Chris Redfield was dead.
Dead.
He fell out of a window, and he died.
Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, and no matter how much she wished it wasn't true, no matter how much she'd begged and pleaded with an unmerciful god to make it all just be some twisted, horrible nightmare, there was no changing it—her. Brother. Was. Dead.
She'd thought that she'd known grief before, when her parents had died, when Steve had died, choking on the first declaration of love that was doomed to be the last, but this was so different. She was hollow, like a shell, a skin just going through the motions of a pointless, grey life.
Dead.
She would never see him again, not even to say goodbye to a corpse.
But then, she had clicked on an image file and as it had slowly loaded onto the screen, he had suddenly been there again.
He was different looking, pale and blonde, with a dazed little smile on his face that was so unlike Chris, but she was his sister. She knew that it was him.
So suddenly Chris might be alive, and she had no idea what to think.
RE--RE
Sheva stared at the crushed remains of the jeep they had been sitting in five seconds earlier, and then turned her gaze to the dead body of that thing. It was a nauseating sight, a complete freak of nature, an abomination worse than any Majini could ever be.
But it also looked human. It had four limbs, and a face.
Thinking about how it might've been made scared her, but not as much as the thought of what it might've done to Josh. He was like a brother to her, and she had no idea what she would do if she ever lost him.
"I'm continuing ahead, Sheva," said Claire, her voice piercing in the still night air. "But you can back out, if you want to. I realize how bad the situation is."
Sheva snapped her head around to look at her incredulously. "Claire, look around you!" She spread her arms, trying to encompass the entirety of the destroyed village—the damaged buildings, the corpses, the fires. "This is impossible! I want to catch Irving, too, but it's not something worth dying over!"
Claire continued to reload all of her weapons methodically, not even looking up at her. "I'm not in this for Irving. I don't care about him anymore." She roughly pumped her shotgun and slung it over her back, moving on to the rifle. "It's personal now. I have to know . . ."
"Know what?"
"If he's—if he's still alive. If that picture was really . . . him."
Sheva tilted her head in curiosity. "Who is 'he', Claire? What picture?"
Her hands slowed in their movement, and she finally met her eyes. Claire looked upset, desperate, even, and when she spoke, her voice was thick.
"The information Josh gave us had a photo inside, and—" Her voice wavered dangerously. "It was of my brother. But until then, I had been under the impression he was dead."
"Oh, Claire," she breathed, reaching out and resting her hands on her arms.
Claire swallowed heavily, forcing a smile. "We were always close, Chris and me. I always tried to get him out of trouble only to inevitably end up needing rescuing myself . . ." She laughed. ". . . and he was always there to help me. But I thought, after that night, that he was gone forever . . . until today. If he's alive, Sheva, I'm going to find him. I have to."
She pulled away, grabbing the rifle by the barrel and striding purposefully in the direction of the nearest motorboat.
Sheva watched her go. Part of her, a large part, wanted nothing more than to turn around and leave Kijuju, to go home and soak in a bathtub and forget all about the horrors she'd seen.
But then she thought about Josh, and she imagined what it would be like if it was them in this situation.
"Claire," she said quietly, "wait. I'm coming with you."
RE--RE
"So . . ." She was hesitant to ask the question, but forced herself to do so. "What happened to your brother, Claire?"
Claire glanced away, out at the passing marsh. It was getting light, which meant they'd been traveling for hours. They hadn't spoken even once.
"He . . . was involved in a mission during which BSAA agents attempted to arrest a man named Albert Wesker. But Wesker is—he's not . . . normal, and the whole thing went badly. To save the life of his partner, he wound up throwing himself at him and—they fell. It was . . . a very long drop."
"I'm so sorry, Claire," she murmured, looking down at her lap.
"Don't be," she said stiffly. "It's nobody's fault except Wesker's."
"And . . . you want him to pay for it, don't you?"
Claire hesitated. "Yes. Very much so. But I don't even know where he is."
They fell into an awkward silence, the only noise being the boat's motor and the pleasant echoes of animal calls. Claire braced herself and tightened her hand around the directional shift as the boat slid up and over a lowered fence, landing on the other side with a muffled thump that sent water splashing up onto them.
"My parents," Sheva began abruptly. "They died in an outbreak caused by Umbrella. For years I didn't know but then I found out that . . . Africa was nothing more than their testing ground. They died just so wealthy men in suits could make more money by selling weapons to terrorists. So, I do understand, Claire."
They didn't talk again.
RE--RE
RE--RE
Author's Note: God, this chapter's really short. And I skipped a lot of stuff they did in the game, like the little standoff with Irving. Sorry. I was just having really a lot of trouble writing this chapter, so I wound up having to really edit a lot out to make it coherent. :(
I am trying SO desperately to just get them to the inevitable Wesker/Chris confrontation, but it's taking a year and a half, and I can't seem to find any way to include any chapter with any Wesker/Chris yaoiness, because the story's told mostly from Claire's point-of-view. *rips hair out*
Oh, and my view on the Darkside Chronicles: it was great until they dissolved into Final Fantasy bullshit at the end. But of course, whenever you include Leon as a major character, the plot has a tendency to get either retarded, cheesy, or melodramatic. And WHY does he have to have a new love interest in every single goddamn installment he appears in? Was Claire, Ada, Ashley, Hunnigan, and Angela not enough for you? Now we need Mary Sue--I mean, Manuela as well? Who's probably underage?
Anyway, at least they did Code: Veronica very well. They made STEVE one of my new favorite characters.
Thank you all so much for all the reviews!!!!!
Anna