Chapter 11: Extrication
"Swept aside, swept away, swept along…sweeping, steeping, stopping…she couldn't hold on."
New York, March
There was nothing quite like the salt of the sea air on your waiting skin. It was a mouthful of delight. It freed the flesh and the lungs and the soul. She didn't like to be dramatic about it but it made her feel wondrous to stand on the bow of such a beautiful boat and appreciate the ocean before her.
The Nemesis cruised to dock and waited, patiently, as Chris leapt ashore to tie her down. She was his pride and joy. His first purchase after Raccoon City. His first investment. And every inch of her had been done by him. If she'd come from his loins, she couldn't have mattered more.
He helped Ada off the deck and they started up the pier toward land. It was his one release, his one weakness, the sea…her siren song tempted him, taunted him, called to him. He knew the promise of her embrace as if she were a lover. Sometimes the separation from her was nearly painful. He knew he could have been no more than a fisherman and died a happy man.
And he felt her absence now as they moved toward his truck.
Duty called, it seemed, and it wouldn't wait for him to feel the continuous sting of love denied. Part of him wanted to turn and wave, bidding adieu to the only mistress that had ever really laid claim to his soul.
At the truck, he backed Ada up against the door. The cold metal taunted her even through her warm sweater and coat. Open eyed, they kissed, tasting the salt of the sea on each other's lips. It seemed he was wrong again. There was something that tasted better then sea air. It was sea air on the lips of Ada Wong.
She brushed a hand over his beard. It was carefully maintained and very, very sexy. The fullness of it excited her. He kissed her palm and turned his head into the touch. Such a small thing and so surprising to still feel it like a caress on places so much softer.
And still, still…the sadness in him. So deep and wide. So terrible. She wondered if he'd ever share it, ever sacrifice it, ever over come it. What did you lose? She wondered. And how can we find it again?
Over dinner, in the soft glow of the candle light, she asked him, "Will you tell me…about it?"
And she felt the sadness again and the grief. And the horror. And linked her hand to his atop the table.
The words were slow at first and halting. He spoke of her, but not her, and the betrayal. He mentioned the loss of his team, men he'd considered friends, men he'd led to their deaths. He spoke of the moment of watching them die, screaming. He spoke of her, her doppelganger Carla, and the treachery. The grief that had followed, the drinking, the drugs.
She offered no judgement, no condemnation. She only sat, and listened.
He spoke of Piers, the boy who'd emulated him, the boy who'd followed him to his near demise. He spoke of his connection to Claire and how it humbled even as it scared the boy who wanted to save his sister from the rejection that came with loving "a broken man."
Did he see himself as broken?
It was a curious thing, as she'd never met a man less broken. He was stitched together in places, this was true. He was a patchwork of feelings, of pain and survival, and fight. FIGHT. He was fight. He simply didn't know how to give up. It wasn't in his bones.
That change, the fight, the loss that had come with his bad decisions, his mistakes - they haunted him. He spoke of Jill and the journey to find her. He spoke of the monsters and the mutilations. He spoke of Raccoon City and the mansion. He spoke of Wesker. And the rage was so fine, so white hot, so real. She wondered if he'd ever leave it behind.
He spoke of the sea. The promise of her. The beauty. And the peace.
He spoke of peace the way some men would speak of a lover. It was something he coveted, hungered for, something he craved. He wanted only peace now. And knew it was not to be. Not for him. He was a warrior, a hero, and the hero didn't get peace. The hero only found release in death.
And Ada could see his death in his eyes. Part of him had died in Edonia. It had died first in Raccoon City. It had come back stronger and sharper, better and faster. But Edonia...his men...and the mess of the mission he'd led in China...that part was still on life support. It was still dying. The part that had believed that through it all, under everything, good always wins. It had made him stronger, faster, tougher, meaner…and killed something of the man he'd been. There were no rainbows here, no starry skies, no secret happy endings. There was only revenge and vengeance and justice.
And Chris Redfield saw himself as an instrument of that justice.
Later, they lay in bed, her head on his chest, his fingers stroking carelessly though her hair.
Such a complex man. Had she really stood there the first time they'd met and judged him as simple? Just another meathead, a jock, an idiot with a gun and no brains.
She was rarely so wrong in her judgement. It was the first time she realized she wanted to give him...something. Something. For what he'd given her so freely. She wanted to give him, just a little, of the truth.
So, she did something she'd never done with a man, she opened her mouth and started to tell him her own story.
Her soft voice startled him a little as they'd been lying together in such peace. When he realized what she was doing, he went soft in her arms like she'd stroked him and soothed him.
This is what truth did, she thought, it bonded you. And her honesty was healing him as she spoke, "...I was born Jingmei Zhao. To a family that already had a daughter. To my father...I was never going to be more than a burden..."
Each word, it eased from her mouth like a story she told about another. It was easier than she'd thought to speak of it. Easier, because she knew there was no judgement here, from him. He was a good man. A good man without any designs on her past.
Just a man that had offered a spy a chance to be something better.
So she gave him her truth...and let him be the first person to ever begin to know...Ada Wong.
The little girl abandoned in the street. The Chinese equivalent of one more useless daughter. She'd learned to grift, to steal, she'd lived out of trash cans and slept in gutters.
The dice games were popular places to find prey. She never went to bed hungry. She always found a way to put some food in her belly.
A man had come when she was about ten. A faceless man. A blonde man with sunglasses that reflected the world. And she'd been taken away.
There was training, training, training. They'd tested and tortured and molded her. She'd been nothing more than another weapon. And she'd emerged as someone else, someone they could use to further their own interests.
She'd become Ada Wong.
She set about gathering all the wealth and notoriety she could handle. She'd bled for it, lied for it, fought for it. She knew it would lead to eventually destroying the man who'd made her. She knew it would end in fire and blood. And she had learned patience and cultivated her own sense of time.
He rolled a little, settled himself between her legs, stacked his hands on the smoothness of her belly, laid his chin atop those hands and watched her face. She stroked his hair as she spoke, almost dispassionately, as if telling the tale of someone else.
She told him of some of the things she'd done. Those she'd betrayed, those she'd left behind. She told of betrayal and missions completed at the great cost of her own dignity. She spoke of proving herself, of proving she needed no one, nothing, and would never regret any of it.
"None of it?"
"No. Regret implies I'd change it. And I wouldn't. It's me. Good and bad."
He rolled onto his back and she sat up, his head now in her lap. She leaned over him and pressed her mouth to his, upside down.
"Good or bad," He said with a smile, "Here we are."
"Here we are."
"I wouldn't change any of it either, Ada. How could I? It all brought me to you."
She pressed her forehead to his and closed her eyes. Didn't he understand? Didn't he see what this was? What it had to be? This had to be the end. She'd told him about herself, she'd told him the truth. It was her parting gift to him.
Had to be. Because she'd broken her own rules. She was so in love with him. She was so desperately in love with him. And he was so hurt, so wounded, so lost. He needed a woman that could help him, heal him, hold him at night and promise to fight beside him. He needed a wife, a partner, a mother to his children.
And she would never be any of those things.
She thought, maybe deep down, he'd always known that.
One tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and slid down to spill onto his cheek. He shifted, rolled, cupped her face in his hands.
"Ada…" He sounded so kind, so loving, "Ada…I didn't mean to make you cry." His face was tortured. He hated hurting her.
Yes...a good man.
She shook her head, swiped away that one tiny tear. "You asked me once to tell you the truth, I'm going to ask you now to do the same."
"Alright."
"Tell me you don't children…tell me you don't want a home, family," She met his eyes and they were wide in the moonlight, "Tell me that…and I will stay here with you, in this apartment…forever. Until we burn each other up and out. Until we can't stand each other anymore. Until we are old and gray and tired."
"Ada…I'm in love with you." Oh, there it was. There it was like a prayer. Or a band-aid on a bullet wound.
And it hurt her heart to hear him say it. "I know that. I know it. And I hate myself for letting it happen. I do. But you have to say it, Chris. You have to say it out loud, now. For both of us. Because I think we both need to know the truth. I think we've been doing this thing, with us, on a bubble. And it needs to burst. It has to burst. Because I can't give you any of that. I won't. It's not who I am. And I don't think you can live with that. Not forever."
"There's no forever, Ada. There's only now. This moment. Right here. Haven't you been listening? There's no home for me, no family. There's only now."
"You deserve a woman that can give you everything."
He pulled her to him, pressed his mouth to hers. "Ada, haven't you figured it out yet? You've given me everything. And it doesn't have to have a picket fence on it. It doesn't need kids and car pools and Sunday dinners. Because it has you in it. And that's more than some people find in a life time."
She looked at him sadly, so sadly. "You should have all those things."
"I should have a twelve inch dick and be ten years younger too. Sometimes we play the hand we're dealt. I can't miss what I don't have. But I can miss what I've got. Don't try to leave me again, Ada. Because I will just come after you. And I will bring you back here, again and again, until you are too tired to run anymore."
"I never get tired of running."
"Then maybe I'll run with you. And we'll see where the road ends together."
They spilled back together on the smooth sheets. Her arms and legs slid around him. His mouth pressed to her chest, between her breasts, and his ear took its place.
They lay together in the quiet now, holding on.
And there was no more pain between them.
She waited until he was sleeping peacefully. She rolled to her feet in the dark, effortless, easily - like a cat. She padded to the bathroom and flipped on the light.
It was harsh on her smooth featured face. The dark circles beneath her eyes alarmed her. She was so careful to keep her faceless wrinkle free and unlined. She couldn't stop time from marching across her face, not completely, no matter how hard she tried.
She had utter control on her life a few months ago. From her whims to her wiles to her willingness to succumb and succeed, she'd had complete control.
She'd lost it somehow, somewhere, to a man with as much class as a foam finger at football game. It was insanity.
It was unheard of. It was an anomaly, entirely. It made no sense and by existing irrevocably eradicated the very nature of her world.
An anomaly...
Her hand shifted and settled on her abdomen. An anomaly. Something that shouldn't exist.
Ada stared at the tiny pink line. It didn't fit in the perfect emptiness where it had appeared.
It was, as well, an anomaly. A line where there should be none.
She stared at her face in the mirror...and kept her hand on her belly.
It was the sound, in the middle of the night, that woke them. It was a creepy sound, a continuous sound. It was the sound of something and someone inside his apartment.
He rolled, in loose sweat pants, and pulled the Glock that was strapped to the back of his head board. He noticed the bed was empty and Ada was gone. Where? Somewhere. Honestly he couldn't think of a better person to have here with him in a moment like this.
The door to the bedroom was kicked in, fast and hard. The mattress of his bed exploded in goose down and feathers as automatic gun fire obliterated it. The gun men figured out it was empty a second too late. He turned, lifted the weapon to fire again, and his face exploded in a spray of blood and bone.
From the living room, a voice came, "Mr. Redfield…I see you haven't lost your touch. Put the gun down and come out here please."
"Sure," Chris called back, his voice thick with sarcasm, "I'll put my hands up and come on out. Maybe you can cut me in half when I get to the doorway."
"I apologize for that. Clearly that was not well done. But I wanted to make sure you were still up to the task."
"What task?"
"I have a maze…it needs a rat. You'll do nicely."
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Come out and I will show you."
"I'll pass thanks. Why don't you come on in here and we'll talk about it?"
"I think not. But the longer you stay in there, the more the people I will shoot in the head. You have ten seconds to come out."
Chris hesitated and listened. And heard the scared sounds of struggle. Ada? He wanted to call out but didn't dare. But the voice was familiar. It was the night security guard from the lobby, Amanda. Where was Stu? Likely already dead.
"I'm coming out. I'm coming."
He came into the doorway to find Amanda kneeling on the ground with guns pointed at her. Her hands were behind her head but she looked otherwise unharmed.
"Amanda…are you alright?"
"Yes. I'm alright. I'm sorry Mr. Redfield. They shot Stu. And then.."
"It's ok. I'm here now."
"Eight seconds, impressive." The voice was female? It was so hard to place. The mask obscured any hope of guessing gender. "Unarmed, you're still not beaten. Get down on your face please. Let's not make this difficult."
"You know, you could have just said please. You didn't have to hurt anyone else."
"Always the hero. People are canon fodder. They are useless. And pathetic. Their death means nothing." To prove the point, the masked intruder put their gun to the back of Amanda's head.
"Damnit! I surrendered!"
Amanda gave him big, scared, pleading eyes. "Oh please don't! Please!"
"Yes you did. But it's now been eleven seconds." And the front of Amanda's forehead exploded, spraying the mahogany floor with blood like a burst water balloon.
He heard the second gun, felt the bullet as it went into his chest. And still couldn't believe it. His hand clutched at it, he stared at the red that welled there bright and thick. He went to his knees on the floor.
"Don't worry. It won't kill you. It was just because I hate waiting. Take him, bind him, put him in D-Block." The voice changed as the mask was lifted and the face floated above him.
With little more than a moment to be surprise, he tried to place it, and memory struck just before he went down like a felled tree.
And someone, quite simply, turned off the lights.
Sherry was warm against him as they slept. The sheets were like butter on her skin. She admitted that his penchant for the finer things was going to please her. She liked the rich fabrics, the soft and glorious feel of hand spun cotton and silk.
She rolled toward him as she roused, just a little, and touched Leon's sleeping face.
God her heart was going to burst. She felt the love of him like an arrow in her gut. It pierced from chest to groin to foot. His eyes fluttered open and met hers.
"Hi."
"Hi," She answered, in the spill of moonlight, "I can't believe you're here. I can't believe I am."
He lifted a hand, touched her hair. "Took me long enough."
"Better late than never." She moved into him and he rolled her beneath him. The kiss was smooth now, soft, deep. She lifted her arms to slide them around his back.
The sky light exploded, showering them in glass like tiny, horrible daggers. He kept her beneath him to protect her. He jerked, jerked again.
Sherry screamed as he collapsed atop her. Panic turned to fear and horror. Was he dead? Had they killed him?
A masked face loomed over his unconscious body.
"Ms. Birkin…what a surprise. And a delight. I had no idea I'd find you here as well. Sorry for that. But he's a bit of a difficult beast to catch. I had to be swift with acquiring him." The masked figure pointed the gun in their hand at her. "It seems it's two for one night."
She couldn't even get her mouth open to scream before he shot her. She felt it in the side of her neck. Bullet? No. No.
Tranq.
Her vision wavered. She clung to the man atop her when they tried to take him away.
"Don't worry," Promised the voice, "You'll see each other again…very, very soon."
And the darkness dragged her under.
The dark house was a comfort.
Claire eased out of bed when she found it empty.
A small light beside the bed illuminated the note.
Claire -
I was feeling brave. I ran out to get milk...alone. All by myself.
Yikes.
-P
Her heart. It was capable of getting bigger after all. A HUGE STEP for him. Alone. He'd driven out in public alone. Of course, it was the middle of the night. He was likely to see next to no one out there at this time...but it was a STEP.
And a big one for a man so broken months before.
Claire shifted and flicked off the light. Her stomach was queasy again. It happened all the time now. Honestly, she should just get used to it.
She rose from the bed naked and moved into the hallway to go to the bathroom and wash her face.
She was three steps there when the flashlight bobbled in her eyes.
"...well...this IS a night of surprises...Ms. Redfield...I'm afraid your picture didn't do you...justice..."
The light bobbled over her naked body lewdly. The voice was British and snooty. She felt nothing hearing it. Fear wasn't something she entertained anymore. Clearly, this asshole didn't realize who he was dealing with.
"Take a picture, you nasty perv, it'll last longer."
Laughter and the sound of a gun cocking.
"Your snarky humor is legendary as well it seems...all though clearly the stories never mentioend the legendary nature of your tits as well. Beautiful." And the pervy hand cupped one, shaping it.
Claire gave the masked face dead eyes.
The cupping hand crushed, drawing a sound of pain from her as she recoiled.
"There you are...underneath all that bravado. There you are indeed. We'll see how you fight, Ms. Redfield, when everything you love dies before you. We'll see indeed."
Claire slapped his hand and he answered the move with a backhand to her face that threw blood from her mouth in beads. But that was ok. Better hitting than groping. She could take the hitting.
She gave him a dirty look from her hooded eyes. The flashlight made everything seem surreal in the dark.
"You can't scare me, you know, if you heard stories about me? I don't scare."
"I've heard. I've heard them all...you know what else I've heard?" He leaned close to her. The flashlight illuminated the red lenses on his ventilator mask. "You'll do anything for the people you love. Will you...Claire? Will you..." His hand lowered and touched her mound. Her teeth barred like a tiger. But she held still. "...DO anything for them?"
She shifted closed to him. Her mouth brushed his mask as she spoke. "Keep touching me, you stupid fuck. Keep playing the rapist. You wanna see how tough I am? Put the gun down and take your chances."
They stood in the dark while he stroked her body lazily. She didn't stop him. She didn't do anything but wait. She kept her hands protectively over her belly while he touched her.
And her mouth turned up in a sneer. "You can do anything you want to me, you little bastard, it won't make a difference. Eventually? This story ends with you dead. That's what happens to the bad guys...they die."
"Do they?" He jammed the gun in her breast, hard, and stole her breath, "Or maybe this story ends like Raccoon City...with all the good guys dead or running for their lives."
She couldn't do anything but watch as the gun whipped her across the face.
Post Note:
Thank you to everyone reading this. I'm getting a kick out of it. Xaori - HAHA. I laugh so hard at your reviews. In an unfair world - Chris Redfield always wears pants. HAHAHAHA. *dies*