The bonds of family

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Claire Redfield was sat at her desk, chewing on her pen as she stared at the faded photo in a battered frame. She had just gotten back from Rio on business and she had already thrown herself into another case. The photo she kept safe was taken such a long time ago, Sherry was still just a little girl in it, and Leon... Well he was no different. They had all been so happy when they made it out of Raccoon City, despite everything that had happened. It was years later and Claire still sometimes woke with nightmares of that place, and her time spent at Rockfort Island. She had barely spoken of it to Leon when she had made it home, but she figured Chris probably told him everything anyway. That was when she had drifted apart from the people she called family. They all seemed to have their mission and she had always just been 'Chris Redfield's baby sister'. Claire was much like her brother, in the aspect that she just wanted to help people. A shame Chris thought she was still that nineteen year old student. They still spoke on the phone often, had dinner together at the holidays, but pinning big brother down long enough for anything more seemed harder work than finding all traces of Umbrella and making them disappear for good. The young woman shook her head to try and clear the melancholy away, then pushed the dark red hair from her eyes. "Come on Claire..." She scolded herself, laughing quietly when she thought of the fun her friends had made in the past when she talked to herself.

Wesker smiled thinly and began to circle around Ramona, not bothered by her gun one little bit. "He adopted and took from you what he needed. I was created with a purpose." He replied coolly. "You think any Wesker would allow spawn rejected by its own parents to one up us?"

"Allow or not, I've done it." Ramona said, trying to keep the fact that his words had hurt her deeply. It was yet another reason she hated Claire. She had family, something she herself would never have or understand. "Something else that I've bested you on, Albert Wesker. Seriously. Age must be getting the better of you." She turned with him, her gun once again finding his chest. "Stop trying to bully me. It's not going to work."

"Age is irrelevant to me now." Wesker replied with a shrug. "You continue to decay day by day, I simply remain frozen as I was." He added, swatting her gun aside as he leaned his face close to Ramona's. "You little Redfield friend doesn't even want anything to do with you, why should a grand daddy who bought you like an abandoned puppy?"

"I don't care if he wants me." Ramona breathed, not sure why her body was suddenly on fire. Her lips brushed Wesker's before she could help it. "I am better than that dying old fool." She whispered. "I wish he was dead." 

Leon had a bad feeling about Chris. It was because of this that he was reaching for his phone again, calling Claire. He didn't know why but he was desperate to get to her. If she couldn't reach her brother he was sure something terrible was going to happen.

"And yet you were too weak to pull the trigger on him yourself." Weeks breathed, allowing his cool lips to linger before snatching Ramona's gun and turning away.

Claire had dragged herself home and tossed on an old t-shirt before flopping face down on her bed. Her phone was under the pillow next to her, vibrating loudly just as she had drifted to sleep. "This had better be good!" She growled down the phone without checking who was actually calling.

Ramona's fingers curled into fist and before she knew what she was doing she had run at Wesker. She had kicked at him, fully expecting her boot to connect with the back of his knees. What she found instead was herself flat on her back, staring at the ceiling and trying desperately to catch her breath. 

"Claire, it's Leon." His voice held a deep worry it hadn't before. "I'm at work. I had Huntington check the location of Chris and Jill. You're not going to like this. She's picking up some strange readings. I'd almost swear we're looking at Albert Wesker...I think you need to get them out of there before this goes South..."

Wesker leaned over Ramona with the same smile that Chris and his team had come to hate over the years. "How many times must I remind you people that you affect my world in the same way an amoeba affects the rotation of the earth."

Claire's brain was still a little foggy from fatigue, and then being woken so quickly from her sleep. "What do you mean Wesker? You're sure?"

Ramona brought her knee up between Wesker's  legs, struggling to slide herself out from under him. "I don't think you understood me when I said you weren't going to bully me." She hissed.

"You know, evil Captain who used his team for research. Tall blonde guy, wear sunglasses at night?" Leon said. "Our surveillance crew is pretty certain of it."

"To bully you, I would need to care." Weeks snorted, though it was clear her attack had indeed caused discomfort. 

"Then why isn't your team doing anything about it?" Claire asked thinly. "If something has happened and they're out of contact? What am I supposed to do then?"

Ramona used the moment to slide out from under him and make a grab for her gun. She knew in the long run it would do her lititle good, she had read Wesker's file, all she was doing was buying time.

"Chris made it clear that this was a BSAA issue and we were to stay out. That leaves it up to you." Leon said. "You're lucky I told you after the way Chris talked to me."

It was as Ramona grabbed her gun that Wesker heard the first of several gunshots within the building. He smiled, then seemed to disappear, though he was in reality merely running.

"Lucky? So you're punishing me for him hurting your little girl feelings?" Claire asked, sick and tired of being caught in-between the middle of her brother and her closest friend.

Ramona too scrambled to her feet. She ran in the opposite direction. She was hoping to make it to Spencer and get him out of there before Wesker turned his attention on the elderly man.

"He's your brother, Claire. I know how you are. You like to deal with him yourself." Leon said gently. "He'll be happier that you saved him than me anyway.

Wesker had stopped to watch Ramona flee, smiling quietly to himself. She could perhaps prove useful, to an extent, once the old man was gone.

"And what am I supposed to do, Leon? Yell at a dead line?" Claire asked quietly as she ran her fingers through her hair.

Ramona knew that this facility was different there should have been no excuse for why she'd gotten lost. As it stood she didn't arrive until after the old man was very dead. She returned to the labs with his body, not sure what to do next.

Chris  called in the middle of the argument to tell his sister that Jill was missing. Things were going downhill fast.

Wesker had rolled up by the rocks below the facility some time later, no worse for wear though he was surprised to see Jill's unmoving form no more than a few feet away. This had worked out better than he hoped. The old man was dead, and now he finally had a way of destroying the thorn in his side that was Chris Redfield.

Claire had wasted very little time. She hadn't even told Leon what had happened before she was on the helipad of the BSAA HQ roof. Subconsciously she had told him nothing on purpose; let his 'agency' fill him in.

Ramona picked her way across the rocks not long after she saw Wesker and Jill go through the ornate glass of Spencer's library. "You're going to need a way out of here, aren't you?" she asked him, knowing the hard fall had cost him.

Chris was filled with desperation, shouting and yelling at everyone that was trying to help. He was completely irrational by the time his sister got there.

Wesker didn't look his usual dignified self, but he acted like an ass anyway. "And you think you are capable of offering it?"

"Hey..." Claire didn't know what else to say when she found her big brother. She knew what Jill meant to him, and understood the pain of losing someone you owed your own life to.

"You're not going to get out of here undetected now that they know you're here. Especially not with...her." Ramona pointed out. "But I can see you don't need anyone..."

"Tell them to keep looking!" Chris howled. They're saying it's too dark!"

Weeks looked down at Jill, a quick glance told him she had suffered severe injuries and wouldn't survive if he didn't get her to a lab. "And what price will your aid cost me, little girl?"

"Chris..." Claire gently laid a hand on her brother's arm. "Jill wouldn't want anyone getting hurt looking for her. We can't do anything in the dark." she breathed, despite knowing she would be reacting just the way Chris was.

"can you really afford to ask me that question at this point?" Ramona asked kneeling to check Jill's slowly fading pulse. "Redfield's men are all over your plane. As fast as you are, she'll still die before you got her anywhere useful. You can't afford to turn me down. And you know it."

Chris wasn't having it. He had shoved off the men holding him and run for the river, plunging into the icy depths with little care for himself.

"If they are all over my plane, then your transport is compromised also." Weeks shot back. "Are you proposing we take her back inside the facility?"

"Chris, don't make me do this!" Claire pleaded as she loaded a dart into the tranquilliser gun she had.

"I have another transport." Ramona said pushing her dark hair out of her eyes as a cold wind blew past them. It carried with it the sound of Chris' agonized cries. Jill's body responded to it. "It's North of here. Tick tock, Albert."

"I won't give up on her, damn it!" Chris roared. He waded through the water, getting deeper and deeper. "He won't win! JILL!"

"Fine." Wesker was clearly not happy about this arrangement, or being called Albert. "Lead the way, princess." He added, Jill groaning softly as Chris' voice carried on the wind.

"I am sorry, big brother." Claire whispered before she shot the dart into her brother's neck.

"it's Ramona." She corrected, motioning for him to pick up the broken woman before she turned to make her way back up the cliff. 

It would take several more before they were able to drag Chris out of the water. He was all but sobbing, begging his sister not to leave Jill behind.

"Princess Ramona, I understand." Wesker mused as he followed her, not really carrying Jill in anyway that may ease her suffering.

It pained Claire to see her brother this way. They had lost many good people, but this really did seem to have destroyed him. "It's okay, as soon as sunrise hits, we'll be back in that water." She promised, though she could hear the BSAA staff around her shaking their heads and telling each other they thought it was pointless.

Ramona waved him off as she touched her ear piece unaware the no one dared to do such a thing to him. In the coming months it was to be something rather common between them however.

Chris continued to fight the sedation as long as he could, telling her that Jill was running out of time. He snarled at the others, knowing that they believed her already dead.

Jill had had her bones set, then was put under sedation. Wesker paid her little attention at first, too wrapped up in using all his resources to watch Chris in his misery. Of course, this was until he recalled her run in with Umbella's final true creation and he began running a complete battery of tests. His plan was to make Lisa Trevor seem like the little girl she truly had been.

Claire had made the decision to call of the search for Jill after a solid week. Even if Jill had survived the fall, she couldn't possibly still be alive. Needless to say, this did not go down well with Chris.

Ramona kept Wesker supplied without complaint. She'd taken care of Spencer's funeral and then returned to the labs herself. She separated the companies and funded them appropriately. Terrasave would remain guiltless should something go wrong with the other.

Claire would be safe from her brother'so wrath for a while. He would spend several weeks in the hospital with pneumonia From his tireless searching. Even from there he was still searching, making calls, begging people to let him know if there was any sign of her.

"Payment." Wesker declared one day several months later, dropping a file down onto Ramona's desk. It detailed all the experiments he had performed on Jill, and how the outcome had been the same for every one of them; her body had simply adapted the virus.

Chris hadn't spoken to Claire since she had called off the search. She was fairly certain Leon didn't really want to talk to her either, given that she hadn't heard from him since Jill's accident. It was on a particularly low day that yet another job offer from TerraSave landed itself in her inbox.

Ramona was quiet as she looked the files over and closed them with the shake of her head. "Where is the research you conducted on yourself using Las Plagas?" She asked, looking at him over the rim of her glasses. 

Leon had often thought of calling Claire but things had kept him far too busy. Jill's death sent ripples through the government as well, especially since Chris quit trying so hard to protect anyone. That left more work for him and far less time to talk to anyone he cared about.