RE: Confidence

"No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence." – T.S. Eliot

August 2, 1998

By the beginning of August, the interrogation was over. Umbrella was apparently satisfied, and if not the RPD wouldn't let the four of them – joint officers between both organizations – undergo more captivity. Letting go like that was not something that Jill normally associated with the super company. If they were capable of such lengths as what she had seen in Arklay, Jill couldn't believe that they would leave survivors like that.

Something must be wrong.

It was noon when they were released from holding and ordered to return to their residences. Before being allowed to stumble blindly into the sunlit streets of Raccoon City, they were also told to report for duty the following morning.

Numbly, Jill knew she would follow orders. It took a while to convince herself to head back, but she did eventually get into her car and drive to her apartment building. A slow plod took her up the steps to her front door, which was several floors up, and then she was back somewhere that should be the most familiar to her.

The rooms still smelled like her, even after being closed up for over a week or so. Other than the smell, though, the empty rooms that greeted her only caused a heightened sense of anxiety. The rhythmic blinking of the machine that sat across the small hall from the doorway announced that people had called in her absence, but the pulsing light in the otherwise dim apartment was too much like the radio light from her belt… that blasted thing that didn't seem to work right whenever she wanted it to.

Oh well, Jill figured, sucking in a deep breath and exhaling it slowly. No sense focusing on what had happened.

Ok… no sense focusing any more than she already was.

Pressing the button on the machine, she secured the door behind her, going so far as to drag her heavy hall table in front of it.

The tape on the machine wound to the appropriate point and the message system's automated voice said, "You have twelve unheard messages. Message one. Received on July 20, 11:48 p.m." A short beep disconnected the lifeless recording from the person on the message.

"Look, Jill. I'm sorry about tonight. I know how you get, so I'm not expecting you to call right away, but I am sorry, and I do want to hear from you."

The voice was familiar. The 20th of July?

Oh.

Lawrence. Her boyfriend.

He didn't seem nearly so important anymore. And what was worse, putting the heavy table in front of the door didn't make her feel any better. It didn't get rid of the empty in the apartment, and it didn't soothe the apprehension. It didn't shake the haunted feeling from her. Some things, Jill now had to acknowledge, could take both the door and the table out with a few well-placed swipes. Maybe not fast enough to catch her off guard, but her newfound experience told her how much it would hurt before she stopped it.

And unfortunately, that was the sort of thing she knew she would have to fear before she could respect it properly. The fear didn't stop her reacting to it, but it did hinder her ability to function in relation to other things.

It had been the same that time freshman year of high school when…

No, better not to think about that too.

Being alone now, thinking that Umbrella wasn't done or had discarded the S.T.A.R.S. members for some reason made her previous problem worse.

Academically she knew. She knew her apartment wasn't the mansion. The hallways looked nothing alike. The neutral colors here were not the aged, brown and green colors in those hallways with the high ceilings. The white trim here was different from the polished wood that was there. Nothing was leaking in her apartment, there were no holes, there was nothing hanging and…

"So when you… when you can, I guess. Call me. Please."

Had he been talking this whole time?

Jill crossed the living room towards the kitchen where her tool drawer was, and walked straight through a thick cobweb. Something dark scuttled in the shadows above her.

That was all it took. Jill's mind supplied the rest. The clicking of talons against the drywall… the dripping echo of water from somewhere unseen… stains of brown that wasn't brown ringed with black and being eaten at by the green of either algae or some sort of fungus…

"Message two. Received on July 22, 6:47 p.m."

Her gun slid readily from its holster and she had fired three shots into the moving darkness before she managed to stop.

"Jill. Are you that mad?"

It was instinctual.

"Come on. Call me."

It was normal.

It was safe.

Her machine beeped. Thankfully she lived on the top floor. Still holding the gun, Jill reached over and turned on the lights in the room.

"Message three. Received on July 24, 3:49 p.m."

Two of the shots had wounded the ceiling just above the crown molding. The third had turned what looked to be a very large spider into a very dirty looking splatter.

Jill wondered if her neighbors would call the cops on her.

She wondered who it would be that responded.

The beep sounded louder, after that, and then a clear voice broke through the almost eerie silence following the gunshots. "Officer Valentine, report immediately to the RPD S.T.A.R.S. office. Bravo Team failed to make contact. Alpha Team is being deployed."

That voice was impossible to mistake. Albert Wesker's strangely low nasal voice would probably be a tone burned into her memory. She even remembered the message.

Alpha team had been divvied up into two groups and given night patrols of the neighborhoods nearest the forest. They were put in charge of tactical units from the RPD. Jill had taken the day to sleep after her shift the night before. They'd not run into anything… really. Just some kid that took off into the trees after they happened upon him with their flashlights. At three thirty, Chris had put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her chair from her desk. It had been curious, but she found out as the two of them headed out of the station, abandoning Joseph to finish the paperwork. Frost had over-slept and been late. He was stuck with the forms.

After sleeping that off, she'd gone to shower before the next shift. She had just entered the living room from the shower and not gotten to the phone in time, but once Wesker's clipped nasal voice came through there hadn't been any hesitation in her actions. Wesker was her CO. It was an order. She'd turned back for her bedroom and changed to leave almost before the message was finished.

She followed his orders.

Now it sent a shiver down her spine just to hear him talk.

"Message four. Received on July 24, 4:12 p.m."

"Jill. Did you get the message?"

Chris's voice was annoyingly comforting. After the others, even interspersed between the automated voice of the machine, his was most familiar. Even the tightness of it from the stress he was obviously feeling about the situation during which he was calling.

Bravo Team.

Chris and Kenneth were in a friendly competition of testosterone. Much like she and Dewey.

There was a pause. "Oh, you just walked in."

It was sweet, really… if she could think of Redfield as sweet… that he had called to check on her. A little background noise, Barry, probably, and then nothing.

"Message five."

The automated voice was cut off by the phone ringing. Jill turned her gun on it, but when it did nothing more than ring, she walked over and stopped the answering machine. Keeping the gun in her hand, she lifted the receiver to her ear. "Go for Valentine," she said. Her voice sounded quiet, even to her. She needed a cigarette, maybe a burger too.

"I've been calling you for almost two weeks, Jill. I came by your place and you weren't there, no one at the station would say anything. They won't tell me anything, why didn't you call me back?"

Lawrence.

"I just got home," Jill said. She took the cordless and crossed to the couch, sinking down onto it. She felt tired, again.

"Got home from where? Can't you even pick up a damn phone? I said I was sorry."

"Rence, work has nothing to do with you," she tried. She didn't want to have this discussion. She wanted someone to hold her… to make her feel safe… like Chris had. The thought almost made her drop the phone. She didn't want Chris. She wanted to be rested and refreshed.

"You're right," he said. "It doesn't, but it means more to you than I do. Christ, Jill, how long have we been dating?"

"Three years," Jill replied with a sigh.

"I don't even have a key to your place, and we've been dating three years. Hell, we moved here together for your job, and I see you less – if possible – than before we left Colorado."

"Maybe-"

"Not maybe, Jill. It's true."

"Lawrence, I do not want to have this argument right now." Jill emptied the chamber of her sidearm, forcing herself to put the safety back on. The click was loud in the quiet room.

"Was that your gun?"

"Well it wasn't yours," Jill said, tiredness shifting from annoyed to angry. She didn't even really know what that statement was supposed to mean, but she knew that she was about this close to hanging up on him.

"You don't really let me use my gun-"

And at that, Jill did hang up the phone. Like she needed to be reminded of the terrible jokes, or how she hadn't gotten laid in half a month because her boyfriend was unwilling, argumentative, or occasionally unable to participate. She cut the call with a savage stab of her finger against the off button, and she heard the plastic of the handset creak in response.

The phone rang again, and Jill tossed the handset across the room. It didn't stop the ringing, but it made her feel better to hear the thing crunch against whatever it hit.

Jill curled up, pulling her knees against her chest, and wrapped her arms around them, ducking her face into the cushion she'd made with her body. She wanted to drown out the ringing… to…

Eventually the machine picked it up. She listened to herself repeat her phone number, and then the short, curt greeting. The message tone beeped.

"… I thought you'd be home by now… um…"

Chris?

Jill's head lifted and she got up, hunting for the handset. She found the thing in three pieces against the bookshelf in the corner, and cursed, heading for the kitchen phone.

"I'll call back later, then… or just see you tomorrow…"

Scooping the phone from the cradle, Jill hoped he hadn't hung up. "Chris?"

"Jill," Chris's voice sounded surprised, and it echoed, still being recorded by the machine.

She crossed to it, turning it off. "I was in the other room," she lied, hoping it sounded like a good enough excuse.

"Sorry for calling… it's late…"

"It's six o'clock, Chris," Jill said, glancing at the microwave to confirm her internal sense of the hour.

"Yeah. Um. I'm… I need a drink."

"Well, I think you're of age to do that by yourself, unless I missed something?"

"Claire hates it when I drink alone. Humor me?"

A negative reply was on her lips. Jill didn't need a drink. She needed… A piece of the plaster fell on her shoulder and she jumped, gun back in her hand in an instant. Ok, she reasoned, maybe she did need a drink, and she could trust Chris, afterall.

"You don't have to, uh… I'll just see you in the-"

"How much of a drink?"

Chris's pause drew out.

What was he thinking about that reply? An old, familiar apprehension sank into Jill's gut as he considered her question. It had started back in 1990, or maybe a little before. The ROTC program was probably the first time… she was rough and tumble enough to swing with the boys, but there was something that kept things from being normal between her and them.

Almost as if she wasn't allowed to out drink them, or to win at arm wrestling… back then, in high school, she knew what it was, but since then it hadn't gotten much better. Somehow the service seemed to instill a sense of little boy in the men that stuck with it.

"Well it depends on how you want to look in front of our new CO," Chris said. There seemed to be a hint of a smile in his voice, a bit of devilment that she hadn't heard before.

Jill felt her own lips curving in a smile, and then she chuckled. That was a surprise to her as much as him.

"So, that established," Chris began, obviously grinning. That was weird. Since February, it was almost like she'd never seen Chris smile at her… or… no. She'd seen him smile at her on occasion, usually when they were on a training mission, or like he had in Arklay. Nothing this personal. He was always polite and professional unless they had their guns out. "Let's plan on neither of us driving home tonight. I'll get a cab and meet you at Mickey's?"

"You asked me," Jill said, contemplating the living room. "Does that mean you're buying?"

Chris snorted at that. "Hey, I've heard stories of you drinking people under the table… we'll split?"

"Sure. See you in twenty."