A/N: DarkGothElegantGirl22: Glad you liked it! I don't think he realized it wasn't Jill :) Excella's stubborn and young. Just a little girl playing with the big dogs. This chapter is a bit more about her. Well and its leading into something else.
Sad little tiger: Thank you. I was worried it was a bit too much. And you're welcome. He is a romantic but a cruel one. Afterall he dreams of utopia, the ultimate romaticised ideal, but he tries to create it with Purgatory. His nature is on both sides of the chain, yanking in both directions. Wesker can't win. He won't let himself. Thank you again.
Welcome back! Y'all are a tough crowd. Enjoy!
Bird
Death is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust. - Emily Dickinson
The cloak is a faded old camouflage sheet hastily repurposed. The mask is unfinished, crude and cumbersome.
A clumsy beak for a bird of prey. Cloth too bulky for a slender frame.
Have those hands ever held something created so haphazardly? Jill can't remember. Clumsy things don't look right in Wesker's careful gloved hands.
I don't think so.
Blue eyes study the worn dark cloth. Shouldn't it be blue? All her uniforms have been blue. Blue and new.
Jill Valentine lives in the frayed old footage of memories. Blue windows to a different soul.
This is a funeral shroud not a uniform. She is a soul who could not pay the Ferryman. Left to wander the world.
To atone for the ones she didn't save. For the traitor's life she didn't take.
Damned for not killing. Hah.
Nothing is blue and new where the dead are simply waiting to pass on. This limbo of stagnancy. Unchanging routing of bland food, little sleep, murder, cleaning, and him.
In the end it all ran back to him.
Something is off about his lean form. Sharp features too carefully blank, body too forcefully at ease.
Wrong. What's not wrong here? Does it matter?
Yes. It matters. Take note. He is God here.
Fuck no he's not fucking god.
Its a mental slap. P30 is insidious, subtle. Or is it the weight of time and repetition?
She doesn't know. Doesn't fucking like it. Fire long thought dead blazes in her.
He's not god. Fuck him.
A third figure enters the room. Jill can't spare the energy to notice her. It takes all her anger to hold onto one thought.
"Put it on."
The dark fabric swallows her lying white skin. More honest than she, able to hold the stain of sins. Blood and pain. P30 holds back the smile for her, holds the scream inside.
Sometimes Jill is thankful for it.
She is shattered pieces mortared in blood. Bleeding fresh at every movement. Screaming silently. Calling to heaven to right the wrongs.
Calling for strength it will not give her.
Pale hands reach for the mask.
A new new face. Reincarnated again. When can I go? When will life be done with me?
When will he be done with her? What will she be when he is?
Dead. Always dead.
"Stop." The pronounced accent betrays unease, chiseled face too still. The mask looks blunt and crude in his hands.
The air is thick and cold. A second womb cold as ice.
He pulls the cowl up over her head carefully, gently brushing strands of hair out of her eyes.
Jill stares at his clenched jaw.
Harsh hands slam the mask onto her face. The world becomes red, like looking through the spray of arterial blood in the air.
Life is blood.
"Go. Do not fail me."
The words are bits of bone.
One pale figure towers over another.
The air is different.
Excella finds it harder to breath, tan fingers clenched on a gold clutch.
Present but excluded. The lone dark one.
"Go. Do not fail me."
A girl in a sheet with a garish mask, a clumsy bird of prey.
A grotesque parody of a child's Halloween costume exiting the room.
His shoulders are tense betraying a blank face and loose hands.
Excella feels lightheaded.
Deadly hands had been gentle, carefully draping the cowl over sallow features. Well known features would be recognized too easily.
Excella can't think of any other face he had bothered hiding.
A face he wants kept from Chris Redfield, from the world.
Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle; she died young. *
The air is hard to breath. Her steps falter.
Night is a different creature above the surface. Not the thick claustrophobic weight of darkness underground. A living shifting thing of grey shades, twinkling stars, and moonbeams.
Of hungry eyes and sharp teeth sliding through the dark. Of looming dark shapes and blacker shadows.
Nightmares.
Golden skin shivers as Excella glides elegantly through the shadows, lips and nails red as if dipped in blood.
Africa is not safe at night. Not even here.
The wild things come out at night.
The eerie whoot of an owl echoes. A beaked mask haunts her mind.
Clumsy for a bird of prey.
Vibrant dark eyes survey the carefully laid out flora. A plan she designed. A piece of her ancient Italian homeland from far away.
Deceptively simple, intricate only in the details.
Restless feet follow a stone path. She will follow to the end, finish what she began.
It is what she is.
Tan shoulders are square, head held high. The carriage of family pride allows no less. She will not disappoint.
Ever.
Cio che Dio vuole, lo voglio. Family motto of ours.
Safe was not her road. In the wilds of Africa she will not be afraid.
Not of my enemies and not of the dark.
Moonlight bathes the path in a silver glow. A slender hand pulls the shawl tighter.
Dark eyes watchful, chin determined. Her enemies are many. Even here she cannot be completely at ease.
Not without him.
In the end it all ran back to him.
What God wills I will.
The empty place in her chest aches.
He is everything. An old Spanish proverb rises in her mind.
Take what you want God says and pay for it.
Excella is always willing to pay the price.
A reflecting pool shines in the moonlight. The world bathed in a silvery glow, colors muted.
Pale skin instead of tan. Hair reflecting a silver sheen. The rush of hate is surprisingly fierce.
A sharp heel shatters the serene surface.
The corpse girl is not here! She is gone!
I am not her.
She is not worthy.
So beautiful. Muscular and lean, form covered in velvet skin. A body chiseled by a master sculptor.
A work of art. A perfect mate for her own perfect form.
Her chest feels warm and full. He is here. With her.
He is here more often now...and less gentle...
Excella ignores the small voice. He will not find anyone better than her. No other is more worthy.
He has merely realized it.
She runs elegant hands down the carved torso, admiring and caressing. This never got old.
The want never fully sated. The smirk on sharp features bringing the warm quivering feeling back to her gut again and again.
Never enough of him.
Soft lips plant gentle kisses along his collar bone.
Wesker is still, watching her. Startling eyes hidden behind dark lenses he is remote. Godlike.
Her head goes lower.
She will worship. Her god will not need to look else where for devotion.
Ever.
She will prove it to him.
The garden is a place of forgetting. She will not think of the corpse girl here.
She will not taint this place for me.
Blood red nails touch the petals delicately flared on a thorny stem. Her favorite flower was a red rose.
The flower was white.
Stupid servants unable to follow instructions. Tomorrow it would be fixed.
How does that trashy American song go? Every rose has its thorns?
Long slender barbs for defense. To impale its enemies.
Ruby lips in a bloody smile.
Enemies are a badge of honor. Excella stands firm against the bloated carcass of humanity. Disgusting pandering sheep, content to follow any leader.
Blind fools.
Tan feet step rhythmicly, following a drumbeat only she can hear.
Yes, she feel will wear her enemies as trophies.
At his side nothing is impossible.
The shadows are long and deep, silvery moonlight waning.
I am not afraid.
Something dark stains the ground before her.
A quick dark shape darts onto the path, drops a dark shape at her feet.
An ankle turns as she jumps back shrieking, hands tangling with the sharp thorns. Blood flies as flesh is ripped free. Painting the roses red.
The silver of moonlight cannot dull the eyes glaring up at her. Smug red-gold eyes in a small furry face.
Feline eyes. Like his.
Offering a beaked bird as sacrifice. A clumsy bird of prey.
Poise and confidence desert her.
Excella will swear the black cat wore a bloody smile.
She is not graceful as she runs to the house.
A little girl in the dark.
Like one who on a lonely road doth walk in fear and dread, having once turned round walks on
and turns no more his head. Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread. - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Review! Please?
*A line from the Duchess of Malfi.