Chapter 19: the Choices We Make

"All those little things you tell me,

Could bear enough to show me,

That we're gonna make it through the time.

I found out in the middle of a heartbeat,

And I know that I'm doin' right…"

Finding a space under a small maple tree, Ada pulled the Jaguar to a stop and killed the engine. Gazing up at the hospital, Claire made no move to get out of the car. "Why are we here?" she demanded.

"No reason," Ada quipped, stepping out of the car and hiking her purse over one shoulder. "Come on, Claire," she said, sensing the younger woman's hesitation. "You're perfectly safe with me, I promise. You heard Birkin. Wesker would tear my guts out if you got hurt on my watch. We're just going to see something."

Frowning, Claire did not like the sound of this at all. The hospital's reception area looked more like the lobby of a Fortune 500 company, with leather waiting chairs, potted banana trees, and four different kinds of marble lending themselves to a vaguely tropical ambiance. Claire's new boots clacked floor as Ada went up to the main desk. The receptionist greeted her with a pleasant smile.

"Bonsoir," she said. "Can I help you?"

As the women talked, Claire let her eyes travel over the outdated National Geographic's and fashion magazines, wondering what on earth Ada wanted her to see. This whole thing stank of a ploy.

"Here. Put this on," said Ada, handing her a laminated visitor's pass. Claire clipped it to her sweater and followed the Asian woman into the elevator, noticing that the receptionist followed them with her eyes, an undisguised look of interest visible on her face. Claire shifted nervously. It was the same stare she'd received at Wesker's party.

She didn't know how many floors they traveled up, but it felt like a lot. When the elevator doors swished open again, Claire found herself facing a long skywalk between two partitions of the building. Going to the window and looking down, Claire saw a large open courtyard constructed in the heart of the building. It was filled with small trees and flowers, even a fountain, all of it surrounding a central support tower. Seeing that the hospital was built around the courtyard in sections, like the segments of an orange, Claire had a feeling that if she'd been able to view the building from above, its layout would perfectly matched the Maltese cross of Umbrella.

"Pretty impressive," said Claire, surprising herself by how much she meant it.

"It should be. We're in the largest Umbrella-owned hospital in the world," said Ada, coming up beside her. "It's got the best doctors, the best patient care, the best of everything money can buy."

"Uh-huh. So does Wesker pay you to be his walking infomercial?" Claire sniped, her sarcasm coming back full swing.

"Sometimes," said Ada, flashing a winning smile. They continued down the corridor, past a small nurse's station where a petite brunette was watching television. A voice speaking in rapid-fire French floated out of the speakers. The nurse glanced up just long enough to read the visitor's passes clipped to their shirts, then went back to her soap opera.

At the end of the hall, Ada stopped at room 303. "Okay, Claire," she said in an undertone, as if not wanting to be overheard. "Just so you're not hanging out on a line, the girl we're going to see was born with something called cystic fibrosis. It's—"

"I know what it is," said Claire sharply. "Why on earth do I have to see this?"

"Just because," said Ada, opening the door and ushering her into the room. A large stack of books and magazines was on the table, and a soft blue comforter was folded at the foot of the bed. There were a lot of flowers and gift baskets on the nightstand, many of them tethering balloons with Get Well Soon written across them in bold, colorful letters. Unsure what she was supposed to do, Claire's attention was drawn to a man sitting at the table. He was tall and angular, with small tortoiseshell glasses and sandy hair gone grey at the temples.

"Hello," he said, getting up from his game of solitaire. Confusion showed plainly on his features. "I'm sorry, but is there something I forgot to do? My visitor's pass is right here." He paused, looking worried. "Is this about Beth?"

"In a way Mr. Morgan," said Ada, reaching out to shake the man's hand. "I'm Ada, and this is Dr. Claire Redfield."

Claire hastily put her hand out to shake, wondering why she was being introduced like this. "We just came by to check up on your daughter's progress," Ada continued, but the man seemed as though he was barely listening.

"Claire Redfield?" he whispered, staring at her. His eyes were vivid cornflower blue, and Claire felt an eerie pang of recognition. She struggled to put a finger on why this man felt so familiar. "The Claire Redfield?"

"Uh, yeah. I suppose so." Claire laughed nervously.

Mr. Morgan swallowed, forcibly composing himself. "I'm honored to meet you, Miss Redfield. You have no idea how grateful I am for what you've done for my daughter. Thank you." He gripped her hand between his own, hard enough for her to feel the calluses on his palm. "Thank you."

"Y… you're welcome," Claire stammered, his unadulterated happiness striking the pit of her stomach. Utterly bewildered, she tried to come up with a better response, but what was she supposed to say to that? She'd never seen this man in her life, let alone his daughter. Claire shot a helpless look at Ada. If she didn't know any better, she'd have sworn that these people liked putting her on the spot just to watch her squirm.

"So, uh, how are things with… with Beth?" Claire fumbled, improvising. When she got out of here, she was going to deck Ada and then run her over with the Jaguar. Several times. She listened carefully to what Mr. Morgan had to say, trying to figure out what was really going on, when she heard several voices out in the hall, a man and a woman. A moment later, the door opened and two people came into the room. Claire was so startled she nearly took a step back.

Oh, God. Sherry?

No, not Sherry – the girl was older and taller, and her face wasn't as delicate – but the resemblance was uncanny: the same silky blond hair (only this girl worn it cropped short, as though it'd only recently grown back) and the same eerie blue eyes. Claire's gaze jerked back to Mr. Morgan. They're his eyes, too, she realized, stunned. Now that they were both in the same room, she could see the family resemblance.

"Oh, hi." Beth Morgan sounded a little surprised to find so many people in her room. She was thin and pale, and obviously recovering from an illness, but her eyes were full of life, gleaming with the same child-like passion Claire had gotten used to seeing from Sherry. "Dad?" she questioned, looking at her father for an explanation.

"Beth, this is Ada and Dr. Redfield. They've come to see how you're doing," said Mr. Morgan. "Dr. Redfield, this is my daughter and her husband, Travis."

Beth's eyes knifed to Claire the same way her father's had done. Travis put his hand out for Claire to shake. "Pleased to meet you, Doctor," he said earnestly. He was built like a professional athlete, holding Beth around the shoulders as though she were made of glass. The gesture was shockingly protective, and Claire's heart chimed with an eerie resonance. "Same here," she said, shaking his hand.

Mr. Morgan pulled out a chair. "Let's sit down, shall we? Can I get anyone some coffee?"

They sat at the small plastic table, pushing the books out of the way. Ada started the conversation with the practiced ease of a diplomat, and Claire felt as though she could hate the woman for it. Mr. Morgan opened the window and brought everyone coffee from the vending machine down the hall. The papery curtains flapped in the breeze, stirring up tiny motes of dust that floated in the sunlight. Claire thought she could smell something warm and sweet.

"When Beth was born, they told us she'd only live until she was eighteen," said Mr. Morgan, his voice husky. Claire tried her best not to cringe. She took a sip of her coffee. It was lukewarm and bitter. "Now she's twenty one and look at her, as beautiful as ever and married, too," Mr. Morgan continued, smiling with agonizing fondness.

"Dad," Beth whined in a chiding tenor. "I met Travis two years ago," she explained to Claire. "I told him I… well, he knew I wasn't going to be around forever, but he still wanting to marry me, even though his mother thought he was an idiot. He promised me that we'd spend whatever time I had left together, so we bought a house and got a dog and…" Beth cleared her throat, blushing faintly. The topic didn't need elaboration.

"I felt so lucky that I got to experience being married before… you know," she said. "And then my Uncle William called and told us about a new serum he'd been working on, the one that you made. He said it was only experimental, but…"

"But we decided to take the risk," said Mr. Morgan, nursing his coffee. "By then, she was on dialysis and everything."

Beth grimaced. "Dad made the doctors wake me up so they could ask me if I wanted to try out the new medicine, and I said yes." She gazed at Claire, her eyes shining. "Then I started getting better. A few weeks later, I could breathe without the machines. They told me that the serum was actually fixing my lungs, not just covering up the symptoms like my old medicine did."

After a moment's hesitation, Beth reached across the table and held Claire's hand, held it as though it meant everything. "Look, I… I don't even know how I'm supposed to thank you, but you gave me my life back. I thought I was going to die, so I promise you I'm going to treasure every second you gave me." She blinked back tears. "Travis wanted to marry me even knowing I was going to leave him in a few years, and now…" Beth's hand unconsciously moved to her belly. "Thank you. I can't tell you much that means to me."

"To both of us," Travis added quietly.

Claire wanted to cry. Her heart felt like a wounded bird frantically beating its wings against her ribs. All at once, things became painfully clear. Morgan must have been Annette Birkin's maiden name, so Beth was Birkin's niece from his wife's side. That's why she and her father had such an eerie resemblance to Sherry. They were family, after all. And knowing that his niece was dying, Birkin had offered her Wesker's hybrid serum. That's why Beth's lungs were healing. That's why she was getting stronger. Claire twisted her hands in her lap, struggling to find something, anything that was wrong with what she was being told.

The hospital was owned by Umbrella, so it stood to reason that several of Beth's attending doctors knew exactly what they were giving the girl and what could go wrong if the T-Virus went volatile. Claire's gaze moved over the IV pole next to the nightstand and wasn't surprised to see that the fluid inside the reservoir had a slight green hue. Not enough to stop the process, but just enough to keep it in check. Claire wouldn't have been surprised if the entire facility was privy to Umbrella's true nature, or if the lazy rent-a-cops eating donuts in the downstairs break room were actually trained mercenaries.

Claire swallowed a the lump in her throat, thinking about what Wesker had said to her during the party, about how the Nightwish serum posed very little risk if used in a controlled, professional environment. His words were an unrelenting echo inside her head. Power is neither good nor evil, and if that power could be harnessed to save lives, wouldn't you want that?

Looking at Beth, a tight ball of pain formed inside Claire's chest. "Oh, Beth," she choked, standing and throwing her arms around the other woman. "I'm so happy for you! I really am."

Beth looked staggered by the unexpected display of emotion, especially coming from a complete stranger, but she put her arms around Claire and hugged her back, her teeth sunk into her lower lip to keep it from quivering. Smiling to herself, Ada leaned back in her chair as Mr. Morgan furtively wiped his eyes under the pretense of adjusting his glasses. From outside the window came the soft tinkling of chimes, perhaps from a restaurant across the street, or perhaps from the garden that the room overlooked.

Later, Claire heard them again as she crossed the parking lot of St. Michel's and sat on a bench underneath a red sugar maple, the sunlight casting dappled shadows on her face. Claire slumped against the weather-beaten wood, her brain sagging under the awesome weight of what she'd learned. From somewhere in the distance, she heard the wail of a police car, its discordant two-tone siren momentarily splitting the air like a knife. On the street, dead leaves and shiny cellophane wrappers went spinning away in a sudden breeze. Claire felt Ada sit down beside her, the woman's exotic perfume washing over her in a pleasant rush, along with something else, the sugary tang of ice cream. Turning her head, Claire realized that Ada was offering her a sundae cone, no doubt purchased from the tiny bistro across the street.

Dazed, Claire took it without complaint. "He put you up to this, didn't he?" she demanded. Neither of them had to ask who he was.

"Of course," said Ada. Leaning back, she took a bite of her own ice cream. "He approached me about it about two weeks ago," she continued, " but I doubt he even remembers with what's been happening on the island."

Claire looked at her ice cream. The folded waffle cone was topped with a fluffy mound of vanilla ice cream and crushed almonds. She really didn't want it, but she began to lick it anyway, the cold treat melting on her tongue. She felt herself going back through the months since she'd been brought to Mont St. Michel. When she'd first awoken her find herself in Wesker's clutches, she'd rather have died instead of owing him her life, but all that felt like a lifetime ago.

Wesker had told her things, shown her things. All of them had been small and insignificant at the time, like gleaming shafts of light extending into a dark room, but they had built up, growing stronger and more compelling, revealing the truth in glimpses, like flash in a pan. Wesker was dangerous, charismatic, and filled with limitless ambition, as was the company he controlled, but Claire realized that her narrow view of black and white, good versus evil wasn't nearly as clear-cut as she'd once thought. There were many shades of grey in between.

Wesker wasn't a good man, he'd told her that much and she believed him, but Claire felt in the deepest part of her soul that he wasn't a bad one, either. He was cold, arrogant, domineering, and often callous, but beneath all that was a fiercely protective, passionate nature. Ultimate power was undoubtedly his primary goal, but she couldn't help but feel as though the man genuinely believed that it was his duty. She recalled their conversation about the roles of gods.

"They didn't build Rome by having meetings. They did it by destroying those who opposed them," Claire muttered, swallowing her ice cream. She wasn't quite sure if she agreed with that philosophy, but she knew Wesker would. Ada looked over at her, obviously wondering why she was talking to herself.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. Hey, quick question. How big is Umbrella really?" she glanced up at the large hospital. "I mean…"

"How much power does Wesker really have? Good question." Ada took a bite of her cone. "After Raccoon City, a lot of Umbrella's standing pretty much fell apart in America, so Wesker's been building it back up in Europe, buying out smaller corporations, establishing hospitals like this one, things like that. I won't get into the details, but he's been purchasing land all over the world, too."

"Building his own little kingdom," said Claire softly.

"Yep. Mineral rights, air space, you name it. And he's not all about hospitals, either. There's a few branches developing weapons and defense tech, all for Umbrella, of course. And before you ask, it's not for backdoor profits. Wesker runs things tighter than government black ops."

"And you're okay with that?" Claire asked, unable to help being curious.

"Are you?" Ada retorted, her eyes glinting, but Claire didn't answer. Couldn't answer.

Ada leaned back and crossed her legs at the ankles. There was a wet leaf stuck to the bottom of her shoe. "Don't repeat this, Claire," she said quietly, "but compared to what Spencer was like, Wesker's a knight in shining armor. The old man was sick in the head. He used to have adolescent boys kidnapped and imprisoned so they could be milked for a hormone needed to create Tyrants, and that's just one example of many."

Claire cringed, thinking about Steve. All he'd wanted was to escape Rockfort Island and have a pretty girl to love him. She hadn't seen very much of how Wesker ran things down in his labs, but something told her that he wouldn't do something like that. Wesker may be indifferent to the whole affair but he wasn't needlessly cruel. She knew that much from personal experience. He would secretly have these hormones siphoned off from boys who came into his hospitals for blood work or flu shots, but imprison them? Never. And was it lesser of two evils? Definitely. Acceptable? Claire wasn't sure.

Claire felt a dribble of melting ice cream splash onto her hand and she moved to lick it off. She would rather have had Umbrella disbanded and never spoken of again, but as Wesker had pointed out, knowledge was power, and the only thing able to defeat power was more power. "Why do you think he does it?" she asked Ada.

"I don't have to think. I know," the Asian woman replied. "I asked him the same thing when he took over Umbrella, and do you know what he told me? He said that every day humanity comes one step closer to self-destruction, so in his mind…"

"He's not destroying the world. He's saving it," Claire finished, echoing Wesker's exact words to her. Ada raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Exactly," she said. "I see you two have been chatting."

"Since the day I landed here," said Claire dryly. She adjusted the napkin around her cone and tried to collect her thoughts. What if Wesker's vision truly was the best thing for the world? It wasn't as if Claire was blind to the state of it; civil wars, famine, disease pandemics, depleted ozone, millions of acres of precious rainforest slashed to the ground, hundreds of birds suffocating and dying in oil spills. The list went on and on in a terrible litany of destruction.

Claire thought about the dead snakes and their venom, about her precious Nightwish rose, and about Spencer's dark legacy, the T-Virus. It could destroy people's lives in a heartbeat, or it could help them breathe again, if wielded by the proper hands. Claire really wanted to fall back on that old maxim that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but how long did it really take for that to be true? Months? Years? Centuries? Sure, Rome fell… after a thousand years of glory. Empires fell when they became corrupt, only to have a new one rise from the fertile ashes they left behind.

The breeze picked up again, warm with the last hint of summer. Claire unconsciously gripped the diamond around her throat. It felt like a talisman of her current situation, her current choice. There were so many things she didn't know about Wesker, so many things she couldn't hope to control, but did it matter? Life was an unpredictable affair. On any given day, taking her motorcycle out could result in getting crushed by a drunk driver, or loosing her balance on a turn and crashing into the guardrail. Sometimes, the danger of living on the edge was what made it fun.

You and I could be great together, dear heart, and I think you know it. Oh, yes. She knew. She finally understood what Wesker had been trying to show her during her forced stay with him. He wants Umbrella to be the bulwark of humanity, because he really believes the entire world would be a better place with a god watching over it. And he wants me to be there with him.

Finishing her ice cream, Claire wadded the sticky pink napkin into a ball, looking out across the parking lot. An idealist at heart, she couldn't care less about being a goddess, or a queen – the only power she wanted was the power to make a difference in the world, to truly help people. It was a little embarrassing, but she'd once thought about founding her own organization and calling it Terra Save, or something like that. But wasn't love a power, too? The strongest, most dangerous kind of power there was, of that she was now certain.

Claire stood up and threw her napkin in the garbage. She didn't know what it was going to be, but she wanted to buy Wesker some kind a trinket, something to show that after everything she'd learned, she was ready to take a few tentative steps towards acknowledging this strange "relationship" of theirs. After today, she was going to stop digging her heels in and just enjoy the dance, so to speak. And what she felt now, it felt good.

"Hey, Ada… when's Wesker's birthday?"

A/N: Hey Howdy Hey! Well, I'm back and although I haven't got nearly as much done as I wanted, I'm extremely pleased with how things turned out. I wanted Wesker's motives to be, you know, Wesker-ish - world domination and all that - but with Claire putting them in a good light. And I know this chapter's not particularly long or earth shattering, but everything comes to fruition next week. You know that big turning point we talked about? Yeah, I'm excited, too! I reached over 200 reviews while I was gone and I just wanted to extend a great big THANK YOU to everyone who's taken the time to comment. Happy Halloween everybody! ^_^

Fun Factoid: Depending on the translation, Beth either means "breath of life" or "god's promise".

Heh. Works on so many levels. ;)