JUST CHRIS

He'd guided her through the place— jabbed a finger at a chair at one point, and she'd sat herself down, eyes flitting between him and his world as it had come awake around them. A hush-hush sort of world still, not wanting much to do with her when she let herself stroll about with Elaya's hem gently fluttering in the absolute lack of a breeze.

"Stay," he'd said and wandered off. When he'd returned, he'd found her pacing with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders up. Tense. Reeling. Soul and mind and body all screaming, wanting her to do something more than dragging her feet on the floor. Anything. Redfield had looked at her. Grunted or huffed or sighed, and then walked right up to grab her by the neck and push her into a chair.

"Sit."

She'd done as told, let her knees bounce and her heart drum, and waited.

Next time around, he'd brought a cup. Warm and steaming, and smelling terribly sweet. She'd looked up at him, caught him peering back at her with a careful sort of intensity, and accepted the brew with a question in trade: "What's it you call this garrisons then?"

"Garrison?"

"Mh." She'd sipped on the cup. Hot. Very hot. Not coffee though, but that chocolate thing that made her nose itch. Creamy. Nice— and then she'd sneezed.

"Office," he'd said in-between her hachu-hachu-HACHU! and put on that tone that indicated she'd gotten something wrong. "It's called an office." A look around, and he'd added: "The headquarters to the North American B.S.A.A branch."

"So you've got soldiers stationed here. People like you."

Up and down his chin had gone, a quiet nod of a heavy head she thought would have liked a pillow, but wasn't about to get one any time soon.

"Garrison then— now come have a seat, you look like you're about to keel over."

He'd sat. Had stared at her, but right then Sadja had doubted it had been her he'd been seeing. Instead he'd focused on whatever asset she't turned herself into when she'd told him about Vil Marrk.

His hope.

Her misery.

Whichever.

Now, still sitting where he'd put her, the office had come abuzz with activity. People roamed the halls, filed into rooms. Filed right back out. They carried papers. Carried boxes. Carried tension with them, tangible and sour, still as frantic as the first time she'd been here. The hubbub wasn't helping her own unease, and Sadja wished herself less of a scatterbrain, since then she might not have forgotten her barr sitting neatly folded on a dresser.

Bloody well done, you moron.

So Sadja hid behind her gates, until a particular knock at them made her look to the hall where she found Nivans standing with his hands tightly clutched by his sides.

"Captain?" His eyes flicked to Redfield, then back to her, and he didn't even bother trying to hide how outright unhappy her presence made him.

Come on now, she whined at him in silence while Redfield got to his feet, an unsteady smile on his lips that struggled with the idea of sticking on. It was gentle though, and she figured it to be true. Just real tired.

"Morning, Piers. You up for a chat with the Chief when he comes in?"

"Sure, but what's she doing here?"

Redfield glanced at her.

"She's here to help."

Help wasn't about to be accepted easily. It had itself stared at from across a table, the stuffy room around her crouching in with panelled walls and the same pane of glass she'd watched Redfield through a few days ago.

Sadja didn't need to say much, but she listened, and she helped while he talked.

Not an easy task, that, what with Nivans yapping and tearing at Elaya's hem with the most stubborn of mistrusts, and their Chief presenting himself with barely a whisper in front of her. While the man looked hardy enough on the outside, weathered by years and then pressed into a neat, ironed uniform, he carried little weight within the Verge. She feared if she'd sneezed a little too hard she might knock him right over. Figuratively, of course.

A Cad'his couldn't change a man's opinion, and certainly couldn't huff and puff at a soul and blow it adrift. Not really, anyway, or at least not the one sitting here, with her hands folded and squeezed between her thighs. And adding fuel to the suspicion that sat between them sounded like a horribly mad idea, since she guessed that way lay more shackles and another locked room. So she listened to Redfield's reasoning as he tapped his fingers on the photographs he'd brought, and the one's he'd dug up while they'd waited for his Chief to arrive, and she made herself small. Reduced herself to something tiny and insignificant, with her throat bared to the quiet hem, and a suggestion of I'm harmless.

Nivans didn't fall for it, but he didn't argue against his Captain. Loyal to a fault, that one. Which was cute. And that wasn't even a lie.

Their Chief though, he bought it all right up. Maybe a little too well. By the time Redfield finished presenting evidence that there was something worth sniffing at, he'd literally forgotten she sat across of him.

Embarrassing, really, since she'd been part of the plan. Part of the why. The "She recognised him, and if we had eyes on them before, then what are the chances this is a coincidence? It isn't. It can't be. We have to look into that location. Fuck, we might already be too late." Or something or the other, he'd talked a little fast then and she might have not caught all of it.

It took a bit of convincing, but their Chief eventually nodded. Clapped a hand flat on the table, said: "You have permission to proceed. Get a team together—" and when they all got to their feet he blinked at her and looked mighty confused.

Redfield caught on, got a hand up to settle it around her neck, and gave it a little squeeze. A thankful squeeze, if she was to read it right, and when he asked "Another perk?" she Mh'd and that was that.

Chris didn't pretend to understand her. Didn't try and fool himself by saying it all made perfect sense. That she made sense. Or that what she claimed was true, that there was more to how the world worked than what he'd gotten comfortable with. Relativelycomfortable with.

No.

Chris didn't even bother trying. He didn't need to. All he needed was that thin thread of hope she'd handed him. Reluctantly. By accident. A coincidence that would take them back across the Atlantic and south into Italy, where the B.S.A.A had dismissed a lead months ago because it hadn't ticked enough boxes to be worth investigating. It was now, and he felt alive with the knowledge of it, felt something familiar drag on him after he'd been given permission to assemble a team and commission transport.

All of which took time, because you couldn't just snap your fingers and have troops at the ready, weapons cleared, and a bird in the air that got them all where he needed them to be. That, and there was the matter of his curious burden, and her absolute failing with conventional firearms.

She missed again.

Not by much, mind you. By a fucking mile. Chris winced and glanced down at her, at how she squinted along the sights of the M4, her fingers flexing around the handguard.

Her focus was downrange, her posture poor, and her hair a mess under the ear muffs. And all of her was out of place. She didn't fit here, didn't blend into the rest of them no matter his efforts today. And damn had he tried.

First, he'd found her a somewhat fitting shirt, and she'd shrugged it over her T and tapped a finger against the B.S.A.A logo stitched on a shoulder. Then he'd kept her around while Piers had helped him pick a team from a set of dossiers, hoping they'd— talk? A little anyway? A Hi, how are you? Sorry I'd have shot you if I'd known what I was doing? Chris had practically felt the air chill around him as he'd sat between them, collecting a list of names. Some familiar, some less— each dragging at his gut with a hint of unease.

More soldiers to follow where he went.

More men to lead to their death.

Come midday, he'd lost an appetite he'd not even noticed he'd been trying to dodge. But he'd gotten a roster and his out-of-place plus one, who'd looked at him patiently while he'd stacked papers, ground his teeth together, and waited for his stomach to settle.

After a quick lunch at a burger joint ten minutes from the office (during which Piers had asked Sadja to Pass the salt please? and she'd done so without trying to kill him), they'd sorted what was left to be sorted on her advisory status.

Which, as it turned out, came with an evaluation, a row of inquiries to fill that guaranteed she wasn't going to be a liability in the field.

Box number one and two had been physical fitness, and rudimentary self defence.

Doable.

Box number three? Firearms proficiency.

Not so doable.

Around them, the indoor range had cleared out, with Piers having reluctantly bailed about thirty minutes ago. Right about when they'd cycled back to the carbine after she'd shown herself moderately okay with a Beretta.

The type of okay that left him wondering if maybe he should have just pushed a shotgun into her hands, blindfolded her, and told her to go nuts. He figured she'd hit more that way. And that he'd have probably enjoyed the blindfolding a little too much to be entirely appropriate.

"It kicks," she complained, her voice dulled by his earmuffs. "Why have you got things that kick so hard, and why are you making me do this again?"

"Because you—" He grabbed her shoulder, pressed a hand against the small of her back, and adjusted her posture before he looked past her down the range, once from her left, then her right. Yeah, she'd barely clipped the target. Damn. "—want to come with me."

Sadja clicked her tongue. "Incorrect. You're in this to torture me, a punishment of sorts because you can't stand it that I've beat you on your mat."

She had. And he liked remembering the finer details of it, how she'd followed him to the ground unnecessarily, with her knees snapped tight around his hip, and a bit of a hard locked sway that he'd almost regretted.

"You cheat."

"Nh—" Sadja's head tilted slightly. "It's not my fault you're about as subtle as an ox."

"I can be subtle," he said and found her neck with the tips of gloved fingers, sliding past the collar of her shirt in search of her twisting markings.

"Your idea of subtle baffles me, Redfield."

"Chris."

She turned her chin up. Let her tongue dart from between her lips. Stared at him from under a pair of clear protective glasses he'd had to convince her to put on. "I'm not that shoddy," she'd said when he'd perched them on her twitching nose, and then promptly proceeded to be just that.

"Just Chris," he repeated.

She huffed, shook her head, and went back to the rifle, shifted her weight until she almost looked like she knew what she was doing, and let it rock against her shoulder with four quick taps.

Three hits and one graze.

Getting better, but still not quite.

Frustrated, Sadja rolled her neck, bumped the muffs off one ear, and rubbed her shoulder against it, the motion swinging the rifle towards him. Chris caught it against his hand, directed it down range, and plucked the muffs from her head.

"Can we be done?" Her eyes went back to him. "I'm not going to be getting any better at this today."

"No, you're not. Unload and we can head home."

He discarded his own gear, tossed the glasses and muffs aside, and chanced a look at his timepiece. Twenty to eleven. Another long day done. Not wasted though. Not at all.

"Home, mh?" A shoulder rubbed against his arm, pulled his attention away from seconds ticking away on his wrist.

"Yeah."

"And where's that?"

Huh.

He looked at her, watched her drop the magazine and eject the last chambered round. CLICK-CLACK-SNAP, quick and without much fuzz. Least she'd gotten that down. The loading, the unloading. And the not shooting him by accident.

Progress.

"I've got dinner leftovers from yesterday," he told her, and her brow rocked up.

"Are you trying to seduce me?"

Chris shrugged. "I don't know. Is it working?"

"Mh, it must be," she hummed, pushed the rifle at his chest. Cocked her head left, and kicked at his heart with a simple: "Take me home then.

"Redfield."

Taffer Notes: Sorry for that. A quick and dirty chapter to set myself up for the meaty parts of the story. We're ready for the home stretch!

To the people reading this: I am holding back on the saucy bits and the teasing between those two, letting it happen mostly off screen. Would you rather have it shifted into the focus?