Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.


The world ended sometime mid-July.

It was a day like any other.

Like the day Albert Wesker found his grave in a burning Raccoon forest.

Like the day Jill Valentine broke a window and plunged into the abyss.

A day like any other.

A good day to put dead spirits to rest.


2010.

"Claire? Sis?"

They were standing, two shadows of the past, on the remains of a bombed Oregon street.

She didn't answer, her arms clinging to him instead. She was small in his hands – too small – too many bony lumps. As she cried, her whole body shook.

"I was sure... I thought - how did you live?"

She looked up, but there was no appreciation in her eyes.

Only despair in her voice as she wailed, "Why are you still alive?"

Because deep down, she was just a little girl who clung to the hope that her brother would never come back for her.

The hope that told her that if he never came back, there was no reason for her to keep surviving in this Hell.

So a part of her couldn't forgive him for forcing her to go on.


Jill told him once, when they were entangled in the sheets, of the time before she accepted reality for what it truly was.

She showed him the marks on her wrists. They were a memory of her own decision, and his power to take it away.

She told him about Excella Gionne, weeping in that cell over the only way she thought she could escape. It was a reminder of someone else's resolution, and his power to crush it.

She spoke about the years to come, a blur of struggling, rebellion and finally, of resignation. Because he had the power to turn her hate into love.

And Chris realized later, that she had told him all these things not because she confided in him. She told him because it was a display of power too. A wicked kind of power to protect Albert Wesker from the man who had come to kill him.

And he believed her for a while.

If she hadn't unwittingly revealed the Serpent.

Because she too had tried to kill a God.


"I can't believe that you made it."

Claire had said that at least five times. He wondered how long it would take her to accept that he was really there.

"I came back. For you."

She snickered at that. It made him feel uneasy.

"Good. Good that you only came back for me." She pointed out the window of her little hideout. "Because there's nothing else left here... except me."

And there really wasn't. The building reeked of rotting corpses, because by the time Uroboros hit the city, it killed for pleasure, not for hunger.

Some called it mercy, because they wouldn't see the faces of their loved ones in those monsters.

Claire called it a crime, because she had to walk through the graveyard of bodies every time she left her hiding spot.


He didn't really know what was supposed to happen.

If he'd just fall over dead. Spasm out of life. Go peacefully in his sleep.

It was a torture to watch the clock tick away with no results.

Wesker sat hunched over his microscope.

Jill read a novel.

Chris watched the clock.

Tick tock.

Wesker sat.

Jill read.

Chris watched.

Tick tock.

Tick tock.

"Jill!"

She and Chris jumped. She stared at him.

"Jesus, what?"

"I've done it!" He shouted, his eyes still on the microscope. "This is it! I've done it!"

It took her several seconds. Then recognition. Then shock. "Oh my God... I thought you... I thought you stopped."

Wesker was rustling frantically through papers, moving things on the lab table. "One last time. I promised myself one last time. And I've won."

She stood. "It's ready? It'll work?"

He finally looked up at her. He was even smiling. "Yes, it will work! Why wouldn't it! It's ready - your body has been ready."

Chris crossed his arms. "What will work?"

But he already knew the answer.


There were nightmares. She screamed in her sleep. She called for all the people who died and left her living.

He whispered as he held her, but he had no place in her dreams.

One night, neither of them could sleep. They stared at the bloodied ceiling and pretended to see the stars.

"Why are you still hanging around, Chris?" It was more accusation than question. "Just go away. Please."

All she really wanted was to lie down next to the bodies Uroboros had left behind.


"Wesker... don't." Jill was terrified. "Don't." She turned to Chris. "It's nothing. Really."

"He should know. I owe so much of it to him, after all." His voice was low then, as sinister as it had been six years before, in Africa.

"Yeah, let Hoss tell me what he figured out, Jill. Don't ruin his fun." He smiled. An eerie mirror of Wesker.

"I'm so glad you'd like to know, Chris. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"

"Al..." She interrupted, slipped up and used his nickname in front of The Other. "Your nose."

Wesker glared, touched his upper lip. Confusion as he looked down at his fingers.

Blood.

A lot of it.

He wiped again and again, rubbing the red on his jeans.

It dripped to the cement floor.

Wesker looked up at Jill with something else on his bloody face.

Fear.

Tick tock.


"Head back, Al. Put your head back."

She was reaching up, holding a paper towel to his nose.

The blood seeped through.

She swore and they walked to the bathroom, slow.

Chris stood in the doorway, leaned against the frame, watching as Jill took care of the monster.

"Jesus Christ. What is going on?" she asked. They were holding a wash cloth to his face.

They sank to the floor, Wesker's head back against the wall.

It wasn't working.

She tossed the soaked cloth in the sink.

It flopped in the basin, wet with blood, splattering the mirror.

"Chris - c'mon. Shit. Gimme something else. Shit."

Chris handed her a bath towel.

Wesker began to cough then, the blood running down his throat.

He was choking it up.

She panicked. "Oh God! What's wrong? What happened to you?"

Wesker shook his head, the blood painting the floor. He couldn't breathe. He was dizzy.

"What did you wanna tell me... Al?" Chris asked, a smile on his lips.

"Shut the fuck up! Shut up!" She turned on him, screaming.

Wesker was coughing. Blood on his breath. Blood on the tile.

"Help me, Jill." Blood. "Injection."

He needed another shot.

Something had gone wrong.

A shot would make it better.

Jill was in hysterics. "Get me the fucking case, Chris! Now!"

He was more than happy to oblige to that, walking... almost skipping down the hall.

He brought it back, clicked it open, placed a syringe in her hand.

Jill was the one who administered the serum to Wesker.

She made him hold out a shaky arm as she tied the rubber band around his bicep.

He coughed, violently.

A vein bulged.

Jill inserted the needle.

Chris looked at the clock.

She pressed the plunger.

Wesker's eyes widened, his bloody mouth dropped open. He must have felt it.

"You." He growled. His eyes, unfocused as they were, sought Chris, leaning on the door frame.

Standing, arms crossed, as if he was watching something unfold on television.

The detachment, the apathy, the removal of God.

"You?" Wesker gurgled.

Chris nodded and Jill wept.

"Please Al, please. No. No no no..." She clung to him, his face in her hands. "No..."

Chris held vigil in the doorway while Wesker was slipping away, drowning in his own blood.

"Tick tock. It's a clock. And yours just ran out of time."Claire laughed.


Uroboros found them, two weeks later.

They hadn't left her apartment building.

They were easy prey.

The life in them stank more than any half-rotten corpses.

Claire found comfort in her brother's arms and promised him that if he wasn't afraid, she wouldn't be either.

He felt bad for her.


Jill jumped to her feet, had him by the collar.

"What did you do? What the fuck did you do, Chris?"

Her voice was so high-pitched, so loud it hurt both their ears.

"I didn't do anything." He was calm. "He did it...to himself."

"You fucking dog..." Wesker wheezed.

Chris snorted. "Oh please. You know that she tried to kill you too, don't you? She just couldn't get it right." He looked at her, accusing. "You want me to tell him, Jill?"

She was sobbing openly, trying to make the blood go away on Wesker's face.

"Al, there must be an antidote... there must be something...Al, please tell me. I'll do it. I'll do anything. Tell me how."

Chris laughed. "She was in your bed before she could figure it out though. See, all she had to do was just turn it around for it to work. Give you the full dose. And it knocked you out, man."

Chris made a motion, across his throat. "Now you're done. Cooked. Down for the count."

Wesker clenched his fists, his teeth bloody.

Jill was out of her mind.

"Lucky I was there. To help her, I mean. Someone had to."

She stopped dead in her tracks as she realized what she had done. Realized who was truly responsible for this.

She'd been the one who injected him.

"Good job, Jill." Claire applauded. She clapped her hands, slow and loud.

"I guess we'll see if you're a god now, Captain." Chris said. "My bets are on no."


The monster took a while getting to them.

It turned over every body in its wake.

Uroboros didn't like cheaters.


Once the seizures started, Chris knew it was over.

There was no going back. Jill had to realize that too, after she was done turning the place upside down. She pulled over everything in the lab, searching for something, anything, to save him.

There was no way to help him.

He bent over the other man. Those reptile eyes emanated no more power.

They didn't glow, they didn't shine.

His pupils were black and wide - a man afraid to die.

"You deserved this," Chris said quietly. "So I'm not going to make it any easier for you."

He took Jill instead. Deadlocked her arms behind her back. Led her to Wesker, so she could bear witness.

She struggled, but it was for nothing.

He wouldn't let her ease him.

He held her still.

She writhed under his grasp and cried and pleaded.

He only let her go when the blood on the floor turned cold.

When they were certain that he was really dead.


Chris Redfield killed Albert Wesker five years after the End of the World.

And he forced Jill Valentine to watch.


It was on their floor now. On the corridor.

Claire shivered in his hands.

Promise or not, she was terrified.

There was a monster waiting outside the door.

But Claire was more afraid of her brother, who kept whispering to her that it would be quick and painless and if she just held her breath long enough, she wouldn't even have to scream.

She could feel his tears falling on her shoulder.

He told her, over and over, how sorry he was.

When Uroboros took down the door, he placed his hand over her mouth and helped her hold her breath.


She hunched over him, rocking back and forth, back and forth.

The clock on the wall kept ticking.

Her tears mingled with his blood on the floor.

A final lovers' union.

Claire said it was a perfect ending to a story nobody would ever hear.

"And you better get the ball rolling, bro. It's not like you have all the time in the world."


In that moment of panic, of terror, he fled. As Uroboros lashed out, he jumped the window, ran, and cowered in some godforsaken place until he was sure it was gone.

He returned to the building when the sun was high. Light entered through the jagged remains of the glass window.

He crawled back to her.

He swept her up in his arms, cradled her, told her that it was over.

That she could stop holding her breath now.

He held her in his arms long after the distant screams faded and humanity handed the reins of the world to its viral successor.

He promised that he would always protect her, no matter what happened.

He swore that he would never leave her alone again.

If she would only wake up.

But she never did.

So he was forced to take her hand in his and help her write a suicide letter.


Jill changed from grieving widow to black widow in a matter of seconds.

Wesker's body made a wet sound as she dropped it back into the blood.

She flung herself at Chris, syringe in hand.

The needle broke as it scraped off his rib.

"You killed him! You killed him! What the fuck did you do, Chris?"


Over the years, memories morphed.

Sheva. She died in his arms. But Wesker was responsible for her death. Right?

Claire. She died in his arms. But it had been Uroboros that took her. Right?

Wesker. Because of the serum. Chris hadn't even been able to do that himself. Right?

And Jill? Who was he going to blame that on, when they were the last two people alive?

It had been her decision to go. Right?

Then why did she scream?


Her accusations replayed inside his head.

What the fuck did you do, Chris?

He tried to convince himself that he'd done the right thing.

But this was far from the happy ending that was promised to heroes.

She half-whimpered, half-gurgled. Blowing blood bubbles from her nose and mouth.

He'd done it before he even realized what was happening.

He stared at her - as shocked as she was.

His hunting knife lodged in her throat.

Life fled her in hurried, hot waves.

A last sacrifice for her dead god.


Five years after the end of the world Chris Redfield killed Jill Valentine.

And his dead sister forced him to watch.


He pushed a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

He smudged her face ugly.

Crimson fingerprints all over.

He painted her his dream-monster in red.

No tear that followed could ever wash her face clean again.


Claire rested a hand on his shoulder. He was stiff from sitting, the muscles in his neck aching as he looked up at her.

Was she happy now?

Was she finally satisfied?

But sitting beside him was just the girl he'd met last time - the one that wanted to lay next to the bodies in the hallway instead of struggling on against hope.

She'd come back for him, just as he had for her, all those years ago.

And she asked the question again.

This time though, he finally had an answer for it.

"Why are you still sticking around, Chris?"


Tick tock.

The clock on the wall kept ticking. Long after.


It was a day like any other.

Like the day Albert Wesker found his grave in the burning Raccoon forest.

Like the day Jill Valentine broke a window and plunged into the abyss.

Like the day Chris Redfield took his life in an underground bunker, because he knew the answer, but there was nobody to tell it to.

It was a day like any other.

A good day to put dead spirits to rest.


Footfalls echo in the memory,

Down the passage which we did not take,

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.

-T.S Eliot


THE END


Well folks. This is it.

Not quite what you imagined it to be? That's what I thought. With three authors, we couldn't decide on one ending either. So we just decided to write three. True to old Resident Evil style.

This one was the Chaed-ian ending. I hope you liked it. I surely had a lot of fun writing it, and the rest of the story too. Redfields rock, even dead (no offense, Claire).

Since this is my last AN for this story, a huge thank you to everyone who reviewed and stuck with us through good times and bad ones.

As a last point, I would like to address my lovely co-authors. Thaleron sadly only stayed with us until half of the story. It was a great, yet short experience to write with you. As for sadlittletiger. You know you rock, girl. I never believed there was somone as sick, wicked and crazy as I am, but then I found you. It was an honor to write with you. We had a lot of fun, good laughs and hilarious misunderstandings during this time. Here's to many more and a long lasting friendship.

Cheers and love to all,

Chaed