9. Memory Lane
A sad look played on Sheva's features as she practically drug her feet down the hallway towards her bedroom, her hand nursing one of her aching shoulders through her red robe. She gritted her teeth when she pressed too hard on the sensitive, bruised skin, laying her palm flat on the surface to let the warmth comfort the injury. She looked to the wound from the corner of her eye, feeling the smallest bit of relief to see no blood on the silk, just tiny tears where Wesker's nails had scratched through.
Her sigh echoed off the stone. To call her encounter with Albert in the lab a disaster would be an understatement, a nightmare was a better word for the happenstance. She should have taken her own advice and just gotten out of there when she gave him breakfast, but she just had to stay and endure his abusive nature. But nothing could have been more stupid on her part than kissing him. What was she thinking? Did she expect Wesker to remember her magically after? That he'd somehow become his old self or he'd kiss her back? In all honesty, yes, she did expect that or at least hoped for it.
But nothing remotely close to that occurred, rather he acted like she should have anticipated him to and ended up causing her pain emotionally and physically. That was what Albert Wesker did. He hurt people into submission and then some. He didn't stop until he had the right to claim victory; he was ruthless. Chris had told her this when they were on the mission in Kijuju and after, but subsequently all she'd gone through with Wesker and saw what she thought to be a different man than what others knew, she assumed she'd get a different treatment than what others received. She assumed he'd treat her like his equal, like someone he didn't sneer down at and would actually want their presence. But that assumption vanished as fast as a zombie disintegrating into the earth.
"He pushed you away four years ago for a reason, Sheva," she told herself, stilling her movements to stand in front of her bedroom door and to take a deep breath.
As she was about to enter her room, a door no more than ten feet away opened, bringing Sheva's attention to the sound. Flynn, Piper's boyfriend, walked out into the hall, looking around the long corridor until his eyes met Sheva's. So visibly stiff, the man's china blue eyes remained wide as Sheva looked at him, then around to different points in discomfort. She slowly turned towards him as he looked on down the hall as if searching for an escape.
"Flynn, right?" Sheva questioned politely. He looked back to her, his brows in an angle of slight worry and apprehension. He gave a small nod towards her and shifted on his feet. "Are you all right?"
"Uh, yeah, fine," was his quick response as he gave another nod.
Sheva pondered if she should let Flynn go and let him do whatever it is he wanted to do, let him do as he wished as she went to her room to sulk over the decisions she had made of recent past. She could go drown herself in the never ending self-pity and guilt that leveled higher and higher the moments she spent alone. But then again, she could find company to keep her mind over the negative and try to focus on conversation or some communication with someone besides an abusive man studying over files in the labs below. Sheva smiled to Flynn with a small but apparent grin, her hands clasping behind her back as she stepped towards him.
"So… Flynn, where you from?"
As if someone had put an entire splint on the length of his body, Flynn remained still and stiff as his eyes scanned Sheva's approaching figure. He crossed his arms over his chest tightly, almost hugging his body, and tapped the rubber heels of his converse together.
"Originally from Canada, but I've been all over," he told her in a voice of little emotion.
"I've never been to Canada," Sheva tapped her chin. "But I hear it's lovely. I guess that means you're a hockey man, right? I mean, whenever I hear of Canada it's either in the context of maple syrup or hockey," she listed with a giggle. She gestured to Flynn's hat to prove her point, his hand reaching up to feel the "Montreal Canadiens" embroidered logo on his cap. "Do you play hockey?"
"I used to, but I kind of lost interest," he replied, his shoulders relaxing a bit. Sheva took this as a sign that he was becoming more comfortable, even if it was just a slight movement of his shoulders.
"Is your family still living in Canada?" she inquired, leaning against the wall across from the young man. His shoulders went from their semi relaxed positioned back to the tense posture they had been in before, his body so rigid his shoulders were nearly touching his neck.
"I don't have any family…they've all passed," he murmured, eyes gazing to the stone they stood on as his lips formed in a frown. Sheva was quick to apologize but he just cut her off with his own question, so obvious to avoid any sort of pity or spotlight. "Do you have any family?"
"Um," Sheva's brow furrowed, feeling her breaths a little delayed caused by the pressure in the air due to the hostility. "My parents passed away a while ago and I was an only child. I mean, I have uncles and such, but I never talk to them. I have Isaac and now Piper, too, I guess. I have my fiancé back home and his sister."
Sheva's face slowly molded into melancholy as she listed off her family, the half back home not knowing about her family here. Flynn was quick to notice her change in mood, unsure of how to tread the situation. He could not respond, wait for her to say something and then try to get away. Or he could try to be some form of comfort, ask her more and listen. Flynn was a man to do more of the former, but to change things up, he thought, he'd be considerate of the woman before him.
Passed on by the messenger Piper, Flynn knew things about Sheva. Though, always hearing a side of the story from someone else proved to be sometimes an entirely different tale. Flynn didn't know Sheva, he knew Piper's version of Sheva. From the things that had been passed on about the brunette, he knew certain things of Sheva that interested him, but what it was that caught his attention was not necessarily her, but the people she was connected with.
Always being a man to come across awkward and at times uncomfortable, Flynn tried relaxing enough to let his arms fall to his sides, his hands sliding into his pockets. He mimicked her position and leaned into the wall behind him, inwardly taking a deep breath as he thought how to start a conversation. Embarrassingly, it had been awhile since Flynn had a conversation with someone besides Piper.
"What's your fiancé like?" he asked her first. Of all the things he could ask, Flynn chose her family outside the Spencer's. He had had enough of the English blood line, needing to hear of something else.
Sheva looked up to him, her eyes glazed with thought as she searched for words to speak. She kicked her foot into the stone, sighing and letting a small sentimental smile form on her lips naturally. "He's great. I don't think I've met one person who doesn't like him. Well," she paused, Wesker suddenly coming to mind. Wesker hated Chris with a passion and the feeling was mutual. "What I mean is that Chris is easy to like. And his sister is just like him but she has less of a filter on her mouth than he does. But Claire's really funny, whereas her brother thinks he's funny but he's not really. His effort is cute, though," Sheva recalled, thinking of Chris's handsome face and Claire's witty nature. The memory and reminder brought her down to a mood of longing, her demons mocking her that she had put herself in this situation all on her own.
Flynn's face remained neutral. He'd been able to train his emotions when their names were brought up, though it was still a challenge. "They seem nice," he commented plainly.
"They really are. You'd like them, anyone would like them… I know!" she called as her sudden epiphany hit her. Quickly, she stepped forward and grasped Flynn's wrist, pulling him along to her bedroom. Though he was unsure of what she was doing, Flynn followed but still with some hesitancy in his step. "I want to show you something," Sheva told him with a smile. "Isaac gets bored when I show him and I don't know if Piper would be interested."
With a furrowed brow, Flynn stopped next to her when she stood in front of the writing desk in her room. The sun had decided to make an appearance and shined in, sending shadows into the lush forest outside the windows. Pulling out the seat, Sheva gestured for Flynn to sit while she snatched her purse and began to dig around in the bag.
"Ugh, so much junk," she muttered before she pulled out her wallet. "Found it."
Once opening the small clutch, Sheva grabbed small cutout photos from a pocket inside the wallet. She tossed her bag and wallet to the desk, stepping to be beside Flynn and handing him the first photo of a man with dark skin, a gleaming smile, and surrounded by an environment that belonged to the desert.
"This is Josh. He's like a brother to me. I talked to him about, hmm, two weeks ago. He's expecting his first child with his wife and when I heard that, I was so happy because," she shuffled through photos, "Jill's having her baby a month before so then I'll be an aunt to two babies."
Flynn studied the photo of Jill, her brown hair in a ponytail and her squinty blue eyes shielding from the sun in her face. A man with shaggy hair and a smile on his face only meant for Jill next to him held the brunette close. Sheva pointed out this was Carlos Oliveira and the photo was taken a week before they revealed they were expecting. Another photo was added to Flynn's hand, making him tense even after being able to stay stoic at the saying of his name. Fortunate for him, however, he was expecting this and recovered.
"This is Chris, my fiancé," Sheva murmured, her voice going to just above a whisper. "He's a looker, huh? We've been together for a little less than four years now. Chris is probably the sharpest man I've ever seen on a mission, but at home and when we get to relax, he can be a big lug, you know? And super oblivious, too. But oddly enough, that's part of his charm. Although he takes his job more seriously than anyone, he's the most laidback and down to earth guy. And that says a lot if you've ever met Leon Kennedy," Sheva said with a snort, not noticing the slight roll of the shoulders Flynn did.
And lastly, setting a picture of a redheaded woman with bright blue eyes that shined past the photograph into Flynn's hands, Sheva smiled as she pointed to the photo. "And this is Chris's sister, Claire. Their parents passed on some good genes if you ask me. Their parents passed away, too, when they were still very young. But Chris tells me that Claire's almost exactly like their mom, but not nearly as much of a smartass. But that's hard to believe," Sheva chuckled. "She's pretty, huh?"
"Mhm," Flynn hummed, a look of discomfort lacing his face as he handed the photos back and stood. He took a step back as he raised his hand to his heart, rubbing the muscle roughly. His heart pounded in his chest viciously, sounding like an angry clock in his ears. He held back the groan when a sharp pain hit him hard, telling himself to stay strong.
"Are you all right?" Sheva asked, her eyes looking worried. He gave a stiff nod, his palm lying flat over his heart as he took deep breathes. She walked towards him, resting her hand on his back and motioning for him to sit. "Is there something I can get you?"
He was about to tell her he needed Piper, but he swallowed hard and told himself he could get past this episode alone. "I'm fine. Thank you, though."
Sheva urged for him to sit on the bed and she joined him, picking at her nails as she watched him massage his chest. "Can I ask you something?" she inquired with a gentle voice. He nodded tentatively. "I only heard a tiny bit about it, but I was told you have a medical condition. I know it's not my place, but is it something with your heart?"
Shifting with uneasiness, Flynn raised the cap on his head and stroked his buzzed hair, placing the hat back on. Something so personal to talk about with a stranger made him uncertain, putting him in a position of vulnerability; a place he never dealt with well. Sheva seemed innocent enough, or maybe a little ignorant, so he was as honest as he could be with her.
"I have a weak heart," he said. "If I work myself up too much, my heart just gets so excited and the pain hits me. But sometimes, I won't be doing anything and it just strikes me like lightening. It hurts, a lot. But I take medication for it and it keeps my heart in check, but sometimes the pain attacks me even right after a dosage of the medicine."
"What do doctors say?" she inquired carefully, doing her best to keep any form of pity from offending him. Trying to be sympathetic in the past with others had put Sheva in situations that she had regretted later.
"They all say the same thing. Ever since the condition started, they'd tell me I would die within a certain timespan. But here I am…alive," he mumbled the last part, relieved to feel the pain gone.
"There was a time in my life when a man watched over me, Emeka," Sheva stated, referring to the truck driver that had saved her after she had ran away from her abusive uncle she'd been sent to after her parents had been killed. He was the man to give her life again, though it was in the confines of guerilla groups. "He had weak lungs, but he always had the strongest spirit. He stayed healthy long enough until about a month before he passed. I had just come back from college in America and when I came to see him, I saw that he had given up. That he had accepted his fate and he was just waiting; waiting for his time to end. All his children had left and had gone off to live their own lives and there was no one to stay strong with him any longer.
"The man I had always known to be so full of life had given up and when he passed, he took that energy and love with him. I feel like maybe if he stayed strong in spirit or realized he didn't need others to stay optimistic, he might have had more time on this earth. I guess I'm telling you this, Flynn, because I don't want to see what happened to Emeka happen to you. If you stay strong and learn that you can fight whatever it is on your own, you can do whatever you want. And you seem to be doing well if doctors are telling you that you will die soon but you're still kicking," she chuckled.
Flynn rubbed the side of his neck, feeling his cheeks redden. "Thanks for the pep talk."
"No problem, anytime. And you have Piper to cheer you on, so now you have two cheerleaders." He gave a lackadaisical nod with little effort. "Speaking of which, how did you and Piper meet?"
"Uh, well…" he looked around the room, trying to find answers on the drapes hanging on the windows. "Piper tells this story better than I do. I'd ask her, really. I'll make it seem like a lame story."
"Oh, all right. Sorry if I'm bombarding you with questions. It can get lonely in this big old place. And I kind of need to distract myself with something. But anyways, thanks for the company," she told him somberly, trying to lay it on thick in hopes he'd talk more.
With an awkward movement of his lips that resembled a smile, Flynn stood and slowly walked towards the door. "I'm not the greatest company, but you're welcome." He looked back at her, stiffening to see her frown as he stepped further away. She was obviously lonely, maybe a little depressed, but too proud to ask for him to stick around. Not that he really would. When she raised her hand in a pathetic wave, his shoulders slouched as he told himself mentally, don't do it.
"Hey, I was going to look for Piper and I know she's in the library. She's always in the library. Anyway, I don't know this place… Could you show me where it is?" he asked, cursing himself mentally. Good going.
Like a spring being set free, Sheva shot up with a large smile. She accepted and strode towards him, pulling him along down the halls of the large estate. She remained positive as she talked about simple things, nothing to make the situation uncomfortable. And for once in very long time, Flynn felt…comfortable? Maybe that was exaggerating, but it was a change. He stopped himself when he chuckled at a comment Sheva made, surprised to hear such a noise escape his body. He had to praise the girl beside him for actually making him laugh, something no one could do for a very long time.
"You seem like a nice guy, Flynn," Sheva told him sincerely. "Piper's lucky."
Stiffening for the millionth time, Flynn frowned at the comment. He wasn't a nice guy. Not after the choices and actions he had committed in the past. For a long while, people had been conducting Flynn's life. He never had the control that he deserved and he still didn't. Part of it was the condition he suffered with and part of it was the fact he was never given chances to give himself better options in choice making. It was a cycle that repeated itself.
He simply shrugged at Sheva's comment, opting to stay silent. As she continued chatting, Flynn knew that he shouldn't grow close to the girl. But that conflicted with the friendly vibe she radiated, making him wish he could throw away his past and actually commit to friendship with anyone, not just her. He wished he didn't have this stupid yet devastating condition and that he had full control over his own choices. However, life had plans for him that he just didn't agree with and he couldn't do a thing about it. He just happened to be one of the many to be dealt a bad set of cards and he had to accept that, no matter how hard that was.
Author's note: Confession? I really dislike this chapter. I feel like it's really insipid and totally lacking in entertainment. This was more meant as a filler and proper introduction of Flynn (that's where I feel I failed), but I was going back and forth if I should write in his perspective or if it should all be in Sheva's. I feel like I'm making Flynn out to be this complete ass. Pardon my sulking and whining, I'm a cry baby at heart.
Sasusakui: Wesker needs to watch himself. Touching Sheva in such a way deducts his "cool points"… I kid. Haha, Isaac would probably cower to Wesker if he'd try standing up to him for Sheva's sake. Keep an eye out for Piper. With a name like that, you never know… :)
Auktober: Bipolar is possibly the perfect description of Wesker at this point. The man is all over the place. Thanks! I think if anyone is going to set Wesker straight, it'll be Miss Sheva. :)
agnesreed: Haha, Wesker was getting excited for a moment and then BAM…kicked in the family jewels. Sheva gets brownie points for that!
littlevamp: Shame on Wesker for wasting food that Isaac put plenty work into… Thank you! I really love writing dialogue; it's almost an escape, haha. Butt-kissing moments: coming soon! :)
Comix777: I can see why that would be a bother. I suppose Wesker reclaimed his Godly righteousness mainly because Sheva was able to catch him off guard and possibly outwit him, so as a reflex he did his "god" routine thing. And because his ego is as big as the Eiffel Tower. Does that make any sense? I imagine Wesker just washing his hair in the shower, soap gets in his eyes and then, "I am a God!"
xxSnowixx: Happy holidays! Thank you so much for the encouragement and I hope to be getting to some real Shesker and Jake and Wesker moments here soon. :)
Should I rewrite this chapter? Can you tell I really am negative about it? Maybe I'm just really self-centered, so please forgive me for rambling on about it. What do you think? Rewrite and repost? Or leave it alone and continue on? Let me know, pretty please. Perfectionism; first world problem.
-Sarai