A/N: DarkGothElegantGirl22: Thank you again for reviewing so faithfully! Wesker...doesn't like admitting things, especially to himself. Don't worry, he'll get there! Well as far there as he can. Probably not in a way anyone expects but he'll get there! :)
OCS: Thank you! I'm afraid it's all very rough, this is really just for fun. I hope it keeps improving. :)
Sorry for the delay. I can only seem to write this story when it rains. Odd but true. On the bright side finally know where its going. Y'all may kill me for it, but I promise you won't expect it. Enjoy!
Pandora's Box
Fury...drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths...This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise - The terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untramelled lord of creation.
- Salman Rushdie
A drum beats painfully in her head, rhythm a perfect match to her heart. Air rasps down a swollen throat while sticky hands throb dully.
Pain is beginning to mean nothing, this body isn't her own.
The sunlight paints marble, iron, and roses in a golden tint, the perfect cover for a tawdry romance novel. All it needs is a well-endowed damsel in the arms of some half-naked white knight with a catch phrase about love conquering all slapped underneath them.
Blood spoils the illusion, a drying trail of rust along the marble leading to the pool her head lies in.
Jill lays unmoving, blue eyes wide and unfocused. Looking into the past, seeing hellfire full of rage and want. Remembering a body betraying itself, burning lips brushing her own.
It can't be. It can't.
Turning the thought over obsessively for the hundredth time. Memories replaying in a new light.
Could it?
Albert Wesker, the remote Captain, aroused, rattled, and disgusted.
Only the pool of drying blood convinces her that no, she did not, in fact, dream it. The concept is on par with alien abductions...and the zombie Apocalypse.
Maybe he is human afterall.
The floor is hard but warm enough in the African air, the sun a steady light in the east. How many hours has she been here?
Jill doesn't care. Doesn't care about the pounding in her head or the pain in her throat. The freakishly disconcerting idea clouding her every thought.
The world just went sideways. Pandora's box opened. The cat got out of the bag.
She knew. Unknowing was not an option. Forgetting even less of one.
Albert Wesker had stared at her like a monk getting a lapdance. Full of disgust and fury but not enough to hold back the want boiling through. Self-loathing not quite enough to blunt a forbidden want.
A shudder runs down alabaster skin, she had felt the evidence against her, hard and thick.
Wesker doesn't ask. He's going to take one of these days...unless...
A lightbulb flickers on in the dim recesses of memory, refracting off a thousand splinters.
No duh Valentine. Way to forget years of knowing the man.
It was a weakness, a disgusting human weakness. Hadn't the Captain ranted over and over about how the guys could get so much more done if they thought with the right head? About how the human race was, as he put it, "so disgustingly base and obsessed with procreation"?
A slow hard smile crawls across her face.
Wouldn't he hate being reduced to their level?
He won't touch me because it'd be like fucking a monkey.
A small rush of satisfaction. About damn time someone wiped that fucking smirk off his face.
A black cat comes to rest by her face, purring like a small engine.
"What should I do Al?"
Knowledge is power.
A broken bird lays on the marble, blue eyes calculating.
Talons sharp, a bird of prey.
Half a world away a report surfaces with a picture of a blond woman in Africa.
Jill.
A strong body shakes like the tail of an angry rattlesnake. It can't be true. She's dead, he mourned her as dead.
A miracle survival or cruel hoax? How could she be alive?
Chris Redfield rereads the report until the words are ingrained in his memory, the photo a knife he holds by the blade.
Books and splinters of wood litter the floor, bits of a shattered chair. The aftermath of a child's tantrum with a titan's strength. A display of petulance he is glad no one witnessed, deep in the dark underground.
In his mind he is still on the balcony and every crack had been her bones (it was the cracking of furniture as he fucked her violently into the floor, legs around his waste, hands in short gold hair), every thud her flesh impacting concrete(the sharp slapping of flesh against flesh).
A conflicting tangle of confused, heated want.
He tells himself he is not disappointed to open red-gold eyes and not find her there. Would he find her blood sprayed over the room in some macabre painting or lying exhausted and sated beside him?
Some sleeping dogs he leaves alone, some doors he does not want opened.
Fucking Jill Valentine the cockroach with her fucking voice haunting him, bringing back weaknesses he had left behind with humanity. With mortality. With need.
Albert Wesker does not need. He commands, controls, and takes. Need is weakness.
A gloved hand pinches the bridge of his nose before a flaxen head jerks back, nostrils flaring. Leather impacts the opposite wall. A childish gesture, his nose is so sensitive he can still smell her skin on those gloves from across the room.
Fucking girl, what have you done?
Rage is a roaring river crashing through him. A trembling hand rises to rest on lips that still burn, even from a brief brush. Nothing has ever brought him so low, nothing has ever wormed into him so insidiously.
She is everywhere, in his dreams, in his research, in his blood, in Ouroboros.
Jill Valentine is the key to his New World.
He had not realized she is also the skeleton key to himself.
Stupid fucking bitch.
Wesker stands motionless in the center, surrounded by the carnage of his fit. A strong jaw is set, a thin grim line of a mouth. Such wasteful loss of control is disgusting, especially to one as self-possesed as him.
It is beneath him, unacceptable. Tense dark arms cross, hands clenching to still their tremors.
Albert Wesker has iron self-control. He is perfect, godlike.
Its her fault. She is the flaw.
Nothing had disturbed his deadly calm before she had woken, nothing had effected his focus, made a dead heart pound and an empty chest ache. His mouth compresses further, lips almost invisible, the only movement of his still body. The storm brews inside him, the surface a deceptive calm.
Perhaps he should finish her. Another variable out to ruin his careful order.
He hates variables, removes them.
Yet...she has proved her worth. Survived Racoon, the T-Virus, and so much more. Her very cells are the key to Ouroboros. She is the mother of his New World, the first of the worthy. He can't deny her place in his pantheon.
If he kills her now, now when he still needs her cells and can't deny her survival, what was all this for? What kind of hypocrite does that make him? Mere human weakness driving his behavior?
Skeleton key.
Or are these excuses?
Gods do not need excuses.
A muscle starts to twitch in his jaw, storm skimming the surface. He shakes off the urge to give the massacred chair another kick. Naked fingers rub tired eyes, an ache building in the back of his skull.
He can almost see her bleeding body lying on marble, ringed with roses and iron. A broken bird, a damsel in distress.
He is no knight in shining armor.
Her blue eyes had been so wide, so afraid...so shocked.
She hadn't known.
She would know now, know the dirty secret he had hidden for so many years, buried under years of time and dusty memory. A weakness that should have been cleansed, removed along with mortality.
One he had stupidly revealed.
Soft lips on his own, responding of their own volition to his want.
What would it feel like...?
A cloud of wood splinters erupts from the wall as Wesker kicks the last recognizable piece of chair, glaring at the wreckage.
Bloody streaks marred her beautiful balcony, the corpse girl's rancid fluid. High heels step delicately around them, sharp nose wrinkling in disgust.
Really scientists are getting so messy these days. Did they have to drive the gurney through the only blood puddle in the area?
Excella had ordered the girl's removal. She did not belong, a sore on the smooth romantic beauty of the mansion. Besides he would be rather irritated if his pet died before she was broken.
Even if he was the cause.
Excella tells herself she does not mind cleaning up the mess he made in her favorite place, picking up his broken toys. He is God. Of course he does not clean.
Gold lettering on leather calls to her as elegant feet pivot. On the glass patio table are two books surrounded by pens, a plain leather bound research journal and a book she knows by heart, red nails tracing the embossed title.
Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps taken by mistake?
Slim hands grip both tightly as she clatters gracefully away, following a rusty trail.
Blue eyes open to a forest she knows. A forest that no longer exists. The shell of a burning helicopter.
The beginning.
Jill can't breath, mouth agape. Slimy fingers brush a thin shoulder making her jump and scream.
"Shhh Jilly it's just me." Filmy decayed eyes watch her expressionlessly, Brad's calm voice a surreal contrast. "We're running out of time Jilly, you have to hurry. But you're almost there.-"
What?
"-but you've gotta pay attention. In the labs. It's the key you know?"
Brad's grimy hands grip her shoulders. Jill stares at him with tired eyes. Doesn't he know Jill Valentine is dead? The hero is dead and gone?
She is just tired. Tired of ridiculous riddles, of blood and pain, tired of life. Who the hell decided a little nothing officer from bumfuck nowhere Racoon City was going to play hero? Who made her responsible for so many lives? Hadn't she sacrificed enough?
Whatever happened to Rest In Peace? Oh right, the zombie fucking Apocalypse.
Blond hair swings in denial, blue eyes shut tight and open again full of tears. How much is enough?
"Brad -" He keeps talking like he can't stop, the words vomiting out of his rotting mouth.
"You're doing so good Jill, just a little longer ok? You're not alone. Now go on, you're not done."
She doesn't want to.
Pain is the first thing to come back. Pain in her hands, her head, her throat.
Oh. Right. That.
The fumes of sterility and the reek of humanity hit her. A continuous beeping in the corner. Following her heartbeat.
A lab. Again.
P30 keeps her calm, keeps the panic at bay. The beeping doesn't change. Her dose must be very high.
He is not there. She knows it. P30 is less.
Something relaxes.
"Pay attention. In the labs..."
Fire burns steadily in her. Perhaps the figments know something she doesn't.
What does she have to lose?
Her life? Her free will?
The door shuts with a click as the last human leaves, the sickly sweetness of decay lessening.
A cat's meow breaks the air making pale lips smile, blue eyes open.
P30 can't stop her.
A slim hand reaches for the leather journal on the silver work table.
For secrets.
Knowledge is power.
She begins to read.
A black cat purrs beside her.
Another book lies unopened, gold embossed letters glittering.
Wesker does not go near her for weeks.
The not-dead ghost he can't escape, a memory he can't bury.
Skeleton key.
Tension rides his spine.
Pandora's box can't be reclosed.
Not even by Albert Wesker.
Only a few find the way; some don't recognize it when they do; some don't ever want to. - The Cheshire cat
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