Springtime. 2021.

Zoe has long since looked back and supposed she hasn't ever known anyone before who was never any sort of fighter. Daddy'd been in the marines. Uncle Joe, too.

Mama and Lucas had never been, she had thought - and then Mia and Ethan and Redfield had come on into the equation, and she'd had to rethink that. She and Joe had asked questions, those four years ago - or at least, Joe had asked one in one o' those roundabout ways. More made a "fess up" challenge. "I still don't take kindly to you government types, especially not showin' up uninvited," he'd said, unsmiling under his bushy 'stache and beard but with a voice that chuffed with unflappability, shakin' the soldier's hand, "but I owe you and your men one."

"U.N., technically," Redfield had said, also stony. "I'm B.S.A.A.."

(She'd then curled up, body heavy and stomach acidic but body too damn long-since-drained to shed a tear as he'd explained what'd happened to Lucas - and then she remembered what'd happened between Ethan and Mama and how she'd just been relieved then, and coughed a laugh that left a powdery feeling on the inside o' her mouth, already having the inkling then that bein' a fighter just ran in the family after all.

And Lucas had just been like Mama, and that was all.

Even as much as she knew about him - dimmin' the lights on memories full of blinking red lights and hazy shapes of strangers strapped to chairs and screaming on blue-and-black screens.

'Least Joe had agreed with her, lettin' her keep those lights low and pretend she didn't know what those blinking lights still flashing through the dark were.)

...You know, it had hit her then that she'd known of the B.S.A.A., sure. What they did. What they were connected to. Names like "Edonia", and "Kijuju".

She'd had to look 'em back up to doublecheck what she actually knew.

She'd been fresh outta high school when the B.S.A.A. had been in Edonia - next spring, going through apologies with Mama and Daddy that she still felt only like a high schooler; money just wasn't coming in at the time to send her off for her pharma degree and keep such an old property maintained.

(So much for that.)

She'd still only been a sophomore when they'd been in Kijuju - wearing her first dresses and skirts, deciding that tomboyish wear would be viewed to her as kid clothes now, before she would re-decide that summer that she guessed she did still prefer them, for comfort.

(Parasitic outbreak, she'd heard about both incidents, in the news - and both had sounded like so little.)

She'd been only about ten when they'd been founded, and it occurred to her that she didn't really know when she'd first heard their name; only that she was fairly sure that was the year that her tomato plant in the greenhouse had grown long and well and had made it into two of that May's dinners, with Mama's help; and that with one o' those, so had been served her and Lucas's and Daddy's first shared catfish of the year.

And Redfield's name goes back to Raccoon City.

Back before Umbrella had come in with a cure.

All the way back when she wasn't even in school yet, and a town had gone nuclear when her earliest memory had already been set in stone as a funny smell hangin' in the bedroom, Lucas refusing to let her see the critter in the attic - buried there even easy as it was to forget during the day, catching frogs out by the waterside, goin' to town for chores and browsing colorful displays with Mama, catching bugs and picking flowers and bein' riveted every time you saw something new.

(Occurs to her, passively, that the word "zombie" was scary at some point - just like she can't remember when she'd first heard of the B.S.A.A., she can't quite remember when that'd stopped.)

She supposes she knows, now, that nothing has ever been quite right - she guesses the first hint to slap her in the face that not seeking it don't make you any less of a fighter really should have been Ethan.

But bein' last in a line of fighters, even if they didn't all seek it, not the same way...

...Well.

She supposes as well that she oughta do something with it.

That, too, is in fact something she has long since supposed.

Last of the Bakers' blood and money sunk, her once mousy hair gray and her eyes cast grayer, too, in the light of her computer screen, she finishes updating her credentials.

Her finger skates over the mousepad. A blunt tap.

The blue-and-white logo pops up in the corner of a window laid out in squares of grays and softer blues and whites and blacks. She scrolls for contacts.

It's been a while. She doesn't figure she's really thanking Redfield for anything - she doubts she's in time to fill in any space he's left behind as someone who was B.S.A.A., anyway, especially seeing as while she sure does understand stuff now, she's still not the soldier-type. Nor does she much think she'll see the man again.

It may count as a thanks to Ethan, though. Mia, too. Everyone's been through enough - if they both wanna get away from the fight, out in their new little village, they're sure entitled to.

And if nothing else, it's a form of paying dues.

If nothing was gonna be the same again anyway, then she reckons she can acknowledge that a peaceful life was always something of a lie.

Written for the r/FanFiction April 2021 Four Seasons Prompt Challenge. Spring #1: "Lines Written in Early Spring" by William Wordsworth.