Disclaimer: All characters, references, and likenesses to Resident Evil belong to Capcom and have been used without permission.

Chapter One: Fracture

Jill awoke to the sound of cards shuffling in a deck and the patter of a hand being dealt to the occupants at a large dining room table that was worse for wear. Her eyes adjusted slowly to darkness of her surroundings. She could see a dim light shining over the couch she had fallen asleep on, presumably coming from the adjacent room where the card game was continuing from earlier.

The spells of sleep would come and go. The BSAA medics had said she was experiencing a detox; an obvious reaction to the lack of drugs that had been pumped into her system consistently for two years. The thought made the grime appear on her skin again, and she felt the urge to lock herself in the bathroom and scald her skin for the third time that day.

Chris's voice fluttered over the card game, and she realized suddenly that he was coming to check on her. It was a routine he had obsessively gotten into the habit of since she had been released from the on-base hospital in Africa and they had flown back to America, under the orders of hiding until the Kijuju situation was under control.

"It's nice to finally get a paycheck for being on the run."

Chris had grumbled his sentiments several times over the last three weeks as he shuffled Jill from safe house to safe house. This was all fine by Jill as anything was a reprieve from a jail cell that Wesker could enter at any moment, except for the hardships it placed when it came to professional medical care. She had experienced a few episodes; harsh flashbacks that put her in a temporary psychosis of extreme paranoia and fear. The look on Chris's face each time she woke up with that guttural scream in her throat would forever be imprinted into her memory. It spoke of desperation and fear, and a reluctance to accept that he wasn't equipped to handle her recovery alone.

Adjusting to a normal life was proving impossible. Jill had been a prisoner for far too long to simply slip back through the cracks and pick up where she had left off. Prior to Chris finding her, the last moments Jill had spent leading her former life involved throwing herself out a window as a last ditch effort to save her lover from a villain whose grip had ceased to falter over the last decade of their lives.

"I didn't know you were awake," Chris's voice startled her from her thoughts, and she realized she had been standing in the doorway for quite some time, watching the shadows of the other inhabitants of the safe house.

"I didn't realize I was either," Jill mumbled, increasing the space between herself and the man in front of her. Physical contact was completely out of bounds. A nervous twisting and aching weighed on her stomach whenever she sensed affection radiating from Chris. It was obvious her "death" had wreaked havoc on many lives, but it had completely buried the man she knew before. He was a hulking mass now - not that he hadn't been fit already, but it was obvious he had taken his grief out in a physical way. She had yet to see him crack a smile, and she wondered if she would even notice if he did. She wasn't smiling much these days either.

"Do you want to join the card game?"

"No."

The idea of sitting in a room with everyone as they traded "war" stories and jokes made her nauseous. She couldn't stand to be around anyone - especially larger groups of people - for longer than a few minutes at a time. It was an anxiety caused by the fact that she felt like every wrong she had committed in the last two years was carved into her skin. The eyes that watched her curiously were reading the confessions and the longer she stayed, the more her secrets were brought to life. She was thankful the only person other than Chris and the BSAA guards that was afforded access to the safe house was Leon (due to his extensive involvement in the government), because she did not think she could stand to see more familiar faces in her current state. Claire, Barry, Rebecca, and everyone else who had (un)intentionally made enemies with Umbrella had been ushered into different safe houses under Chris's insistence that retaliation was probably imminent.

"Do you want me to stay with you?"

She hesitated. He was still in love with her, still trying to be the hero he had always been, but she didn't know who she was anymore. The feelings were still there - the vividness of their relationship prior to her death - but her body had holed that part of her life off in the time spent under Wesker's lead, and she couldn't seem to undo the safeguard.

"It's okay, Jill. Just go to sleep. If you need anything, I'll be right in there," he took a step closer out of old habit and she could smell the beer on his breath. The familiar heavy lager awakened many memories, and for a moment his presence was appreciated, but the man in black appeared all too soon. She stumbled backward, bracing her hand against the wall for support.

"Okay," it was all she could muster as she watched him leave the room. She could see in the darkness how his shoulders slumped; how he didn't walk with the same swagger she remembered him having. He was a broken man and she was doing nothing to aid him in his healing.

"Fuckin' mosquitoes," Chris mumbled under his breath as he lit his second cigarette of the night.

"Is she alright?"

Chris glanced up at Leon. He had nothing against the guy - Leon had proved himself worthy on several occasions in the past five years - but he just didn't know when to shut the fuck up. Claire had warned him of his prying personality years earlier. "He means well, Chris, he just doesn't really understand how you and I cope with things."

He decided to bite back the impulse to be rude. "I don't know. She won't really talk to me. She's said five fuckin' words since I brought her back," he inhaled the nicotine, relishing its calming effects.

"Didn't Claire tell you to lay off that shit?"

"I did. I quit eight years ago, but something made me pick up the habit again. I guess finding out your girlfriend's still alive and under the control of a sociopath will do that to a guy."

"Nice," Leon mumbled, unenthused by the sarcasm.

Chris shrugged in response, leaning against the wooden railing of the porch he and Leon stood on. He had tried to be civil, but Leon's inquisitive nature had overstepped the boundaries Chris meant to be in place. He understood Kennedy was a government agent, knew it was his job to probe, but all he wanted was to relish his cigarettes in peace.

"She's got another evaluation coming up."

The statement was thick, and it hung in the air with the fog of smoke surrounding Chris.

"It's to decide whether or not they're going to commit her for a mandatory period."

Chris suffocated the tip of his cigarette against the wooden railing, flicking it into the grass. He leaned against the structure, the aging wood creaking under his weight.

"She has nightmares. She wakes up paranoid…totally distraught. I guess she's remembering things she didn't really have time to process while she was drugged. She thinks I don't know what happens, but she screams in her sleep. She begs for him to get off of her and cries out for me, but I guess I never come," Chris admitted, his voice cracking under the severity of the statement. He cleared his throat to cover it, and nervously raked his hands through his disheveled hair. "Even in her dreams, I can't save her."

"The psychologist said her brain was remembering everything she has repressed since her capture, and there's no way to identify triggers she may experience. You don't save her because you didn't save her. She was under Wesker's control for two years, Chris. Anyone would be seriously reeling from that. She's lucky to even be alive. I don't think - "

"You don't think what, Leon? That I can handle her on my own? You think I don't fucking know that?" His voice was rising, and Leon realized this was probably going to get uglier than he intended.

"Everything okay out here, guys?" The men were startled by the voice of one of the BSAA security guards. His name was Kevin or Kyle, Leon couldn't exactly remember.

"Peachy," Chris mumbled.

The guard gave an unsatisfied look toward both Chris and Leon, before shutting the door to the house once more.

"I'm just saying, if this evaluation requires that she needs help beyond what she is already receiving, maybe it's not such a bad thing," Leon reasoned. It was a shoddy attempt to calm Chris down, and both men knew it.

"I feel like you know something, Kennedy. Like one of those higher ups has told you they're going to put her away until she sees rainbows and butterflies in those ink blots," Chris challenged.

"I don't know any more than you do. The BSAA doesn't divulge information to me like the government. I'm not their agent, so they don't have any loyalty to me."

Chris sighed. He was agitated, mostly at himself for not being able to do anything about the situation at hand. The BSAA had valid concerns for why they wanted to admit Jill to one of their facilities specializing in trauma sustained while in battle. Chris didn't think the BSAA actually knew the severity of the trauma that was associated with Albert Wesker.

"I don't feel like she needs to be put away. We just pulled her out of confinement…only to put her back in? Regardless of what she's going through, that's still my Jill."

"Fair enough." It was the only response Leon could give, for he had nothing else to offer.

The reality of the dilemma surrounding Jill had been building for weeks. She had woken up in a state of extreme paranoia on more than a couple of occasions, scaring everyone around her. As much as Chris had refused to let on, Leon had seen the fear in his eyes when he couldn't shake her from her delusions. The medics had said it could be a side-effect from the P30 serum, but no final answer could be given as the results of Jill's blood tests and cultures had not come back yet. Until any semblance of answers could be found, they were on their own.

It was tiring, hearing Chris and Leon have the same conversation over and over. Where she should have felt some sort of emotion toward the prospects of her being admitted into a medical facility, she felt the same void that existed whenever she tried to create any sort of emotion for herself.

She had never believed in the saying "better off dead" until she had met Albert Wesker and unveiled the truth in her position as a S.T.A.R.S. member - glorified lab rat.

Jill pulled the door to her bedroom closed, ensuring that she made as little noise as possible. The BSAA guards were trained to react to any movement, especially those coming from her. Regardless of if she was put away so to speak, she was still on lockdown within the confines of the safe house. Her outbursts and her failure to even try to socialize were casting a dim light on her chances for improvement.

Knock. Knock.

She knew it was Chris. He was the only one who dared try to speak with her.

"Yeah."

Chris entered, eyes meeting hers before he was even in the room. "Should I set a plate for you, or are you just going to starve yourself?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Jill, you have to eat."

She narrowed her eyes at him, exasperated with what he expected of her. "I feel nauseous just thinking about food, Chris. I don't want to eat."

He nodded, propping himself against the door. She cautiously watched him from the corner of her eye, and she could tell her was looking at her in the dim light cast from the outside hallway. Her time spent with Wesker had undeniably toned her already fit body - she was after all intended to be his perfect weapon - but the last few weeks of detox had forfeited her exercise routine and caused to her to become skin and bones. As a result of this, Jill avoided mirrors and lights as much as possible.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. It came out of nowhere, just an automatic response to what she knew Chris was thinking.

"Yeah. I am too, because if I can't pull you together, they're going to send you to someone who thinks they can," he looked at her expectantly, as if he was awaiting a nervous breakdown.

Emotions did not touch Jill anymore though, and she merely affirmed his statement. "I know."

"That's it? You're just giving up?"

"I don't think I ever started anything, Chris, so I don't know what there is to give up."

He moved forward suddenly, shutting the door behind him, and she could tell from how calculated his movements were that he was refraining from tearing the door from its hinges. The idea of violence made her stomach turn with the weight of memories of Wesker, and before Chris could come any closer, she sprinted toward the bathroom, emptying the bile into the toilet.

Chris rushed after her, his hand automatically going to her back, which sent Jill reeling again. When she finally was able to get a handle on herself, she shrank away from his touch, positioning herself so that the toilet was in between them and shielding her face from the light that was suddenly on.

"You need to eat. You're going to dehydrate."

"I think that's the least of my worries."

Chris sighed in response. He had no idea how to deal with side of Jill. He had known going into Africa that the chances of her being alive were slim to none, and the chances of her being the same were even less. This version of Jill was something entirely different; something not to be reckoned with. She was neither callous or cold, but rather entirely indifferent. He would rather her be vicious than entirely incapable of expressing/feeling any sort of sentiment toward anyone, herself included. Emotion, negative or not, bred humanity.

"I've heard you and Leon talking, Chris. I'm not an idiot."

Her words jarred him from his thoughts. The subject came so suddenly that he didn't have time to prepare a response.

"I know you're not an idiot. That's why I need you to cooperate during your next evaluation. You can't just sit there in silence proclaiming you're fine. Psychiatrists are paid to call bullshit."

"Since when are you a friend of Freud?" She was referring to his prior experiences with shrinks - doctors who classified them as mentally incapable of working, thus nullifying their recounts of the Spencer Estate incident and catapulting the events that followed.

"Jill, the BSAA was developed in response to everything we have worked for. This isn't S.T.A.R.S. and this isn't a shrink paid by Irons to call us all psychos," he reasoned softly. The allusion to the beginning brought back more than he cared to think about at the moment. He had to focus on one tragedy at a time or it would become too much to bear.

Jill pushed herself to her feet, the idea of sitting on the floor suddenly making her feel weak and inferior in front of Chris. "Does Leon know something we don't?"

"I don't think so. He's only pointing out what's obvious."

She felt the force of his statement, probably more harshly than he intended, but he was right. Jill wasn't making a strong case for herself when it came to her stability, and the bigger problem was that she couldn't care any less. If they wanted to admit her into a psych ward and poke and prod her brain for its troubles, then so be it.

"Been there, done that."

It was a dark thought, one she didn't dare voice aloud out of common sense.

"Jill?"

She was shaken back into reality at the tone of Chris's voice, indicating he had been talking to her for quite some time without a response.

"I'm fine. I just want to take a shower and go back to sleep."

Chris begrudgingly took this as his cue to leave, and he shut the door behind him. She heard his heavy footsteps as he made his way from the bedroom and into the hallway before slamming shut the door. The frames on the walls rattled as did Jill's bones at the noise.

"Get a fucking grip," she growled at herself as she caught her reflection in the side mirror. She looked like she had died and the life that was revived suddenly in her was slipping away quickly. Her skin was white as a sheet, with her hair not fairing much better. The time spent in Wesker's chamber had traded pigment for healing. She had been horrified at first, screaming when she had awakened to her new appearance. Then the P30 had started, and she had no time to process her looks. If anything, not looking like Jill Valentine had helped her cope with what she had done while under Wesker's control.

Wesker.

The name alone made her skin crawl and her body ache. The worst part of the P30 wearing off were the memories that were slowly creeping their way into her brain; each one making it evident that she was no longer a victim, but rather a murderer in a hero's disguise.

Author's Note: I'm not sure where this story is going exactly. I have some ideas in my head for where I want it to go, but nothing concrete. I've had this idea spinning around in my head since Resident Evil 5 was released, and I felt like I had to at least try to do something with it. It's going to be a little darker than what I've previously written, and hopefully better. I've been gone for a while so I hope I'm not too rusty at this. Reviews are greatly appreciated!