Warning: this fic contains blood, injury, and death.
Jill knows that if she were in Alice's position, she would do the exact same thing in order to protect Angie. No doubt about it.
However, that doesn't stop the string of surprised expletives from leaving Jill's mouth when the shrapnel strikes Alice, embedding itself deep in her abdomen. From her parted lips, blood bubbles forth, streaking down her cheek as she falls somewhat limply against L.J.'s shoulder. "Aw, hell!" he utters in alarm. The shockwave of the blast has their hijacked helicopter spinning out of control.
"We're going down!" Carlos shouts.
L.J. grabs a fistful of Angie's blazer to prevent her from slipping out of her seat. Jill does something similar for Alice, seizing her by the straps of her holsters as she begins to loll in the other direction. 'Come on. Don't pass out now, dammit!' she thinks. "Put on a seatbelt! Heads down, lean forward, grab hold of your lower legs!"
Despite how nauseatingly disorienting everything quickly becomes, Jill manages to get a belt on Alice's unconscious form. She can't do much to get her into a bracing position. Especially with the twelve-inch pole sticking out of her, but at least now she won't be knocking around the cabin like a pinball.
They better survive this crash. After the hellish night they've all just had, they better survive this fucking crash. They've lost enough people already.
There's screaming. A lot of it. An alarm is blaring.
Everything goes black.
...
Something is burning. It's the first thing Jill processes as she regains consciousness, followed by the persistent ache that's settled throughout her whole body. She groans.
"Jill?" Carlos made it. Good. L.J. helps him pull her out of the wreck. They're both still alive. Good.
"Angie?"
"Kid's alright," Carlos tells her. Good.
"Alice?"
"...She's gone."
Jill catches sight of Alice sprawled out on the rocks not too far away. She's staring lifelessly up at the early morning sky, entirely unmoving.
Jill knows that, realistically, she should have expected this. Alice already wasn't doing too hot when they first boarded the chopper. Still, she finds herself in disbelief that the enigma of a woman (who rocked up by crashing a motorcycle into a church and won a fistfight with a seven-foot-something monster) is dead just like that. A hollow feeling settles in her chest.
"We need to get going before they find us. Come on."
...Carlos is right. They can't risk lingering.
Before following after the others, Jill takes a moment to remove the wristwatch hanging from Alice's belt and sends her a silent thanks for her help.
With their homes blown sky high, lives upturned, no family or friends to contact, and Umbrella on a manhunt for them, Jill, Carlos, L.J., and Angie decide to stick together. They find themselves a temporary home—a safe house—while they try to figure out what to do next.
Jill already knows what she wants: To take down Umbrella. She spends her time thinking of ways to make that happen.
When her thoughts aren't occupied by that, her mind often drifts back to Alice. Even as time continues to pass, acceptance refuses to set in.
Jill starts to wear the watch. She tells herself it's because the face of her S.T.A.R.S.-issued one is cracked to the point of being unreadable. That leads to her thinking about how it got like that, which was when the kitchen in Angie's school blew up and the force of the explosion threw her into a table.
Then, she thinks of finding Alice standing in front of her, shrugging off the fire blanket she used to shield herself and Angie.
She thinks about how surprised she was to see her still kicking after they separated at the bridge.
Then, she sighs and tries to steer her thoughts elsewhere.
Days go by.
It's late and Jill is only two shots deep into the whiskey L.J. brought out.
She turns her head at the sound of creaking footsteps coming from down the corridor. Angie is standing in the entryway of the main living space.
"I think Alice is alive."
Jill can't help but perk up.
They're all quiet for a moment.
"Angela..." Carlos starts, unsure of how to word what he wants to say next.
"I know she is. I can feel it. She's out there."
Jill wants to hear her out. She knows that, somehow, Angie and Alice could sense each other were infected from the get-go. She also knows that the T-Virus tends to keep the dead walking. Maybe Alice is alive. She tells the boys as much.
"If she is, are we even gonna be able to track her down?"
Maybe there's a possibility that Angie can simply pick up on Alice's presence if they're close enough.
It ends up being a bit tricky, but a lot of driving around with Angela in their "borrowed" Jeep and snooping leads them to believe they've pinpointed Alice's location. There's an Umbrella medical research center in a secluded spot outside of town.
"This is a suicide mission," L.J. says.
"They won't even know that we're the same people the suits placed a target on," Jill assures. "We'll be in and out."