"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
- Kahlil Gibran
He sat down next to her, wincing.
"You alright?"
He nodded. "Just getting old..."
The snow was falling steadily. The downed tree they perched on was icy and their breath hung in the air like clouds.
"So many years, Jill." He shook his head while she sighed. Her hands wormed into the pockets of her sweat shirt.
"I know."
"How many times did you try to escape?"
She stared at her feet. "I tried to, uh..." She made imaginary slashes up her arms as it hurt too much to speak the words, the words making it more real than she could deal with. "Once."
He raised his eyebrows. "You never just made a run for it or anything?"
She kicked at the snow, her legs swinging like a child's. He knew the answer was disappointing and shameful.
"It's wrong, Jill. I don't care what he's done or what he's told you. You're a hostage."
She sighed again. "Well, it's the past, right?"
"No. No, it's not the past. You're still here, in that goddamn hole. With that blond piece of shit."
She held up a hand to stop him. "I can't do this, Chris. Not now."
"When then? When do you want to do 'this'? It's not getting any prettier, Jill. Every day that ticks by, with you hiding out, waiting for-"
"I can't! Just stop!" She stood. "I won't!"
I won't leave him. I won't live without him.
"Okay," he said, softly. "Okay. We'll talk about something else."
"I'm not like you." She cut in. "You can't keep thinking that I'm you. I'm not."
Chris looked at her. He looked through her. "What do you mean?"
"Maybe I'm... I'm just not a hero."
He leaned away from her, as if she'd slapped him. "Jill. Wha- of course you are. I mean... what..." The words wouldn't come, his world jolted to a standstill.
"No. I'm not. Really." She paused, letting the weight sink in for both Chris and herself. "I wanted to live more than I wanted to be a hero."
"Jill-"
"Seriously. Listen to me. I'm not a hero."
He was broken-hearted, his breath shallow. "But what about Raccoon? Or Spencer?"
She looked into his eyes. "I was, I guess, when I was your sidekick. I'm not anymore though."
"Now you're his fucking sidekick." His tone was derisive and hurtful.
"No."
"Then be a hero again. Fuck this place. It smells like death in there, Jill. Let's go. Let's leave him to rot."
She shook her head. "No."
He made a hopeless sound; it gurgled out from the back of his throat. A death rattle for Jill Valentine.
He was up, pacing briefly. She watched. He turned on her.
"All that goddamn time. I wasted so much fucking time on you."
She backed up at the sting of his tone.
He started to walk and stopped. "It would hurt so much less if you would have just died that night."
The first time he left the room, he thought there was going to be... something... more than indifference.
She was reading her book. He was writing in his journal.
It was so surreal, he wondered if he was still dreaming.
Had these people forgotten what world they lived in?
In the kitchenette, a hallway apart from the living room, Chris stood, waiting for the coffee to brew.
He looked up and around. He listened to the drip of the Cuisinart.
This place was really no more than a grave with a pretty tombstone inscription to lure in all those desperate wanderers.
Come on down to Eden, y'all, cause we got false hopes aplenty and hot coffee to swallow down the good news. Just don't forget... your soul's gotta be dead to enter!
The machine beeped. Done.
He took the mug and risked a glance into the other room, where time seemed to stand still. He wrote and she read. No change.
It made no sense to him as to why they had insisted on keeping him here, when none of them seemed interested in his presence. He was a stray dog they picked up on the street, washed and brushed, but still a mutt.
"It's 'cause they're afraid of you," came a voice from his right and as he looked to define its origin, Claire stepped from the shadows. Good old Claire. Claire-Bear. Lil' Sis. The only person in the world left he could trust.
She wore one of Jill's old outfits – he wondered how it had survived all these years. The black tank top hugged her frame, accompanied by a short jeans skirt and knee-high brown boots. It was a warped memory of the past of all the things he'd lost (Jill) and those he still had, but was unable to reach (Claire).
"They're afraid of you." Claire explained. "They're fucking terrified and that's why they don't let you go. You're the key, to that damned lock they've been picking for years and how could they possibly let the only key in the world slip through their fingers?"
He didn't know what she was talking about.
Part of him knew she wasn't even there.
The rest of him listened closely.
"Stop playing by their rules. You never did before. Grow a pair."
"Okay," he said, quiet and uncertain. He didn't want them to hear.
Claire smiled. "Thats good. I trust you, Chris. You'll do the right thing. I can count on you, man. You always do the right thing."
She slipped past him then, through the door and into his bunk.
Neither Jill nor Wesker noticed her.
Why should they?
She wasn't their stray dog.
The six knives glistened in the artificial light of the kitchen and Chris pulled one out tentatively. It was sharpened, undoubtedly kept in impeccable shape by Wesker. Chris frowned at the thought and drew one finger over the edge of the blade.
A drop of blood instantly welled up but he felt nothing because the blade was so...
Perfect.
That asshole.
"Shit... Jesus..." She clutched her head.
Wesker pressed one blood-soaked hand to his wet side. The knife lay on the ground, right beside its previous wielder.
"That's it," he said. "He's never getting coffee again."
Jill checked for a pulse, and, relieved when she found one, started investigating Chris's body for additional injuries.
"He's not himself, Al. You know that. Shit... you have to be more careful next time. You nearly broke his ribs."
Wesker was shocked by her concern for the other man.
"Were you present, Jill? When he stabbed me? Hmmm?"
"Are you surprised?" Her question was sincere.
He never answered as they carried Chris back to his room, tied his arms to the bed with a zip tie.
When they closed the door behind them and left to continue their daily errands, it was Claire who sat by his side and waited until he woke.
"Good job, Chris... good job..."
A day later, Claire returned.
"You should apologize now. They'll untie you then. We'll start thinking about killing him again soon." Her smile was gentle though her words were those of murder plots.
"What? Apologize?" He struggled, tugging on the restraints.
She stood, glaring at him. Disgust.
"Yes, Chris. You're not doin' much good here, are you?" She was angered by his arguing. "You're pathetic, all tied to a fucking bed. You let them beat you. You must not have a drop of Redfield in you, you-"
"Alright! Fuck! Shut up!"
In the lab, Jill and Wesker looked up and then at each other as his voice carried out through the hatch.
He was talking to himself.
"He's been through a lot, Al." She defended him.
Wesker didn't reply, his eyes fixed on the hall.
Later that day, a much more reserved Chris apologized, making promises of never losing his cool, making excuses for his behavior. And he was allowed to rejoin them... as soon as they had secured every "weapon-ish" item in the hatch.
She coughed. Wet coughs.
Wesker looked up, peering over the square frames of the reading glasses.
She coughed again, this time bracing herself on the wall of the hallway.
Wesker stood then, somewhere between alarm and annoyance.
"It's fine." She wheezed, coughing again, finally dislodging whatever had been in her throat. "Your uterus is fine."
He adjusted the glasses and sat down, picking up the pen while watching her suspiciously. "If you are ill, Jill, I need to know."
She shook her head and dumped the basket of her dirty clothes in the washbasin.
"I'm fine, Wesker. Trust me."
They would find in two days time that Jill was not "fine".
"Hey."
Wesker turned, a mug in his hand. He stared blankly at Chris, who hadn't acknowledged his presence since the apology for the stabbing.
"She's sick."
Jill lie on her side in the bunk. Her eyes fluttered open when Wesker appeared behind Chris.
He knelt and smelled the air around her, his nose detecting nuances better than most physicians. His thumb held up one of her eyelids, watching her pupillary response. Fingers on her throat, at the pulse. Finally, a surprisingly cool wrist held to her forehead. She was too weak to move, too bleary to speak.
Wesker looked back at Chris. "We need to leave. We need to leave now."
He used his strength to force the hatch door open. It was heavy with snow and ice.
Chris handed her up the ladder.
In Wesker's arms, she went limp, except for the weak fingers clinging to his coat.
Clinging to him.
"She's really hot."
"Unbutton her shirt."
Chris undid the flannel, his breath fogging the frigid air of the car. She laid on her back, her legs over Chris's, her clothes half off in an effort to bring her fever down. She wheezed when she breathed.
"Shhhh..." Chris whispered. "Hang on, baby."
Wesker hadn't heard Chris use that word in nearly a decade.
Under ordinary circumstances, it would have turned his stomach.
On this day, it did not.
A fist through the glass, the icy wind blowing in, stirring dust that hadn't been disturbed in five years.
Wesker yanked on the lock at the top of the door. His fingers slipped and fumbled. He was breathing quickly; he felt his heart ache with exertion.
He needed to hurry. Of all the times to rush, he needed to at this moment.
He needed to hurry.
He needed to hurry.
Chris watched, a lifeless Jill in his arms. "Shhhh..." He bounced her gently, like a baby.
Wesker found the pick and pulled down hard, freeing the emergency room doors.
Chris blew past him and down the dark corridor.
Stained stretchers lined the hallway. Filth and grime and smeary red hand prints painted the walls. Unrecognizable corpses, dried out and mummified, found their resting places in some beds, the curtains in various states of privacy around the sick bay.
Wesker clicked on the flashlight as Chris settled Jill on a cot. He was mumbling to her, touching her face.
"Jesus Christ, she's so warm. Shit." He was afraid.
She inhaled, gasping like a fish out of water, her eyes squeezed shut in pain. They could hear the whistling of bloody mucus in her lungs.
"Roll her over. Pound on her back."
Chris hesitated at the order.
"Now, Redfield!" He roared.
Wesker flung open cabinets around the nurses' station. His flash light flew from shelf to shelf. He was skimming the tags, identifying the nature of the grouped drugs. He had to squint. The letters blurred together - a sudden and hysterical bout of stigmatism. Pausing, he rubbed his eyes, letting the elliptical pupils expand and contract behind the eyelids.
Of all the times he needed his sight to work, it was now.
He needed to see.
Where the hell did he leave those goddamn glasses she'd gotten him?
He needed to hurry and see.
He needed to...
"Hey."
He whipped around, nose-to-nose with Chris.
They stared at each other. Deja vu.
Wesker could see the bloody stitches on Chris's shoulder, could smell the sterile sweetness of the busy hospital room, could feel Jill to his left, could hear his own voice berating Chris. He was taken back.
He knew Chris felt it too. How could he not? It was so reminiscent. But he didn't care then. Didn't care about rank or pride or... whatever else they could find to hate each other with. Neither did Chris. For once, there seemed to be something bigger than the both of them.
He took the flashlight from Wesker's hand, holding it back up to the shelves.
"Go to her. And tell me what I'm looking for," he said quietly.
Pneumocystis jiroveci.
A bacterial pneumonia, often affecting both lungs.
An illness of those with a compromised immune system.
Characterized by severe chest pain on inspiration, thick, rust-colored sputum, chills, fever, and lower intestinal upset.
If a speedy prognosis and treatment plan is not made, mortality rates go dramatically up.
"We need a sulfamethoxzole or a trimethoprim."
"English, Wesker."
"Septra. Antibiotic."
Chris searched the rows of chemicals, repeating the words to himself.
"Alright. I found the antibiotics. I'm not seeing Septra."
"Levaquin?"
Chris noisily moved the little glass bottles around, disorganizing rows, knocking a few to the countertop. "No. What was that first one?
"Sulfamethoxzole." He pulled Jill to a sitting position. She lulled forward and coughed weakly. He rapped on her lower back, trying to help her break up the infection.
"Spell it, Wesker."
"S-U-L-F-A-M-E-T-H-"
"Bactrim?" He asked, holding up a bottle in the beam of the flashlight.
"Yes."
Wesker administered an undiluted injection and then hooked up an IV.
Chris watched, chewing what little was left of his nails. "Will she... is she going to..."
Wesker looked up, eyes burning. "She must."
His hand wouldn't fit.
He wanted the Cheetos. Badly.
He rocked the machine.
Only a little at first.
Then violently before he collapsed.
He wept, silent, tearless sobs, his face pressed to the freezing glass, the ghostly images of stale junk food floating before his fuzzy vision.
The painful need for Cheetos masked the painful need for something else.
"Please... Please Jill... Not again... It's my fault..."
There was a hand balled in the back of his shirt, yanking him up - not cruelly, not in anger as he'd once felt.
Chris quickly covered his eyes and turned away, hiding the remnants of weakness. He sniffled and wiped at his nose.
Wesker dropped a heel through the glass this time.
"What am I looking for?" He asked, hands on hips. He kept his back to Chris - allowing him a moment to compose himself.
Chris cleared his throat. "Cheetos."
Without looking, he tossed the bag back and said, "She's coming in and out. You should be there."
Wesker fiddled with the IV. He was perched on the edge of her cot and Chris knelt on the other side.
She was still feverish, which, Wesker explained, would be expected for several days. He droned on that there would be blood in the mucus, and that she might require weeks of graduated bed rest. Chris half-listened as he stared at her.
Her breaths were shallow and quick. She couldn't fill her lungs; her body was exhausted. He saw how small she was and it made him afraid.
She opened her eyes slowly and they both leaned over her.
Chris smiled, relieved at the tiniest signs. He cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking the fine bone. "Oh God, Jilly..."
When he said her name, everything came rushing back into him - every memory he had of them together: every touch, every exchange, every word, good and bad. For a moment, she was his Jill again - Jilly-Bean, Jill Valentine, Jill... Redfield.
Their eyes met.
He waited for the same recognition, for the same awakening - but instead, she looked confused.
She turned her face to Wesker, eyes sleepy... and she reached for him.
He caught her hand as it moved, placing it over her own heart.
"She's delirious," he said quietly, trying to cover up what had just transpired.
And Chris nodded, pretending right along with him.
His sister though, stood in the shadows and judged.
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of the many things that escape those that dream by night."
- Edgar Allan Poe