So I said 46 was when things were going to start getting serious again. Turns out that I lied to myself. This was originally going to be a super fluffy chapter. My hands laughed at that and wrote this instead. I'm sorry but also I hope you enjoy it all the same.

Song Suggestion: Follow my Feet by The Unlikely Candidates

Disclaimer: I own Nothing, lordy do I wish Capcom would hire me to fix their lore but I don't think that's an open position so instead I will stick to fanfiction filled with spelling and grammar errors.


New Year's Eve approached for the fourth time since Emma had moved in. And, as strange as it was to think about it, this would be the last time the tradition would be held. It was bittersweet in its own way, but all the same, Emma smiled, standing next to Chris as they took their place between their apartments. Chris' phone was resting on his wall-mounted shelf and played a broadcast of the usual radio station. Bastion and Travis stood in the empty space between apartments on the opposite side of the hallway. Sitting on Bastion's wall-mounted shelf was his phone, which was blasting a recording of an old fashion Italian record. It just seemed appropriate for the tradition to follow through to the end.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four…

Three… Emma made sure her phone was out and recording.

Two… Travis took a deep breath.

One… He reached into his baggy jacket pocket to make sure that he had a small velvet box in hand.

"Happy New Year!" the radio loudly announced as Bastion gave Travis a quick kiss. Chris and Emma watched with knowing smiles. She wasn't able to keep it from Chris for long, considering she kept going 'shopping' with Travis.

Travis walked into the apartment to return with four glasses and a bottle of good champagne.

"Are you recording?" Bastion asked, confused as he finally noticed Emma.

CRAP. "Well yeah, it's our last New Year's together. I wanna have the memory," she said, causing Bastion to roll his eyes.

"Put that away. If you want the memory then live it," he countered while Travis nervously focused on very quickly pouring the four glasses and handing out three of them.

"Suppose it's my turn to give the speech," Travis said as he nervously shifted and checked his pocket again. Yep, the box was still there. "So. I, um—" He cleared his throat.

"A little over two years ago I was accepted into this community and with that, the second-floor new year's tradition. Each year that I've been able to attend I consider how lucky I am to know such amazing and loving people," Travis said as he fidgeted with the box in his jacket pocket. "And it was exactly two years, two months, and sixteen days ago that I was fortunately smart enough to agree to go on a first date to a terribly horrifying Halloween carnival that changed my life forever."

Come on. You can do it. You rehearsed this so many times, Emma thought as she mentally cheered on Travis.

"A life that's going to continue to change as this little family that is the second-floor community starts parting ways. Mrs. Russo has left, and soon, so will Chris and Emma," Travis said, giving a slight nod to Emma and Chris.

Bastion chuckled at this. "I think I jinxed it by telling everyone not to move. Maybe reverse Psychology? ... Quick! Everyone, scatter!" he joked, which caused the other three to laugh.

Travis smiled as he took a deep breath. "If I've learned anything over the last year, it's that change is inevitable, even if it can be terrifying," Travis said before shifting to kneel. "So, if there was one thing that I could make consistent in my life, even if we change with time, I'd want it to be that we're together for all the changes that life can throw at us," Travis said as he took out the box and offered it up to a now sobbing and nodding Bastion, hiding his mouth behind his hands. "That is to say, do you want to share the rest of forever together and get married?"

"Of course I do," Bastion replied as he moved forward to kneel in front of Travis as well so he could throw his arms around his new fiancé and pepper him with kisses.

Emma fought back a quiet 'Aww' so it wouldn't cover any of the audio on the recording and moved to make sure she was recording at the right angle. She loved a happy ending. Beginning? Whatever you called this.

Travis helped Bastion put on the ring and he showed it to the camera. "It fits," he said happily with a chuckle while moving to wipe away a tear. "You're sending me the video, right?" he asked, smiling from ear to ear as he and Travis both stood up and Emma nodded. "Okay good." Bastion fanned his face to try and stop crying.

Travis cleared his throat as he finally picked up his own glass from the shelf. "So, if everyone would care to join me in a toast," Travis said as Chris handed Emma her glass and she mouthed a quiet 'thank you.' "Cheers, to a year of good health and prosperity."

"Cheers!" the three cried before taking a drink. With that, Emma cut the recording and focused on taking pictures for the two. By the time that the four had finished their drinks and gotten all the photos the newly engaged couple could ask for, it was 12:20 in the morning. Chris and Emma made their way back to his place to rest for the night. Why did it feel like they forgot something... All the same, the two went to bed.

'*'*'*'*'

Briiing, Briiing! Briiing, Briiing!

Chris inhaled deeply as he heard his phone going off and lazily reached for it.

Monday, January 11th, 3 AM.

[INCOMING CALL - DIRECTOR]

Well shit. He gave a short-tired sigh before giving Emma, who was curled up next to him, a quick peck and answering the phone.

"Hello?" he said, not even trying to hide that he was tired and that he had just been woken up.

"Redfield. We need you ready to head out to Romania in the next three hours," said the director with little else in the way of a greeting.

"I thought we weren't scheduled to leave until next week?" Chris pointed out. "Did something happen?"

"The time was moved. That's all there is to it," the director replied.

Yeah, he doubted that. "Okay. I'll be there," Chris said before hanging up and putting the phone down.

"Work?" Emma said, confused as she rolled over since the conversation had woken her up too.

"Yeah," he said, getting up. "Something feels off..."

"Be careful," Emma replied with concern evident in her tone despite being half asleep.

"I should be back in a week," he replied.

"Mmkay," Emma answered before starting to fall back asleep. She'd known him for four years, and they'd been seeing each other for two, so this was pretty normal now.

'*'*'*'*'

One long flight across the ocean later, Chris made his way to check on Ethan, Mia, and Rosemary Winters. Overall, the trip went pretty normally. Until the last day. Saturday, January 16th.

"Hey, Alpha," Tundra said as she headed over to join Chris as the squad got ready for the day.

"Yeah?" he said with a raised eyebrow.

"Just got back from talking to Tiger Orca. Nothing unusual to report aside from this." She handed over an envelope addressed from Mia to Zoe Baker. The only other survivor of the Baker incident. Zoe hadn't exactly been quiet or subtle with her poking around about the BSAA, but it made it easier for him to dig around too. So he didn't exactly move to stop it. "Mia found out about Zoe?"

"Seems so," Tundra replied with a nod. "The letter seems clean. She handed it off to one of the Tiger Orca members a week or so ago, judging by the photo of the kid's half-birthday. They wanted to run it by you. Figured since we'd be stateside, we could take care of sending it out. They haven't heard anything regarding Miranda. It's hard to tell, though, when the woman can apparently turn into anyone."

"That certainly makes it more difficult," he agreed with a tired sigh, pocketing the letter. "Wait half-birthday?" Chris asked, confused as he took out the letter and opened it to look at it.

"Something the matter, Captain?" Tundra asked and Chris nodded.

"Maybe... I want to confirm a hunch though. For now, lay low. And don't mention the letter to anyone," Chris said as he pocketed it again.

"Yes sir," Tundra replied, confused.

All the same, the squad gathered up and they made their way to the Winters' home. Chris was the first to exit the vehicle and make his way up to the door. He pushed past his initial urge to just burst through the door and knocked on it.

It took a moment, but Ethan answered. "Hey, good timing," he said with a tired smile. "Mia, I'm heading out!" he called back into the house. "Let's go," he said as he closed the door behind him.

"Good timing?" Chris asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah," Ethan replied as they walked down the path of the house to the group of armored cars. "Saved me from getting my head bit off again," he said with a weary sigh. "Mia's been irritable for the last few weeks," Ethan admitted with a slight frown. He didn't like speaking poorly of his wife, but the fighting was getting draining.

Chris nodded and listened while trying to avoid raising any alarm. "Is she off her meds still?"

Ethan bobbed his head slightly. "Kind of. She went on them again after the birth but back off again recently. Started going on about some holistic baby food diet. How it's not good for Rose even though the doctors said it would be fine."

"Right." Chris nodded while knitting his eyebrows. "How old is she again?"

"Five and a half months," Ethan said with a smile. He was more than happy to talk about his little girl. "It's kind of funny actually," he added as he pulled up his phone to show Chris the same picture that was in the letter to Zoe. "Without the meds, Mia can be scatterbrained. Back on the second, Mia made up a cake for Rose's half-birthday. I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't for another month."

And that was pretty much exactly what he was looking for. Something was wrong. They needed to move out immediately.

Chris was rather irritable through training; Ethan was still not doing great. He'd improved over the last few years to be sure but. Even with that it just seemed unwise to tell him about what was going on. What if this Miranda person infected him too? They didn't know how her powers worked, exactly, just that they did, and that they were connected to the mold.

Once they dropped Ethan off for the day, Chris got back into the car. "Get us to the airfield. We're going to be doing an all-nighter," Chris said, which caught the group's attention. They hadn't even turned off communications. "Miranda is up to something. We need to move now." Chris flipped off the communications upon remembering it was still on. "We're going dark effective immediately."

"Yes sir," they all replied and made their way to the airfield.

"Tundra, stay behind with Night Howl and Umber Eye, just in case. See if you can get Tiger Orca squad on board to help. They've been our eyes on the ground the whole time. We're going to need extra hands for this."

"Yes sir."

"Got it."

"Can do, boss."

"Lobo, Canine, that leaves the two of you with me. I'll make the flight over, Lobo gas up the chopper to make the flight back. Canine you'll come with me to get the supplies from the apartment," Chris added before looking at the group as a whole. "We'll meet up again at the coordinated provided by Tundra's tip as Miranda's base of operations. After that, we won't be able to go back to the BSAA for a resupply, so grab everything that isn't bolted down."

It was definitely not ideal to have to do this right when they were coming back from a mission, when they'd be expected to attend a debrief, but to hell with it. If they didn't act fast someone was going to die. If there hadn't been casualties already.

After a long flight back to the states the three went ahead to carry out their goals. Chris hurried to his own office to get his civilian gear, which had his car keys in it, only to find a lone envelope sitting on his desk. It was embossed with the BSAA logo. Chris frowned as he opens the envelope, though his expression shifted to shock as he read the letter inside.

BSAA HQ:

Warning Letter to Chris Redfield

Chris,

We are growing concerned with your recent activity. According to the recent Reports you have taken personal control of the elite unit, the Hound Wolf Squad, without permission. And you've accessed a number of top-secret documents. Also without permission.

What the hell are you doing?

What are you and your squad doing in eastern Europe? Who the fuck is this Miranda that keeps popping up in your correspondences? What is with the investigation into the Winters family?

You've been very critical of BSAA since the Baker Incident. You might be one of the founding original eleven, but I cannot let you continue to run around unchecked. So, I will repeat myself, What the hell are you doing?

BSAA HQ, Investigations

He frowned as he read the letter, grabbed a pen, and wrote on the back 'It's Not Over.' He shoved the letter back into the envelope and pocketed that along with his car keys. He was running out of time. The BSAA was catching on and fast, they had a few hours at best before a no-fly notice went out to try and keep them grounded. With that he quickly made his way out of the building and to the parking lot where Canine was waiting by his car.

"What took you so long?" Canine aske das he opens the car door the second it was unlocked.

Chris gets into the car as well. He reached to grab the wire he was aware of and yanked it out to throw it out the window. "We got trouble," Chris said with a frown.

"Don't we always?" Canine asks in return as he strapped in.

"BSAA is on our heels," Chris said as he got the car started and quickly made his way back to the apartments.

"Great, should I text Lobo?" Canine asked, taking out his phone for the group chat.

"No, they're going through phone records. All correspondence is being scrubbed as we speak from the sounds of it. We have to go completely dark at this point," Chris said with a frown as he used one hand to dig out a cigarette from the pack in his cup holder.

The drive goes by quickly since there was hardly anyone on the road. Even after leaving at 6:30 pm for a thirteen-hour flight, it was still 11:30 pm on the 16th thanks to time zones. Chris quickly parked along the side of the road, leaving the SUV running as he and Canine hurried up the stairs. He used the spare key to open up Emma's apartment, which caused Duke to start barking at first since it was an odd time for someone to walk in, but he stopped shortly after seeing it was just Chris and friend.

"Come on," Chris said as he led the way back to the room where the supplies were stashed and unlocked it as using the allen wrench that Emma stashed on top of the door frame. It took a good while, but they eventually moved the six large crates worth of supplies, along with miscellaneous extras too big to fit into the metal containers.

"I think that's the last of it," Canine said as he waited for Chris to exit the apartment and lock it up.

Chris nodded. "Let's go."

The two drove back to the BSAA HQ and didn't bother parking in the parking lot. Instead, Chris used what security access he had left to get the car onto the airfield so they could start packing it up directly. It would be more evidence against him to leave his car on the airfield like this, but they didn't have the luxury of time.

"Taking off," Lobo said as Chris and Canine buckled in.

"Chopper H1W1, you are not cleared for takeoff," said a voice over the radio. "Return to base, over."

"Ignore it. Take off. If we re-ground they're going after us," Chris said and Lobo nodded.

"That would be a negative air control. Make sure the skies are clear, over and out," Lobo replied and with that, he took off and headed back to Romania.

Around 6:45 AM Emma's alarm went off. She woke up in Chris' apartment with a yawn. Sunday, January 17th. It was early for a weekend, but Duke needed a regular schedule, so she woke up all the same. She sleepily shuffled from one apartment to the other and walked in to stare at the island counter in confusion. That wasn't there before, she thought as she attempted to pet Duke while being distracted by two envelopes and a folded piece of printer paper sitting upright with a pen.

She walked over and picked up the folded paper to read it first.

Emma,

The BSAA caught onto my plans. I'm sorry but I don't know when I'll be back. It's more than I should ask of you, but please mail these out to the address on the envelope.

Stay safe,

Chris

P.S. Burn this so they don't know I was here.

Emma stared at the tiny metal house on the island before ripping off a scrap from the piece of printer paper and writing on it with the pen that was left next to the letters. She put the rushed message into the house before wandering to the junk drawer to find a box of matches and using one to light the scrap of paper in the tiny house on fire. She repeated the action of tearing off a piece of the page, writing a quick message, and burning it until the page of printer paper was completely gone and a mound of ashes collected on the tray under the metal hut. Each scrap of the page held the same message.

Please let him come home safely.

"Come on, Duke. We need to take a trip to the post office," Emma said with a worried frown.


Dawn of the final day.

FanNatic Lore:

Welp, I had to make some stuff up again so here we go. If you look over the Zoe Files from the post-game purchase store for RE8 [i think that's where it is] you get an 80 slide document. In it, Zoe mentions receiving two letters. One from Mia which for the sake of brevity I did not write out verbatim. and One from the BSAA that was unsigned calling out Chris's sus actions with a message on the back that seemingly came from Chris himself. The letters don't line up. in the slightest. As they are, at face value, The letter from Mia would have had to have been written after Feb 2nd because that was Rose's half birthday and Chris had to have started Recon and took over a few squads well before Feb second considering the level of Recon they did and the multiple observation sites. He would have also had to have had the time to know that Mia sent a letter since and both of the letters arrived together in the Zoe log. Mia Couldn't have written that letter on Feb 2nd since it was heavily implied that Rose had a sudden Diet shift Weeks in advance of RE8 because of the built-up canned baby food and Miranda had been trying to blend in for a while.

-insert confused writer sounds here- Who on earth was in charge of this timeline and were they high? The game starts on Feb 9th when the heck did they think all of this happened? by their logic it was, half birthday on the 2nd Chris hijacks a team to go to Romania. Mia writes the letter on the 3rd and gives it to a BSAA person only to get janked by Miranda. Chris says oh sheet on the 4th and stops what he's doing to go fly back to America and get a memo from his desk that says screw you what are you doing so he can mail that to Zoe with the letter he somehow got while he was doing recon in a remote village under the radar then flys back on the 5th with more people sets up the plan and attacks on the night of the 6th so the game can start on the 9th MC FREACKING NO. You've got to be pulling my leg Capcom. We're not going with that.

The best explanation I could come up with was that the letter from Mia was actually written early by Miranda who was trying to lure in Zoe in case Rose didn't work out because at that time she wouldn't have had confirmation that Rose was a perfect vessel yet and Zoe was another infected young female. More so than Mia was since she almost completely calcified or whatever you call it, then came back from it. A decent indicator that she would be similar to Rose. With that, I'm going to lean into the fact that Miranda was missing information that would have been common to Mia and say she got Rose's birthday ever so slightly wrong which is what tipped off Chris that she swapped places. Honest to goodness this is the best I can do while adding this piece of in-game lore to the story and getting it to make sense lmao.

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Review responses:

Guest1995 - I swear you guys can read my mind sometimes lol that is going to be the subject of a poll that will be going out with chapter 46. vaguely. until tomorrow friend. i salute you. Thank you for your continued support throughout all of this. it means the world to me.