It's amazing what velocity can do
When human beings are in season
Her hands are cold in the small, cold box of a room where the BSAA keeps its fallen members before their 'people' can make the appropriate arrangements. It isn't large, or hi-tech, but the Agency is well-enough equipped to take care of its own. Chris is thankful for that at least; he wouldn't know where to start. He's not even sure if the death of his partner is something that will ever fully penetrate into all the folds and wrinkles of his brain. It feels like a piece of him is lying stretched out on the stainless steel table, unmoving and serene. But the void that is her absence inside of him is already filling up with a hot, blinding rage that knows no humanity, no limit, no control.
He has never seen her hands so still, like a marble cast of themselves. If he lines up their palms the tips of her fingers barely reach his last knuckle, the nails clipped short, the cuticles rough and torn. Her hands seemed ill-suited to her line of work; finely boned and delicate they had suffered much in their use over the years. The pad of his thumb traces the crooked alignment of a pinky finger that never did heal quite right. Jill's hands were her lifeblood; she never truly forgave the medic that set it wrong although her skills had not suffered any for it. These hands had killed people, they had killed monsters, and they are killing him with their lifelessness.
Underneath the modest, white sheet her body seems too small, too frail to have represented the formidable Jill Valentine. Despite the deep shadows cast across her features by the dim fluorescent lighting she looks young – too young to be lying dead in a morgue. He has never seen her so expressionless, so devoid, even in her sleep. It's peaceful in a kind of chilling way. This isn't the way he wants to remember her, but he knows it is the images of her here, and earlier in his arms that will stay with him as the memory of her smile fades.
His fingers slip gently through hers. This is the last time he'll ever get to touch her, the last few quiet moments they'll ever get to have together. He doesn't want to step outside and hear them roll her back into the dark little cubby hole and lock the door. He doesn't want to go home to the house they shared and wake up everyday in it alone.
But this is his life now; it wasn't when he woke up in the morning, but it is now. He would trade it for hers in an instant, but he can't. The only thing he can do is to persevere, to try to live through it. To take her personal effects back to the house and act like he didn't just wash her blood off of every inch of himself.
It's almost time to go. The lids of his eyes squeeze shut as he wills his skin to memorize the feel of her hand in his. He never wants to forget her crooked little pinky; the little scar on the inside of her forearm; the line of her nose; the way her second toes are as long as her big toes; the sweep of her eyelashes on her cheeks… there's too much to forget - he'll never preserve it the way he wants to in his mind.
He can't let go; he can't leave her here alone in the dark. He can't even breathe he's so frantic at the thought.
His eyes open. He compresses his lips into a thin, bloodless line until his chest begins to rise and fall at a more normal rate. There's a light knock at the door; outside the world is still turning, things still need to get done. His lips touch her knuckles once, twice, in a final gesture, laying her hand gently down at her side again before he forces himself to turn around and walk away.
The lab technologist gives him a wide berth as they pass each other in the doorway. This is a place where people give the name Chris Redfield some respect. They admire the standard of work he does, the legacy of accomplishment he's built up for himself. He's dependable, uncompromising in his morality.
Or at least he used to be.
He wonders how much his name will be worth tomorrow, after they finish scrubbing the viscera off the walls of the interview room where a pathetic young man is waiting to die.