The bonds of family

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Claire stared down at her ring, and realised she didn't want to contact Leon. She wanted him far away from Alex and any harm she could do him. "The last thing I remember is being put under for surgery. I don't know how i ended up here, or even how long I've been here." She confessed. Her secret fear, was that Leon would believe her dead.

Parker shook his head and rose to his feet. "I don't the help of some lovesick children!" He sneered. "I'll find Rebecca myself!"

"Tell me where he went!" Claire howled. "And quit making fun of me for thinking a guy is cute, I'm not a little kid anymore!"

Wesker ceased smiling also. "Marvelous. Now the little mouse will be out for blood."

"I won't and you're a dork!" Chris howled. "You're the red headed step child that nobody wants. And you smell bad!" 
"Miss Redfield! This isn't appropriate for a pregnant woman!" The doctor cried.

"She wasn't already?" Ramona asked, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Yeah? Well you were adopted!" Claire shot back, talking over the doctor. 
Despite everything that had happened, Jill was smiling as she watched the both of them. This was exactly what life had been like before Umbrella had ruined it for all of them. "I think you may have to sedate them." She mused.

"Hardly." Wesker sorted. "She was just angry."
He didn't know that Rebecca wasn't inside the facility anymore. Someone had stolen her unconscious body while Alex had kept Wesker busy.

"It's a thought." The doctor muttered, tapping Claire on the shoulder. "Miss...please settle down."

"Parker!" Rebecca woke up, her body bathed in sweat and yet shivering. She was certain she was still inside the cage and didn't even bother open her good eye.

Claire turned her bright sapphire gaze on the doctor. "Well he started it!" She insisted childishly.

"Sorry... Not Parker." A gruff voice that Rebecca would recognise from her past commented. "Just a ghost."

"That may be true but you have a baby to think of now, Miss." The doctor said evenly. 
"A baby." Chris turned toward Jill, needing her to say something. 

"Oh god. I've gone nuts." Rebecca breathed, still not opening her eyes. She pulled her knees to her chest and shivered. "Screw you, Captain."

"Huh? You mean Jill?" Claire asked, glancing to the elder woman's belly. "I promise you, there is no possible way I can be pregnant."

"Captain? Not quite." The dark haired man chuckled. "But you're welcome. There was a time you called me... Billy."

"So that's why Leon's pissed."Chris muttered. "You think the baby is his? Who could she possibly have cheated on him with?" He went on, talking like Claire wasn't there.

This opened Rebecca'a eyes. "Billy is dead, Wesker. I'm not falling for anything else. You shipped me his body. I buried him. Don't try to play games with me. I won't do it!"

"Hello! I'm standing right here!" Claire huffed. "I'm not pregnant, least of all with the baby of some guy I literally just met!" She insisted.

Billy nodded his head a little. "I'd expect nothing less from you, girl scout." He breathed.

"No. It wouldn't have been Leon's." Chris went on, shaking his head. "I'll bet the boy scout sleeps with a condom on. Hell..probably a full body one. But who else? The only other one it could have been is very dead..."

"You're making fun of me." Rebecca whispered, fixing her eyes on the figure in the darkness. "I don't play mind games, Captain. And I will never be sorry for what I did to your whore."

Jill's cobalt eyes filled with sadness at the mere thought of who it was Chris spoke of. The last thing she wanted to do was remind Claire of someone she had lost, if they didn't have to. "Speculating isn't helping anyone right now." She breathed.

Billy had brought Rebecca to what what appeared to be a small cave in the woods surrounding Wesker's facility. Right then he was building a fire, the flames catching in steel coloured eyes Rebecca couldn't hide from. "Good." He breathed, having a good idea what it was Rebecca spoke of.

"Leon wouldn't have left if it was his. Even if he didn't want it." Chris said softly. He didn't know what else to do but speculate. He felt lost and confused. "Claire...we need to take you home and figure this out. We can't do it here. It's not safe." He finally murmured, glancing toward Jill. 

"Billy." Rebecca's voice was filled with a mixture heartbreak and relief. It was her turn to retreat into the darkness, her grief at Parker's loss and the memory of Billy'so tearing at her insides. "How can he keep finding ways to hurt me?" She breathed. "Why can't I die like the others?"

Jill was nodding in agreement. "Chris is right sweetie. We need to get you home and we can figure all this out over pizza, okay?" She breathed, torn between terror of not knowing what had happened to Claire, and joy at having her home.

"I'm sorry." Billy didn't know what else to say. "I thought I was keeping you safe by staying away. And then... I met Jill and Chris. I couldn't see them having the life I wanted with you." He smiled rather sheepishly and ran his fingers over his hair. "I sound like an idiot."

Chris frowned at Jill. She made it sound like Claire was a teenager again and that all this could be solved with anchovies and cheese. He was already shaking his head.

"I got married." Rebecca told him, as if she were confessing to something. "His name is...was..Parker Luciani..."

Jill knew Chris too, and how he would try to 'take control' of everything. "It's a lot to take in in one day." She breathed, not wanting Chris to push Claire away like he had the last time.

"I know." Billy breathed, thinking back to that moment in Chris' house when the other Man had told him Rebecca was married. "We're you... Happy?"

"Anchovies?" He asked sighing in defeat. He grabbed for his phone, glancing at Claire. "Extra cheese right?"

"Not really." Rebecca confessed. "He was so sure I was still in love with you that he cheated on me. I'm thinking it was more than just the once that I knew about."

Claire seemed to be trying to act like this didn't make her happy, when in fact it did.
"We can make this okay, I promise." Jill breathed, squeezing Chris' hand before he turned away.

Billy didn't know what to say. "I met your susperstar Chris Redfield." He breathed after a moment. "I can see why you thought so highly of him."

Chris nodded though he didn't seem a bit like he was comforted by Jill's words. He rubbed his forehead, his stress level rising.

"Not anymore." Rebecca said bitterly, pulling her knees to her chest. "Chris is no better than Captain Wesker."

More stress was the last thing Jill needed. Their own baby hadn't exactly been planned, and the relationship had been on thin ice until that point. Jill hadn't told Chris, but she wasn't sleeping much lately, too worried that something was going to come between them again. Claire's predicament wasn't exactly what she had been thinking of.

"Why do you say that?" Billy asked, simply wanting to keep Rebecca talking. "Sure, he can put his foot in his mouth without even trying, but what else has he done?"

Chris sat watching his sister busy thinking of who the father might be. It didn't make sense the way Leon had just left. The only thing he could guess was that Leon had been hurt.

Rebecca didn't answer. There was nothing to say. She felt defeated and exhausted. Not to mention depressed.

Jill saw it now too. She had seen the pain in Leon's eyes that she had mistaken for anger. He had needed her help, and she had hit him. The dark haired woman was again sat out in the hall, her face in her hands as she recounted how everything had gone to hell in such a short space of time.

"Alright, how about we start over?" Billy breathed. "We can say I rescued you, and now I'm going to 'save' you?" He asked with a hopeful smile.

"Well...we tried to hold onto Heaven didn't we? " Chris asked with a deep sigh, coming out into the hall to join her. "Claire is sleeping." He added after a moment.

"No. You're going to tell me how ito is that you survived having your heart ripped out. And then you're going to dump me somewhere before he starts looking." Rebecca snapped. "You already died for me once."

Jill looked up at Chris with red rimmed eyes, quickly trying to wipe away her tears. "It's all my fault." She breathed. "Leon needed help, and all I saw was that he was walking away from Claire. Chris... I think she broke his heart, why else would he have left like that?"

Billy wasn't smiling anymore. He genuinely thought he had done what was best for Rebecca by keeping out of her life. "You needed someone who wasn't living moment to moment. You were just a kid, and didn't need that kind of baggage."

"I don't know. I'm lost. The whole thing is...I don't understand why Leon didn't tell us what happened. It's like he was so upset by it he couldnt." Chris sighed. "I don't know what to make of it."

Rebecca gave a shaky sigh, closing her good eye. "And yet I got baggage anyway. Thinking you were dead..."

"Maybe it's something so awful, we don't want to know?" Jill breathed. "If it can make Leon give up on someone, then I would think there was someone else. A someone else who is the father of the baby, and now Claire has no memory, we're never going to know."

"You got married, can't have been that bad." Billy snorted without really thinking.

"Oh we'll know." Chris snorted. "The minute little bit comes out, we'll know who the father is. You can bet on it." He shoved his fingers through his hair. "And she's a Redfield. She'll fight through this memory thing. I bet we know even before."

Rebecca burst into tears, her guilt getting the better of her. The scene of Parker's death was playing over and over again in her mind. It was all she could do to cover up her head and beg it to go away.

"Chris... I'm scared." It wasn't something Chris would be used to hearing from Jill. "We have our baby on the way, and now all i can think is that I've been selfish. Leon was right..."

"Shit..." That was the last thing Billy had wanted, and was quick to pull Rebecca into his arms, her head tucked under his chin. "You know I'm an asshole..."

"Leon is a moron." Chris grumbled. "He never deserved my sister anyway. This is probably for the best." He knelt in front of her and took her hands in his own. "You're over thinking it. Just like I always do. We'll be fine. I promise."

Rebecca clung to Billy, the smell of him familiar and comforting. And yet she couldn't stop her sobs. So many terrible things gad happened since she'd seen him last. This wasn't how her life had been supposed to go.

"What if it was Claire who didn't deserve Leon?" Jill breathed, prepared to have Chris explode the moment she said it. They had been on the brink of self destruction, the baby had been the very thing that saved them.

Billy didn't tell Rebecca to stop, he knew how much she needed this. He had watched Chris and Jill very almost self destruct, and he didn't want that for Rebecca. He felt like his hands would never be clean enough to hold her, but it didn't mean he was going to continue keeping his distance. "I'm sorry... I should have found you sooner. I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Yeah. I thought about that too. Claire was pretty self destructive. She might have done something to hurt herself and taken him down with her. I've never seen Leon look so...so...broken before." Chris finished. "I will find someway to reach out to him. It will be hard to help either one of them until we've smoothed some of this over."

Rebecca cried until she she could barely breathe. She suddenly found herself too exhausted to even hold her head up. She'd fought so hard for so long and now none of it seemed worth it.