Chapter 21

-Wesker's Promise-

Under Eva's insistence, Wesker went to fetch a first aid kit from the building and took care of Chris's wounds. After a few minutes, bandages covered the agent's entire upper body and were wrapped around his head and over his injured right eye which he was still unable to open. Chris didn't have any new clothes so he remained in his bloody shirt, but fortunately Wesker and Eva had other clothes to put on. When Eva came back out after changing her shirt, Chris chuckled when he saw what she had chosen to put on.

"What are you laughing at?" Eva asked him through suspicious eyes.

"Nothing, don't even worry about it," he replied quickly.

Eva was wearing the exact same black t-shirt she had been wearing before. The only difference was that this one wasn't soaked in her blood. The green-eyed girl seemed to have her father's sense of style, or at least color. Chris noticed she didn't have her arm in a sling and it hung motionless by her side.

"Don't you want to take care of that?" Chris wondered, gesturing to the useless arm.

Eva shrugged her shoulders. "I'll get along fine without bandages for now."

Chris decided not to force the matter and he shifted away from her, staring out over the African plains to watch the horizon as the sun set. Behind him, Wesker came out of the building and a glance told him the tyrant had chosen the exact identical clothing he had worn before. Chris shook his head in amusement. Those two were one and the same. From behind he heard the two conversing with one another.

"Why can't I have a cool power like yours?" Eva asked her father. "You get healing, superspeed, and superstrength. No fair. I have to die for something to happen for me."

"Eva, I want you to live a normal life. I don't want you to become inhuman like me." Wesker informed her briskly.

He didn't seem to have any interest in remaining on the topic but Eva wasn't going to let him off that easy apparently.

"I doubt there's going to be any normal for me. I'm seventeen and graduated from college, my father's pretty much a supersoldier, and I can't die. Not that I know of anyways."

There was a long period of silence and for a moment Chris thought they might have left without him hearing, but then Eva's voice filled the quiet.

"So what of your promise?"

Chris perked up, he had wondered what promise Wesker may have made to her earlier so he wanted to hear this. After a brief pause the blonde tyrant answered her.

"Yes. You may stay with me. I gave you my word, didn't I?"

He couldn't see since he had his back to the two but he could practically hear Eva's head bobbing up and down as she showed her understanding and agreement with Wesker.

"Yeah, yeah. You did."

Someone came to stand next to him. Eva shifted her stance beside him and stared out at the sunset. After a few seconds of quiet peacefulness of just relaxing in the moment with no cause for concern or heartache other than the kind which already plagued them both, Eva broke the silence.

"So what are you going to do now? The organization you're a part of isn't real, so what are you going to do?" she asked him quietly.

"It's been my life's work to bring Umbrella down and I thought I accomplished that goal five years ago. But I was wrong and they're still out there, which means I have a job to do." Chris told her with grim determination.

"But the letter said Sheva was their last hope for Umbrella's revival. Now that she's dead I thought they would be finished..." Eva trailed off, looking to Chris for answers.

He shook his head. "Umbrella won't give up that easily. Not if they're still out there trying to bring themselves back after all this time, even without Spencer to lead them. I'm going to stop that evil corporation, for good this time."

"Ah Chris, you haven't changed at all." Wesker said, giving Chris his trademark smirk.

The black-clad man strolled slowly over to stand on Chris's other side, watching the sun's gradual descent along with them. He continued to wear his ever present dark sunglasses but he peered at the other man over the rims.

"It seems our paths are forever destined to cross." Wesker commented.

"Yeah, it seems that way." Chris admitted.

"I have an idea!" Eva exclaimed, suddenly very enthusiastic. "You two both keep crossing paths and you both hate Umbrella. You guys are perfect for working together to fight Umbrella! I'll help! The three of us will take that corporation down together!"

Chris seemed stunned by the idea and stared incredulously at Eva. "What?! Wesker and me working together? We hate each other!"

"So what was your plan then? To go and fight Umbrella alone?" Eva asked him skeptically.

She accidentally hit a sore spot though, because Chris's expression darkened and grief filled his one visible eye. His jaw twitched when his teeth clenched together as he struggled to keep his emotions from surfacing.

"Jill and I, we sought to destroy Umbrella together and we thought we had. I'm grateful she died without knowing those bastards are still out there." Chris laughed but it was forced and filled with despair.

Eva's excitement faded and she grew more solemn. "Chris, there will be a happy ending for you. Sometimes it just takes time."

He sighed, obviously weighed down heavily by the day's events. "I'd like to believe what we saw back there was real. Our loved ones come back to us to get to say goodbye. But a part of me thinks it was all Sin, or Dante or whatever. That somehow he turned his own power in on himself and it destroyed any part of him that might have remained when I wounded him."

"I don't understand." Eva shared, frowning in her confusion of his thoughts.

He did his best to articulate his thoughts that even he was newly coming to understand as possibly true.

"I'm not sure on this, but maybe somehow there were two parts of him. Part of him convinced in his psychosis that he was actually the real and true living version of sin itself, and the part that knew he was just some guy who got created into what he became. All those people we met with powers? I'm starting to think they may have been a part of Dante's creation too. Like maybe it was the part his other half created, to try and stop the evil things being created by its own power."

"But they have to be real. And your sister being dragged into this...?" Eva noted, still so terribly confused and uncertain about things now.

He got why she would want to believe all of it to be real, to have happened. Who wouldn't want to be able to see a mother they couldn't actually remember because she'd died so young? And Chris wanted to believe that group of people they'd met were really and truly out there somewhere, doing good. They'd been real heroes, each and every one of them.

"If people like that are out there with powers, just being born that way, why wouldn't we have seen them? Especially in my line of work, my cases strive off of the unusual and dangerous. Maybe you're right, maybe they're out there. I'm just telling you what I think."

"That Dante had a split-personality and actively tried to destroy himself while the other side got all greedy and murder happy?"

He looked at her. "Pretty much. Or maybe some kind of death echo? If a thing can become powerful enough to be looking like other people and popping dead things back into existence, why not be a big enough force to create some kind of burst of power upon its death?"

"Maybe you're right. But us being there and what happened was real enough. And we won. It's over."

Chris glanced at her before returning his gaze to the sky. He knew where she was going with this and it just wouldn't be true for him.

"People like us, we don't get happy endings."

Determination appeared with full force in Eva's expression. "That's why it's up to us to be the ones to fight. So others can get their happy endings."

This idea appealed to Chris and he actually felt a sliver of positivity return to his weighted soul.

"You're right. If I can't be happy then I'll make sure others can be."

"We'll make sure. You don't have to do this alone." Eva told him.

Chris turned to Wesker, who met his resolved gaze. "What do you say? I know we don't like each other and there's that whole arch nemesis thing... But if we form an alliance, I'm sure we can destroy Umbrella."

Wesker appeared to be contemplating the whole situation as he studied the other man's face. And then after looking at Chris's brown iris which now contained traces of green in it, he reached a decision. Wesker surprised Chris when he held out a gloved hand for him to shake. He never thought he'd see the day...

"Agreed. We shall have an alliance to destroy Umbrella." Wesker affirmed.

Eva threw her arms around Chris happily. "Yes! And you can stay with us since we're probably going to have to go into hiding."

"Hiding?" Chris asked with confusion.

"Yeah, from Umbrella." Eva explained matter-of-factly. "When you don't go back to work for the BSAA, they're going to realize you've discovered their true purpose and come after you. You're too much of a thorn in their side for them to let you live with what you know."

Chris frowned. He hadn't thought about that but he realized she was right. He didn't think they'd come after his sister or any of the others, if those others even did exist, because they would have no reason to suspect any of them were involved. But Chris figured it would be best if he warned his sister and friends just to be safe. Working with Wesker, he wondered if the tyrant would go for that idea of him contacting others. Maybe he wouldn't tell him.

"I guess that's true." Chris conceded.

Wesker shifted his sunglasses and started to walk across the field, towards a hangar in the near distance.

"Fine, you may live with us." Wesker called back to Chris. "But if you and my daughter engage in..relations, I will castrate you personally."

Chris's eyes widened in shock at the wild insinuation and then became aware that Eva still had her arms wrapped around him. Not in the least bit eager to take Wesker up on his threat, he quickly detached himself from the blonde haired girl. Chris could feel his cheeks heating up in embarrassment and a quick glance at the girl and her matching red blush told him the next few days were going to be extremely uncomfortable. The two walked hurriedly to catch up with the other but before they did, Chris swore he heard Wesker say something else.

"The day I ever see mini Redfields..ahahaha..."