Blue on Black

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Leon Kennedy starred at his gun as he heard the truck shudder into the drop zone. It was never going to get any easier. It didn't matter how many times he came into these towns and cleaned them out. 
It had nothing to do with the people. It was Claire Redfield. He saw her everywhere. The same scenario played out in his mind. In the end he was in her arms. Except...he wasn't. For the most part, he was alone. Until he was calling a phone number that made his chest hurt just to make the chill inside him go away. 
"Claire..." He breathed as he stepped off the truck and looked around. "Will you ever forgive me?" 

Rebecca Chambers didn't share Leon's sense of loneliness. The mousy haired woman was rather happy living alone. She'd seen far too many of her friends and loved ones die to believe in anything but science. 
At the moment she was seated on the floor of her office chewing on her pen, watching a video about the bio-experiments that had been newly discovered from Raccoon city. She didn't seem to be buying a word of it.

The motion was enough for Jill to miss the sight of the door to the room being opened. A moment later she was yanked out into the hallway. 
Carlos shoved her hard against the wall. "We have to get out of here." He hissed softly. "Umbrella is here. Nicholai is here." He put his hand over her mouth to keep her from shouting. He knew her well enough to know the moment he said that name she was going to have something to say. 

Molly was quick to slide around Wesker. "When." She demanded. "When did you last see him." This was important for her. His answer would mean that what happened to Jake might mean that someone else might have been involved. "Fuck....That son of a bitch."

Carlos was taking a great risk. Chris would’ve known Jill wouldn’t think twice about biting the hand over her mouth. She was ready to do just that, when that name slid into her like a finely honed blade. Carlos would see both the anger and the fear in her steel haze when he dropped Nikolai’s name. She was very slightly trying to shake her head, wanting to deny he had survived. 

“Months? Years? Who even knows any more.” Wesker snorted, not wanting to confess that the old man had somehow eluded him. “I haven’t seen him since before raccoon city was more than a crater in the ground.” He admitted. “I know he isn’t dead though. The grand cogs at umbrella wouldn’t still be turning quite so feverishly if he were.”

At the same time Carlos was nodding. He had known the other man had survived. He'd been given the order to ensure it. "We need to go before he finds you here. He knows about Chris and Sherry but not you. I won't let that happen." Whether she realized it or not he was pulling toward the emergency stairwell. "Redfield can take care of things. We don't have time." He grunted. "Six minutes. Maybe less...shit. I lost count." 

"Albert. How long!" Molly demanded. "He was at my apartment two weeks ago with his armed guards." She said bitterly. The woman before him had never been afraid of anything but Ozwell Spencer had changed that. Her scarred chin quivered ever so slightly. "We can't talk here. I don't trust anyone. Not even the goddamn walls." She breathed.

Jill dug her heels in and was trying to peel Carlos’ fingers from around her wrist at the same time. “I won’t leave them!” She hissed, her anger bubbling afresh. He had been just fine all this time she had blamed herself thinking she had left him down there in the bowels of Disneyworld. 

Wesker saw the tremble and reached out again, this time placing his hands on her shoulders as she has done to him earlier. “There’s is a place, not far. It’s safe… for now.” He assured her. “Then we talk… both of us.” He was pulling her with him. Giving Molly little time to respond to his thinly veiled warning that he knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful with him.

Carlos kept dragging Jill, grunting as she threw her weight against him. This wouldn't be the first time but it didn't mean it made it easier. "Stop. We're leaving." He hissed, finally reaching the stairwell and yanking her into darkness. The door locked behind them with an audible sound. "My truck is right by the door. Run."

Molly sat at a well worn table, feeling as if she'd been run over and then thrown into a lava pit. She nodded as Wesker set down a cup of tea in front of her. Surprised she glanced up at him. "You remembered." She smiled wearily. "English with milk. But did you add the cinnamon?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

The second the door shut Jill spun around and tried to pry it back open. “You asshole! She’s just a kid, I’m not just leaving her there!” She shouted, unsure if she had ever truly known Carlos if he was capable of this. 

Wesker simply smiled and sat down, taking a long slow sip of his own black coffee. Of course he had,  it he wanted to see her face when she realised he had.

"She'll be fine." Carlos snapped, grabbing Jill's arm and yanking her away from the door. "Come on, Super Cop. You know, Redfield won't let anything happen to her. You mentioned his sister. You told me that means he'll die to keep a promise to her. Right?" He dragged her toward the stairs while he spoke. "We don't have time for this!"
Above them a door opened, a light shining down in their direction. "Carlos? Have you found her?" Nicholai growled. 
Carlos shoved Jill hard against the wall and stepped into the light. " Nothing yet. But I've seen the girl. She and Redfield just left the room."

Molly sat back in her chair and took a slow sip. Her lashes rested on her cheeks and a smile played across her scarred lips. "I've missed this." She whispered. "I've missed you." She opened her eyes and reached out for his hand. "Spencer ruined everything. He..." She didn't want to tell him of the horrible things the man had done to her simply because she had fallen for his son. She just wanted to be here with him and to have their son back.

Jill remained hidden, but no doubt Carlos would be able to feel her gaze boring into him from the shadows. She had never told him what Nicholai had very almost succeeded in doing to her in raccoon City. Not that it would change anything. This was a side of Carlos that made her sick to her stomach. Even after what he DID know Nicholai had done… he was still working with him. All she could do right then was out her trust in Chris protecting himself and Sherry. 

“He lives on borrowed time.” Wesker finished for her, focusing his attention on her hand where his rough fingers traced over it. “He thinks he can not just cure death,  it reverse the ageing process. Old fool… he has no idea what he allowed to slip through his fingers…”

Carlos dragged her out to his truck and shoved her in, looking behind him several times. He'd swerved out onto the street when the back of the truck gave a heavy groan. No more than a moment later the back window shattered inward. "Going somewhere, asshole?" Chris growled, holding onto the shattered window with one bloody hand and somehow managing to keep hold of Sherry with the other. The slender girl was holding onto him piggy back style, her face pressed into his back.
Carlos stepped on the gas pretending for the moment that he needed to create more space away from the hospital.

Molly spent several hours catching her former husband up on the years that had gone between them. She told him about Spencer's involvement in the bomb that was intended on killing her. She told him of the old man's physical torture of her as he replaced her face with a new one and the pleasure he'd taken in every moment. She told him of the woman who made her swear in blood never to go near her beloved again or Spencer would kill him. 
Molly told him of the night she'd given birth to his son in a tiny apartment with no help. 
When she finished she simply sat and watched him. She didn't cry. 
"You'd have been proud." She said softly. "The old man hated me because I wouldn't cry or scream. The day he finally gave up he called me useless."

“Red?!” There was obvious elation in Jill’s voice when she twisted in her seat to match the face to the voice she had just heard. “Jesus Christ… you scared the shit out of me!” She declared, glancing back to the front window to see if it was safe for her to slam slam the hand break in without warning Carlos first. The last thing she wanted was for chris to see that her words on being scared hadn’t just been a statement… knowing Nicholai was here truly did fill her with fear. 

Wesker sat and patiently listened to Molly’s story. He didn’t speak, and his only reaction was each time she said Spencer’s name, the leather of his gloved creaked as his fingers flexed. “Who was she?” He asked at last. “What woman did you think had enough sway to have me killed?” He questioned. It was a lot to take in. He had a son. A son who was already grown enough to know enough to hate his absent father.

Carlos winced. The joy in Jill's eating at his soul. It didn't take much to make him remember that the woman he loved would never belong to him. He hated Chris. It didn't matter that the two men had never met officially.
Ever so slightly he tapped on the brake and the truck skidded into the next lane, making the tires screech and the unwanted passengers now unsteady. Chris roared as his hand slid along the broken glass he was holding onto. to his credit, he didn't let go of Sherry. Instead he threw his body to the right side allowing the young woman to crawl through the window. Carlos cursed softly, yanking the truck back into the proper lane. "We're being followed. Hang on!" He shouted.

"Spencer called her Alex. He cooed over her. I remember that much." Molly said. "To me she looked a lot like you but...she talked about you like she was hot for you. The things she said when Spencer was torturing me..." It was Molly's turn to make a fist. "She's lucky I couldn't get my hands on her..." She pounded a fist on the table before she thought better of it. "To be honest, at the end of all of it. I think she was jealous of me." Finally she met his eyes as she snorted. "Come on, we've both seen her. Before the accident, beauty wise, I had nothing on her. But brains, I win every time." She finished finally grinning in a way that he would remember her best for. "I can guarantee I'd drink her under the damn table!"

Jill grabbed Sherry and hugged her tightly. So much was happening that she was struggling to keep her thoughts level. So Nicholai was looking for her, and not alone… he had Carlos working with him. She was watching her liver over the top of Sherry’s head now; had any of it been real? Had he ever actually been in her side, or had he been playing her all along? That thought alone chilled her, to think she could have misread someone so gravely. She had run into Carlos not long after breaking up with Chris. She had been as low as she thought she ever could be… maybe it wasn’t as coincidental as she thought. 

“Alex…” he snarled that name with bitter hatred. “I sincerely doubt she was jealous for the reason you think. She didn’t want me… she wanted my prestige. She was always Spencer’s second, and anything but the best was punished in his twisted world.”

Chris turned his head slightly to see that Carlos was right. There was a sleek black car that was sliding in and out of the morning traffic and gaining on them quickly. "Fuck...Jill...to your right!" He barked, reaching in and pushing down Sherry's head. He dropped the gun she'd given him into her lap.
The back car was a distraction, there was one right beside them. There was a passenger leaning over the driver about to open fire. He let go of the window and rushed the car, jumping onto the roof and praying he didn't miss. 

Molly stopped smiling. Her eyes sliding over Albert Wesker as if seeing him for the first time. In a way she really was. He was not the man she'd met in the army. Nothing he'd told her about himself was true. She knew nothing about the man that sat before her now. 
"You know...this would be a good point to end things." She said softly. "I could walk away with my memories and you'd be free and clear. The next time this sort of thing comes up...it wouldn't be your problem." She hoped he wouldn't know how much those words had hurt her. But there was so much between them now that proved that their relationship had been nothing but a lie. Maybe Alex had been right. Maybe he had simply used her. She couldn't bear to hear him say it.

Jill used the gin to smash the window beside her, keeping Sherry’s head bend down as she did so. “Red! Get your ass back over here!” She roared, firing several shots into the window of the car beside them, once the offending car’s window was broken, several of her shots hit its driver. 

“You don’t get to decide that.” Wesker replied somewhat coolly. “You say I have a son… but where is he? My guess is you only had the medic reach out to me because you need something, not because you miss me, or truly wish me to be a part of his life.”

Chris swung into the drivers seat while the passenger was trying to steer the car in a panic and hit the man hard. The blood added to what was already there, making the windsheild almost impossible to see out of. 
While he was trying to gain control of that car, the car from behind had caught up and clipped the back end of Carlos' truck. This time he wasn't able to stop the vehicle from spinning on the road. Terrified, Sherry screamed. 

Molly shook her head, glaring at him with a defiance he would remember well. "You really think I want to parade the only thing I ever did good around for that psycho old man to see?" She snapped. "Those two ripped me apart! Body and soul! Then made me swear I'd never fucking go near you if I didn't want the same to happen to you!" It was then that she finally broke. Molly Wesker never cried. Not really. Not until now. "I told him to stay in his room. To stay quiet. Spencer found me. He...found out I'd been looking for you. He punished me..." She lifted her shirt to show him the still fresh wound from the goons who'd taken a combat knife to her side. "I think Jake was watching through the crack in his door...he...Albert, he kicked his door down...and went after them. Spencer was practically..." She buried her face in her hands, her sobs shaking her bony shoulders. "They took him. He took him..."

Chris was about to be the lucky one. Jill’s gaze met his own for a very brief moment as the car struck the back of the truck. It had spun before clipping another car and flipping several times, finally landing upside down, embedded in the wall of a hardware store. 

The table between them suddenly flipped over and Wesker was hauling Molly into his arms. Both to comfort her, and keep him from seeing that wound. Something else he was to blame for. “You should have told me…  it hung he could do to me would matter.” He swore. Oh, if only Chris could see his great nemesis now; so human and vulnerable.

Chris slammed on the brakes of the car he was in, his chest on fire. This was all on Carlos and he was going to make him pay for it. 
He didn't have time to think more on it however as the car behind them pulled up and shot him with a tranquilizer. It took two more before he dropped like a stone. 

Molly clung to her former lover, his words making her insides ache. "I failed you..." She finally managed. "I'm... sorry..."

Even if Chris had made it to the wreckage, it wouldn’t have been pretty. Though she had protected Sherry, Jill now lay unconscious with a piece of rebar from the semi destroyed building pinning her down through her abdomen. Through the entire ordeal of the crash, she had however kept a tight grip on Chris’ gun. 

“No… you did good, Mrs. Wesker.” He breathed into her hair. “I’m sure you taught our boy well, he will survive until I find him.” He promised. “But I must do it alone. I can’t have you back in Spencer, or Alex’s sights.”

"I'll be taking that." A man dressed in black unhooked Jill's arms from around Sherry and pulled her from the car. "Tell Wesker we have her." He said into his ear piece, his eyes meeting Jill's as she slowly opened them. "Dispose of them. Starting with Redfield. He'll be pleased."

Molly sighed heavily, her body all but sagging in his arms. She was more than exhausted. She hadn't slept in days. She'd pushed so much aside simply to get to this moment. The relief alone was overwhelming. "Okay." She whispered. "I trust you."

Jill heard her former partners name and tried to protest. Her voice refused to issue anything more than a croak, and her fingers merely twitched. She was trying to react, to fight for the people being torn from her, but her body refused. She had finally pushed it too far and eyes lashes fluttered for the final time before she sank into darkness. 
”You call that a punch? You fight like a girl!” Chris was exclaiming with a smirk as he leaned in the doorway of the RPD gym, watching Jill attack a punchbag, her tongue poking out in concentration.
“Well shit, Red, I am a girl, or did that escape your keen powers of observation?” Jill retorted, grabbing the bag with it hands to keep it from swinging as she turned to face him. 
Chris was grinning, making it quite clear he had taken a good long observation at what made her a girl. “Really? I just figured you to be a cross dresser with tissue down his bra.” He smirked. 
“Right, so I guess I don’t need to be wearing this anymore then, huh?” Jill asked as she sauntered closer to him, her fingers toying with the zipper down the front of the sports bra she wore. Jill paused in front of Chris, winking playfully before reaching up and messing up the hair she knew he spent so long getting ‘just right’. “Nice try, Red. How about next time you out your money where your mouth is and actually fight me. Then we’ll see just how wrong it really is to fight like a girl.”
It was a random memory firing in her brain as Jill lay bleeding out. The accelerated healing she had exhibited down in the tunnel couldn’t take effect, thanks to the metal still poking her like a human skewer. 

“Silly girl… you should never trust anyone.” Wesker breathed, though he did gently tilt her chin up and steal a warm kiss from her. Molly made him feel like a hot blooded youth again. He very almost forgot he was a monster, one with a vendetta again Chris Redfield. Although, Wesker had yet to determine if this were a good thing. It was odd, as though his life without Molly had turned out the way it had simply because of that; it was a life without her. Had these last fifteen years been spent in domestic bliss, where would he be now?

It was Chris turn to be at Jill's bedside day and night until she healed. He barely left the room as he continued to watch over her. That night he was laying on the floor, tired from another round of sit-ups. He'd made sure Jill was clean and comfortable. And usual there was no sign of Carlos. But what was he going to tell her about Sherry when she woke up?

Molly slept for a good portion of the two weeks that she was back with Wesker. It almost seemed like she hadn't slept in years. 
That night she'd gotten dressed and met Wesker in the kitchen of the house he'd brought her to. "Don't tell me you cooked." She teased, her eyes looking longingly at the steaming plates. "I still remember the last time."

Jill’s wound has begun to heal even there in the operating table once they had removed the metal from her abdomen. It hadn’t been quite quite enough to cause anyone to notice, just enough that the doctor would give himself a Pat on the back to his skills in aiding her speedy recovery. However, speedy wasn’t exactly correct. Though her body was healed, Jill still took over a week to regain consciousness. It had been chalked up to physical and mental exhaustion. At one point she had the ashes in her sleep, arms lashing out as she shouted for someone named Nicholai to stop. But it was the second week now, and finally she opened her eyes, unable to discern why she was connected to a heart rate monitor, one that quickly started to beep when she pulled it off her finger. 

Wesker glanced over his shoulder and chuckled quietly. “Fifteen years allows for plenty of practice… and time to find a good take out restaurant.” He teased, setting the plates in the antique mahogany table before gesturing she sit. “Either that, or the time I was gifted while waiting for sleep beauty to wake.” He added with an almost affectionate smile.

"Valentine." Chris was quick to grab her hand. "Be still." He whispered, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "It's a dream. You're safe. You're not alone. You're never alone." He promised, never knowing he'd never be able be able to keep this promise.

Molly laughed, standing on tip toe to kiss him. "You should thank me. Now that I'm awake you'll be bitching at me to shut up." She snorted, bumping him with her hip to reach for a dumpling.

Jill ceased her movements, wide blue eyes staring up at Chris as though she couldn’t tell if he were real or not. Finally she reached up, a palm pressing gently to his cheek and lingering there. “I… had a dream about you, I think.” 

“You think you were quiet while you slept?” Wesker asked with an arched brow. “Interesting…” He mused with another grin before turning to grab the bottle of wine from the cooler under the counter.

"All the girls do, babe." Chris said with his usual grin. He gave her a kiss on the tip of her nose and winked. "The nurses here can't keep their hands off me." He smoothed the hair away from her face, unable to hide the emotions that were tearing through him in that moment. "You scared me. You know that?"

"Seriously?" Molly blushed. She watched his movements, noting howu h more precise and confident he was. Even for him. It was almost scary. "Alright, Alley cat." She had called him that in teasing on their wedding night. It had stuck. "It's your turn to tell the truth." She said as she sat down. "Don't you dare think your going to seduce me with that wine." She grinned.

Jill’s brow creased slightly. There were huge black holes in her memory, such as: why was she in hospital at all? “I thought a hotshot flyboy like you didn’t know fear?” She teased, assuming the gaps would fill themselves. 

“Oh Molly…” Wesker was smiling as he poured them each a glass of the crimson liquid. “I never needed wine to seduce you.” He finished with an amused smirk.

"You're all I have left." Chris' voice broke as he said this. For a short minute he tested his head on her chest. "I'm such a moron. I was trying to save you...I always screw up." He didn't want to admit about Sherry, saying it out loud would be like admitting he'd let Claire die.

"That's why you came to my room and begged me to go out with you that first night." Molly snorted. "You were the one who couldn't keep you hands to yourself." She reminded him. "Remember when I had to ask you what you kept staring at?" She watched his long fingers sliding along the rim of the glass and the smile tugging at the edge of his lips. "I was so sure you were making fun of me...or you'd set up some elaborate prank. When you kissed me the first time I was waiting for one of the other privates to drop pig's blood on me." She admitted.

“Oh I don’t know… there’s some things you do that no one else even comes close to…” Jill mused, though her fingers were gently stroking through his dark hair. The feel of the weight of Chris’ head in her chest was familiar, and safe. She remembered lazy Sunday mornings spent like this, debating over whether a vampire was stronger than a werewolf, silly things that didn’t matter outside of that moment. 

Wesker continued to smile, to slide his finger around the rim of his glass until it sang. “You really have to ask what I was staring at?” He pondered. “It always irked me that you never saw yourself as beautiful. But you were, and strong. You had a strength I had never seen before, with that drive to seemingly prove you had earned your place there.”

Chris sighed again, remembering the mornings when there was nothing to do but argue about the real possibility of an alien invasion or whether the color cyan was green or blue. "I want to go home." He whispered. "Why can't we just find a time machine?" He tested his arms on her sides, for the first time in a long while feeling as if a burden where relieved. "I feel like this is all my fault. If I had just killed the dogs outside... Maybe Wesker too... We'd all be okay..."

Molly nodded. " You made me earn my place. I felt like you pushed me harder than the others. Almost like you wanted me to give up. Rember that night I fell and the other officer stepped on my back during training? All you ever said when my face was buried in mud was go home." The slender woman laughed softly, pausing to take a sip of her wine. 
"I like to think I pissed off the other guy enough to make him quit. I don't remember him being there that next day. But I do remember that sneer you gave me when I lumped out of my barrack and saluted you." She laughed again. "Did you ever find out what happened to that guy?"

“Or maybe the dogs would’ve got you first.” Jill pointed out. “I can’t argue with the logic though… Killing Wesker has literally no downside.” She agreed, still stroking her fingers through his hair. It was a little longer than she remembered, if felt good. Even before they had dated, she knew Chris had been there looking out for her. She would be running in the park after dark, and mysteriously would bump into him… also out for a run. Wesker would dump a mountain of paperwork on her desk, and Chris would appear with coffee and fresh pastries. 

Wesker smirked and diverted his gaze as he took a sip of his wine. “Yes, very sudden his departure.” He agreed, though clearly knew more. “He was from a military family, thought his place on my squad was owed to him, not something to be earned.”