Authors Notes: This is my first resi fan fic, so please be kind, and dates/times may be slightly inaccurate.. :) Also, I'm not demented, I was just born that way... (Story is told from Chris's perspective) C/J, a little C/L later on… maybe…

I wasn't crazy, at least a year ago. Back then I was sane, and lead an ordinary life. Plain, dull, perhaps uninteresting, but it was life, and I got on with it. Even working with S.T.A.R.S could became tedious as we never really got to do anything, just sit round on our asses all day eating donuts like all good cops do, right? At that point the world seemed too slow, too comfortable, too sure of what was coming. Like me. I thought I could tell if anything was coming. I fell into that too safe security that lulls you into sleep and wakes you when you're not ready. Despite myself, I wasn't ready, and even after it all, I don't think that I'm ready now.

So what happened. To start with, it wasn't even the mansion incident, or Racoon City, it was meeting her. I know what you're thinking, love at first sight and all that crap, red hearts and fluffy bunnies all dancing round my vision whenever I looked at her. It wasn't that extreme, at least not at first, but then I never did believe in love at first sight. She was my security, I've worked that out now. My lock and key and safe all wrapped into one. My shot at a big house, with dogs and kids, and a life of normality. A life with her.

I suppose that's a childish view, to be happy. But I loved her, and for as much as my own pathetic little attempt at making a normal life was worth I wanted to be with her. Who would've thought it. The great Chris Redfield retiring at the age of 25, ready to settle down and live out the rest of his life without the prospect of being able to shoot someone everyday. Before I met her that idea would've seemed terrifying, but now, I would give anything to have that opportunity in front of me again. It sounds so B movie, so daytime TV, but I didn't really realise what I had until I lost it. And I lost so much...

Now we're back to the first point, my loss. This loss, this thing that's missing, this hole in my heart, it didn't just go all at once, instead choosing to slip away bit by bit each and every day from the very day it all started.

The day it started... July 24th 1998. 07/24/98. The numbers forever etched into my mind to mark the date in which my life took a downward spiral.

It started off like any other day; the buzz of the alarm, sunlight filtering through the window, and the warm press of skin as my sleeping lover rolled onto her side, completely oblivious to the outside world. Not knowing that she was mine. It's strange to say that your world is a single person, and I remember as a teenager reading soppy romance poems and wanting to puke at the prospect. How could one person mean so much to someone that you couldn't eat or sleep or live without them? Surely a loss couldn't affect someone so much that they couldn't go on living?...

That was then, and I've changed. I didn't want to change though. I didn't want to have that kind of dependency on another person just to carry on living. It didn't seem right. I thought it would've been an instant thing, a flash that suddenly changes your viewpoint forever. A matter of seconds.

So I prepared myself for it, building up a special barrier specifically designed to stop that flash from ever occurring. The thing was, that's all I was expecting, something that would come and go in a second. Something I could just disregard and be all the better for it. I wasn't expecting anything permanent. Anything real.

I guess that's what I thought love was. A second of realisation, of clarity, I didn't think it'd be permanent thing. That's what got me, hooked me, all the permanent things, the little things.

Like when she woke up next to me every morning and without fail hit the snooze button for an extra five minutes, or at breakfast when she would start to make one thing and then change her mind, or when she left her clothes all over the bedroom floor, or hid my cigarettes…

I could go on, but the list would eternal, cause it was all those little everyday things that you don't notice, that you don't care about, that become a part of your life too. And when they're gone, it's like a piece of you has been cut away and spat out, thrown to the leeches and never to be seen again. If it's stuff like that you miss, then it's gotta be love. And I love her. I loved her. I've gotta keep remembering that…

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. Where was I? Ah, July 24th, how I remember that day. How I wish I didn't.