So slow to catch on

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Jill gave Leon a little push, then smiled. "Believe me, these things can last days." She assured him. "Besides, I want the chance to grill you myself."
"You doubt my suitability as a mother?" Claire asked thinly, folding her arms across her chest.

Claire was left speechless, for once, as she stared wide eyed at Sherry, and then Leon. She honestly didn't know what to say, but she did know that this probably wasn't the best time for him to have found out.

Leon didn't seem phased by this as he handed Claire a shotgun. "Keep them in front of us and Sherry behind you." He instructed. "We'll back toward that door over there as soon as you're ready. Okay?"

Claire nodded, though her fingers shook slightly as she took the weapon from Leon. "I'm sorry... I wanted to be certain before I told you." She breathed, then turned to take on the first of the skinless creatures before Leon could reply.

Leon couldn't tell her he was happy about it. Even if he was, there was no point in getting overjoyed when there was no way of knowing if they were even going to live through this.
One slipped past them as they began to fire. Leon didn't see what became of it. At least not until he found himself tripping over the remains.

Claire's gun jammed as she tried to reload, causing her to miss the fact Leon had tripped over, or that a few more steps backwards and she would stumble too.

Leon grunted as Claire landed on him, though he instinctively slid his arms around her to protect her from the rest of the fall. "You okay?" He breathed in her ear.
"Are you two crazy?" Sherry hissed, grabbing for Claire's gun. "Your brother and that soldier won't be here soon enough to save you! Don't stop now!" She added, firing into the midst of the licker group that was quickly gaining ground.

Claire nodded, her fingers squeezing Leon's as she removed them from around her, then pulled him back to his feet once she was on her's. "There are too many, we need to run." She replied, though in the same moment a familiar face was there to shoot down the closest monster.
"Leon, get her out of here!" Jill hissed. Apparently, even when as badly damaged as she was, she couldn't just give up on the people she loved.

Sherry smiled at the taller woman that stood beside her. "I didn't tell them about you." She said as Leon began to pull Claire back toward the door. "I couldn't tell whether you were human or not."

Jill's pale blue eyes were so very sad as she looked down at Sherry. "I don't know the answer to that one myself." She breathed, genuinely wondering if she had any human left in her at all.

"Your mate is here too." Sherry told her, grinning even though she was taking down another monster. The hoard was finally beginning to thin. "I can smell him on your clothes."

Jill's cobalt eyes were the only thing that betrayed how painful it was to hear Sherry call Chris her mate. "No... You're mistaken, kid." She breathed, then turned and actually walked towards the thinning hoard. Black ooze seemed to rise up from the ground and pull the advancing Lickers down into the rubble. "Monsters don't have mates."

"So does that mean I'll be alone too?" Sherry asked sadly, watching Jill as if she were a true wonder. "Miss Rebecca would have loved to study you." She added darkly.
"Jill!" Chris burst through the doorway on the other side of the hoard, Ark Thompson behind him. "Babe! I know you're here! Answer me!"

Jill heard Chris' voice, but she couldn't look at him. He couldn't see what she had become. Her eyes were a dark onyx now, her focus on controlling the black ooze that was now tearing the other monsters apart. Though he hadn't known it at the time, Jill was Wesker's only real success at bonding Uroboros with a human.
"Uh... Chris..." Ark was quick to spot Jill, and what it was she was doing. He was staring wide eyed, unable to believe the woman Chris had sent all this time mourning, was in fact now the biggest threat in an entire hallway of monsters.

"Jill, babe...I know you don't want to talk to me but...please...just this once." Chris went on, evidently refusing to even hear anything Ark was saying. "I was being stupid. I see that now. I wasn't myself and I'd like to talk to you about it. Please?" He went on, slowly walking forward. "You're the only one I could ever talk to."
Above him, Sherry was slowly making her way to them. It was taking all her effort to avoid the black ooze. This stuff scared her almost as much as Jill herself was beginning to.

"It's too late for that." Jill replied, but still didn't make any effort to move closer, or reign in the monster that she was becoming. "I practically begged you to dig deeper and understand me... But you didn't want to! You wanted to pretend everything was just fine!"
Ark wasn't listening to his comrade, or the woman Chris was pleading with to talk. He was watching the slender figure making her way across the ceiling.

"I was hoping you'd talk when you got ready. If I pushed you, you would have ran that much sooner." Chris told her darkly. "I was trying to give you time."
Sherry was preparing to drop down behind Chris and simply take him to the ground. At the moment he seemed a greater threat to her than the other man.

"Time is all I've had, Chris!" Jill shouted, the darkness around her pulsating faster now. "I needed you to push, I needed to know... That you would be there to catch me when I did finally fall!"
Ark was still watching sherry, his hand on his gun, though he hoped he wouldn't need it. He didn't yet know who she was, but even if it did, that still wouldn't explain they way she was moving right then.

"Freeze, boys." Sherry landed between Ark and Chris, a smaller gun pressed to the back of the latter man's head. The barrel of the shotgun she held with her other hand was all but pushing into Ark's stomach. A young woman that small shouldn't have been able to accomplish such a feat. "I always wanted to say that." She added with a soft laugh.
Chris held his hands up in a show of surrender, but his eyes never left Jill. "If you needed to know it, babe. Then you never really knew how I felt for you at all. Did you?" He asked her, making it clear he intended to do something so the one with the gun would shoot him.

"Hey, come on sweetheart, don't do anything stupid..." Ark breathed, his own hands up in surrender as he watched the slender blonde. He was also painfully aware that Chris seemed to care little about losing his head.
"How can I know anything, when I don't even know what I am anymore?" Jill replied, her onyx eyes holding Chris' gaze. "I love you, Chris, but I don't expect you to still love whatever this thing is that Wesker has made me!"

Sherry narrowed her eyes at Ark and shoved the barrel harder against his mid-section. "Don't call me that." She hissed, pulling back the hammer on the gun trained on the other man without looking at him.
"Wesker didn't make anything. You're still Jill Valentine." Chris said firmly, not even the slightest bit phased by the metallic click behind him. "You're still my Jill Valentine."

"Alright then, what should I call you? Do you have a name?" Ark asked, hoping to keep Sherry distracted.
"No!" Jill shouted. "That Jill is dead! I started the outbreak in Africa, Chris! Does that sound like something you think your Jill would do?!"

"None of your business." Sherry said softly, frowning deeper. "Now you hush. I'm waiting for the signal."
"It sounds like something Wesker would make Jill do." Chris said evenly, still holding his hands up.

"Signal from who?" Ark pressed, seemingly not smart enough to keep his mouth shut, even when he had a gun pressed to his stomach.
Jill faltered slightly, the strain of controlling the infection within her apparently becoming too much. As it was, she was using Uroboros to keep the rest of the monsters at bay. If she fell... They would all come flooding right here. "Chris... My hands will never be clean again. How can I ever help anyone with so many deaths on my conscience?"

Sherry shoved the barrel against his stomach harder. This time there was no way he'd come out of this without a bruise. "You talk too much, sir. It won't help you or anyone else right now." She snorted.
"He made you do that." Chris reminded Jill. It was all him and not you. Remember? You told me you had no control. I don't blame you. You shouldn't blame yourself for that bastard either."

Ark groaned quietly, chris' voice in his head mocking him for bruising like a peach. "You look like you're gonna kill me anyway, so why not just tell me your name?"
"I should have fought harder!" Jill shouted, the Uroboros shrinking away from the undead monster slightly to take a greater interest in Chris.

"Sherry Birkin." The young woman hissed, clearly getting frustrated now. "Be quiet, soldier. You are making it hard to concentrate!"
Chris didn't move. "There was nothing else you could have done besides to die, Jill." He breathed. "And you know that it would have truly been the end of me too."

"Nirkin? No way!" Ark hissed before he could stop himself. "I know that name, and Sherry Birkin is dead!"
"Just end it now!" Jill shouted, desperation in her voice. "The BSAA will never just let me be, just end me now and let us both find peace again!" She pleaded as she dropped to her knees. "I can't be with you like this, Chris... Deep down you know that. I can't be trusted not to hurt you."

"Sherry Birkin wishes..." She didn't get to finish. Chris took a step towards Jill and Sherry fired her shot with her pistol. Chris managed to take another step, grunting as he did. And then he was face first on the ground between the two women, blood pooling around him. `

"Chris!" it was Jill who shouted the e,der man's name, not Ark. In a move too fast to have been human, she was by his side, her fingers trembling as she reached out to touch him. "No... Not like this..." She whispered, nothing else in the world existing right then but Her Chris.

"You distracted me!" Sherry shouted, clearly vexed by what had happened. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
Chris had missed a bullet to the head only because his movement had taken him a step upward. It had caught him in the neck. "Jill...Claire..." He gurgled, no longer sure who was there with him.