Welcome to Let Me Live! The parallel story to Made In Heaven!
If you have not yet read Made In Heaven, DO IT NOW! Trust me, this fanfic is written with the assumption the reader has read Made In Heaven first.
My face connected hard with the door frame as Chris dragged me into his room, and I felt a horrifying crack in my eye socket, a sharp pain searing my sight away, hot yellow spots clouding that one eye. I stumbled half blind across his bedroom as he painfully twisted my arm behind my back, pressing my knuckles into my spine. I managed to turn to look at my brother, but his expression was empty, void of any shred of recognition of who I knew him to be. He didn't even so much as breathe loudly, like he wasn't breathing at all. It reminded me of the Tyrant that stalked me as I tried to escape Raccoon City; cold, calculating, emotionless, hell bent on obtaining only one objective. I could smell the vodka on his breath and he stared at me with dark eyes. I tried to turn and break free of this arm lock he had me in, but I was only rewarded with a punch to the temple, the sight in my other eye now affected. He punched me again in the back of my head, and I became dazed, the room spun, and the pain of his fist smashing against my skull burning my scalp. I tried to scream at him, to beg him to stop, but no sound left my lips. He thumped me in the small of my back, so many times, more times than I could concentrate on counting. My shins caught on the edge of Chris' bed and I fell forward, my brother's big hands harshly grabbing my waist, pulling roughly and not so discreetly at my shorts and I felt something fleshy catch painfully at my...
I bolted up right in bed, stifling a scream with a clammy hand. I quickly looked around my room, squinting into the darkness, checking the corners, checking the doorway for my closet.
That fucking nightmare again. After all the shit I've had to deal with, you know, Raccoon City, Rockford Island, Antarctica, the airport outbreak...you'd think I'd be having nightmares about bioweapons and zombies but OH NO! Claire Redfield, the little sister of THE Chris Redfield, having nightmares not even related to the SHIT she's gone through!
I've been having these recurring nightmares for some time now, I can't even talk to Chris about them because it's so…messed up. I don't want him to know I'm having them. I don't know WHY I'm having them. Ugh, I don't even want to think about it. I just know I need to get these sheets off and get changed; I'm soaked with sweat.
I carelessly tossed my sheets to the basket in the corner, I don't even care that I missed, and I stripped myself naked, also throwing my clothes in a half assed attempt at the basket. Fuck it, I don't care. I turned on my little red lava lamp; it had become some kind of ritual for me whenever I had these fucked up dreams, like I would become scared of the dark every time. Scared of what might be lurking outside of my nightmares. I flipped the main switch for my room's light off, casting my bed in a red glow, and I went out across the hall to the kitchen and grabbed my sports bottle, the one I take to the downstairs gym. God I'm thirsty. I filled it with water and ice, and took a long drink. I stood there, savouring the cold liquid, swirling it around my dry mouth. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, and my sweat flicked across the counter. Yeah, no way was I going back to bed like this.
I walked to the bathroom and ran the shower on a tepid flow. I needed to scrub the sweat off my skin. Scrub the sensation that the nightmare left on me. It felt way too real, and it scared me. I know it could never be real, my brother would never do that to me, but it's still a horrible thought. Chris would never hurt me. Ever.
I heard the other day that some of the West Africa BSAA soldiers got wiped out in Kijuju. I know that's where Chris is...God, I hope he's ok. I don't know how I'd cope with losing him. He's all I have left...
My big brother has done so much for me; he quit the USAF to make sure I didn't get dumped into a foster home or orphanage after our parents' untimely deaths. Hell. he even learned how to do my hair, of all things, like braiding it for me. Of course he'll never admit to anyone that sometimes he would ask to do my hair if we were just chilling, he found it therapeutic. He helped me get through high school, he always helped with my schoolwork, no matter how busy he was with his own things, and I remember he was on call on the day of my graduation.
It was hard enough for me to know that my parents' faces weren't to be in the sea of proud family members, but my one last relative absent on what was, at the time, the biggest day of my life? It sucked. I stepped up when my name was called, and my principal halted the ceremony to make a quick mention of my parents. I didn't want to cry in front of everyone, but I did. I definitely killed that tough girl image that everyone knew me to have.
He briefly mentioned how proud my parents would've been of me after graduating at the top of my class, even though I had struggled through my last years in school. He then mentioned how Chris couldn't be there today, only for him to gesture behind himself, and there my brother stood proudly in his cop's dress uniform, the uniform normally reserved for special and ceremonial events. Chris walked over to me and hugged me, told me how proud he was of me as I cried my eyes out onto his crisp and clean uniform. He told me that Mom and Dad were with me, with us, and said he knew they would be proud too. I could hear applause as he held his arms around me, whispering encouragement to me, and I soon realised there was a standing ovation. I'm not going to lie, it was only a little bit embarrassing hahaha.
After the graduation ceremony we went to visit their grave and for the first time in my life my brother referred to me as a woman. He no longer considered me to be a little girl anymore. That night he had booked a table at my favourite restaurant, and he bought me my first legal drink. He also told me that his work in S.T.A.R.S was beginning to pick up a bit, and that he would likely see me less often. It was then that I revealed to him that I had got a place at a college six hours away from Raccoon City. I remember feeling like I was going to choke on my own words; I had never been far from him in my entire life, but he reassured me that learning independence would be good for me. By that point he had taught me how to fight and use a gun, and while the thought of not seeing him for long periods of time scared me, I knew he was right. He passed a little black box across the table to me and told me to open it. Inside was a little necklace with two little metal feathers, the bigger one had a lovely little gemstone set into it. Chris told me to turn the feather over, and, in tiny curvature letters there was a little message, it read "You Are Claire Redfield". I smiled, he always said that to me whenever I was upset, or doubting my own abilities. He said to me as we finished dessert that if he wasn't around to tell me that, just hold my necklace and think of his voice.
He moved to Raccoon City so he was closer to work, and I moved to the college town. We constantly sent letters back and forth, and exchanged phone calls when our down times coincided. So of course it was unusual and disconcerting when he suddenly stopped making contact with me. I remember sitting in my dormitory room, thinking hard. Did I say something to piss him off? Was he trying to get back at me for something I didn't even realise I said?
The asshole didn't tell me about the shit show going down in Raccoon City is what the deal was, and me being the dumbass I am, went to find him after nearly two months of unanswered calls and unopened letters. Luckily I got out of that hell hole with a rookie cop called Leon S. Kennedy, and I even rescued a little girl called Sherry Birkin from the nightmare her parents had dumped on everyone.
I later went to Europe, only to get captured by Umbrella in Paris a few months later while I was still searching for him. I escaped Rockfort Island but I ended up in Antarctica. That's where Chris found me, and we escaped the lab together in a jet. The guy literally went to the end of the planet for me. I tried to get out with a kid I met at Rockford called Steve, but Alexia Ashford got to him first. He almost killed me, and he would have if not for him fighting back the Veronica virus that had been injected into him. It was the first time anyone outside of my family had told me they loved me...and even up to this point, it still is.
That night after we got to the small apartment Chris was bunked out in I had a nightmare about Raccoon City and Antarctica, where I found Chris' body in Raccoon but he was a zombie in Antarctica. I never told him exactly what the nightmare was, just that it was related to all that shit. He calmed me down and stayed with me, he spoke to me, reassured me, and I remember waking up with my face smushed into his arm. I couldn't ask for a better brother, I'm so lucky to have him in my life.
I snapped back into reality under the barely warm water, grabbed a towel from the wall hook and headed back to my room with my freshly refilled water bottle. I couldn't be bothered to fit sheets on my bed again, so I just pulled some out of my closet and threw them onto my mattress. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I sat on my bed, drying myself off. I patted the towel against my ass cheek and I suddenly had visions of my nightmare, of Chris standing behind me and…
Fuck no, don't think about it, Claire. He won't do that, don't let it cross your mind.
I curled up in the mass of sheets, still clutching my water bottle, and silently prayed that, wherever Chris was, he was safe. I prayed that he would be home soon. I heard a loud noise coming from the bathroom, it sounded like something hitting the sink, but I was too tired to check it out, and within seconds I had drifted back off, hoping that my dreams would be kinder to me.
The song for this chapter is Enter Sandman by Metallica.
Yup, I went and decided to do songs for chapters here too!
I think there is an issue with the link to the playlist if you try to access it through the Instagram phone app, if you do, gimme a shout and I'll send it directly to you!