Valentine was rolling in her grave. How had she been demoted from special ops to being an on-call babysitter?
With a sigh, she turns on the television, but she feels her stomach sink at the sight of the news ticker running across the screen.
Bioterrorist outbreak in Fukoka - B.S.A.A. reports death toll is "uncountable"
There's a loud, ringing sound in her ears that drowns out the words of the reporter on the screen. Jill winces and presses her palm against the side of her head, willing the sudden, piercing pain that shoots through her temple to lessen. She catches herself thinking that she shouldn't watch this, not with Olivia around, but then the images come.
A grainy video taken with shaky hands shows a B.O.W. snarling as it stumbles down the street, flesh half-melted from muscle and bone as a fire rages in the background. It's almost as if its tissue had been liquefied as it openly gushed down the length of its arm, splattering onto the pavement with each jerking movement that it made.
The image shifts to a still of a man screaming, face twisted into one of pain. Jill can only assume the source of his discomfort is the series of sharp, bony prominences that jut from his body in various directions like spines. It's terrible, she thinks, just in time for the visual to change.
This time, it's a young girl who stares at the camera with black, sullen eyes. Her entire body appears to be engulfed by leech-like creatures that swarm over her, leaving only her neck and face exposed. Jill's eyes are locked with hers, even as the leeches continue to swarm over her and inevitably envelop her whole.
She feels a sharp, seizing pain in her chest and she takes in a staggered breath. Jill's vision is fading from the outside in, a fog of grey forming in her periphery and rapidly moving towards the center of her line of sight. She feels something wet drip down her face and chin and she thinks it's a nosebleed, but she can't be too sure. Her lungs are burning and she begins to cough. Jill clamps one hand over her mouth as her other fumbles for leverage in her blinded state.
Jill thinks she's on the floor now, given the throbbing pain in her shoulder and the burn of the rug against her skin as she writhes. She's not aware of her body. Maybe she's moving, maybe she's not. She's not sure.
She's coughing, coughing so hard that her throat is raw and she thinks this is it-this is how it ends.
Her fingers curl into a fist and she clutches at her shirt, turning onto her side. She scrapes her nails against the wooden flooring and tries to call out, but she can't even hear herself over the low-pitched whine that echoes in her ears.
She feels something, a presence. In the absence of sight, she somehow sees a figure in the distance amidst the darkness.
Jill reaches out and it turns.
The final sight she recognizes is the glint of light against those impossibly dark shades before she succumbs to the state of unconsciousness that her warring body so desperately seeks.
"Giving up so soon, Jill?"
Have y'all ever made yourself cry while writing because lord knows I did about ten times while writing this. I promise it'll be short-about 4 more chapters-because my fragile heart can't take much more of this abuse.