Another One Down

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Leon Kennedy couldn't remember what it felt like to breathe. His chest hurt. As he stood there in front of the president accepting a medal for his bravery in the face of overwhelming danger he found that he couldn't force himself to drag in that much needed air. 
He was horrified to realize he couldn't hear a word the other man was saying. It was all the whispering of the monster that once controlled his body. He couldn't even return the handshake that was offered to him. All he could do was stand there as the audience watched him on a world stage. 

Rebecca Chambers leaned back in her chair and rubbed her face. "Turn that song off!" She shouted at her lab mate. It wasn't the first time he'd played a song that simply repeated, "The devil's gonna make me a free man..." 
The guilt was tearing at her and she couldn't stand it. Frustrated she shoved out of the chair and stomped to her car. So far the devil had done nothing but made matters worse. Not that she blamed him. 
She got into the drivers seat and checked her phone. She was sure the loss of Krauser was going to come back to bite her.

"Well...at least they're paying attention to me. Unlike some people I know." Leon spoke with his mouthful. He was still eating as he reached into the box and began to crumble another pastry. The pigeons began to gather as he tossed some of the crumbs to them. "At least they will miss me when I leave." He sighed dramatically.

Rebecca closed her eyes. Wesker was right. There was no doubt Chris was still looking for Jill. There was evidence of it in security files and videos. 
But no one cared about her. Apparently not even her best friend. Or even her former lover. Large tears slid down her nose. 
"So what now?" She whispered. "What do you want from me?"

“I miss you every time you leave. That’s the problem.” Claire breathed in reply, her fingers reaching into the box, though she kept her gaze on the pigeons. “Doesn’t hurt any less. Never gets any easier… but I keep letting you in anyway.”

“How much do you wish to give?” Wesker asked simply, his yellow eyes uncovered for once as he peered down into Rebecca’s face, always entrances by this big doe eyes. “You think me a monster without morals, but everything I do is to advance those worthy of it. I wouldn’t take what you didn’t wish to give freely. You are too valuable to break.”

Leon's smile faded. He tossed down the remainder of the pastry and shook his head. "You know I can't do anything about it." He breathed. "I just came to say goodbye. I'm leaving out in a few days and I wanted... someone to know." His hair fell into his face as he continued to stare down. "Take care of yourself. Okay?"

"Everything." Rebecca whispered, knowing Wesker would know what this would mean. She reached over and turned off Jill's monitor. She got to her feet and stood on tiptoe, pressing her lips to his. Maybe this man didn't care about her but at least he didn't leave her behind.

Claire finally turned her head to look at Leon, now he no longer looked at her. The sun had begun to set as they sat here, and the streetlight beside them had flickered to life. The warm yellow glow highlighted the fat tears that clung to Claire’s dark lashes as she watched the man she loved, and love him she did. That was why it hurt so much; she knew Leon didn’t understand that she loved him. She had since almost the moment they had met, even if he had never noticed.
“So that’s it? Take care of yourself?” She asked tearfully. This wasn’t all on Leon, he had simply caught her at a bad time. Running the BSAA alone was taking its toll on the younger Redfield. This wasn’t who she was. She wasn’t good at sitting around planning, she needed to be out there, taking action. Instead she was holding her brothers dream together, while he lost himself at the bottom of several bottles. Claire had lost Jill too, but no one seemed to see that. Even Rebecca was no longer returning her calls. Claire was drowning, and her cries for help were being swallowed up by the roar of bigger problems.

Wesker was genuinely caught off guard by Rebecca’s gentle kiss. All these months, he has assumed she hated him, as he was essentially her jailer. His calloused hands slid from Rebecca’s slender waist to travel up her spine, moving around until he was gently cupping her elfin face, even his lips were showing restraint against the savage way she truly wished to taste her. He was a different creature to the man who had been her captain. Now every time he touched her he had to expend conscious effort to control his strength, lest he crush her like a butterfly in the hands of an inexperienced entomologist.
“Everything… is a steep price to pay. Can you afford such lavish statements?” He breathed at last, lingering close enough that she would feel his somewhat cool breath linger against her warm lips.

Leon had so much he needed to confess. But if he planned to keep Claire alive then he knew better. His chest ached. More so as he caught sight of the shadow that was nearby. It was proof that he was never really alone. 
He took a deep breath and slapped his knees, getting to his feet. "It was good catching up with you again." He said as if this were nothing more than a meeting between acquaintances. "Thanks for the food." He reached out and patted her shoulder. She would never know.
He would die before he let them hurt the only woman who truly carried his heart and soul. 

Rebecca nodded, offering Wesker a bright smile. "What have I got to lose?" She asked with a laugh. " So Mister I'm a god. Are you ready put your money where your mouth is?" She asked, tapping his chest.

Claire looked up into Leon’s face as he bid her farewell, the tears she had been desperately trying to hold at bay dripping down her cheeks. Her soul was a raw nerve, and he had just set a match to it. Overcome with a mixture of rage and sorrow Claire roughly shrugged his hand off her shoulder. By thinking he was keeping her safe, Leon was damaging Claire the most. “Oh please, don’t let me keep you from what really matters.” She spat, getting to her own feet and walking away.

“Are you?” Wesker countered, smirking slightly before turning away. “You just sold your soul to the devil, and he requires you to perfect his new toy.” He added, proving himself as fickle as the wind. One moment he was kissing her, the next he was all business.

Chris was leaning back in his chair when he heard his sister coming in. He opened one eye and grunted. "Didn't bring the boy scout back with you? What's the matter? Was he too afraid he might run into me?" He pushed aside papers he'd been pouring over, pretending his faculties weren't exactly sharp. He didn't need Claire giving him hell over his obsession of Jill's whereabouts. 

"You act like it's more than a typical Tuesday." Rebecca snorted. 
His walking away had her wondering if her kiss had been enough to make him lose interest. Deciding this was the case she turned away and began digging through a box of beakers.

Claire felt her brother’s venom wash over her, seeping into every wound Leon had just left her with. “No. There’s enough asshole in this room already.” She spat, not even glancing at whatever Chris had been looking at. Claire had no one to turn to. No one to soothe away the pain she was in. “Try not to puke all over yourself tonight. I’m not cleaning you up again.” She added, already halfway across the room.

“Dr Chambers?” A young man with dark hair was hovering in the doorway, holding something in his hand. “Could I get a second opinion on these results from the RC specimen, please? It’s been a while since I slept, and I need to know I’m not going crazy.” He added with a nervous chuckle before pushing his glasses back up his nose.

"Fuck you." Chris snapped. "Sherry called. I told her you were too busy being a bitch to talk to her." He growled, shoving to his feet and stumbling towards the bathroom. 

Rebecca offered the man a smile, giving up her search for a proper beaker. She met his eyes and an odd sensation washed over her. He reminded her of Billy. Tall and well built. In this get up he carried himself as a researcher would. It was a bit strange. For a minute she didn't know what to say. 
Finally she looked down at the paper. "There are a ton of specimens, sir. Which one are you looking at?" She asked, feeling like she was missing something.

Claire didn’t know if she had it in her to call Sherry back. She dragged herself to her own bedroom and shut the door, sliding down it u too she was sat on the ground with her back pressed to the hard wood. It was here Claire finally allowed the dam to break. Her tears flowed freely and she sicker in gasping sobs, her knees hugged to her chest. Like all the survivors, she had good and bad days, and on a day like this… she wished she had been the one to die in Antarctica, not Steve. Maybe he could’ve gone on to live the kind of normal life she never would.

“The newest one, Valentine.” The man confirmed. “Her cells seem to be acting strangely.” He glanced as the notes he was carrying again, pushing his dark rimmed glasses up onto the top of his head this time. “We know she can heal physical wounds, but…” He sighed heavily, as though he didn’t want to say the next part out loud. “She seems to be… stuck, at a cellular level I mean. Her cells haven’t degraded since she was first infected.”

"Stop your fucking crying." Chris growled. He stood over her, his arms crossed. "It makes you looks weak. It's time you remember that there is no one who will save you but yourself. Get up off the floor and remember who you are." He hissed. 

Rebecca tapped her chin in thought and smiled. "That's interesting. I can work with that. You can take a break now. If you see Wesker in the hall, tell him to come back by. And... Thanks. " She smiled at the young man, hurrying to her blood vials.

Claire screwed her eyes even tighter shut at those harsh words. He doesnt mean it. He’s just hurting too. Things she had told herself for months now each time Chris lashed out at her. For months she had valiantly not retaliated, knowing it would do nothing but harm. Enough was enough. Claire was damn near broken being the ‘strong’ one of their sibling relationship. Finally she opened her bloodshot, sapphire eyes and looked up at her brother. At the man who had trained her, given her the skills to keep fighting. “Who I am?” Claire asked, her voice deadly low. “Who am I, if not your fucking babysitter!?” She roared, shoving up to her feet. “Jill is dead, Chris! She’s dead and she’s not coming back! Don’t you fucking talk to me about being weak!”

The young man let Rebecca go, only smiling very slightly once she was rounding the corner at the end of the hallway. She didn’t belong here. She was too good for such evil. This was the only way he could help.

Chris smiled darkly. "Babysitter? Babysitter? Let's talk about that." He snarled. He took one step forward that was far quicker than it should have been. Then he was shoving her against the wall. It didn't even seem to phase him when the back of her head hit the wall. "How many years did I sacrifice babysitting you?!" He screamed in her face. "And for what? Spoiled bitch. I went hungry. They injected me... But oh no... Not precious Claire!"

Rebecca found Wesker reporting her findings to him and taking a sample of his blood. Hours later she had finally gotten tired enough to fall asleep on the floor. 
She'd gotten a dark plan in place. As well as a clone being formed in a glass tube in the back of the lab.

Claire’s vision swam with the force Chris had hit her head against the wall. She was struggling to refocus her gaze, and worried that the words she was hearing, were not the ones leaving his mouth. Injections? They? “Who.:. I mean… what are you talking about?” She managed to ask, though white sparkles continued to dance in her vision.

Rebecca wouldn’t spend the night on the floor. At some point she had been carried back to the modest room she had been given. Whoever it was had removed her shoes and labcoat, but allowed her her modesty by leaving her otherwise fully clothed. Wesker hadn’t left his own lab since Rebecca had brought the he test results to him.

"There were so many tests. So much pain. All while you got to go to school and yell at me telling you to clean your room." Chris was livid. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his large fingers leaving deep bruises. "Guess what happened if they found out I yelled back?"

Rebecca burst into Wesker's lab the next afternoon wearing a triumphant smile. "Are you ready to meet yourself?" She asked gasping for breath. She hadn't bothered with a lab coat and her long brown hair was barely held in by her hair clip. "You're going to worship me after this."

Claire’s eyes were wide now. She fought the grip her brother had on her, but he wasn’t budging at all. “You’re a tiny like a psycho! I went to school because you joined the military!” She insisted. “You’ve had too much to drink, and Ho would even do all this to you? Who would care! We’re nobodies, there is no great Redfield name!”

“Only after?” Wesker mused, leaning back from his computer to spin his chair around and give Rebecca his full attention.

"Don't you ever say that!" Chris screamed. Again he slammed Claire against the wall. "My parents were fucking amazing people! Then they brought you home! They were murdered because of you!" He threw Claire across the room and stormed out, ignoring the sound of shattering glass.

Rebecca laughed, tucking hair behind her ear. "He's going to help us when you take me to Africa get the progenitor flower." She stepped aside so that a perfect copy of Wesker himself could enter. 
The man was dressed in an old suit of his, his hair styled in an artful way. He nodded to his mirror image but did not smile. "A pleasure to meet you." He purred, his gaze turning toward Rebecca. Over the next several months it would become no secret how much the clone craved the tiny woman.

Claire felt something warm seeping beneath her as she watched her brother’s feet stomp away. The glass door he had tossed her through had left a jagged piece jammed in her shoulder. It had missed major arteries, it there was still a lot of blood. It was as Claire sank into the welcoming darkness that another tear rolled down her cheek. She thought she was a good person, so why did everyone suddenly hate her? Leon’s name was on her lips, wanting to tell him how sorry she was. At that moment Claire never knew it would be months before she chose to see her brother again. Some things were not so easily forgiven.

Wesker had been about to question her desire for the projenitor flower, until he saw the way his clone was already looking at the slender genius. He frowned slightly, wonder if it was possible to be jealous of yourself? Did he himself look at Rebecca that way when he thought she didn’t see?
“I want that thing locked up until it is needed.” He finally scoffed, gesturing in the ones direction.

Chris Redfield had forgotten what it was like to speak to someone else in more than a growling whisper. He barely gave anyone the time of day unless they had something he needed. His continued belief that Jill was alive had led him down a dark path.
That day he was seated at a table in a dark bar with his head in his hands, pretending to be extremely drunk. This way, the young man with his arm the tall blonde would continue simply shouting everything about Umbrella. All he needed now was a location.

Rebecca Chambers found herself with her hands over her face as a loud snorting laugh escaped her. She couldn't remember when she'd last done it. "That was the worst one yet!" She finally gasped out. "Where are you getting these terrible jokes at?!" She cried. "I swear I'm going to have to revoke your access to the internet if you keep looking up crap like that." She added. 
She found it odd to be patting the shoulder of one Albert Wesker and taking orders from another. The latter of these having promised her the world in purring whispers only a few hours ago. Her thoughts were with him, even as her fingers lingered on that of the clone.

It had taken Claire weeks of physio for her shoulder to fully heal after her brother had slammed her into the glass door. All that time she had had too much time to replay her last conversation with Leon over and over. She still came to the same conclusion; letting him keep rolling in and out of her life was what was killing her a little more each time. In an effort to take her mind off the man she loved, Claire also had the time to think about the things Chris had screamed at her. The insinuation that she was protected from something, or someone, that he never had been. It was this line of thought that her her spending night after night on geneology websites and in the surviving records from Raccoon City.

The clone was grinning at Rebecca, his eyes much less cold and animal like than his progenitor. “Well, if it’s that annoying to you, I guess I’ll give up on the jokes and just look at porn instead…” He responded with a dramatic sigh. “Hot female scientist… glasses.” He pretended to type it out as he said the words.

"Are you ever going to sleep?" Leon asked from where he laid. He was stretched out beside her in the bed, an arm over his eyes. "I told you I would look for whatever you needed me to when I go to Washington this weekend." He sighed heavily. "If you'd rather I left now just say it."

Rebecca thumped the man on the back of the head and snorted with laughter. She was blushing deeply. "Don't let him catch you doing that." She sat down at her own computer, shaking her head. "Though I really don't know why. This morning he cornered me and yelled at me for not being a Valkyrie like Jill. He called me a fragile butterfly. He said I am easily broken and useless." Her smile was gone. "I'm not sure what I did to make him that way ... "

Claire was sat cross logged on the bed, hunched over her laptop. She was wearing her red rimmed glasses, a pen balanced between her lips as she scrolled through what was on the screen. It took a moment to register Leon had said anything at all. “Huh? Oh, right… no.” She murmured, clearly still concentrating on the words she was reading. Finally she turned her face to look down at where Leon lay. “What I mean is… what if you find something… not good? What if they send you to arrest me, or Chris? Would you really want to have to make that choice?” She pushed her glasses up onto the top of her head and did finally lay down next to him, her head resting on his shoulder. “Or does that get you hot, the idea of me in an orange jumpsuit, confined with all those women?” She added with a teasing grin as her fingers traced to contours of his abdomen.

“Is being a butterfly truly such a terrible thought to you?” He asked, leaning back in his seat, his fingers clasped casually behind his head. “Butterflies are mostly adored, they a beautiful and people can’t help but wish to protect them.” He paused, thinking about her comparison to Jill. “Valkyrie’s are bad omens. They are death. Do you really wish to be the woman who brings death, as his precious Jill does?”

Leon kept thinking about Claire as he pushed his way through a row of undead. He'd already discovered the truth about Tricell and it was because of this he was soon to find he was not leaving his new found hell. 

Rebecca thought about the clones comparison as she watched Jill destroy a group of government soldiers. He was right. She brought nothing but death no matter where she went. Even to a man she was friends with. Currently lying at her feet was Leon Kennedy. 
Rebecca closed her eyes at the sight. It would destroy Claire if she knew.

“This bothers you?”  The clone queried when he saw Rebecca close her eyes. “They’re just government fodder, no one will miss them, trust Al on that.” He assured her with a smile.
Jill had a foot on Leon’s chest, pinning him down as she watched him through the eyes of the bird like mask Wesker made her wear. Her gun was pointed at the other man, though she hadn’t yet put him down. If Rebecca opened her eyes again, she would see the tremble to Jill’s fingers, fighting the order she had to dispose of ALL the agents she had encountered.