Title: For Want of Other Idleness: Chapter II
Fandom: Resident Evil Extinction
Pairing: Alice/Claire
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
A/N: Set in the Extinction movie-verse. Feedback is super appreciated. My muse came back for this one. Thank gods.
By mid February, Claire had discovered the real reason why Infection had not reached Alaska.
It was too damn cold.
At the first sign of the leaves changing colors, Claire insisted everyone house together in the hotel located off the main road in town. It was the newest building by far, which still wasn't saying much, and the best insulated. There were fireplaces in every room and a large, functional kitchen. There were a total of eight rooms, but after sleeping in vehicles on the convoy, it was more than enough room for thirteen people.
Claire wanted everyone in one building, uncertain of how much snowfall to anticipate.
It was not so much snow as the bone aching cold, they all quickly learned. It was pervasive, clawing its way through layered clothing and chilling to the bone. Even through the heavy winter gear they scavenged from one of the nearby ranger stations, the cold could still be felt, angry and sharp. Leaving the relative warmth of the hotel was done only when necessity dictated.
Towards the beginning of March, it had warmed up enough that Claire thought it safe to allow everyone to come and go outdoors. It was still cold and snow still frosted the ground, but it was no longer a treacherous cold. It was a decision made based as much on Claire's sanity as anything else. The children, used to being cooped up on a bus during their convoy days, were not accustomed to being locked indoors constantly.
Even the adults were tired of one another. Even K-mart, who was nearly an adult now, had been short and moody. So Claire was all too happy to fall into the hard labor routine of the warmer months. Everyone moved back to their normal living quarters, Claire and K-mart back to their cabin, and preparation to survive the next winter started.
As soon as the sun rose, the survivors accompanied it. The winter stores had kept them adequately fed, but would not last forever. They also needed vegetables, their meager stores of canned goods had been depleted, and a diet of strictly protein would not stave off diseases like scurvy. There were plenty of abandoned vehicles, but they needed a lot of work before one would be in running condition again. A map in the hotel lobby suggested there were other ranger stations, small towns that, if they weren't inhabited, could be raided for potentially useful items.
One of the adults, Joel, had been a mechanic Before. Well, he and his brother had worked on a car once, trying to soup up the engine, and he knew how to change a tire. Both of which were more than enough to qualify him as a mechanic in these times. So while he worked on making a vehicle operational, the other adults and children stayed around the village working on chores, renovating other buildings in the town for use. K-mart and Claire usually spent most of their days either hunting or ice fishing.
Those days were usually spent in silence. Despite her initial reluctance to take the life of cute little rabbit or deer, K-mart turned out to be a proficient hunter once she discovered the driving need to eat. She and Claire would leave before dawn, bundled warmly and rifles slung, and find a suitable place to wait for passing wildlife. They rarely spoke.
Leaving Claire to her thoughts. Since her breakdown at the sign, neither she nor K-mart had mentioned Alice again even though they had a mutual understanding that the strong, strange woman was a frequent visitor to both of their minds. K-mart did not mention for fear of upsetting Claire, and Claire did not for fear of losing control of her emotions again.
But still she thought of Alice, or remembered her to be more accurate. She hadn't even liked Alice at first. She regarded her with a hostile suspicion bred by the undeniable need to survive and protect the lives under her charge. At first, it had been resentment and suspicion, but it gradually gave way to a grudging respect.
But once the seeds of respect had been planted, they gave bloom to curiosity about the woman. Everyone who survived Infection for five years was broken in some way or another and scared, but Alice was different. No one liked to talk about all the horror they all experienced, but Claire decided that Alice had her own personal horror, something that the members of the convoy could not relate to. And the fear that seemed to possess her was not a fear of the T-Virus or a death that was worse than itself, but a quiet terror of herself.
It wasn't long before the curiosity became yearning, a craving to reach out to the other woman, perhaps ease some the pain that paralyzed Alice and through her relieve some of the ache within herself as well.
It had been a long time since Claire had felt attraction to anyone, and it took her many studious, frustrating hours before she figured out that, indeed, was what she felt for Alice. It was an overwhelming need to touch and be touched by her, where every frustrating glimpse drove her pulse upwards. It was the flutter in her chest and the warmth in her cheeks whenever Alice rewarded her with a weak but rare smile. It was the defiance to the little voice that told her to protect herself, to keep her distance.
"I'm not safe," Alice had told her one night.
Claire hadn't cared, her face framed by Alice's small, slender hands. "When's the last time any of us were safe?" She had whispered plaintively, closing the distance their faces. The tip of their noses touched first, then lips.
So every morning, she and K-mart would leave the village in silence. Claire would lie in the snow which no longer felt cold to her anymore, and wait and remember. She would remember and miss Alice. There were times when she thought she could feel the other woman next to her, sense her presence as if she were burrowed in the snow next to her. If she could close her eyes, she could almost feel the back of Alice's hand brushing her cheek.
But then the hunting day would end, and they would carry the carcass of their kill back to the village to be stripped and cleaned. They would store the meat so it wouldn't spoil, and Claire would perform her evening rounds of the village, assuring everyone was safe, listen to accounts of the day, mediate disagreements, hand out assignments for the next day, before returning to her cabin where K-mart was usually preparing dinner.
She went through the same routine every day without thought or consideration. She felt like a robot, mindlessly reacting to her environment. It was as if life was occurring all around her, but she was helpless to participate. So she mimicked the others, went through the motions of living without ardor.
By April, the snow was well on its way to melting and the days lengthened. The inhabitants of Abernathy averted their efforts from building restoration and renovation to preparing small plots of land deemed the most fertile for another attempt at farming, and from hunting to fishing.
On a cool, drizzly morning, Claire and K-mart returned from the river early to mend one of the nets that had been snagged on a submerged log and torn. While a welcome break from the monotony, Claire nearly preferred her zombie fighting days to a day bent over trying to mend a net. Umbrella had been so relentless in its quest for future technology that it had created the catastrophic event that flung the human race back several centuries. Who even knew how to mend a net anymore?
K-mart huddled in a corner by the stove, knees drawn up to her chest, a book on Alaskan wildlife open to the chapter on edible plants. Claire peeked up from the net which she spread across the kitchen table, a rare smile finding its way to her features. Fully relaxed and absorbed by her book, K-mart appeared more like the sixteen year old kid she was and less like a survivor of the harsh, turbulent reality they now found themselves in.
Just as she was narrowing her eyes back on meticulous, painstaking work of fixing the net, she heard it. It was a sound that was both familiar and incongruous. It started as deep rumble that could be mistaken as thunder in the distance, but as it grew louder, it was unmistakable. The moment Claire's eyes met K-mart's, they simultaneously leapt to her feet.
K-mart, whose rifle was leaning against the wall next to her, was out the door before Claire could tell her to wait. Snagging her rifle from behind her, she cursed as she heard K-mart cry out over the roar that was now deafening. In a clean, brisk movement learned from her days clearing buildings of the Undead, she kicked the cabin door open, butt of the rifle against her shoulder, cheek already pressed to its stock, finger loosely resting on the trigger.
The cool air was startling, especially since she hadn't bothered to put on a jacket. A back part of her mind noted that the roar had ceased, as quickly as it began, but now there was an obscenely large Jeep parked in front of her cabin.
Gripping the rifle by the barrel, K-mart had let it fall to her side. She stood right off the porch, staring at the driver of the vehicle, who had dismounted and shut the door behind her.
Just like the first time Claire had seen her, the figure was swaddled in clothing. Only this time, she wore long trousers and a sweater underneath her long, duster jacket. A hood was pulled over her hair and face, not to protect it from the desert sun but the bite of cold now. She took a few tentative steps forward until she was standing directly in front of Claire.
Claire didn't dare allow her heart to hope; she would not survive if her heart were broken again. She didn't allow herself to feel anything at all until the figure reached up and pulled the hood back from her face, and Claire's pale green eyes locked with those that were blue, like gazing into a melting pool of a glacier. Slowly, she let the stock of the rifle fall away from her cheek.
Alice smiled that hesitant, almost timid smile of hers. "I'm back." She said, almost as shyly as she had smiled.
Fighting the rising tightness that constricted her throat, Claire swallowed hard. "Are you?"
