They were lucky he had casually remembered bringing some of his Captain's clothes to the hospital, as smuggling Chris out of there would have been more uncomfortable if not more dangerous in that nasty paper napkin they called a robe—or however they actually called it. Piers turned around a little irritatedly as Chris asked him to leave him some privacy to change while the two women got to stare at his naked butt. Not that there was anything special in seeing his Captain undress, but being discarded as unworthy of the sight after having shared the same locker room with him for nearly three years felt weird.
Tearing the used robe into pieces and improvising a gauze, Claire removed the IV cannula with certain elegance and left them all truly impressed. Her response to Chris' question if she was a nurse was a mere I've seen it often enough to know how it's done, but the sly look she gave Valentine afterwards indicated that she'd probably seen it more often in movies than in the tents of Terra Save's survivor camps.
Once Chris was ready, Piers and Jill led—rather carried—him out of the hospital, each of them hefting one of his arms over their shoulders, while Claire guided them towards the exit through the least obstructed corridors. Piers wondered if she did it to avoid being spotted on their way out or to keep herself from having to face the consequences of Edonia's battlefield, as she seemed to turn pale every time they came across a victim. When they found a couple of civilians with their crying child, all covered in dust and dry blood, Piers saw how the feeling of helplessness spread across Claire's beautiful features and his free hand reached for her elbow to remind her that there were other things that needed her attention now.
"Thanks," she muttered as they walked across the helipad towards the chopper Barry had sent them. "For everything."
Piers' look softened at the unexpected token of her gratitude and he nodded in reply before she lifted her hand to shield her face from the hair the rotor blades blew around wildly. Jill was the first one to climb into the cabin, helping Chris get in after her. The patient looked around with his eyes wide open as he inspected the inside of the chopper.
"Wow!" he exclaimed as his view drifted to the cockpit, from where a bearded guy who had introduced himself as Carl Rio was staring at the boarding passengers. "That looks nice! Can I fly this?"
Carl's neck nearly squeaked from how fast his face snapped to Chris.
"Sir, we have no time to waste, sir."
It was hard to tell if Chris' speechlessness came from the sudden sir he'd been called or from the tone Carl had chosen to reject his humble wish. Claire pushed her brother into the seat and turned to the pilot.
"He's an ex-Air Force pilot," she excused and shrugged a shoulder before turning back to her brother.
"It's okay, Chris, look, you'll soon gonna pilot jets and things again, but you're still recovering from your head injury." Her voice was soft as she explained the situation, hoping he wouldn't feel hurt. "We're bringing you home, so they can treat you there."
Although pouting, and surely wondering what was happening to him that he needed to be treated back home, Chris stopped complaining and agreed to sit down quietly next to Jill. The blonde was giving him one of those eagerly encouraging glances she had rewarded Piers with earlier that day as her hand found Chris'. The rumbling of the bombs in the distance seemed to put him at unease.
"I owe you an apology, Claire," she mouthed as she saw Chris' glance jump to the horizon every now and then. "I was thinking you were overreacting, but it's best to keep him away from all this."
Especially now that the BSAA's job in this country was done, she thought to herself as she smiled at her old partner, who kept inspecting the inside of the chopper, visibly wowed by the sudden evolution of technology and design of the aircraft.
"Impressed?" She asked amusedly, at what Chris just shrugged.
"I mean, it's basically the same thing, right? It just looks better."
Claire overheard his comment and laughed amusedly, as the face her brother was making reminded her immensely of the past and of some of the arguments they had shared when they'd been younger, and she saw a spirit she had already forgotten. The fiery character was a trait the Redfields had printed into their DNA, deep and persistent, but over the years that character had turned from friendly positive to nearly destructive and their relationship wasn't the only thing that had suffered from Chris' constant bad humor. Claire sat in front of Jill, as Piers took a seat next to her and faced his Captain with an expression of relief and awkwardly uncomfortable happiness. Chris was still a little overwhelmed to see the young man's reaction to him, but as Jill and Claire didn't seem to find it surprising, he just accepted things as they were.
"What are we gonna do now?" Jill asked in concern as her look waved to the redhead in front of her. "The chopper is one thing, but I'm not sure if he's ready for a Transatlantic flight."
Claire shook her head.
"I would like to take him to a hospital outside of this area before flying back home," she said. "Terra Save has secured facilities not far from here and-" she paused and leaned forward, propping her chin up on her hand. "Guess who's currently there."
Jill blinked at her with the curiosity of a child.
"Who?"
"You're lucky I am in Edonia!" Rebecca yelped as she saw Jill step down the hallway of the lab. She was in a white lab coat, skin held in an unhealthy paleness that indicated that she hadn't seen the sun in days—maybe even weeks. The mark of the eyepiece of her microscope was still printed around her eye and Jill wondered for how long the young woman had really been working before they had interrupted her. "Claire said it was urgent."
The blonde nodded after hugging her old friend. Through Barry, Claire had known that Rebecca was in town and after one phone call, she had also figured out that it was her own organization which was currently sheltering her team of researchers and offering their facilities as a lab to investigate the new virus strain they had encountered in Edonia.
"Yes, look," Jill said. "I know you have a lot of work to do with the new virus, but Chris has had an accident."
Rebecca's initial irritation was blown off her face instantly and, face turned into a grimace of concern, she replied, "What? What happened?"
The blonde quickly smiled so Rebecca wouldn't believe their common friend's life was in danger, but her facial expression told enough to let the young scientist know that it was serious anyway.
"He's amnesic," she said straightforwardly. "He believes it's 1998. He doesn't remember anything from that moment on. So, no Umbrella, no BOWs, no Raccoon City destruction." She sighed, shrugging a sad shoulder. "He asked me about Kenneth and Forest."
Rebecca listened, as baffled by the information as they all had been when they'd found out that the brave BSAA Captain Chris Redfield didn't know how brave he had really been anymore, left in the belief that he was a police officer—an elite cop, but still a cop.
"Oh my god," was all the ex STARS medic could reply. She gave Jill a nod and they walked towards the waiting area where Piers and Claire were waiting with Chris.
The redhead was engaged in a conversation with some of her colleagues from the European camps and it was the first time Chris was alone with Piers, who was guarding his Captain as though he was a fortress to defend from outside attackers. It had been a weird couple of days, the young soldier thought as he recalled every moment. The awful screams of Ben, Andy, Carl and Finn as the cocoon had begun to grow around their bodies; how quickly the gates had opened again, leaving him and Chris to the mercy of the creatures that had once been their teammates; the cracking sound Chris' head had made when he'd hit the stone floor, making him believe that he himself would be the only one who would make it out of the City Hall alive; how he had used up all the bullets in his own and Chris' machine gun before the last of the BOWs was taken down and how he'd had to punch its face to assure they even had a chance to survive.
And Chris didn't even remember it.
Piers sighed. It wasn't like he needed any approval or reward for doing his job, as his devotion for it came from elsewhere, but he had done so extremely well that it was simply a pity that the only one who had lived to see it couldn't remember anything. When he bent forward to rest his elbows on his knees, he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder.
"So, uhm," Chris was giving him a weird smile as he patted his back. "Claire said you kinda saved my life."
Piers turned to his Captain, wondering if he had, somehow, read his mind. He nodded.
"Yes, Captain, it's my duty to help all my teammates if possible."
Chris laughed loudly, soon holding his head when the pain the noise and movement caused started to sting. After another second of silence, he smirked at Piers.
"I know I must be some higher rank, but, please, don't call me Captain. I'm not used to such formal treatments towards myself. Just say Chris."
Piers smiled faintly. It was actually something Chris had insisted on before, as he didn't like to be treated any other way than his team. So, off the field, he had often demanded to be addressed by his first name instead of his rank, and Piers found it amusing that he kept doing so even though he didn't remember anything of his recent past.
"So, what I wanted to say is Thank you." His smile turned warm and fatherly, just as it had been the rare times he had smiled at his men. "I owe you my life, Piers, and I would really like to hear someday what happened exactly. I mean, when we are ready for it."
The young soldier looked at him, taken by surprise by how open their conversation had turned suddenly.
"You're welcome," he replied with a grin. "Chris."
Claire came back to join them as soon as she spotted Jill and Rebecca returning to the reception, putting a calming hand onto Chris' shoulder as he tried to get up.
"It's okay, you have to rest," she said and received a somewhat chiding glance from her overconfident big brother. She should have known that it would be useless. When he caught sight of Rebecca, the surprise to see her pushed him automatically onto his feet.
"Rebecca!" He yelped as he took a step forward.
The young scientist smiled.
"Hey Chris," she said, smiling. "How are you feeling?"
Chris shrugged, astonishedly staring at Rebecca.
"Weird."
The scientist smiled at him before she slung her slender arms around him and sighed against his chest.
"I'm glad that you're alive, at least." Once she'd let go of him, she winked at him and pointed at a room nearby. "Jill said she wants to take you to the States, which might probably be the best place for you to be treated, but we need to make sure that flying is safe for you. I would like to run some tests and have some of my colleagues check on you. They're very good physicians in their field and they can surely tell you more." She gave him a sign. "Come with me."
As Rebecca walked away, Chris kept standing in the corridor, as if time had stopped running for him. He didn't react until Claire elbowed him softly in the side.
"You okay?" She asked, a little concerned, at what Chris nodded.
"Have you seen her?" He yelled, laughing. "She hasn't changed at all. She still looks like she's eighteen. It's amazing."
Claire couldn't help but feel offended by the comment, as his reaction to her first sight hadn't been that positively surprised. She huffed out a laugh.
"Sure, everybody but me still young," she said, jokingly, but with a hint of disappointment in her voice. Chris, however, put his arm around her and smirked.
"No Claire, you don't look like you're nineteen anymore," he said warmly as they began to walk through the corridor. "You look better now."
At Claire's confused grimace, he added, "Don't get me wrong. You were always a beautiful girl, but when I see you now," he blew out a breath. "I see so much more than just a pretty face. You're beautiful through and through. Your spirit comes to show and you fill the entire room with your presence and what I see makes me nothing but proud."
Claire gasped as she heard his words.
"Oh, Chris."
He laughed.
"And it's a shame you don't have children, because those precious genes of yours should really live on," he exclaimed before he let go of her to follow Rebecca.
Piers, who had overheard the intimate conversation not entirely by accident, agreed completely with his Captain about the beauty of his sister, but he probably wouldn't let her know.
"This is the weirdest case of amnesia I have ever gotten to see," Dr. Zink, the bearded psychologist in a white coat pushed the glasses up his nose and cleared his throat. "That a man forgets such a long period of his life, the happenings and the people in it; but remembers everything before that date so clearly, is certainly not very common."
Dr. Harrison, the neurologist next to him, nodded.
"And you say he forgot everything related to BOWs and Umbrella?" He asked, rubbing his meaty chin.
Jill nodded.
"Everything," she said. "When he woke up, he actually believed he was in 1998."
The way Dr. Harrison pressed his lips together nearly caused his mouth to disappear in the voluminous cushion of his cheeks.
"I would love to keep your friend here to study him," he said as his head turned to his colleague, who affirmed his equal interest with a nod.
Claire, who had been sitting quietly in the room, still baffled by the nice words Chris had given her earlier, suddenly jumped to her feet.
"Studying him?" She shouted. "I can assure you that nobody here is going to turn my brother into a lab rat." Her finger waved through the round as she yelled out her complaint, and received Piers' agreeing nod. "We just brought him here to know if he can fly and that's what I want you to tell me."
Dr. Harrison stared at her seriously through tiny eyes as he smacked boredly. Propped against the wall, he turned slightly and grabbed the file containing Chris' latest analysis they had taken from the hospital.
"When did you say he got hit?"
Claire relaxed a bit, exhaling some of her gathered anger along with a breath. Her face turned to Piers, silently asking for help as she herself couldn't even remember what day it was. She was no better than Chris.
"On Monday," he said, hoping Claire wasn't expecting him to lie, which could have been dangerous to his Captain. "But he's fine so far."
The doctor lifted his eyebrows in a bored manner, taking a deep breath that turned into a sigh on its way back out.
"Impossible, he can't fly yet. We should wait at least ten days to discard any further bleeding or injuries." He handed the scans to his colleague. "It doesn't look bad, I admit, but given the circumstances and the symptoms, I can't let your brother fly yet. And he should really stay here so we can watch him, if you don't like the word studying, Miss Redfield."
Claire grunted as her hands balled into fists at the side of her hips. That guy might have been a doctor, but that was no reason to talk to her like that. She began to hiss under her breath, seeing the two doctors walk away. She relaxed when she felt Piers' hand on her shoulder.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"
"No," she whispered as she turned to him. "It was the right thing to do."
Rebecca sighed in the corner where she had been standing all the time, excusing herself with a soft shrug and hanging shoulders as she walked into the middle of the room.
"I'm very sorry, guys," she said, her head low. "They work in a lab, isolated from civilization and they don't know how to treat people correctly, but they are kind people on the inside, and they will do anything to help you, Chris."
Jill had been standing some feet away, watching the scene with hundreds of questions running through her mind—all of them regarding the wellbeing of one man who had been the main subject of the argument and who was taking it all with such unconcerned amusement that it nearly made her laugh when he turned to her.
"So, we're spending New Year's Eve with Rebecca? That's great."
Spending the rest of the holidays with Rebecca, her team and several TerraSave people was indeed not as sad as the Edonian hospital would have been. They even had a real New Year's dinner and drinks, which Chris, unfortunately, was not allowed to taste. The tests they ran were simple, and the doctors respected Claire's wish not to introduce her brother to the delicate subject of bioterrorism—also because they believed themselves that it would be harmful to confront him with such awkward things like zombies. By the end of the weekend Harrison had given them the green light to bring Chris back home by plane and Claire was so happy about it that she immediately offered the man her apologies for having called him a fucking dickhead in the face, not though for all the other names she had given him behind his back.
They all avoided speaking about BOWs. When Chris asked Rebecca if she kept in touch with someone from BRAVO team, the young woman nearly burst into tears. Trying to keep the conversation strictly to private subjects was extremely hard, as nobody really knew what Chris usually did in his free time anymore—except for working out in the gym, of course—and so they spoke mostly about themselves. It was what interested Chris the most anyway.
"And you live in New York City?"
"Yes, and so do you," Jill replied as they packed Chris' bag together. "We work there, you know?"
Her partner handed her his shirts after inspecting each of them closely. Even after a week, he hadn't gotten used to the fact that his upper body was now somehow twice its original size.
"Do we live together?"
Jill clicked her tongue as she folded the wrinkled shirt back into a state worthy of a well-packed suitcase.
"No, we don't. You have a nice apartment of your own."
Chris sat on the bed and leaned against the wall as he stared at her. Jill's moves had always been elegantly sexy—what Speyer had called in need for dick—but she had evolved into something so royal and beautiful that it was hard not to stare at her.
"I can't believe I never asked you out."
Chris' words took her by surprise. She had known, of course, that he found her attractive, as he never failed to remind her of it, and she had suspected him to try to kiss her spontaneously to welcome the year 2013, which had been reason enough for her to stand as far as possible away from him.
She didn't want to hurt his feelings.
Before she could come up with another cocky reply of hers, the door was opened and Claire stepped in.
"Jill, the doctors want to see us," she explained as something in her voice trembled.
Dr Harrison and Dr Zink had elaborated fifty pages of report that concluded in an extremely weird diagnosis. They agreed that Chris suffered from Dissociative amnesia; where a person forgets part of their past, often to help deal with stress situations, making the individuals forget something very traumatic. In Chris' case, it was unclear if the cause was the loss of his team mates, which, according to Piers' testimony, could have been the trigger, or if it was indeed the brain injury.
"As far as I know, this would make your brother the only case in the history of written medical articles," Dr Zink explained. "I think he might have used the head trauma as an excuse to develop a dissociative amnesia and deny his past in bioterrorism to cope with the pain it caused him."
"That explains why we didn't find anything unusual in his CT," Dr Harrison added.
Claire closed her eyes and shook her head, the agitation visible on her face.
"So, are you saying that his problem is not physical, but mental?"
Jill held her breath until the doctor would give them a clear answer. Was it really a mental disorder Chris was suffering from?
"Yes, I fear so," Dr Zink replied. "This has both advantages and disadvantages. As the physical damage is low, he will recover from the pain pretty soon. That's the reason why Dr Harrison allows him to fly."
The psychologist cleared his throat before he kept speaking.
"But the treatment for this kind of amnesia is more complicated and longer. We shall start therapy, maybe he needs medication," he explained. "I would appreciate having him here with us and see his evolution, but it would be best if you took him home, to his familiar surroundings, and slowly confront him with his past to see how he reacts."
Jill was certainly relieved that Chris was able to come back with them to the US. Everything else would be a slow process, but they could surely handle it. Claire, however didn't seem that happy about the news, Jill noticed as she turned to face the redhead.
"So," she said when the doctors had walked away. "Now we can get him home."
The smile Claire forced came out a little too dark, and she shrugged sadly.
"Chris must have suffered a lot all this time." She leaned against the nearest wall, letting her head drop back. "He was always so dedicated to the job and I had no idea he was… feeling so bad about it."
Yes, it was true. All of them had been carrying their little emotional baggage throughout the years, more than once close to giving up, but that this complete erasure of their past had been a product of the mind of Chris Redfield was hard to believe. Chris had always encouraged them to go on, to keep fighting until the last of bioterrorists had been taken down. It had been an impossible dream, though, as there would always be someone ready to substitute any Wesker or Spencer that came to fall, lining up for becoming the next concern of the counterterror organizations. One thing was clear; they couldn't win for good, and it made it easy to fathom that they all reached their physical and mental limits. Was Chris' current condition a result of the lack of victory over bioterrorism?
Claire sighed.
"I can't really blame him, though," she muttered lowly. "If I had the chance to decide whether to remember or forget all this-"
"You would choose to remember!" Jill stepped towards her decidedly and grabbed her shoulders, slightly shaking the redhead. "You would want to fight and help, and that's what Chris wants, too. He's had an accident. Those guys have been sitting in their lab for too long and they don't know how to do their job anymore. I mean, we're in the middle of nowhere, Claire. There's not even the right equipment here."
Claire's eyes opened to meet Jill's, finding a new source of peace and confidence in the bright greyish-blue of her irises. After another shallow breath, the redhead licked her lips and smiled.
"He said I'm beautiful. He hugs me and he laughs and he talks to me." A short laugh made its way out as her eyes watered. "I don't even remember the last time we talked like this before this accident."
As the words popped out, Claire realized just how much she had missed the relationship with her older brother, all the trust they'd used to have in each other and the concern their sibling's well-being used to cause them. And it hurt.
"If Umbrella made him that way, I don't think I want him to remember."
Her friend's bold confession made the blonde shudder, as there was certainly some truth in Claire's words. Chris had turned cheerful and carefree, he joked and laughed a lot, just like he had been in STARS when they had met, and Jill had to admit that she, too, missed that side of her partner.
"I know," she said before she could stop the words from coming out. "I don't want it either."
Someone knocked on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. Both women turned towards Chris, who was sticking his smiling face into the room.
"Hey," he asked. "You ready? Piers says we can leave in an hour."
Jill nodded. Giving Claire's shoulder another soft squeeze, she walked towards the door.
Thanks a lot for reading, guys. I'm sorry for all possible mistakes and I still hope you enjoy it, despite all the advice I ignored for the sake of the story hahaha
