Oh ho, UNDER a week. Aren't I just aiming high these days? And I think the next few parts will go up fairly fast beyond this on top of that, like I have some sort of deadline or something.

Some of my favorite songs in this batch. (Songs, not responses, though I like some in this batch more than some others.) And on that note...

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the songs; those are owned by their respective artists and labels, and all rights reserved to them. I don't own any of the characters or wringers they've been put through; that is all Capcom. ALL CAPCOM. I'm just coloring weird things in their coloring book with these.

Disclaimer 2: Spoilers for the Resident Evil 6 trailers, demos, and side information are in one of these ("Other Way" towards the end). If you are trying to stay absolutely spoiler free, that's the one to scroll past.

Rating: Still T: mostly for Claire (naughty language, death threats to alarm clocks), Wesker (for being Wesker), and Chris (everything is about him!). It will change to M in the next part for overt sexual content. WARNING WARNING WARNINGS will be issued then as well.

Thanks: As always, to the Lovely Betas for their arrangement help and thumbs up; to all those who have read, and to those who take the time to leave feedback, as it is a hard and somewhat thankless task that means a whole lot; and especially to Chirika, Ruingaraf, and the Lex Hex for the substantial amount of geeking out yall have done with me this week. Much appreciated, all!

Enjoy!

Vienna Teng - "Nothing Without You"
Tell me it won't always be this hard
I am nothing without you,
but I don't know who you are

There's an uncomfortable truth staring Jill in the face. It first peeked around the corner when she got to Europe and couldn't find Chris, and ever since, it's been showing more and more of itself.

Truth is...she doesn't really know Chris Redfield.

They worked together, sure. They've been bound together by this fight. She feels things for him, and unless she's completely lost her mind, he feels something for her as well. Something that could be exciting, dangerous, and potentially...long-term.

But all of that is unconscious knowledge. If Claire popped into her room and decided to give her a quiz on Chris, she probably wouldn't make it past the second or third round. First, possibly. She knows scattered incidental facts, and she knows things about him, but she can't really link the two together.

Well. There are ways to fix that.

She borrows a set of shot glasses from one of the other boys, buys a decent whisky, and snags Chris. She sets everything up, looks him square in the face, and says, "We are going to play a game."

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Jonathan Coulton - "When You Go"
All of this time I knew
That I'd be losing you
That doesn't mean that it's OK
That doesn't mean I'm ready

Growing up, there are two things Claire knows about her brother.

1) He is a pig-headed, mule earred, donkey minded stubborn stupid head who makes her laugh and keeps her safe.

2) He's going into the Air Force one day, because it's all he's talked about ever.

Seriously. While most girls she knew could rope their brothers into the occasional game of tag or house, she got to play Airmen. With her brother. She knows more about the rank and file of the Air Force than she does about ponies by the time she's in first grade. Looking back on it, she's sure that's some sort of crime, but hell if she knows what to charge him with. Maybe Criminal Overexertion of Brotherly Ideas.

So she knows he's leaving. She knows that losing their parents isn't going to change that. She knows that going to live with a sequence of family members until, finally, their aunt takes them in for good - that's not going to change it, either. Come her brother's 17th year, he's going to enlist. He's going early, he wants to go so badly.

This is his dream.

It surprises the hell out of her, though, when he goes to hug her goodbye - and she bursts into tears.

He hugs her still. He strokes her hair. He calls her all those quiet names between them. He promises he'll be back.

She just wants one more moment like this.

But she watches him leave instead.

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Blind Guardian - "Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)"
I stand alone
No one's by my side
I'll dare you
Come out
You coward
Now it's me or you

She doesn't blow up at him after they touchdown. Which is a whole messy business in itself, because European nations do not like random fighter jets with no programmed flight plan suddenly showing up in their skies, hm? She's lucky he has his passport still on him. She's lucky the Umbrella freaks never got to hers.

The anger builds, but she holds it in. If there's something she's learned over time from her big brother, it's that there are actual times and places to do these things. Even if she mostly picks "Here and now"...well, that's still a time and a place, isn't it? But they need to get to a room first, to a private place, and then - then -

"What the fuck were you thinking?"

"It was your life," he responds, snagging her spare pillows to make a bed for himself on the floor. "And he just wanted me, Claire. He always just wants me."

His voice is so tired that it stops her for a second. Then she reaches out and grabs the pillows back.

"You can sleep on the damn bed, too," she tells him.

He gives her a dubious look, so she whacks him with the pillow. "I do not snore," she snarls.

"But you do punch," he says. "And I've been punched enough today."

She feels a prickle of conscience, but the anger is still too much for it. "Why does he hate you?" she asks.

Chris suddenly looks very weary, more than her older brother has any right to, more than he did in those days after the Air Force. "I wish I knew, Claire. I wish I knew if he just wanted some epic stand-off or what. Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass." He sighs. "I just wish he'd stayed dead."

And it's not over, like that, but it is over for that night, like that.

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Self - "Pattycake"
what ya gonna prove
how you gonna prove it
there's no need to waste your life
shatter and abuse it, babe

Claire finally gives up on the Anti-Umbrella movement the day they decide to send her brother and Jill to Eastern Europe.

First of all: Eastern Europe isn't a country, a capital, something you can easily point an airplane to and land in a spot and go, "Hey, Eastern Europe!" It's a giant fucking chunk of real estate, and they are sending two - TWO - agents of theirs to go deal with the shit there.

Second of all: they don't want to send her.

They make mealy mouthed noises about how she's still young, and she has this suspicion - faint and steadily getting stronger - that this pressure isn't just coming from the top. That certain people within the movement are going, "Holy shit, wee American adult! This could cause problems!"

Except she's been with them for two years at this point. Which is equal to the number of outbreaks she's survived. TWO. TWOOO. She's seen more action than most of them, and that could be said to include her older brother, who did not go through Raccoon City and people should stop assuming he's the Redfield who did.

She learns in her ranting to Jill all she needs to know about her feelings.

So she goes. She will make her own damn way against this virus. And they can kiss off.

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Coldplay - "Viva La Vida"
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemies' eyes

Claire wakes up sometimes and thinks: I used to shoot people.

She's often tempted to shoot the alarm clock. She doesn't; it's the best annoying alarm clock she's found. Can't get the decibels off some of these newer ones. But that doesn't inspire the thought, it's more - an echo of her dreams. An echo of the days when danger was so much closer than a papercut.

She gets up. She showers, dresses. Gets her coffee. And sometimes, in the midst of that, she remembers when showering was a luxury. Coffee never was, because Europeans won't go without it, but showers - good clothes like this - they were.

She gets to her desk. She checks her e-mails, her phone messages. And sometimes, as she does that, she remembers when a good phone line was hard to come by. Much less e-mail. It had been a cheerful day when they'd managed to figure out how to get useful, reliable e-mail.

She is a solid, respectable citizen now who used to be in an underground.

And sometimes, still, she thinks about those days.

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Trevor Hall - "Other Way"
How could it be any other way?

The day Sherry tells him she got her certification, that she is now an official agent, Leon congratulates her.

He then calls up Jill and tells her they need to get drunk. Just the two of them.

It's not a time for drinking with Redfields. He calls Claire more often with his problems, a pattern that gently emerged post Harvardville. And Jill and Chris are, well, Jill and Chris. But they don't share the same burden that he and Jill and Sherry do. So they're out on this one.

He'd gotten in touch with Jill after his infection in 2004. She was the only one he knew who'd had something similar and stayed in this line of work, and though he didn't really know her, that fact bound them in a different kind of trust. And she listened. Sometimes he was so busy talking to ladies that he forgot about that fact, but with Jill, he got used to it. Eventually, he chipped her experience out of her, too. Same after she got back from Africa.

But in this case -

He needs someone who knows what it's like to carry that infection to the fight. To always wonder if you're going to turn. He needs this, because Sherry will need this. And he has to be able to give it to her.

But first, he needs to purge his other feelings.

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The Killers - "The Ballad of Michael Valentine"
Rock children hold your heads up high
In the night while I try
And tell the ballad of Valentine

"You don't know who your Mom is?" Claire asked, eyes going wide.

Jill shook her head. She plucked a dandelion and held it up to Claire. "Chris ever teach you how to milk one of these?"

He'd been remiss, so Jill demonstrated. When they were both chewing on the bitter sap, Jill leaned back and looked to the sky overhead.

"My Dad," she said. "Michael. He was one of the first members of Delta Force, back when it was getting started in the 70s. But he'd done some work in special forces groups before then. He worked with a lot of the same guys then and in Delta, when I was around. When I got older, sometimes they liked to tell me stories about him." She shook her head. "They said he left a trail of fire and broken hearts wherever he went."

"And your Mom was one of those," Claire said.

Jill shook her head. "No," she said. "From what I gather - she broke his heart. Didn't want to play happy families with him, even though she kept me. Just - gave me to him and vanished."

"Do you know her name?"

"Funny, but no," she said. "The guys would say, 'Oh, you have her eyes, her mouth' - but they never would tell me her name." She tilted her head. "Just the way it goes sometimes."

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Dave Matthews Band - "The Last Stop"
You're righteous, so righteous, SO RIGHTEOUS
You're always so right
Go ahead and dream
Go ahead believe that you are the chosen one.

"Come to me, Jill."

She ascends the stairs gracefully, and he is glad to see it; no more halting movements, no more tiny jerks to her steps. No more resistance to the most basic commands. He's not a fool to believe there is no more resistance at all; whenever her eyes turn to him, he can still see it there, see it in the ruby gleams from the gem on her chest. But he'll take his little victories to get to his big one.

"Sit by me, Jill."

This command was harder than the others to teach her; she never wanted to sit as close as he needed. But they have gone over it, time again, given the reward and the punishment for it, and now she sits just as she should: her back against the arm of his chair, her head within reach of his hand.

He slips a gloved hand off and gently strokes her hair. It is soft and silky smooth, just as it had been all those years in S.T.A.R.S., in the video he'd seen of her in her activities afterwards. Jill had always had a little vanity when it came to her hair, else she would've worn it shorter. But she hadn't, and he'd seen through it, and he'd kept her hair very well in this place.

It makes fine loops around his fingers, and she barely shudders anymore. Excellent.

"He is coming, you know," he tells her, as if he were one human talking to another, and not a demi-god with his worship-slave. "He is coming, and he thinks he is coming for you."

His fingers tighten in her hair.

"But it is not you he truly comes for, Jill," he whispers to her, loops now taut around his fingers. "It is for me."

"In the old times, all gods, all heroes, all those who would bring salvation, they always faced one final enemy, one final test. Him in his righteousness, with his BSAA and his rules and laws, thinks he will be chosen. He thinks the final test lays before him. But it is my final test, Jill. It is I who am chosen. It is I who shall be a god."

"And it is Chris who shall fall."

He leans in, fingers loosening. "Remember that."