"Three can keep a secret if two are dead."
- Benjamin Franklin
Chris hated having to piss in the middle of the night.
The cement was always so cold under his feet, the lights were always so bright, his balance was always so poor.
He'd woken up, Jill gone.
He hadn't been surprised by it really - she'd said she wasn't too tired when they'd slipped under the blanket. Maybe she'd gotten up for something to eat.
He heard her voice then, just as he was about to turn on the switch and close the door.
She was out in the lab.
He walked, slow and noiseless, down the hall, stopping just outside.
They were in there, together. Wesker working and Jill keeping him company. He wondered what they talked about when he wasn't around, what they looked like when he wasn't around.
In the shadows of the hallway, he listened and could just see them around the corner.
Jill had the little ball she'd picked up at the store. She bounced it over and over on the floor in front of her as she reclined in a rolling chair. She watched Wesker scribbling in the journal.
She bounced the ball off the table leg.
He looked up briefly, went back to his writing.
She bounced it off the arm of his chair.
"Stop that."
She smiled and bounced it on the floor again - hard this time. It hit the underside of the table and came back to her in a series of hops.
"Jill, enough."
The ball ricocheted off of his journal and then his chin.
He was a blur.
Wesker was standing over her, the offending toy in his hand, thrust in her face. He was very close to her, sneering, growling something.
Chris held his breath. He thought of the guns, locked away. He thought of how helpless he was against the monster, how helpless Jill was.
But then he noticed that she was laughing, wriggling under him.
She was laughing.
She mumbled something.
"Louder."
She mumbled again, laughing and reaching for the ball.
"I can't hear you, Jill."
"I'm sorry!" Smiling.
"Shhh." He straightened and turned away from her, ball in hand.
"Hey! Give it back!"
When he sat back down, she came to him. Chris's heart lurched into his throat.
Her hips swayed when she walked to Wesker. He suddenly hated the way her clothes fit - sweats too tight in the ass, tank top too revealing, flimsy sports bra - practically transparent. And when had she gotten so curvy? Her breasts seemed larger, heavier - as if everything she owned had become too snug, too suggestive, so unlike her.
It made him ill.
She didn't dress that way for comfort.
She dressed that way for them. For both of them.
He knew he shouldn't watch but he couldn't stop.
He had to know what she was like with... him. What she did with the monster when he wasn't there, wasn't chaperoning.
His stomach churned and his heart beat so hard he was sure they heard it.
Jill sat on his knee. Wesker looked at her, alarmed.
"It's fine, Al. He's asleep."
Chris ground his teeth.
Al? This was what they did when he slept?
Wesker pulled the ponytail out of her hair. It fell to her shoulders, waves of unnatural white. He let it slip through his fingers as he stared at her face, watched her reaction to his touch.
She leaned into him, tucked her nose under his jaw, her hand on his chest.
His left arm wound around her as he wrote, the ball rolling and then stopping on the lab table.
"Are you tired?" he asked, quiet. The pen scratched away on the page.
She nodded. "Very."
"Will you lie with me tonight or go back to him?"
"Take me to bed," she said. Casual.
His mind, racing, filled in the gaps.
"Take me to bed, Wesker. Fuck me. Fuck me as hard as you can. Ruin me for him. He'll never know... He's a fool." She might as well have said.
Chris turned, his face to the wall, gasping.
He retreated back to his bunk, his heart and pride limping behind him.
He heard Wesker's door shut. Through the collapsable wall, heard her whisper, heard him reply.
Then silence.
June, 2002.
It was the evening of their reunion in Washington, D.C.
They were holed up, under a sheet, in her apartment.
Through the windows, the red sunset shone on the far wall.
Four squares of blood.
Chris's fingers traced the tattoo on her side.
He propped himself up and stared at it.
"Really, what was the story behind that one?"
He followed the circle.
She had an arm draped over her eyes. "Really really?"
"Yeah."
"Wesker."
She couldn't see Chris flinch. His fingers stopped circling.
"What does it mean?"
"Eternity. He called it... Ouroboros, I think."
Chris stared at it. A snake, eating it's own tail. A perfect circle of self-preservation and self-loathing.
A perfectly Wesker circle.
"He took you to get that one?"
She shook her head, still hiding. "I drove him home. We stopped. He drew it. After that Christmas party. Remember? You were -"
"Sick. At home. I remember."
He moved her arm to see her. She kept her eyes closed though.
"You slept with him?" It wasn't harsh, and it wasn't interrogative. It just was.
She was surprised he could keep such control.
Perhaps he had changed.
"No. I never slept with Wesker."
"You wanted to?"
She didn't answer.
"It was just that, right? You just wanted to sleep with him? Nothing else?"
Finally, she opened her eyes. "Not really. It was deeper, I think."
He looked heartbroken. "You loved him?"
She stared up, through the sheet. "No. Well, I don't know. I was really confused. I was young. Dumb."
"How could you love him?" He asked quietly. "After everything... Think of what he did, Jill."
"And what about you? How could I love you? After what you did?" She snapped back. "You lied to me while you were living in my house. He never broke my heart. Not like you."
Chris moved away, hurt.
She started to get up, pulling the bed clothes around herself.
"You ever wonder what he's doing?" She asked quietly.
"I've made a fucking career out of it," he said, lying back down.
She watched the Saturday night traffic jam, standing in front of her window. "We really aren't all that different, are we?"
He looked at her, the blood-light on them as the sun sank.
Cars in the intersection below honked.
"What do you mean? Come back to bed." He patted the mattress.
She hooded herself with the sheets.
"All of us, Chris. Just a bunch of liars and cheats..."
He waited for her.
Hiding in the shadows.
Waiting for her to finish with the other man.
Wesker stopped her from shutting herself in the bathroom.
They were a tangle of limbs.
He slammed the door with his foot.
Shirts pulled over heads. Clothes kicked away.
Picked her up, she wrapped her legs around him, his mouth on hers.
She still tasted of Chris.
He didn't care.
It all ran together now.
All three of them ran together now.
She breathed hard while he had his way with her against the bathroom door.
Arms around his neck.
"What took you so long, Valentine?" He asked, face in her throat.
Teeth on her collarbone.
She sweat for him.
She would always sweat for him, no matter how cold the air conditioner ran.
"You know... why..." She whispered, between.
He slowed. Deeper. Staring into her face, into her eyes. Memorizing her in that moment.
Slower still.
Deeper.
Hold.
Again.
Again.
"Oh God, please... please..." Her prayers on his ears.
She let her head fall back against the door.
Her thighs tightened around his sides.
She smelled like sex with Chris.
She smelled like sex with both of them.
He didn't care.
It all ran together now.
All three of them ran together now.
Chris had never claimed to be a genius, but they were fools to take him for an idiot.
He would fall asleep with her and she would be there again when he awoke. To alabaster skin beneath his touch, to soft blonde hair resting against his cheek, to a sweet lungful of that perfume she wore.
He would stroke her back and she would open her eyes. Bright, cornflower blue.
Awake, completely, as if she hadn't slept all night.
Eyes wide, dark circles marring the skin beneath.
Kissing him, wishing him a good morning. "So what did you do last night, Chris? I know we were busy. You had a good sleep? We didn't wake you, did we?"
No, no problem, Jill. Really. Don't worry. He'd just go on pretending not to notice them, as long as they kept pretending not to do it.
That way, he could keep secrets of his own.
At night.
In the lab.
The time had finally come for secrets to be uncovered.
It was a shocking sight.
The two of them. Together.
This was equally disturbing though.
He wavered, stumbled back. Held his breath as to not wake them.
Standing there, in the middle of the night, while everyone pretended that Jill lay in his arms, the time had finally come for secrets to be uncovered.
Fingers traced over cold metal, leaving imprints on the polished surface. It was heavy as he lifted it, but in perfect shape.
It was so cruel in his hands.
April 27, 1998.
Albert Wesker pulled up. The red and blue lights blurred in the foggy night.
There were seven squad cars, parked haphazardly at the Convenient gas station.
And they were all there for Jill Valentine.
She was sitting in her Jeep, door open, giving a statement.
The officer saw him coming and wrapped up, tucking the notebook in his back pocket.
He left them alone.
Jill looked down.
"I'll need your badge and your gun, Valentine."
"If it's not one of you, it's the other." He lectured, holding the door to the little diner open.
Jill ducked in under his arm.
"Perhaps I should hire a babysitter for you both. Dock your pay for it."
She slid into the booth, paint chipped from wear.
He passed her a sticky menu. "Raccoon is so miniscule. I cannot even begin to guess how the two of you find so much trouble. You'd think you were operating in the most dangerous part of New York City."
The waitress brought him hot tea without having to take an order.
"The lady will have tea as well."
He took the menu from her hands. She hadn't even looked at it yet. But she was too exhausted to fight him.
He tore open three packets of sugar and stirred them in. "Have you always been a magnet for destruction and chaos, Jill? My God, you weren't even on duty tonight. A 211 on your night off. How in the hell did you manage that?"
He looked up then, almost as if he'd just realized she was there.
She had her face in her hands and she was sobbing silently.
He sighed, set the spoon on a folded napkin. "It was your first, I imagine."
She nodded.
"You're an officer of the law. It was bound to happen. It will happen again."
She looked at him, bloodshot eyes, blotchy face.
He sensed round two of her hysterics coming on.
"Stop blubbering and tell me about it."
"So I told him to put the weapon down. He wouldn't. He yelled something... about killing all of us once he had the cash. And... I shot him."
Wesker stirred his third cup of tea slowly.
"I watched him die." She stared out the diner window, her eyes blurring again. She wiped at them. "He was just a kid."
"He was only a year younger than you, Jill." Wesker argued. "And you saved a life tonight. That clerk owes you some thanks."
Jill shook her head.
"You know that I have to put you on administrative leave. And you must see the department psychologist before returning to work."
She sniffed, cleared her throat (a habit). "Yeah."
They were quiet. Wesker warmed his hands with the cup. Jill watched the fog rolling over the diner.
"I lived with the guilt of my first kill for a long while."
She looked at him. It was rare that Wesker volunteered any personal information.
"I questioned whether it was the right thing to have done."
Jill listened. "Was it?"
Wesker took a sip. "I can't be certain. I'll find out though."
She wasn't sure what he meant.
"It gets easier, Jill - taking lives," he said with a strange authority. "You'll realize it's done for the common good and all of that discomfort just... fades away."
Her mind raced. Exactly how many people had Captain Wesker killed?
"Where's your friend tonight? Working long hours in that lab?" The waitress interrupted. "Y'all were lookin' pretty rough the other day."
Wesker glared at her, setting the cup down loudly. "I'll take the check please, Edna. Thank you."
Jill watched him and filed away the strange interaction.
"Are you ready?" He asked her. She nodded, wondering about his friend from "the lab".
Her car was in the driveway, dropped off by another officer. Keys under the mat at the front door.
Wesker walked her up to the stoop.
He didn't get too close though, for fear of the humiliation he'd felt before - the door shut in his face the night of Chris's (trashy) party.
Jill turned to him. He was a silhouette in the misty dark. "Thanks, Captain."
"Is Chris home?"
"No. He took Claire up to look at a college."
"You ought to stay elsewhere then. With family maybe. It's not good to be alone after something so... upsetting. I'll drive you."
"I'll be fine, sir. Really."
Inside, Chris's pitbull barked deeply.
She could almost make out Wesker's eyes, so clear and pale they were barely blue.
He nodded. "I know, Valentine. I know."
She watched him trudge across her crab grass lawn to his car.
She scrunched her hair dry with the towel.
Tried not to think about the boy at the gas station, laying in an ever-growing puddle of his own blood.
Tried not to think about Wesker's lab friend.
Failed.
Is this "friend" another woman? How many does he have? Did that boy have a family? Can I get fired over all this? What if he wasn't going to do anything? What if I killed him and he was just bluffing? What will I tell Chris? Will I tell Chris about how fast I did it? How I didn't even think, I just shot? Will I go to hell for this? Is there a hell? What do his girlfriends call him? Albert? Who is this "friend"? What does he look like when he cums?...
What does he look like when he says "I love you"?
She chastised herself for how stupid that last thought was.
Stupidest thing she ever thought. Ever.
Why do you even care? She asked herself, disgusted.
Pulled the robe tightly together, tied it.
Walked to her bedroom window and pushed the curtain aside.
His car was still parked on the other side of the road.
He was sitting in the driver's seat.
She watched him, reading a book in the street light that streamed in his window.
He licked his thumb and turned the page.
She thought of how he would look if he was in love.
It seemed an impossibility.
It was an impossibility.
But it would probably look a lot like that.
Jill went to sleep that night, feeling safe with Wesker outside.
She decided to let the discomfort just fade away.
April 29, 1998.
"What'll it be for ya, sweetheart?"
Jill sat hunched over the diner's little bar.
Same waitress - just as she'd hoped.
"I'll have a bacon cheese burger platter. With a Coke. Excuse me - are you Edna?"
The old waitress smiled, popped her gum loudly. "Yeah." She held out her hand.
She shook it. "Jill. Nice to meet you. I was the one in here the other night crying."
"Oh yeah! With Captain Wesker." She frowned. "He wasn't breakin' up with ya or nothin', was he?"
Jill laughed, and then looked completely flustered. "Oh God... no. Jesus. No. No, not at all. Just had a bad night."
"Well, good. Lord knows I love him, but the Captain can be a cad, right?" She put her hand over her mouth, a brash snort-giggle. "Don't tell him I said that. He'll have me arrested."
Jill found her angle. "You mentioned though... that he had a friend."
Edna's eyes lit up. "Oh hunny - no. Not a friend friend. It's just a guy he hangs around with. Told me that they've been buddies since high school."
She nodded. Threw out a name, wanting to be corrected. "Tommy?"
"Not Tommy - Will..." She thought, holding the tray on her hip. "Yeah. Will Birkin, I think. From up at the Umbrella plant. On the hill." Edna gestured out the diners windows.
Jill smiled. "Umbrella, huh?"
"Uh-huh. From what I've heard, they used to work together. But that's just me eves-droppin'. My old nosy self, overhearin' everything."
"Hmmmm." Jill was very interested now.
The waitress seemed to sense she'd made a mistake.
"Yeah, well, the Captain's a good man, dearie. He's a catch, under it all. You hold onto him, you hear? I'll put your order in." Edna winked and hurried off to a table that had just been seated.
Jill turned back to the bar, looked up at all the license plates above the cook's station.
Will Birkin of Umbrella Pharmaceuticals.
Very interesting indeed.
The plate almost throbbed and pounded in Chris's grip, as if it had come to life.
He imagined it would latch on to his ribs, his lungs, and search for his spirit - pull it out.
Chris placed the chest piece back, careful. The tips of his fingers tingled. He brushed them against his pants, hoping to forget how it felt to hold someone's soul in his hands.
The chest plate was not the only thing in the box. A transparent plastic bag. Locks of blonde hair. A date.
The ball chain made a clinking noise as he picked it up.
A hasty glance over the shoulder.
They were too busy pretending to be sleeping (too busy fucking as quietly as possible).
He looked at the dogtags.
VALENTINE
JILL
311131489 BSAA
B
NORELPREF
They were not clean like the chestplate. Crusty blood (type B), rusted, neglected.
He found faxes, research papers, test results. All concerning the same subject: Jill Valentine. One stood out among the others. A date was circled with red ink. In the obituary column.
03/16/2007
Jill's funeral.
Almost a year after her fall from the Spencer Estate.
Chris had wept like a baby on the day they'd declared it was no longer a search and rescue but a recovery mission.
He wondered if Wesker had attended the service - from afar? Had he been there to mourn the girl he kept in a glass tube, hidden away from the world? It was a fucked up, unsettling thought.
Perhaps one day... he'd just ask the asshole himself.
For now, he abandoned the thought.
Because he searched for more.
And more he found.
One last thing.
A blue thong.
June, 1998.
Jill opened the office door slowly.
"Sir?"
He was at a filing cabinet, the desk lamp in his office the only light. He turned to her, a manilla folder in his hand.
"Take a seat, Valentine."
She did, thinking of what she'd say, how she'd react.
It had been less than a week since he'd caught the the two of them having sex in the cell. He was still very unhappy.
She was waiting for a pink slip, waiting for him to have a change of heart, to fire her instead of spare her.
She was armed and ready for Albert Wesker.
"I've been reading up on you." He said.
She nodded, crossed her legs. Her uniform felt suffocating, stiff, stuffy.
"And I think Irons must have been asleep at the wheel or he was too busy staring at your ass because you, Ms. Valentine, are a liar."
She pulled back, glaring.
"A bad liar, at that. Did you really think I would miss this?" He held up the personnel file.
"Excuse me?" She put on her best offended tone.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She stared into her own reflection in the dark lenses of the sunglasses. "You were never in the Deltas. There's never even been a woman in the Deltas, period. And that's the tip of the iceberg, Valentine. Your qualifications have been almost completely falsified. You weren't anything but a grunt with high marks in IED disarming."
Wesker was really on a roll.
She waited until he was done ranting.
"I needed in, sir." Quiet, controlled.
"Needed in? Well, it was a grievous error on your part, Ms. Valentine. I assume you understand the consequences of lying to obtain a position with the government."
"We aren't part of the government."
Wesker's heart stopped. "What are you talking about?"
"We're not. A part of any governmental organization, I mean."
He laughed at her, taking a seat, trying to appear relaxed. His lower back broke out in a cold sweat. What else could she know?
"Enlighten me, Jill. Please."
"The S.T.A.R.S. unit is actually classified as a part of Umbrella Pharmaceutical's intelligence branch. We aren't really associated with any law enforcement agencies. I think... Umbrella bought their way into Raccoon."
He could only stare at her.
"And I found out, after a little digging, that you and your "lab buddy" are just researchers for Umbrella. You aren't a police Captain. You're a scientist. And a worthless one if they put you on this detail. So I guess you're a bad liar too."
He leaned back. "I should fire you, you in-subordinating little rat."
"You could, I guess. For forging documents. But you have more brains in your head than that."
"Don't threaten me, Ms. Valentine."
"I'm not threatening anyone, sir."
Wesker played with a pencil. "I haven't confirmed anything you've accused me of."
"You don't have to."
They studied each other.
"What makes you think that anyone would believe you?" He asked.
"Nothing. But there's always a chance." She smiled. "I don't know what Umbrella has going on here, Wesker, but if I go down, you're coming too."
"And what of your lover?"
Her jaw tightened. "What does he have to do with this?"
"Oh, he hasn't kept anything from you, has he? I would hate to think of that... Keeping secrets in such an honest, close relationship..."
He turned the tip of the pencil into his desk, turned it into her heart.
"What... what about him?" She asked.
"I'm going to fire him too. That suspicious activity on Ford all those months ago turned out to be quite... interesting. You see, apparently our golden boy has been running a small business."
"Just say it, Wesker."
"Did you know that Mr. Redfield distributes controlled substances?"
Jill's eyes were glassy.
"No? You weren't aware that he was independently wealthy? An entrepreneur?"
She turned her head, her hand at her mouth.
"He would never do that. You're lying." She whimpered.
Wesker sighed.
She stared at the wall, gutted by the revelation.
"It's all falling into place now, isn't it? Strange behaviors? Long absences? Excuses?" He said it so casually, ruined her life with such ease.
He watched her, eventually reaching over to hand her a tissue - some social cue he didn't even understand. She took it, sniffling.
"You can't fire him. He's supporting his sister."
"He probably should have considered that before he turned Ford into a goddamn firing range and then paid one of my men to destroy the official report."
"Let me take the fall. Reprimand him. But don't fire him, Wesker. He can turn it around. It's all he's got." She begged.
"I'm afraid it won't work that way, Jill. We're in a bit of a stand-off, aren't we? If one of us "goes down", as you so aptly put it, we all do."
She wiped her face, smearing the mascara, and wiped again, trying to clean it up.
She stared at him.
He cursed her big blue eyes.
Wesker tossed the sunglasses to his desk, teeth grinding. Well, things had gotten fucked up rather quickly. "But... you stand to lose more than me then, don't you? So I suggest the you sweeten the deal and get us all out of this mess."
"What do you expect me to do, Wesker?" She yelled.
He shrugged, took a sip of cold coffee.
It tasted like day old Hell, but he swallowed it.
"He wants to marry me." She paused, regretting it as it came out of her mouth.
Wesker raised his eyebrows.
"I'll say no." She looked down. "And then we keep our jobs. And we all move on from this."
He was grinning like a fool, the pencil twirling between his spidery fingers. "That's charming, Ms. Valentine, truly. As if I could bought by something so..." His hand gestured, looking for the word.
The word, he knew, was perfect.
"You live to see him suffer," she said through clenched teeth. "Stop acting like you don't."
Wesker studied Jill. She was wrong of course - it wasn't about Chris. He was just a peripheral casualty.
It was her that he wanted.
It was her that he wanted to hurt.
And it all made him sad, both of them caught in their own damned webs.
He laughed again, shaking his head. "I think you might have a deal, Jill, you might just have a deal..."
But what can I do when misery so loves company?
That night, Jill packed a bag and left.
Wouldn't... couldn't look at Chris.
Told him to stay at her condo with Claire until they could figure out what they needed to do.
She didn't tell him where she was going, or how long she'd be gone.
Jill left Chris.
Didn't say why, though she wanted to. (It would have raised too many questions about her conversation with the Captain).
Told him they could be friends. (As bold of a lie as either she or Wesker had told).
Said she needed time. (More time than he could ever give).
Told him maybe she would come back to him when things "calmed down" at the office. (They wouldn't have the chance).
He thought it was because of the time in the cell.
He knew underneath that it was because of the Captain, but he wasn't sure how, because they both still had their jobs.
He stared at the box.
The box that held everything.
Chris was indecisive. He wanted to tear, rip, stomp. He wanted to barge into Wesker's sleeping quarters, to haul Jill out of that bed and show her the truth.
He wanted to unmask the monster.
He wanted to be the hero.
He wanted his girl back.
But this wasn't the time.
Something was off - not quite right.
A voice, recently silenced, surfaced.
Hold onto that, it said. Soon. There's more, you know.
Chris put everything back the exact way he had found it. He polished the chest plate with the fabric of his shirt, doing away with the fingerprints. He stacked the papers neatly and put the dogtags over them.
He regarded the Shrine of Jill Valentine for a long time. Almost reverently.
It was the shrine of a goddess.
Apparently, she was Wesker's goddess as well.
Some perverted deity of fertility.
It was Pandora's Box.
June, 2002. The Capital Building, Washington, D.C.
Jill emerged at 11:30 am.
He'd been waiting for her all morning; they wouldn't let him in during the session.
She looked natural in a fitted blue suit, her now well-manicured hand carrying a nice bag.
She had on flats (had always hated heels).
New costume, he thought. Still Jill.
She weaved and dodged through the throng of people on the steps, on the sidewalk.
"Hey soldier." From behind her.
She stopped, mid-step. Frozen and listening for who she thought she'd heard.
Her hair was longer now, nearly to her shoulders, and it picked up in the breeze, blew around her beautiful face as she turned to him.
"I've missed you, Jilly-Bean."
"So look at you. Big time lobbyist. Wow."
She smiled, suddenly shy. "Yeah. Working on the legislature. Trying to get them on-board with stricter codes and all that. These fucking pharmaceutical companies are running over every law we throw up..."
Chris agreed, took a sip of the coffee.
They sat, side by side, on a park bench, watching the White House.
"You look..." She started, but couldn't find the word.
"Different, right?" He smiled.
"Yeah. Different... Trendy."
Chris had grown a goatee.
"You like it?"
She laughed, and so did he.
"You look like an asshole."
He covered his chin in embarrassment. Jill pushed him, laughing harder (like dishes breaking).
He sat back up and looked at her, wistful. It was an awkward moment.
She let the laugh fade. "Wesker told me about you. Before the mansion. In Raccoon."
Chris fixed his sleeve. "Oh yeah?"
"He told me about the drugs, Chris."
He frowned, wounded by the memory.
"That's why I left you." She continued.
Chris swallowed, took another drink. "I'm done with that, Jill. I was just a kid. A stupid kid with no money and two mouths to feed."
She nodded, stared at her Frappacino.
"I'm sorry." He said, shamed by her confession. "I'm sorry I let you down. But I'm glad you told me. I never knew... why you took off. You didn't even call."
"The phone works both ways, Chris."
"Well, I figured you must've had a good reason to high-tail it after all that, not to look back. I was right. But there wasn't an hour I didn't think of you."
He remembered leaving her for Rockfort.
He hadn't seen her since.
Until today.
"You got your head on straight now?" She was firm then, back to her controlled self, pushing down the old feelings.
"I do, yeah. Have for years."
She watched his face, looked for a lie, looked for some way of telling that it wasn't true - that he was still a deceitful phony. But there was nothing there.
Just those brilliant blue eyes, and dazzling smile, and that hero's glow.
"How long are you in D.C., stranger?" She asked.
"However long you're gonna let me crash on your couch... Or in your bed."
She punched him in the ribs. Playing. Like old times.
"I have something to ask you though, Jilly. For real. I'm putting together a new organization. Anti-bio-terrorism and all that. We're pretty start-up right now, but we're gonna get bigger fast."
"Yeah?" She took a bite of the Starbucks sandwich. Focaccia something or other.
"Yeah. Got this investigation going on in Russia. Pretty compelling evidence."
"Okay. And?" She asked.
"I want you back, Jill. I want my partner back."
She set down the drink. "What's your dream team called?"
"We don't really have a name yet. I was hoping that you'd help me figure it all out."
"It's just us, isn't it, Chris?"
He smiled, sheepish.
Jill shaded her eyes in the mid-day sun. She looked into him. Saw only his truth. Only his heart.
Pigeons landed and cooed at their feet. Chris spread what was left of his potato chips on the ground. The city's birds gathered around him, gathered around the hero.
"Alright," she said. "I'm in."
He stood, barefoot, on the cement floor of the lab.
"...a biological apocalypse... worldwide infection within a year..."
The book contained everything.
A verifiable Necronomicon.
A sort of Bible.
From the first idea of eternal recreation.
To the final construct of a monster that would mark the end of mankind.
In just one night, while Wesker and Jill kept pretending, Chris read. From front to back.
Everything.
Everything.
"As a last resort, I will begin the project with J.V."
It took every ounce of his strength not to pull the page out.
He read on.
About the p30.
About its mode of operation (Scopolamine) and its side effects (suicide attempts).
He thought of the marks on Jill's wrists.
She had never given him the answer to the question he didn't have to ask.
But up until now he had attributed it to an act of defiance. A last attempt at escaping.
Him – not some temporary withdrawal symptoms.
She herself seemed to believe it was her own doing - not the drug.
It was of some comfort that she didn't know though, didn't realize she was off of the p30.
It was of more comfort that Wesker had absolutely no idea she'd been weaning him off that virus. She had confided in Chris that much.
It brought him joy - elation on those good days.
But even so, he found no entry - no evidence - of the Jill he knew. The girl who gave her life for her partner so many years ago.
No.
This was not Jill Valentine.
This was Wesker's creation.
The creature-girl from the glass-womb.
The most dangerous woman in the world.
He would return – when he was sure that they were trapped in their little game – to learn more about the the Garden of Eden they had built so carefully with their lies.
He learned, for example, that Wesker was not a God. He could not create life - not even in through sexual reproduction.
Especially not through sexual reproduction.
Chris indulged in that chapter over and over again.
He read it voraciously, laughed internally, found sanctuary in it.
It stopped amusing him when he discovered about the solution of that problem.
"His sperm count is high, healthy. Strong flagellum, good speed. If properly impregnated with my DNA, they will be successful, no doubt..."
How... How had he gotten...
Her. He realized.
She took the condom every time.
Every damn time.
He was destroyed by that chapter. Ashamed, run-over, KO'd.
He stopped feeling shame when he read how the solution to that problem was to be implemented.
He was enraged as he read that chapter. On fire, spitting mad, furious.
Long after he closed the journal and put it back into place the anger gave way to disappointment.
Disappointment to heartbreak.
Heartbreak to... nothingness.
He was truly alone.
He had always believed Eden would hold more for him than lies and deception.
Wesker's fingers, on her side, traced the serpent though he couldn't see it in the dark of his bunk.
She tried not to laugh from the tickling.
"I'm going to stop."
"Stop what, Al?"
"The fertility treatment."
She was quiet.
"I am not... There is nothing I can do."
She was silent for a minute, still reeling from the shock of hearing him speak about failure.
"What about all that repopulation shit?"
His fingers stopped tickling.
"I have found that I don't care. About any of it. At all." I want to live here, in this bed with you, Jill.
She thought of the death and the destruction and the end of everything.
And now his apathy, his nonchalance.
It hadn't worked so he had washed his hands of it.
She chastised herself for not seeing it in him, for being surprised.
It was such a perfectly Wesker-esque attitude.
"I often wonder what he thinks." Whispered to her, interrupting her thoughts.
"About what?"
"The two of us. He must suspect something."
They could hear him snoring.
She buried into his chest, flattened herself against him. "We wouldn't be here... if it wasn't for Chris."
He frowned to himself. "Explain."
"If I hadn't been with him. If I hadn't belonged to Chris Redfield... you wouldn't want me." Muffled. "It's why you want me now. There's always gotta be some kind of conflict to turn you on."
He smiled then. "That's an unfair assumption, isn't it?"
"You only want whatever you can take from someone else, Al. You don't have to pretend with me."
He breathed deeply, his fingers now in her hair, chin resting on top of her head. "You don't know that. You don't know the first thing about me."
She did though - she knew him as well as he knew himself.
He let his pulse slow to match hers and they coiled together like snakes.
Wrapped around each other, tangled, laying in wait, like a pair of star-crossed vipers.
Because at the end of the day, they were all just a bunch of liars and cheats.
"Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret."
- Alphra Behn