As the crickets around the tower chirped out a heartbeat to the South American landscape, Jill briefly took in the space of the lookout tower as she climbed the steps.
It was a place of solitude, where the sounds of nature played a symphony that no human composer could truly replicate. A place where one could let their warring thoughts come to die.
The second thing that struck her as she had climbed the stairs was the gentle caress of the mountain breeze, a cool and crisp whisper that rustled through the trees surrounding the tower. The ancient wooden structure creaked softly in response, as if joining in the conversation with the wind. A comforting sound, a reminder that the tower had stood sentinel here—maybe for decades—witnessing the passage of time, and a new purpose in its usage.
In the midst of this symphony, as Jill had made her way from the chattering voices down below, she noted the profound silence that grew the higher she climbed.
These were interludes—the silence. Something her father had sometimes spoken of. A poignant juncture where the imminent shift of the future lingered in the stillness, holding the promise of change yet to unfold.
Fingers on the knob to the tower, Jill could see a silhouette inside. One she knew better than anything these days and she nearly broke apart from just the sight of him.
With shaking fingers, she opened that door to look upon him.
Drooped over his seat; a man who had lost too much but still continued to fight.
Carlos.
He was speaking now. Saying something that sounded like an order to the shift-change, but he hadn't turned around yet.
Much like it had when she first found him again only a few weeks ago, the horrors of her life became the backdrop they were meant to be. The air seemed to escape her lungs then, and her once-steadfast grip on the bejeweled sword faltered, slipping away amidst the hold of cramping, weary hands.
The forged the sword of Bolivar.
Of no base mundane metal,
Was the wondrous weapon made.
And in no earth-born fire,
Was fashioned the sacred blade.
She'd meant to give the sword back to Tatiana, but a part of Jill hadn't wanted to give it to her. Parts of Jill thought that honor should go to him—to Carlos. To the one she had fought so desperately to get back to.
Albert Wesker had brought her back from death with the curation in his laboratory once, and she had spent the rest of her days wishing for that end.
Carlos Oliveira had brought her back to life with nothing more than the memory of who he was, and now she could only see the future of her life with him in it.
At the sound of the sword crashing, Carlos was rising to his feet, spinning in place as his own knife fell from his lap.
And there again—in his eyes—he looked at her like no one else did. She wasn't the fallen S.T.A.R.S. operative to him, not the woman fighting bioterrorism, not the woman who fell from the window and was turned into a slave by her ex-captain.
She was just Jill to him.
Just Jill.
"To whatever end, Carlos," she repeated her vow to him as she had in the cab of the car on that stretch of road before her abduction. A promise she intended to keep, no matter the setting, and no matter the foe; she'd protect him until death took her for the second time. "My home is still with you."
Hands that reached for her, his boot knocked the sword aside with a scraping sheet against the old wood of the watchtower. She could hear him inhale sharply before his body slammed into hers; his larger hands swallowing up the back of her head as he dove his fingers into her blonde strands.
"Jill," he uttered the only title she wanted for the rest of her life. Face before hers, tears in his eyes. "Jill. Jill."
A broken sound.
A man who thought all had been lost.
The scent of gun oil and sweat clung to him, but underneath it was the undeniable essence of Carlos. Alive and real.
The scent of home.
Cupping his own face, Jill finally realized the sob she'd been holding back on the stairs as she looked up into those impossibly dark eyes and beheld the man she wanted to call her home for the rest of her days.
For home wasn't a place. It was a person.
The old tower floorboards groaned from their combined weight as Carlos rested his forehead against hers, and their breaths mingled in the small space between them.
They stayed like that, wrapped in each other's embrace, until gravity brought them once again to the floor like it had in his small home when he'd first confronted her guilt.
"I thought I lost you," he whispered at last, his voice cracking.
"You didn't," she replied softly, her lips brushing against his neck. "I had quite the journey, but I wasn't going to let them stop me…I…" She trailed off as he pulled her into his lap, cradling her gently as if too much pressure would cause her to shatter.
Carlos pulled back slightly to look into her eyes, his hands cupping around her elbows as he held her there.
As he took in the woman who fought her way back.
"You're…" Switching from looking at each of her eyes, down her face, and eventually to the new scars on her neck, he seemed to lose whatever thought he had for the moment.
One hand released her elbow to run the pads of his fingers across her neck, and Jill could see when the garroted lines in her skin took ahold in his awareness.
"I…killed so many people," she confessed, gasping out the last word before she caught his hand at her neck and pressed his fingers into her own collarbone. "They threw me in that trailer, they—" And the rest began to pour out of her.
The truck of trafficked people.
The boat where she'd been beaten.
When they'd dragged her behind the truck in the dirt.
When they ordered her to kill the children.
"I couldn't do it!" She sobbed, yanking her face away when Carlos reached for her. "I thought I'd doomed you all, Carlos. I couldn't kill the innocent again. I wouldn't! I wouldn't—"
Leaning forward, Carlos wrapped his arms around her and dragged her forward to lean against the wall with him as he shushed her. As he cried right alongside her and whispered his understanding.
She had become the arbiter of fate in Mexico, extinguishing a myriad of lives without the imposition of any mechanical dictate upon her chest.
…And this was her manifestation of justice, a resolute response to the perceived transgressions of those men in Mexico.
Yet…apologies remained absent from her lips.
The lives she'd taken were not cloaked in innocence; they were individuals who had traversed a path of choices. No longer would she claim the innocence of the blameless. Her commitment now rested solely on the altar of justice as she perceived it, a relentless dedication to a cause that brooked no compromise.
And justice looked different for people like them.
"Murderer," Wesker's voice whispered somewhere in her mind.
"'Winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice.'" Trent's quote to the hymn of the Goddess, Nemesis followed the memorized words of her tormentor. "Suiting, don't you think?"
In the quiet recollection, reminiscent of the night they lay beneath the starry canopy in the shelter of his truck bed, Jill revisited the profound realization she had forged about him—the essence he held in her world. As she embodied retribution, a force unforgiving to those who threatened the sanctity they shared, he emerged as the subsequent chapter.
He was forgiveness personified.
For circumstances beyond her control, for the actions she had taken, and those she might yet take to safeguard their haven.
Carlos embodied a pardoning grace, a comprehension shared by a select few. A soul who, having tasted the bitterness of loss in the crucible of war and captivity, returned to find his homeland marred and shattered, a poignant testament to the toll exacted by time and conflict.
"What you had to do," Carlos whispered into her hair as she continued to cry. "Everything that you've done, Jill…You've become exactly who needed to be to face it." His thumb ran along her cheeks until he'd collected the rest of her fresh tears, forcing her to hold his eyes. "I met you in that dying city in 1998 and you were the most beautiful thing I could have ever found. I should have died there, Jill. I would have if not for you. For what you represented."
Her fingers laced through his.
"And even when they took you from me…" His forehead rested against hers once more. "You still remained true to exactly who you are, supercop."
Stranger.
Outlander.
Foreigner.
Mictēcacihuātl.
Rhamnusia.
Jill.
As the hours would pass, Carlos settled himself against the wall with her between his legs, her back to his chest. Somewhere along the way, he had pulled out some water and food from a small table on their left, and she hadn't even hesitated as he put the water in her hand and commanded her to drink.
And so, she spoke about her journey. From the moment she'd left him until she'd climbed the stairs back to him.
Mercifully, no one came up the steps to interrupt and no one called upon either of them as the night passed along. Jill knew she would have someone to thank for that later.
When she got to the part about Chris arriving, the warm laughter Carlos bid out rumbled on her back and gave her pause.
"Chris Redfield is here? The Chris Redfield? In South America?" Carlos asked, his lips at her ear.
"Don't say it like that," Jill ordered, the first laugh in hours to break from her throat. "His head is big enough as it is."
"You didn't mention him much when you first got here," Carlos commented softly.
Carlos wasn't denying her the moment to tell him everything, but Jill knew he was making it easier for her. A moment to be grateful that she had made it out… and the opportunity to stop crying.
Jill nodded at his words and leaned her head back on his shoulder behind her. "No, I didn't." And then she thought about it.
She wasn't sure if she ever really mentioned Chris to Carlos, not unless it was in a passing detail about Africa, or her experience at the Spencer Mansion. She hadn't been fully able to.
"How do you know about Chris?" Her chin turned over her shoulder to look back at him.
"Read about you, remember?" Carlos grinned slightly; his eyes just as red as hers before he lifted a hand to her chin that was pointed his way now. "Means I also read about Chris. Your fabled partner I competed with while in Raccoon."
Pressing her chin further into his hand, Jill didn't care that he could see her splotchy face now.
"No one can really compete with Chris," Jill provided in a rough voice before she cleared her throat. "Chris is someone who is as much a part of my story as anything else. I'd be dead without him." Carlos held her gaze, his true smile graced her vision. "Someone emailed him a video of when they threw me off the bridge."
For the first moment since she had begun speaking, Jill saw that darkness cloud over in Carlos' eyes before the skin around his eyes tightened.
There were words she thought Carlos wanted to say. A rage that wanted to spill forth, but he seemed to save that for later.
They would have all the time in the world for rage.
"Who could have sent this to him?" Carlos questioned.
"An old friend of mine, I think," Jill responded, seeing the sparkling eyes of Trent in her mind.
Turning his eyes away, she watched when Carlos focused on something beside them before he sat up from the wall. His chest pressed further into her back before he released her chin and reached around her.
The sword of Bolivar scraped again against the ground when he picked it up.
"This sword represents everything to us," he said around that quiet anger he held back for her. The point of the weapon facing outwards as the hilt bumped into her stomach. "It was never meant to be lost. Never meant to be wielded again, but…" He kissed her cheek before he brought her hand over the hilt with his. "We also believe it should only be drawn when there is injustice in this country." He seemed to quote something now, "'Let it be of the people: it is the sword of the people'."
"They took you from this land," Carlos' voice became stronger, harder. "They took you along with others, and you punished them all for it, Jill."
They didn't leave the tower until the morning rose along the land once again. Carlos had fallen asleep holding her to his chest, but sleep had eluded her for a few more hours.
As she continued to think.
When Carlos woke, he did so with a gasp before his hands were all over her. Seeking flesh as if she hadn't ever truly been there.
But she was, and she met those hands with her own and kissed him until he could only whisper her name like a prayer in the dawn's light.
She'd be there when he woke up. Every time.
"Do we have to leave this tower?" he finally managed to ask, trailing his mouth along her collar bone, fingers tugging and pulling at her dirty clothes.
"We should," she commented, offering no further resistance as he pulled her clothes from her body and trailed his mouth along her skin.
Eventually, they left.
But not before she was bare before him. Scars and all.
They fell into the spaces of one another over and over again.
In the love that had brought her home.
Delivering the sword of Bolivar back to Tatiana Rani should have been a bigger ceremony, but Jill had enough of the processions in her life, and that sword's honor didn't belong to her. It belonged to the people of Colombia.
It belonged to South America.
Stepping off the last wooden stair, Carlos at her back, the sun played at her hair like a halo when she caught sight of the group of people sitting around a fire pit near the guard post homes.
A few faces she recognized instantly.
Pedro looked up first, and his tanned face stood out starkly in the morning light. David and Alex roused at something she could see Pedro uttering before they all stood.
"You were missed," Carlos provided quietly behind her. "Even if you never returned, those men would have never forgotten what you did for them. For our families. And they'll likely never forget what you did when you chose to stay." His large hand cupped her shoulder as she watched them all run toward her like they had the previous night. "When you chose them too, Jill."
Her body barked in pain when they crashed into her again, but she didn't care as she did her best to hold the three of them. As their tears mingled with hers.
All three of them seemed to speak at once and Jill could only laugh through her tears as she just held on to the nation of men who chose her too.
"Rhamnusia," Tatiana called, emerging from a home in the commotion. "You look well rested." A secret smile before her eyes darted toward Carlos.
"Where's Chris?" she couldn't help but ask, eyes darting around the area.
"He's being entertained," Tatiana responded with a carefree laugh that Jill hadn't quite seen from the woman yet.
"Good luck trying to let him return home," Alex muttered beside her, wiping his nose. "Pretty sure Alonzo isn't going to let that happen."
"Alonzo and Chris?" Jill uttered, "I can barely get him to talk to me in the mornings… and Chris can't even speak Spanish."
A collective laugh released from everyone around her like a big secret was afoot.
When Jill located Chris and Alonzo, they both stood in one of the smaller rooms of what had been refitted as a weapons station. Guns lined the walls, and different forms of cleaning cloths and gadgets lined the table that separated the two. A third man stood cleaning a gun barrel and he seemed to get the unlucky honor of translating between English and Spanish for the two of them. He did so now, almost reflexively and delivered it in the most deadpan tones.
Of course Chris would have found himself here among the guns.
At the moment, Chris seemed to be considering the firearm between them.
Alonzo set the sniper rifle down on the table, and the thunk of the weight seemed to echo between the two men in the growing tension.
"Did you really infiltrate that warehouse with her? You don't even hold the weapon right," Chris asked in a disbelieving tone, continuing the conversation; not realizing the audience they'd suddenly gained.
Chris didn't normally have the typical facial expressions that many could decipher without knowing him well enough. Many just thought his blunt interactions were displayed from anger. Jill, of course, knew better.
"You think so?" Alonzo asked and was quickly translated by the third man. "You going to teach me how to hold it then?"
Chris tilted his head and responded in a slow tone, "Interesting. Did no one teach you to separate the light from the dark for laundry day? Should I start with the basics?"
"Didn't you get sucker punched by a plant in 1998?" Alonzo retorted with ease, arms folding over his chest.
Chris blinked before his eyebrows furrowed. "Plant 42 wasn't just some—"
An odd sound was filling the room then. One that Chris Redfield probably would not have expected.
Alonzo bid his rasping laugh and soon, Chris was turning fully toward him in slight irritation but also—
"Plant 42, the one with the vines? The one with the door that literally stated, 'Keep out'. That one?" Alonzo continued.
"How the fuck do you even know about that?" Chris groused.
"Redfield," Alonzo chuckled, his accent drawing out the surname before he cleared his throat. The smile had grown but not by much. "Let's start you off with a smaller gun, alright?"
"Fuck," Chris leaned forward over the table. "You."
Thick fingers were pulling Alonzo closer over the table by his shirt; the youngest Oliveria's longer torso easily stretched over the small space.
Alonzo's heels had come up off the floor, but he remained on his tippy toes and with the largest shit-eating grin Jill had seen from him yet.
Chris finally turned his gaze toward the door and beheld Jill Valentine and her entourage who all looked slowly back and forth from their close proximity.
"Should I...come back?" Jill finally asked when Chris seemed to regain himself.
"It's—" Chris let go of Alonzo's shirt. "—It's not—"
"Come on, sweetie," Alonzo said, falling back onto his heels gracefully while straightening his shirt. "We can work this out later."
Chris Redfield, the BSAA captain, the former point man for the STARS Alpha Team, former pilot in the Air Force, and a man who never blushed, was doing so now as he stared at the crowd behind Jill when they all began to laugh.
"Welcome to the family, Chris," Carlos called over to her best friend.
And that only seemed to make Jill laugh harder.
In the heart of the sprawling slums, nestled between narrow alleys and makeshift pathways, stood a weathered shack that seemed to defy gravity and time itself. The exterior, a patchwork of scavenged materials, told a tale of resilience against the harsh elements that the residents faced daily.
The structure leaned slightly to one side, as if burdened by the weight of years of struggle. Corrugated metal sheets, once vibrant in color, now rusted and worn, formed the walls that barely held together. Gaps in the metal allowed thin streams of sunlight to penetrate the dim interior, revealing dust particles dancing in the air like forgotten dreams.
Inside, a small, chipped mirror hung on a crooked nail, reflecting the resilience etched on the faces of the shack's inhabitants. Of the men and women who oversaw the poorer portion of the land's defenses.
The narrow space held remnants of personal touches—a faded photograph taped to the wall, a child's crude drawing pinned with pride, and a solitary, unlit candle that would be used to flicker against the encroaching darkness in the nights.
The truth of the abode didn't need to be said in the silence before the meeting started.
This house hadn't belonged to any of the resistance members. It had more than likely belonged to someone who'd died in the streets. A family that had struggled against the way of life and lost their own to the greed of men near and far.
Victims to a war for a land.
Sitting beside Carlos and the rest of the men, Chris Redfield had chosen to stand alongside a few other men that Jill didn't know yet. He'd blamed his massive size for not wanting to take the seat, but Jill knew what he'd been doing.
Keeping watch as he always did, Chris never liked to sit with his back to a door or where he could not see the total inhabitants of a room. There were probably many different reasons for this, but as Jill watched him now, she tilted her head and gave him a small smile.
"The caravans left earlier this morning," a man named Victor Quispe said, catching Jill's full attention once more. He was one of Tatiana's men and could often be found beside her. "Many of the other districts reported the same."
"They will return," Tatiana answered, a sour note in her tone but there was a slight smile on her face. "Different men, for different reasons, but some will return all the same." Her eyes cut to Jill. "Although, we did manage to capture a few of them."
"Are they talking?" Carlos asked, leaning forward into the table beside Jill.
"Oh, they talk," Victor answered, a sneer on his older face. "Not very useful sorts of words, but words nonetheless."
"You're torturing them," Chris spoke up, causing more than a few heads to turn.
Glancing back to her friend and partner, Jill noted Alonzo beside him, doing much of the translating to the language.
"We could be, American," Victor answered slowly, words measured as he glanced once over at Tatiana who seemed to also be considering Chris.
"Not really an effective way to get information," Chris continued after he'd understood Victor's response from Alonzo. "In fact, once people understand that truth, it becomes more and more clear that information isn't what's being desired."
"Are you accusing us of enjoying it, Mr. Redfield?" Tatiana finally spoke before she stood, her silhouette playing on the wall from her position near the window. "You wouldn't be wrong if you were. You'd be bold for suggesting it, but not wrong."
"They deserve more than what they're getting," David spoke up then, jutting his chin down toward his chest.
"I want to see them," Jill provided, holding Tatiana's eyes now.
"Are you sure?" the Colombian resistance leader asked, laying her palms on the table as she considered the request. "I owe you plenty of favors now, Rhamnusia, but I'm not sure this is the type you may want."
"I think it is." And Jill stood too.
The entrance to the make-shift prison area was guarded by stoic figures with faces etched in apathy as Jill passed. The door ahead creaked open reluctantly, revealing a desolate courtyard enclosed by towering concrete walls. Faded graffiti adorned the building's interior, narrating the silent voices of those confined in its history.
Inside, the air hung heavy with a mixture of sweat, desperation, and the lingering scent of dampness. Narrow corridors, dimly lit by flickering fluorescent lights, led to cramped areas that barely contained the multitude of bodies they housed.
No one had allowed Jill to make the venture alone, especially not Carlos and Chris who trailed slightly behind her now as she began to walk.
Chatter had been in hushed whispers and whimpers, but when the doors had opened, a stark silence of fear filled the room like a call of death.
It had smelled very similar to the trailer she'd been housed in when the cartel had carted her off to Mexico. The distant clang of hopelessness rang a familiar tune as Jill began to walk.
Dressed only in borrowed black cargo pants, a simple t-shirt, and the black, bullet-hole ridden poncho she'd been traveling with, her hair lay in stark contrast to the fabric as it flowed from beneath the hood.
Only her footfalls could be heard after a time. Even Carlos and Chris had seemed to pause, likely wanting to watch the entire area, but still they remained quiet.
And then the whispers began again as she passed the chained men. At first, they were indiscernible murmurs. Quiet, hurried sounds, but it was then Jill recognized the cadence was repeating from man to man.
They were saying something specific. All of them.
"La Viuda Negra, Rhamnusia."
"La Viuda Negra, Rhamnusia."
"La Viuda Negra, Rhamnusia."
With a frown, Jill remained silent in her new furnished nickname alongside the other, but as the whispers continued, the next words burned in her throat before they spilled forth.
"These chains that hold you," Jill began, stopping at the front of the clusters of bodies. "like your intentions, were meant to confine." And the whispers stopped. "Each link that binds you, each cold surface on your skin, bears witness to the rebirth of a land you tried to break." Her rasping voice made a man lower his head before his shoulders began to shake.
A chilling silence finally settled again, broken only by the distant echoes of restrained breaths from the defeated.
When she tore the hood of the poncho back, a few men jolted from their positions in the cells.
And none of them could hide from her gaze.
The storming violet eyes, and the hoop of death in the shape of a scar around her neck.
Of the woman who wouldn't die.
"Remember this moment; your legacy is written in the chains that hold you." Jill turned to look into the other cells on her right. "And when the next of your foolish leaders decide to try again. I will be waiting. We will be waiting."
Several of the men were eventually set free the next day; the others were swiftly executed. The local police force still hadn't shown up on this portion of the city, but Tatiana had laughed when Jill had even asked.
"You sure that was the right decision?" Tatiana asked later on in the morning as they watched the freed prisoners make their way where the resistance members directed them.
"It was," Jill answered quietly. "It's their responsibility to carry the message and teach the lesson to their masters now."
Tatiana only grinned as the sun rose higher and higher.
"We shall see, Rhamnusia."
"Pretty sure it should be you who delivers this back to its rightful place," Tatiana said as they all sat around a large table later that afternoon, eating lunch. The sword sat on the table between Jill, her flock of men, and Tatiana with her band of rebels.
"That sword," Jill responded, licking her lips as she considered it. "As it was explained to me, belongs to its people. I brought it home, but it isn't me who should be putting it back up in its rightful place."
"And what do you think makes people of this land?" Tatiana asked, ignoring the translation that was happening for Chris in the background. Provided again by Alonzo.
"You recognized me as an outsider once," Jill gave back, tilting her chin up at the scared visage of the woman's strength across from her.
"I was wrong," Tatiana expelled, her gaze sharpening on Victor who huffed to her left. "I judged you by the wrong things, Rhamnusia."
"It's just Jill."
"Jill then," Tatiana amended softly. "This is a powerful expression: Belonging to the land." Tatiana's hand flicked off toward the side. Toward the streets and the country beyond. "And it is a vastly different thing from having it belong to you, wouldn't you agree?" Heads were nodding along with her, but Jill remained silent and still.
"If you belong to the land, it means you are responsible for your actions there. It's not a conquest but a caretaking position. It also means recognizing the others that share this land, Jill." Tatiana set her hand back down on the table. Down beside the sword. "Ask me if I mind standing in the rain to talk?" She leaned forward over the table, holding Jill's eyes. "We don't mind the rain," she responded to her own words. "Because it belongs here."
"We must acknowledge that belonging to the land is a matter of belonging to a community of life over time," Tatiana's fingers touched the blade between them, and she nodded down to Jill's own hands just a few inches from the hilt.
Tatiana didn't continue until Jill also laid her hand along the ancient sword. "We can only belong to the land by honoring the ways in which other life, cultures, and other natural processes belong here with us."
"You belong here," Alex murmured somewhere off to her right.
"You are a part of us all now," Pedro added.
"You did what South Americans stand for every day," David chimed in.
"'You will be what you must be'," Carlos quoted the famous José de San Martín. "'Or else you will be nothing'."
"Your home will always be here with all of us that remember what you did to aid it," Tatiana continued softly. "The Rhamnusia will never be forgotten, and neither will the real woman who holds that title."
In the shadow of dawn's first light, where the breath of the Andes Mountains whispered its secrets to the land, boots stirred the dirt around the cargo trucks. The amber glow of morning painted the resistance's faces with determination as the engines of weathered trucks hummed in a harmonious cadence, their metallic tones weaving into the quiet chatter of hopeful men and women.
Hands worked in synchrony, packing essentials for a journey that echoed with the silent chords of solidarity. Against the backdrop of corrugated rooftops and the verdant portrait of the Colombian hills, a camaraderie unfolded—The Colombians would return with Carlos and his men.
A promise to rebuild with them.
A thank you that could never be stated enough.
The indomitable spirit of those who dared to resist.
At last, when the food had been secured on the remaining truck, Jill eyed the mattress in one of the other truck beds with an odd smile touching her lips.
"What's that smile for?" Carlos asked, stepping up beside Jill as he sipped his black coffee.
He'd served her coffee first before getting his and she hadn't missed the significance that echoed the first day she'd served him in his healing bed.
"What happened to the bed we brought home from Peru?" She glanced up at him slyly.
"Uh…" Carlos was kind enough to wince. "You wouldn't have wanted that bed."
Slinging her arm through his, Jill gave him a look of understanding as she pulled him along.
"I hardly think replacing it now is on the list of priorities," she admitted.
"No?" His grin caused her to laugh and try to hide a blush. "Seems you and I are on the opposite end of priorities at the moment."
"Maybe I just came to prefer that beloved little couch." She lifted her chin with a look of heat in her eyes.
"I'll bet you did," he laughed into his cup before he drained the rest of the coffee.
David and Alex passed by and paused to give them both a little wave.
"We're going home!" Alex stated proudly, shifting a bag on his shoulder.
"Who's driving this time?" David inquired as he lowered one of the truck beds from the borrowed vehicle.
"I thought it was Alonzo." Alex shrugged.
"Is that wise?" David asked hesitantly, more than likely remembering Alonzo's last drive.
"I don't think the bull is gonna let that happen," Pedro chimed in, jogging up from another group he'd parted from. Before Jill could ask about what the 'bull' was, Pedro gestured over their shoulders.
And there stood Chris arguing with Alonzo…well, arguing as well as they could with that poor third man acting as what seemed to be a permanent translator between them.
"Clearly, the wheel craves the touch of a masterful driver, and that's me, my friend!" Alonzo said, giving a showman's bow before the towering figure of Chris.
Chris who did not look amused, tilted his head impatiently as the third man translated.
Leaning against the passenger side with an eyebrow raised, Chris retorted, "Masterful driver? I heard that the last time you drove, you mistook the gas pedal for a dance floor. You end up doing the waltz with traffic cones?"
Undeterred, Alonzo shot back, "Ah, that was just vehicular interpretive, my little American! And we were getting shot at."
Chris actually managed to chuckle, "Getting shot at his one of those times you need to be masterful, little Oliveria. I've seen Picasso with a paintbrush; I'm pretty your driving is more like a Jackson Pollock splatter painting—unpredictable and confusing."
"Oof," David uttered, covering a smile. "I don't even know what that means, and it still stings."
"I like him," Alex said simply. "Can we keep him too?"
"Pfft," Pedro uttered, splaying out his hands. "You can ask him. I got enough scars to last a lifetime."
"You guys can't just keep every American that gives you lip," Jill uttered with her own laugh bubbling up.
"I dunno," Carlos offered, drawing out the vowel in the last word. "Kind of seems like a man that wants to stay. We'd have to build him a bigger house."
"Bigger chairs too," Pedro conceded.
"He'd probably scare the women," Alex produced thoughtfully. "Or…they might like that. This may be a terrible idea."
"Isn't Carlos the same size as Chris?" David asked, looking back and forth between the two.
"Shhh," Carlos uttered, pulling Jill toward the truck at last. "I don't need that kind of competition in my life."
Chris and Alonzo seemed to come to some sort of an agreement because they both began to make their way over with Alonzo beaming and Chris who looked as if he was trying to hide a smile with a frown.
"Shotgun!" Alonzo shouted in glee as they all moved toward the vehicles.
He bumped into a large arm and blinked down at it for a moment before he met the bigger man's eyes.
"Name the parts of a shotgun," Chris demanded with a growing smirk.
"Ahhh," Alonzo fumbled, eyes glancing toward Jill as the interpreter did an odd little hand motion while translating Alonzo's uncertainty.
"Thought so. In the back, Little Oliveira." Chris' grin was lupine.
"Ugh," Alonzo dispersed with the largest smile before he looked over at Jill. "I don't know how you put up with this guy."
"Alonzo," Jill began with a warning in her tone. "I know what you're doing and trust me when I tell you that he will hit you once and you won't be getting back up."
With a wink and shimmy of his shoulders, Alonzo followed after Chris with a happiness that seemed to lighten the rest of the journey for everyone.
Traveling back toward Bolivia was to be a long affair, but with Taiana Rani's resources and volunteers, countless trucks and different vehicles had been loaded up with supplies and equipment to aid the resistance members of Bolivia to return home.
The Markas of Carlos' village was in the Altiplano; thehigh plains of the Andes Mountains of Bolivia. Many of the members of the original homestead of people had remained there, under the cartel's rule, but that rule had fallen to pieces in the last week.
Efforts that had been called away.
Something Jill knew to be a promise kept in blood all the way in Mexico…
That peace was tentative; El Mayo hadn't lied about that.
Jill knew this portion of his speech had been true. There was no cutting the head of the snake when it came to human greed. The cartel expanded out much further than El Mayo's reach. Although he would remain to be one of the most powerful men for a while, he wasn't the only one out there that would challenge this way of life.
There would be more.
There would always be more.
But they would be ready. She would be ready.
And her name would be whispered for years to come.
All of those names.
With the vehicles in tow, and the crews leading the train, it took just over a week to traverse from Medellin, Colombia and into the heart of Bolivia where Lake Titicaca began to soften the soil. Stopping to pick up the remaining members of Carlos' village in hiding, Jill had cried silently in her seat next to Chris as she watched them emerge from their hiding place in the Atuncolla District of Peru.
When Madris emerged from the crowd, Jill couldn't stop her own hand from opening Carlos' truck door.
The old woman seemed to sense her arrival and paused in the hilly clearing as the families greeted the resistance members.
Doctor Ortero's stern visage came up beside Madris, the rifle slung casually in his arms as Jill made her way toward the pair.
"Madris," Jill sobbed, arms slinging around the woman as carefully as she could.
The doctor was blurring in Jill's vision as she looked at him from over the woman's shoulder.
And for the first time, Jill saw the older doctor smiling.
"I once asked you once what you were when you woke up on my table," the doctor spoke, referring to when she'd been shot in the village. "And you'd answered me as honestly as I think you could have, given the circumstances."
Madris was murmuring something Jill couldn't understand, but she didn't let the older woman go as she cried. As she listened.
"I also told you that you'd bled for us twice," Doctor Otero continued, setting his rifle along the rock wall that was to their left. "And whatever you are, young lady, you're a gift to us all." He nodded to the procession of Bolivian men and women hugging Carlos, David, Alex, and Pedro.
And Jill Valentine couldn't dare speak in her relief to see them all safe. To hear the gratitude that she'd never need spoken but appreciated, nevertheless.
Chris was walking up beside them now, his face was hard to see from this angle, but Jill would never mistake his presence.
He'd make this journey with her. To see her safe.
To see her thrive as she hadn't been able to in Alaska.
To see her home.
The typical Aymara house in this portion of the region consisted of small to larger oblong dwellings. Most constructed of adobe, although near the lake, reeds were the primary building material. Thatched roofs were made of reeds and grass as they were in the village Jill had seen first.
The Markas that came into sight were truly no different than what Jill had surveyed before.
But it was different here when the trucks began to pull up.
A collective cheer had gone up as faces began to emerge.
Families that had been reunited after years of separation.
Truly, the Aymara didn't need the help of the Colombians that had followed and brought gifts, but they accepted the help gleefully when Carlos and Alonzo stepped forward and began to set into the work.
The Oliveria brothers had come home.
As dawn embraced the horizon on the second day, the men and women emerged, their silhouettes were against the fractured walls and charred remnants that would soon be rebuilt. Tools clinked in rhythm in its own kind of song. The visiting Colombians rose from their tents, providing a semblance of order amidst tired and weary people who had already dealt with so much.
The Markas along the shores of Lake Titicaca had seen better days. The lake itself, one of the largest on the border of Bolivia and Peru, was also the deepest high-altitude lake on earth.
Later, as the years would continue to push on, Jill Valentine would learn of the people she protected. Of the generation that remained and fought for their way of life. Untouched by danger that wasn't already accounted for.
The Aymara Indians arrived in the land before the Incas. They continued to subsist on fish, much as their ancestors had, and some of the remaining tribes still practiced living on floating islands of reeds.
Relying on the barter system, the Aymaras traded the food they produced for wool, which they needed for warm clothing. Otherwise, the Indians of Titicaca depended almost entirely on the lake for their survival.
The lake was their home.
And the cartel had seized it from them.
Taken it.
But they hadn't taken the most important facet.
The people.
You could remove people from their home.
Threaten their lives.
Try to change their ways.
But the earth would remember and so would its people.
Standing near the tall grass, Jill Valentine had paused to look on at the caravans of people that continued to be delivered by Tatiana Rani's generosity.
People delivered not to a home.
The people were the home.
But back to a land that was theirs.
Today's generation of Aymara were still rediscovering the merit of ancient methods, such as extending raised rows of soil into the lake so that crops could grow in the warmer air near the water.
The cartel hadn't understood this. They were foreigners in this land as much as she was. They hadn't tended to a land they'd been brought up on.
But the land would heal.
And so would its people.
"You coming?" Chris called over to her as the evening began to descend on the Markas.
He'd been helping move as much as he could, but his lungs were nowhere ready for the high altitude of the land. He'd been told to sit and rest more times than Jill thought he'd ever heard in his life.
"There's something I need to do first," Jill replied softly, pushing her blonde strands behind her ears before she pulled on her jacket.
Something she'd been thinking about for a few days now.
And when her boots crackled through the tall grass, the others remained behind her, unmoving. Acquiescing to her silent request to be alone to do it.
Carlos, Chris, and Alonzo watched her depart toward the fields in the north.
Trusting her at her word.
No matter how vulnerable.
Step after step, Jill Valentine made her way further and further from the lake. The earth around her feet became more and more dry as she went; dirt that crackled along the rock of the surrounding terrain.
Before long, she stood looking along the dryer planes. Standing in the spot where life had a much harder time flourishing due to its distance from the water source, but still, somehow, thriving in its own way.
Violet eyes blinked once, and she could see the memory of the savanna planes of Africa before her.
The acrid smell of despair was a memory in her mind as she let the moment flourish in her.
As the weight came down on her shoulders.
"Albert Wesker," she barked out into the solitude, authority in her tone.
Nothing in the planes moved.
The sounds of nature had gone silent at her words.
And then she felt him at the tip of her consciousness.
The looming presence that she could never escape for long.
"Valentine." His sneer seemed so much quieter now.
Faint.
Mutable.
"You fell out of that window with me," she whispered out loud, clutching around the coda that was his haunting presence within her. "We should have died—I'd hoped we both would die. I hoped to die for a long time, but you didn't allow that."
The warm breath on the back of her neck could have been the stirring winds behind her, but it felt like him.
"You betrayed me—" Her teeth clenched. "You betrayed us all."
She could still hear the way the leather of his gloves crackled when he clenched his fist. When he prepared to strike her down.
"You were family too—among the rest of our men. I'd claimed you as family, Wesker," she continued, never to be struck down again.
"You wished you could kill me. All the pain, all the cruelty—You took me to kill me. To ruin me." The scar on her chest felt like it was on fire.
"I bet you wished you could kill me. I bet you wished you could ruin me. I bet you wished I was dead—but I'm not!" For it had never been Albert Wesker that had been with her all this time.
Even as she saw him at the corner of her vision now. His still presence was much like it had been in life.
Albert Wesker was dead.
But she wasn't.
The presence with her had always been her guilt.
Albert Wesker was her guilt, and he had followed her every step of the way since his demise in 2009.
"I survived because of what you did." For what you made me do and become.
"I can protect these people because of you. I can protect them like I couldn't do for those people in Africa, and I'll do it now until I perish." Tears streamed down her face as she unclenched her fists.
And he did too beside her.
"I forgive you," she hoarsely shouted through her clogged throat.
I will forgive myself.
"You were the biggest victim of them all, sir." And that was the truth wasn't it?
The one she never wanted to say.
All of those children.
The Wesker children.
They'd never stood a chance on what they were to become.
Spencer had seen to that.
Albert Wesker had been the one that lived. The one who'd lived and lost his mind along with the rest.
Could it have ever been stopped in the end? Could he have been saved?
Probably not.
"But I'll forgive you," Jill uttered, sinking down to her knees. Dirt pressed into her palms as she bowed forward.
She'd forgive him on this land.
And she'd let go of him to forgive herself.
"Jill," his voice was so soft in her head now. Two voices that spoke in her head at the same time. Hers and his.
And then she knew he was gone.
Her guilt.
When Jill Valentine rose again, she was alone.
Just Jill.
And she turned around, step after step, and returned to her home.
To her people.
In the Andean Aymara tradition, the jaqi, or personhood, was not granted to the individual but to a couple. The ceremony following the chacha-warmi, husband-wife, came with all their rights and obligations within the ayllu. Something that Carlos took the time to fully explain to Jill as they sat eating lunch further into the week.
Jill hadn't wanted to disrupt the festivities and work with something she thought may be selfish to plan while they rebuilt his home, but that had only made Carlos laugh.
She didn't know how special she had become to him.
To them, his people.
To her people.
Still, she thought they should wait until the work was done.
It was too bad for Jill Valentine that Carlos Oliveira had other plans.
After falling in love, it was a part of the ceremony to follow the irpaqa, ahand request. And he'd done so by giving her that bracelet and declaring her his for anyone to see in Peru.
Normally, what followed was the sirwisiña, cohabitation, but… well, they'd done a few things…slightly out of order. She'd lived with him in his small home with not even a bed to offer her. Nothing to give her but his name, his love, and his protection, and she'd accepted that.
She'd accepted all of what he could offer and even what he couldn't.
Being out of order aside, like hell he was going to let her get away without the jaqichasiwi. Themarriage ceremony.
Usually, the ceremony was decided by the parents of the couple.
But he and Jill had been without family ties for years.
Hers lost to time, and his to the smattering of war and poverty.
So, being the kind of man that thought on his feet, he'd asked Madris to stand in for him. It had been a moment that filled him almost with shame to even ask, but Madris had smacked his shoulder and pointedly said to him, "Wipe that shame from your face! I knew your family before any of you children were around. I would be honored to do this for you and them, you oaf!"
He hadn't been ashamed to let her see the gratitude in his eyes. For the love she would carry behind him in the ceremony.
Had his parents been alive to see all of this…Had his brothers…
Naturally, for Jill, Carlos had asked Chris…which, given their brief moments of interaction, turned out to be a little more intimidating than Carlos had considered.
Chris had been resting after a particularly hard day of moving lumber they'd use for the gates, and Carlos hadn't wanted to interrupt his rest quite yet. He'd let Alex know to send the big man his way when he was up and about.
So, when the door closed on his home he'd reclaimed days earlier—the home that had belonged to his mother and father—Carlos grinned as he tossed the spare tools down, thinking it was Jill returning from her work with the children in the other homes.
"Couldn't wait, Supercop? I would—" he stopped himself as he turned. The figure that filled his doorway was something Carlos suspected he'd never be ready for.
"Oliveira," Chris' voice is rough as it is curt, and from her stories, Carlos knew he was speaking to a different man now.
Not a lot of time had gone into speaking with Chris as of yet, and Carlos knew the man had understood. Conversation in groups wasn't the best way for them to get to know one another, and Carlos thought Chris may be saving his true interaction for when they'd be alone.
And now they were.
The military training lengthened Chris' stature in his doorway. The history of a man who had been watching Jill's back looked out at him from eyes that were tired. But the keen presence of her partner wasn't to be denied.
"We haven't met yet," Chris Redfield spoke again. "Not truly, but I'd like to now, if you have the time."
"The way you've been mentioned," Carlos answered, straightening up to his own height. "Means you really don't need an introduction." He held his hand out for Chris to take a seat in one of the many chairs he'd been restoring. "But I'd appreciate the ability to either way."
The cartel hadn't been especially kind to any of their homes, but he would rebuild it. They all would.
"I'm sure neither of us can accurately be summed up by just stories," Chris responded, taking a seat with Carlos. The tiny table between their frames seemed almost comical…or maybe that was just Chris' frame. What did the guy even eat?
"Probably not," Carlos agreed with a sigh as he took his seat. "I appreciate you coming here with her—" He stopped and shook his head and leaned his elbows on the table. "No, fuck that. I appreciate it a lot more than just that. You found her in Mexico—You went to help her with barely any information, and you found her—Thank you."
"Don't need your thanks," Chris offered with a bit of a huff as he crossed his arms and leaned back into his chair after a moment. "Jill and I have been working together for…a long time. I don't trust anyone as much as her, and in truth, there's an understanding between us that's hard to dictate in words. I've never worked so well beside another person before her."
"She was your partner," Carlos offered, tilting his head a bit as his hair fell into his eyes.
That title always seemed to mean more to Jill than just having a comrade at her side. She'd bidden that title with the highest praise that Carlos thought was possible without it touching romance.
"Never had to question where she was beside me in our work—in our lives," Chris acquiesced with a nod. "I know she's there. I know she's acting in the best interests for both of us every time we're together. I trust her with…everything."
"And then you lost her," Carlos murmured, understanding to a degree.
"And then I lost her…" Chris responded, his tone a bit sharper. "I didn't believe she was dead, and I hated seeing them put that gravestone up. As the years passed on, I kept wondering if I was holding on to this…icon of her; this impossible idea that she could survive anything—" Chris winced and looked away before he unfolded his arms and just let his hands fall into his lap. "Truly, I just didn't know what to do without her."
Remembering what Jill had spoken of in his truck when they'd been heading to Peru, Carlos lowered his gaze for a moment as he understood that full meaning in front of Chris.
Of the impossible weight that Jill had carried…and Chris. For the life they both took on for the city that was wronged in 1998.
"Ever think of retiring?" Carlos suddenly asked, changing pace for a moment.
With a huff between them, Carlos glanced up to catch Chris giving him an odd look.
"Didn't think that was possible, but after seeing her here—" Chris cut himself off as he waved toward the walls and out toward the community of people they were all helping to rebuild.
"Hasn't been all easy," Carlos offered with a knowing nod.
"No doubt." Chris held his gaze now. "Maybe in the future, but I have things I need to finish first."
"Keep it in mind." Carlos didn't drop the man's stare. "You will always be welcome here."
A few moments passed in silence as Chris seemed to look beyond Carlos in his own stare.
Of a future he still had before him.
"Count on it," Chris finally said before he appeared to shake off whatever items he was considering for himself. "If I leave her here." Chris nodded toward the door. Where Jill remained outside, working alongside everyone else. "And I find out that you ever hurt her—"
"I wouldn't," Carlos interrupted, not needing to know the ending to such a statement—or rather, the threat.
"Who she is…" Carlos wouldn't have said Chris was a man who became flustered, but there was a hesitance now as he spoke. "She's faced some of the worst things you can imagine. And she chose you. You understand what that means?"
"No," Carlos replied honestly. "I'll never fully understand how I deserve her, but I'll spend the rest of my days trying. Trying to deserve what that means."
The table groaned when Chris leaned his elbows atop it now, and the first smile appeared on the corner of his mouth.
"Good, Oliveria," he simply answered. "Now maybe you could ask me what you've been meaning to."
With his teeth flashing in the light of the noon sun through the window, Carlos leaned forward too and said, "What do you know about weddings?"
"It's not going to involve me getting into a dress, is it?" Chris bid out.
"Depends, you gonna marry my brother, Alonzo, that quickly?" Carlos flicked his hair from his eyes.
"What?" Chris leaned backwards.
"What?" Carlos parroted innocently, leaning back too.
The portion of the ceremony known as the Ramanda had been set up last as the community came together for a week. The repairs and restoration of the Markas would take weeks to complete, but once word got out about the wedding, no one could put a justifiable reason why such a happy occasion needed to wait. Jill hadn't found herself arguing too hard to delay after that.
The Ramanda was a sort of hut that was made to be adorned with the branches of the eucalyptus tree and flowers that were white.
At the central part of this structure was an altar that held a large table with two seats for the bride and the groom which was also adorned with white flowers and covered with a white cloth. The two white flags on the opposite sides of the altar represented the bride and the groom. The Ramada was also set up at a central place of the main houses with a view outside, so that the sun (Tata Inti or Willka Tata) could be the eternal witness that the ceremony was carried out with transparency and in front of the members of the community.
On the day of the celebration, at dawn, the jach'a irpiri, the godfathers, along with the parents of the groom and the bride, prayed to the guardian beings for the happiness of the couple making offerings of alcohol and coca.
In this case, it had been Mardis and Chris that had prayed together, and Jill had been in awe to watch a big man such as Chris treat Madris so gently.
Watching Chris participate in the ceremony had Jill laughing in moments but quietly taking in what it meant to have him here.
To have him come for her. One last time.
The wedding rite usually lasted three days but given the situation in the Markas, they had done it at a much quicker pace to allow the Markas to get back into shape.
Still, Jill wasn't letting any of the men avoid dancing the irpastay in a circle. It had only taken her an hour to fully understand the moves but watching Chris Redfield fumble a few times had made everything worthwhile as she stumbled into him, barely containing her ugly, guffawing laughs as she spun in the dress Carlos had brought for her from Colombia.
She couldn't remember a time where she had ever been so happy.
The Aymara wedding overall was a social ritual by which a couple became an integral part of that community with all their rights and obligations to the community. Alonzo was quick to remind Jill that she'd technically been doing this from the very moment she'd entered the village.
With a sassy little wag of his eyebrows, he explained his first reaction to her had been out of sheer love.
Deeming the entire interaction as sacred, Jill was hesitant to spill blood on the occasion.
Standing there with Carlos now, the bracelet again upon her wrist, she held his hands as the people around them listened to the vows they made to one another.
Maybe Alonzo had been right after all. From the very first moment Jill had walked into the village, she'd already been writing her vows to Carlos. To them all, really.
"I will protect you," she spoke the words again to him in English as the entire community stood behind them.
"I will serve you," she continued in Spanish, joining their hands when he reached for hers.
"I will fight for you," she spoke to them all.
"I will never betray you." And she leaned in to kiss Carlos as Chris began cheering alongside Alonzo and the rest of the men.
And as Carlos spoke, he held her hand as he looked into her eyes and bound her free-floating soul that was now unshackled of the guilt she had first come there with.
Carlos Oliveria gave her his honor and his name, and called upon the portions of her that she hadn't ever dared to traverse with anyone before.
A pain Jill Valentine released herself from.
There were those who sought out pain like Albert Wesker had; patterns of self-destructiveness, existing in varying degrees. As Jill looked backwards now, she could see that the masochistic practices her former captain had bestowed upon her had been a way to become sovereign in her body today.
Now, there was no better lesson than mastering herself. Bound to no one else's will now, she'd grown a tolerance for the bite. For the teeth of singing nerve endings exposed in the darkness of her own lonesome life.
And she learned to endure.
From the life she'd stopped living after Raccoon. From the packed-up boxes of her apartment she'd had in Texas.
She'd never imagined a life for herself because she'd stopped living for only herself for so long.
And no one had ever been able to contend with it. None to come close enough.
Until now.
Pain was an ally, and it had become a dear friend. Pain would tell her when she could continue. Pain had kept her angry, but above all, pain had told her that she wasn't dead yet.
But being alive hadn't been enough.
The life she'd been living hadn't been enough to wake her up.
But Carlos had.
Palm against palm, Jill sucked in a breath as Madris touched their wrists, the vine of a eucalyptus tree binding their souls together before she smiled at them both and whispered the last of her words and stepped back.
The thunderous sound of the voices around them caused Carlos to laugh before his hand replaced Madris' and he pulled Jill in for a kiss.
"Jill," he murmured into her mouth, hands cupping her face as people began to dance and sing. "To whatever end, Jill. My place is always with you."
"To whatever end." And Jill had laughed into Carlos' lips and sealed her fate to his forever more.
Looking up last, she caught sight of Chris standing beside her, a grin upon his own features before Alonzo knocked his shoulder into his bigger one.
And beside Alonzo was the rest of her men. Her family.
Beside them all, a village of people that celebrated the union of their home, and the new member of their community.
A home.
Jill Valentine-Oliveira was home.
A/N:
To those of South America, I wanted to create a fic to give Carlos a deeper portion of his identity and values, and I absolutely adored writing in my chosen portions of culture and strife for him. I did my best to research all I could to be true to the Aymara people, the rest of the people of South America, and Mexico. Please forgive me if I have mistaken a portion of a place, or the culture. I have nothing but respect for the different ways of life and I only mean to honor it all here.
Thank you.
This story is a gift for one of the best women I met in my time of writing. It may have taken me much longer to finish this, but in truth, this story was only ever supposed to be five chapters at most. You can see how that went.
Finishing this story has been a sad and lovely thing. I loved this journey so much. This was so much about explaining where Jill went after RE5, about her finding the right person to see her for who she is, but also helping her to accept that guilt she carries with her. Jill's journey will always be special to me, and I thank you all so much for coming on this ride with me. I have appreciated every kind word.
Thank you for being here with me as I wrote this and thank you to those that come after.