November 30th 2014.
Hunnigan noticed the double-take Jill did when she read the paperwork, and she shared the sentiment. When Lucy had told Hunnigan she wanted to change her last name to what really was her family name, she'd felt somewhat devastated and more than that, rejected.
Up until just recently, Lucy had looked up to her and had practically mimicked everything she did, she'd wanted to be like the cool older sister when she grew up. And then she'd actually grown up, overnight, and not long after that she'd been informed she wasn't any of the things she'd thought she was, and now...
Hunnigan supposed it made sense, Lucy was looking for answers, she was looking for herself, and this connection was the only tangible thing she had to her roots. Just because Hunnigan herself had been more than happy to just be Lance and Alix Hunnigan's kid and not dig up anything about her biological parents, that didn't mean Lucy felt the same way. And just how much she didn't feel the same way had become very real today.
"You're joking," Jill scoffed.
"It's just a name. Granted, one with a lot of negative connotation but still, just a name," Hunnigan said but honestly, she didn't think Jill believed her words anymore than Hunnigan herself did. It was not just a name, it could never be just a name, and in Lucy's case, it was a statement she was making.
"Never would've thought I'd see the day someone calling themself a Wesker works directly under my supervision," Jill chuckled mirthlessly. "Well, I suppose it might do good, perhaps Irma Wesker will be more likely to have a chat with an agent that shares her last name. Let's get going," she then said and got up from her desk.
They made their way to the parking garage where Lucy was already waiting for them. She greeted both with a sharp nod and they got in the SUV, Jill taking the wheel and beginning the drive over to the correctional facility where Irma Wesker was being kept at.
Hunnigan hadn't expected that the visit would be quick, but after they'd been sitting at the waiting room for over an hour, she was becoming suspicious. She'd filled out all the paperwork in advance, and they'd been granted the right to visit, this shouldn't have taken so long. Something was wrong. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later when they were finally called into the warden's office where he sat them down.
"I'm afraid the prisoner is no longer in our custody, she was released late yesterday evening," the warden said.
"On whose authority!" Jill scoffed in disbelief.
"Well, mine and the court's."
"Why would you do that?" Hunnigan frowned.
"It's called compassionate release, her Alzheimer's was severe, she was unable to communicate coherently at this point."
"It seems a bit rapid, she was doing relatively fine not long ago," Jill narrowed her eyes, and Hunnigan was inclined to agree that this could be an elaborate hoax just for this exact purpose.
Nobody wanted to see someone who looked like a harmless old lady incarcerated, especially not when said old lady was clearly suffering from a terminal illness. It didn't matter that the same old lady was a criminal. There was also the fact that nobody wanted to take responsibility for someone in that condition; in this case, "compassionate release" was a fancy way of saying the warden and the court had decided to kick the demented old woman out so that they wouldn't need to be responsible for her care.
The warden assured Jill there was no reason to suspect that Irma Wesker's condition was a fabrication, the doctors she'd seen had confirmed her status, and her increasingly unstable behavior had reflected their statements.
"For the love of God, at least tell me you released her into someone's custody rather than just let her wander out the gates and leave it at that," Hunnigan groaned.
"She was released into the custody of her twin sister Veera," the warden confirmed after checking his paperwork, and Hunnigan glanced at Jill, who seemed to share the same thought.
Another Wesker we knew nothing about? How many are there?
"And I presume all the required paperwork was filled out, IDs checked, and so on?" Jill asked, and the warden nodded, handing over the folder. Jill spent about two seconds looking it over before closing it and tossing it onto the warden's desk.
"Well, I can tell you right now that the address listed here would put them in the middle of the Potomac river, so I presume you didn't bother double-checking the rest of the information either," she scoffed, and the warden picked up the folder, rapidly began typing on his computer and seemed to deflate a little when he read what Hunnigan assumed was the results of a quick search that confirmed what Jill had just said.
"I don't...know how this could've..." he muttered, and Jill sighed.
"Thank you for your time, have a good day," she said, stood up and exited the room, Hunnigan and Lucy following behind her.
"What are we going to do next?" Lucy asked once they were back in the car, leaning forward from the backseat.
"I'll check surveillance footage, see if we can track them, but I'm not holding my breath."
"What about this Veera-person, have we ever run into that name?"
"No, but I doubt she would've used her real name anyway," Hunnigan said, and Lucy exhaled deeply, slumping back in the seat, visibly disappointed.
"So, what do we do?" she asked again, and Hunnigan sighed in unison with Jill.
Neither one of them wanted to tell the eager young agent that all they could do immediately was to check in with their assets on the field and wait.
I need to get my roots done, Jill sighed internally as she examined herself in the ladies' room mirror while washing her hands. It was ironic, typically people had dark roots and artificially bleached hair, her problem was the opposite; she couldn't even count how many hairdressers had legitimately questioned her sanity for wanting to dye what appeared to be naturally blonde hair with a color as boring as chestnut brown. It was understandable, she supposed, they couldn't have known her reasons behind hating the blonde hair.
Jill exited the bathroom and went to the bar, ordering another bourbon. It had been one of those days. She'd gotten into her first argument with Ingrid Hunnigan and while she figured she'd won (for what it was worth), she didn't feel victorious and like she'd made a good argument; she felt like a coward.
And then what? You have no plan, no intel, we are not going to rush in blindly, I won't risk losing people over this, Jill had said, and she felt she was being reasonable.
We're not making any progress now, we need to rush in, and you would see that if you weren't paralyzed by your fears, Hunnigan had argued and Jill had resorted to using the "I am your superior officer and I say we're not doing this, so step aside or come up with a reasonable plan"-card, and while it had been efficient ending the debate, Jill knew she was not in the right with this one. Not completely.
Caring about one's people wasn't a weakness, sacrificing them needlessly shouldn't have been a part of anyone's plan, and she could hardly believe Hunnigan of all people was so gung-ho and aggressively demanding of sending in a team. That said, Hunnigan wasn't wrong; they hadn't made any progress by simply trying to pry from a distance; whatever (if anything at all) was going on in Raccoon City was happening in secret.
"You look like someone just kicked your puppy," a familiar voice said, dragging Jill back to reality from her thoughts.
"Of all the gin joints," Jill muttered with a smirk, downed her drink and ordered another one. "Are you here to pressure me into going to Raccoon City too?" she then sighed.
"No. But if you do decide to go there, I want to come with," Claire Redfield said and took a seat next to Jill at the bar, ordering herself a rum and coke.
"Really? What's your motive? I would've thought you and your husband had enough of Raccoon City to last a lifetime," Jill remarked.
"Leon's not my husband," Claire corrected, "and you're not wrong but if there is something there, I want to help make sure it doesn't get out. It's what Chris would do if he were here."
"What do you think is there, radioactive zombies?" Jill chuckled, not commenting on Claire's subtle inquiry about Chris's whereabouts, frankly she wasn't entirely certain about what he was up to right now either.
Radioactive zombies was a horror story people loved to repeat and it made rounds in the major news at least once every couple of years. Contrary to the popular belief, Raccoon City had not been destroyed with a nuke, but frankly, Jill was glad the rumors of radiation kept circulating, it worked as a decent enough deterrent to get anywhere near the ruins of Raccoon City. It had been cordoned off with a wall, and only very few people bothered trying to enter, but there had been daredevils. Fortunately, they hadn't gotten far beyond the wall before being stopped by the soldiers stationed at the border.
Of course it had been for their own safety, but they did love to make it look like the government was hiding something in there, as if Raccoon City were a location similar to Area 51. And it made for an entertaining story, Jill admitted she too would've been curious had she not known better. She supposed it said something about human nature's curiosity and self-destructiveness that some would intentionally try to sneak into a wasteland they assumed was populated with radioactive zombies.
"Well, if I learned one thing about the Umbrella-products back in Raccoon City, it's that they don't tend to die easily, so it doesn't hurt to double-check, even after all this time," Claire said. Jill sighed deeply and hung her head a little in defeat. Frankly, not checking in earlier had been an embarrassing oversight on absolutely everyone's part.
"You're right," she muttered, finished her drink and ordered another. "And I hate it," she added, drinking the bourbon before the bartender had even had a chance to put the bottle back and nodded her head to silently instruct him to refill her glass.
"What do you mean?" Claire asked, and Jill recounted her argument with Hunnigan from earlier today.
"I keep telling myself I'm being responsible, but the truth is, I'm being a coward. What the hell happened to me?"
"I don't know. I keep asking myself the same thing," Claire said.
"Well, I mean, you have a family now, that is bound to change your priorities," Jill commented and Claire smiled.
"It did, but at the same time my desire to make sure the world is a safe place to live has only been amplified; what's really changed is that I can't just run off and get into the fight like I used to because I have to stop and think about my kid."
"I get it, but I don't have that, so I don't know why I'm being so...cautious."
"Maybe what happened to you back in Kijuju had a bigger effect on you than you think," Claire said quietly and put her hand on Jill's forearm.
It was so obvious it was ridiculous. Of course it had an effect on her, and after all the time she'd spent under close supervision, she'd never been psychologically evaluated beyond the mandatory checkups that didn't even scratch the surface, and Jill hadn't wanted to go beyond that even if the opportunity would've been there. What was there to say? What even would be the point of talking, it wouldn't change anything. It never had before.
Telling someone about the time she'd walked into the garage after school when she was nine years old to find her mother slumped over the steering wheel of her car that had the engine running hadn't made it better. Telling someone about her father who was a thief who eventually got caught and was sent to prison from where he escaped and Jill never heard of him again hadn't made it better. Telling someone what it was like being controlled by Albert Wesker and being unable to stop herself despite being conscious of it all happening wouldn't make it better, either.
The nightmares would never go away, and a part of her didn't want them to. She'd taken a lot of lives, and she had done things that went against every fiber of her being, and she hadn't been able to do anything to stop herself, but knowing that didn't make her feel absolved. Add to all that the humiliation of being Wesker's personal, seemingly willing handmaiden...no amount of talking would fix it.
Well, at least I got to see how much it annoyed Excella, that was something, Jill mused. It wasn't really, but she kept telling herself otherwise, she needed at least one thing from it all, even if she had to lie to herself to feel like she got it. If there was nothing that would invalidate all of the suffering and she couldn't allow that. She wouldn't.
Excella's mistake had been to make herself always available. Men like Albert Wesker weren't interested in women who would gladly surrender to needed to feel powerful, they needed to be able to take it rather than have it gifted to them because where was the power in receiving what you want without a fight?
And Jill had fought, with all her willpower, but it hadn't been enough. Over time, fighting had only served to eat away at her morale, but the mere suggestion of just accepting what was happening was an insult of the worst kind.
I guess I should consider myself lucky it didn't escalate to anything worse. No. That's bullshit. There was nothing lucky about it, just because it didn't get worse doesn't mean I should be grateful things didn't get worse, what the hell, why should I be glad? Fuck that, and fuck anyone who has the nerve to tell anyone they should be glad it wasn't worse, fuck you, Jill fumed furiously.
The one thing she hadn't really considered until right now, however, was that perhaps she was being exceedingly careful (to the point of her timidness managing to irritate even someone as typically patient and calm as Ingrid Hunnigan) because she was terrified of it happening again. Or that it would happen to someone under her command; being a mindless slave was a fate Jill wouldn't have wished on anyone.
What if she went to Raccoon City and would end up having to fight her own people because some lingering remnant of her brainwashed state was still exploitable, or because someone else got captured and infected like she'd been? What if she went there and froze when she'd need to make a decision, and because of her hesitation or inability to function someone would get hurt or worse?
She missed having someone to watch over her. She missed having a partner she trusted with every cell of her being. She knew her people were all professionals and she did trust them, she knew they would do their jobs and were willing to make sacrifices if it came to that, but it wasn't quite the same as it was with Chris. How could it be, it was a miracle she'd found one person she synced up with so seamlessly and effortlessly, it would take more than a miracle for it to happen twice in a lifetime. So no, no amount of trust and practice would be enough to elevate someone else to the level of Chris Redfield when it came to synchronizing with Jill Valentine.
Long ago she'd confused that synergy for something else, back when she'd had her little girl crush on him. She'd flirted with him, and he'd been completely oblivious to it. For a while, Jill had thought that perhaps it was just her, maybe he wasn't interested and pretending to not understand when a woman was interested in him was just Chris's way of letting her down gently, but the longer she'd known him and seen the way he remained oblivious when women (and some men) came onto him, Jill had begun to think that perhaps Chris was just wired differently.
He was loyal and extremely protective, everything was about duty and integrity, and he did love very fiercely and deeply, Jill had no doubt of that; his love for others just was never romantic.
I miss that big idiot so much, she sighed internally.
"Jill?"
"I don't want to talk about it," she said and ordered another drink.
"I know you don't. I probably wouldn't either. But...if you change your mind..."
"Just drop it, Claire."
She didn't want to talk about it, she didn't want to think about it, the whole thing was annoying and frustrating, and she knew that the ones who asked if she was okay only meant well but she just wanted people to shut up and stop asking about it. It had been years and she was still exhausted by the good intentions of those around her. But God forbid she tell that to them, they'd only grow more concerned and flock over to comfort her and offer a shoulder to cry on even harder if she did, when all she wanted was to be left the hell alone.
"All right."
"All right," Jill repeated, swirled the drink in the glass and sighed deeply.
She'd been drinking here for most of the evening and all she had to show for it was an expensive tab at the bar. She couldn't get drunk anymore. What had been done to her, and everything she'd gone through long before that, had made her immune to many kinds of poisons and toxins, alcohol being one of them. She didn't even know why she kept insisting on trying. Perhaps it was partly lunacy, partly a stubborn and desperate attempt to hold on to who she had been before everything had gone to hell.
"I guess we have to go back to Raccoon City."
"It seems rather fitting, in a way, don't you think? Ending it where it began," Claire commented, and Jill chuckled ruefully.
"Here's to finishing what we started," she nodded and clinked her glass against Claire's.