Unbeknownst to Chris, he wasn't the only one having nightmares...

Claire slowly stirred from her sleep, and she gently stretched her tight muscles out, leaning side to side to loosen those overnight knots that tugged away at her body. God this bed felt so good after sleeping on a plastic recliner for so long! She smiled to herself and she wiggled her legs back into the soft, cloudlike mattress. Her back certainly felt better, that's for sure. She pushed her hair out of her face and sighed at the ceiling, idly drifting her eyes at subtle flecks in the paintwork. She lay there until the first signs of daylight teased her window blinds. Jesus, what was she going to do today? Oh! That's right! Last night was Chris' first night home!

"I should probably help him get out of bed." she said to herself, and she twisted her waist to sit.

"Claire?" came his voice from his room.

"Yeah! On my way!" she called back. She straightened out her powder blue night shirt and pulled it over her ass and thighs. Let's face it, even if he doesn't remember, he's seen her ass before, she didn't care. She opened her door and stepped off the bedroom carpet onto the cool wooden floor of the hallway. She stretched again and creased her face with a sweet groan, pinching her eyes at the birthing morning through the front door glass.

It was so surreal to have Chris home, after all this time. She stepped forward and delicately touched his bedroom door handle. Except, was he really home? Physically, yes, but mentally? Not a chance. He had no idea where the fuck he was. She blinked away tears and angrily rubbed her cheek, and she opened the door, immediately stepping in.

A gasp caught in her throat as her feet gave way below her, and she sank into-

"What the fuck?" she whispered.

Goo. Big chunks of pink, slimy, smelly goo, like a flesh smoothie. Exactly like she had seen in Raccoon City's sewers well over ten years ago. It steamed and bubbled and pulsated around her ankles, and the putrid stench caught in her throat. She clasped a hand against her mouth and dry heaved.

"Claire?"

She looked up, and Chris was standing in the middle of his room where the bed was meant to be. The olive green paint on the walls was bubbling and peeling and evaporating before her eyes, but if Chris was noticing it, it wasn't bothering him. He simply stood and stared at her with sad eyes.

"Chris…you're…standing?" Claire gasped through her fingers, but she clamped her eyes shut and shook her head. Of course this was a nightmare. She had had them far too often. Was Chris going to die in this one too? She looked at him, surrounded by the thick, grotesque biomatter. This wasn't real, she thought, and she fled from the room.

The hallway was just as bad, if not worse; the lumpy human smoothie had extended into here, but the sight of corpses torn asunder made her dry heave and gag harder; the stench burned her nostrils, and she made a vain attempt to shift her hand to also cover her nose. She looked around, and saw the front door was ajar. Get out, she had to get out, she needed to wake up.

She lurched forward and her hand barely touched the front door before she was wrenched backwards. Hands on either side of her shoulder gripped her hard, fingers digging cruelly and sharply into her skin, and she was spun around. The same hands clamped around her throat, stealing her breath and silencing the voice that was about to expel from her mouth.

Chris.

Or at least what was still there of him.

His skin peeled and hung limply from his cheek, exposing the pale bone underneath, but Claire couldn't find the breath to scream, she couldn't push it past his big hands. He tightened his grip around her neck, and felt wet sensations trickling between his fingers and her skin. He twisted one hand to encompass her whole oesophagus, and pointed an accusing finger at her face. She clasped her own hands around his wrist that led to her throat, but struggled for grip against something slimy, gristly. Through the popping sensation in her eyes she could see nothing but bare bone and sinew; the wet sensation that she had felt was his skin falling from his fingers, his hands.

"You left me." Chris groaned and gurgled, "You deserted me. You never came to look for me."

Claire could barely focus her vision as her oxygen levels began to plummet, her head swam and her consciousness wavered.

"I travelled the Earth for you, but not you for me." His voice became more and more gurgled and distorted with each word, and Claire tried to raise an arm, to touch his hair that stuck to his skull by mangled, rotting flesh. Her neck flamed hotter as he twisted harder, and her eyes went wide. Her fingers stiffened as she tried to gasp for one last ounce of air, but Chris drew it from her with skeletal digits.

"Pathetic. After everything I sacrificed for you. I have no sister."

She bolted upright and reached for her throat in a frenzied panic, coughing and gasping as tears flowed freely from her eyes. Her chest rapidly rose and sank, it burned her lungs like boiling, billowing steam being pressured inside her torso, and she quickly looked up at her brother on the other couch through damp eyes.

She creased her face and cried harder.

She had endured many dreams and nightmares of him, but never of him attacking her, never of him accusing her, and certainly never of him rotting away before her eyes. God, he didn't really blame her for anything, did he? No, surely not, not with his memories being shot to high hell.

She stood up shakily and approached him; she cared not for waking him, but she needed to touch his face, touch his skin, she needed to make sure that he was still whole, still human. She cupped his sleeping face with both hands and delicately alternated her thumbs on his stubble, barely disturbing the dermis. He was still here, he was…IS…still human. As jokingly superhuman as she had always considered her big brother to be, he was human and very, VERY alive. She cried harder still, battling the images of his decaying self, valiantly thrusting them back through the fortifications that still stood tall in her mind, though the mortar had chipped away over time, the drawbridge rusted and barely functional anymore. It was more like an abandoned fort, long devoid of strength.

She kissed him on his forehead, his nose, she even kissed him on the mouth. It wasn't uncomfortable or weird for her; pecking each other on the lips as a gesture of greeting or farewell had been commonplace between them for decades. There was no more to it than that and no one had ever questioned it, save for one jerk in BSAA who verbally berated Chris for showing such quaint levels of affection to his little sister at a staff Christmas do. Needless to say, Chris promptly shut down that rumour mill that this jerk had maliciously created after that party, with the aim to undermine and jeopardise Chris' position in BSAA, and support for the siblings very quickly mounted high against this jackass. He never questioned anyone's affection again, not least because he was found to be in breach of the NGO's rules and was swiftly discharged for his behaviour.

She observed her brother's slumbering face with a weak smile, tears still silently rolling down her cheeks as she rested her palms on his broad shoulders. The shoulders he had literally and metaphorically carried her on for much of their lives. She kissed him again on the lips before sliding down, resting her head on his lap. She cupped his hand with her own and closed her fingers around his, offering a silent prayer to anything, praying that he still retained memories of their lives, their siblinghood. It's in there somewhere…it has to be…

She gasped awake again, and flinched back at hands on her shoulders, but was soon settled by Chris' voice.

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't want to wake you, but I er…" he cleared his throat, "I think I need to be in bed to sleep, ideally."

Claire rubbed the tight feeling on her eyelids and nodded, yawning.

"Sorry, I should've just sorted you out earlier." Claire said as she got up and walked to his wheelchair.

"I mean if you weren't my sister, I'd let you sort me out anytime." Chris giggled, but Claire wasn't amused by his comment.

"Wow, Chris. Seriously?" She growled. She violently pushed his wheelchair to his side and applied the brake.

"Sorry, Claire, that was quite inappropriate of me."

"It was very inappropriate. Don't do it again." Claire clicked her tongue at him, and he offered an arm to her, gripping the armrest of the wheelchair with the other. In a joint effort he pushed himself up, his feet remaining where they were as Claire took a decent portion of his bulk onto her shoulder. He flopped down into the wheelchair and twisted his legs around onto the footrests.

"Sorry, Claire. I guess you know that I don't mean it." Chris spoke apologetically, but he felt too ashamed of his remark to look at her directly, instead only watching her hands as she undid the brake.

"Luckily." She spat.

Chris lay in his bed as Claire switched out his catheter bag, and he watched the concentration on her face as she worked. As well as concentration, he could see that slight grimace as she lifted up his partially full bag of piss.

"Sorry." He mumbled to her. Her eyes flicked briefly to him, but she didn't respond to his apology. It figured, he thought. She had already responded to one apology tonight, there was no need for her to carry on answering to his stupid pleas of forgiveness. He watched her movements, watched that tell tale sign of her shrugging her shoulders in and keeping them there, like she always did when-wait…like she always did? Chris stared at her, his lips parted, but recomposed himself.

"You don't have to do this, Claire." Chris said softly. Claire shook her head.

"No…no I feel…biologically obliged to be here, Chris."

"You're not. Believe me." Chris scoffed and lifted a hand, gesturing to the medical equipment stacked to the side of the bed. "You could've ran from this and I wouldn't have known better." Claire flinched, no doubt triggered by the thought of abandoning him, and she placed the bag into a plastic container before she checked the fresh bag again, double checking that she had attached it correctly. "You could've bailed out and I'd be none the wiser, and if you did, then I wouldn't have blamed you. Likewise, I could've shut you out."

Claire shot her eyes to his, and Chris pursed his lips at her shocked expression. He continued, even after she turned her gaze away.

"But I didn't. I didn't shut you out because in here," he prodded his chest, "in my heart I know that I don't want to discard you like garbage just because I have no recollection. I know deep down that we have a connection, I don't know how, but I just feel it. And Claire?"

She turned to look at him, but she averted her eyes elsewhere. He held a hand out, and for several seconds she stared at it, unmoving. He wiggled his fingers, enticing her to grasp them, and she hesitantly but lightly accepted.

"Thank you. I greatly appreciate the sacrifices that you're choosing to make for me. Like I said, you really didn't have to."

At that moment (and Chris knew she had been fighting it off) Claire burst into tears. He said nothing, and simply tugged lightly at her hand. She did not fight the direction of travel, and slowly slumped forward into his chest. He still held her hand, and wrapped his free arm around her.

"Just know that every ounce of your efforts means so much to me, Claire." Chris kissed the top of her head sweetly, and mumbled into her hair. "If our relationship before all of this was this close, then I want to make an extra effort to regain it all."

Claire continued to sob into his shirt, constantly flicking her tongue to catch her tears, and after some time she lifted her head.

"I don't have the conscience to run from anyone in need, certainly not my own brother."

Chris blinked softly and smiled. Yeah, she always did have a kind heart for anyone who deserved it. Wait…Di-did he…?

"You have a kind heart, Claire." Chris nodded, and he kissed her forehead before gently pushing her away from him. "Now go to bed, get some sleep. This day has been a lot rougher for you than for me."

Claire nodded too, brushing her wrist along her cheek and she turned, still gripping his hand. He felt her fingers brush along his as she stepped from his reach, and she stopped in the open doorway. He knew that thoughts were racing through her mind, but he didn't push for explanations. She rubbed her foot on the carpet, but stared off into nothing.

"Love you." she mumbled. Chris smiled again, though of course she wasn't looking at him.

"I know, and I love you too, Claire-Bear."

He saw Claire's eyes grow wider, and she stopped short of looking directly at him. With nothing less than a sobbing cough in her throat, she closed the door behind her. Chris still held his smile.

Yeah. She was his little Claire-Bear sister.

He unslotted the controls for the bed from its plastic holster, and slowly reclined to a comfortable position.

Just a thing to say that there maybe be bigger gaps of time between chapters for a bit. There are some things that I need to do IRL. Same applies for Heaven For Everyone.

Don't worry, I won't be dropping this for six months again!