Chapter Text
Grace had been doing good. Great even.
Her job was going fantastic: apparently Jill and her squad put in a good word for her, so her status as more or less the FBI’s go-to for sharing info with the BSAA got utilised a lot more, with which came a higher clearance and a raise, which then meant she was finally able to afford that tiny car to better transport herself and Emily.
Speaking of Emily! She was finally hers; the court hearings and paperwork all came through and she was now officially Emily Ashcroft, new fully legal birth certificate to go with it and everything.
And she was doing amazing in her classes. Her remedial tutor said that it could be less than a year before she could be up to date on what a 9-10 year old(the physical age the doctors settled on, which became her legal birth year) (hey, just because the certificate was legit didn’t mean all the things in it were 100% true) should know and, if Grace and Emily wanted to, could probably start attending a normal school. And Emily for her part was always excitedly sharing just what new thing she learned.
Grace also had a supportive found family that had slowly trickled into her life, always there to help her and she, in turn, always there to help them.
By all accounts her life was going the best it had ever been.
So why was she feeling like this?
Every sound, every scrape, every stray gust of wind had her looking over her shoulder and itching for her service gun, ready to draw it at a shambling zombie.
What was wrong with her? It’s been months. Over half a year. Last time she felt like this was directly after it happened. Why did it return now? It shouldn’t affect her like this.
It wasn’t like with her mom; she didn’t lose anyone this time. That meant it should be fine, right? All the different ‘family traumas’ that Grace knew still haunted her… aunts and uncles? Would that be the term for them? Whatever. Traumas that she knew still made them wake up in a panic always involved some kind of loss or going through way more than one bad day.
Like Leon and Spain: Grace eventually learned of a man named Luis who tried his best to better himself and of Jack who did the exact opposite. Ashley and being kidnapped across continents and then infected with a mind control parasite.
Chris and… hell, all his dead teams.
So it was fine. She was fine. She was safe and okay.
She was safe and okay especially right now.
Claire was in the country again, so she and Leon took the girls onto ‘an adventure with aunt Claire’, leaving Grace and Chris alone to take a breather. So now of all times, sitting on the Redfield-Kennedy couch, watching TV and enjoying a cup of tea without having to worry about anything, she should be relaxed.
Hell, this was the first time since she started suspecting Chris of being just the one lone Captain R when they were alone. Perfect opportunity to broach the kind of conversation topic that might stir up bad memories for him.
And yet Grace couldn’t do it, she was barely thinking about anything at all. She just sat there, trying and failing to relax.
And then a chair scraped against tile behind her.
She was in the room with the dining table, the smell of the fresh corpse in front of it hitting Grace’s nose, forcing her to supress a gag. How many bullets did she have? Not enough. And injectors? Oh, forget about it. She was missing a coin for that cabinet with the part that she thinks could upgrade the blood collector. Where the hell would you hide a coin in a place like this? She already opened all the safes.
Heavy footsteps were approaching her, shit that was the chef or worse yet Gideon, she needed to go, stay moving, get away, hide.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, making her fall over herself while scrambling away from it, hitting the carpeted floor with a yelp.
Carpet? Wasn’t she in the tiled dining room area?
She raced into a hall, blood rushing in her ears, running into the first open door and slamming it behind herself. It was some kind of bedroom. Just her luck; there was only one entrance and exit and she couldn’t risk returning to the hall, so she was trapped here for now.
She had to hide.
Not under the bed, everyone always checked the bed, but shit, the only other hiding place would be the closet and that one only had one way in and out, same as the room, so if she was discovered there, she would for sure be done for.
So she crawled under the bed hurriedly, eyes burning with tears and hands slammed over her mouth to not make a sound.
The door opened gently, the heavy footsteps entered. They were both too methodical for a zombie and yet too calm for Gideon. The socks(socks?) were muffled further by carpet.
Now she just had to wait till whatever entered was on the other side of the room and then book it out again. She could do this.
But then the thing sat on top of the bed, legs blocking the way to the door, making Grace let out a hopeless whimper through her hands.
“Hey Grace. Sorry about how dusty it probably is down there, pretty sure we haven’t vacuumed in a while.”
W-What?
The voice was steady, calm and familiar.
“Do you like the carpet? Leon picked it out, floor was hardwood when it was still my parents’ bedroom, but we both decided we have nightmares that make us fall out of bed way too often for that, even if the upkeep is more complicated.”
Leon, the DSO agent. Was he okay? Wait no he was also her… friend… and weird goofy father figure.
“L-Leon…” Her voice was weak and muffled by her hands, but the voice above seemed to be somewhat all-knowing and she needed to know if Leon was fine. He was infected, wasn’t he? Stage 3 T-virus infection. Was he still even alive?
“He’s okay Grace, you saved him, he’s with Claire and the girls, Rose and Emily. They’re all okay. You’re okay too.”
Emily, she needed to save Emily.
No wait.
“E-Emily?”
The voice hummed, “Emily is doing great too, as fine and as happy as a little girl can be.”
A sob wretched its way out of Grace, making her shoulders hit the bottom of the bed. There was a bit of movement above her, which made her freeze again, before it stilled.
“Can I sit down on the ground? To be closer to you?”
Could he? Grace wasn’t sure… Sure, the voice didn’t seem hostile, but Gideon also had a somewhat soft register when he wanted to. Tone didn’t mean anything.
“It’s okay if not. I can stay right here. Pretty comfy. Good mattress.”
Yes. Let him stay right there, that was a good distance.
“See my back isn’t what it used to be, so while in my thirties I could just sleep on some cold ground in Siberia no problem, now there is all this stuff about mattress firmness and if it’s memory foam and how do you sleep on it. Ha. I think my age is finally catching up with me. The lifestyle choices probably didn’t help. Heh, don’t tell Leon that last part, he’ll bring up my smoking again.”
“M-My…m-mattress came with-with the a-apartment…”
She didn’t know why she told him that.
“You better watch out for that, you’re still young now, but your back will thank you later. And some exercise. That will do you good. You don’t have to... hehe… punch boulders or whatever. A jog will do.”
Punching boulders… That’s who the voice was. Captain R.
As soon as her body realised that if Captain R was here that must mean she was safe, she started sobbing in earnest.
“That’s right. Let it out. You can be as loud as you want to, they won’t get you.”
Grace really wanted him closer now that she knew who he was. But her entire respiratory system was a bit too busy wailing for any phonemes to form, so she simply reached out, blinded by tears, till her hand was holding onto a thick ankle.
The ankle shifted under her hold slowly, before a large mass landed next to it, Captain R’s reassuring voice accompanying it, “I’m sitting down, okay? It’s just me here. No one else.”
Grace nodded in response, even though he probably couldn’t see it.
“Would you rather hold my hand? I think it would feel better than the ankle. Squeeze for yes.”
Grace squeezed firmly, lungs burning with sobs, “Okay. I’m going to touch your hand, okay? It’s just me.”
The moment the other’s hand touched her she let go of the ankle and held onto it for dear life. It was big, warm, calloused and felt like the only real thing in the word right now.
She laid on the ground in the dark for a while, sobbing until she didn’t have any tears left, with Captain R’s thumb rubbing her hand reassuringly, the man mumbling gentle things like “It’s okay” and “You’re alright now, just let it out.”
She eventually felt back enough in her own skin to start shimmying from under the bed, “Oh, can I help you out?” Grace’s arms became spaghetti as she squeaked out a sound of agreement, accompanied by a squeeze to Captain R’s hand, “Okay, easy there.”
She reached out with her other hand, which he took in a sure grip and pulled her out like it was nothing. As soon as she was free, she let go of his hands and tucked herself against his side and chest, his safe arms winding around her securely.
“There. You’re okay. You’re fine.”
The voice rumbling against her was the last push Grace needed to realise where she really was. Not the care centre, but in Leon’s and Chris’ home. And the chest she was currently squeezing into wasn’t Captain… Well it was, wasn’t it. The boulder joke confirmed it. The 2009 Africa operation was the last major case Grace considered a part of the wider ‘Captain R lore’ which she wasn’t sure Chris was involved in.
Her voice was weak and scratchy from crying, “I don’t get how you can do it all.”
“Are you with me again?”
“I think so…” She nodded weakly against his chest.
“Do what?”
“You- You’re in… so many c-cases. You’re always only listed as ‘Captain R’, but it’s always you. You’ve-You’ve l-lost so m-much a-and-” She sobbed again, though she was all out of tears.
He patted her back softly, “Easy. Take a deep breath.”
She did, “And y-yet you’re always so s-strong. And you-you punched a b-boulder and that’s so crazy a-and I wanted to ask you about that for-for weeks now. B-Because it can’t all be you.”
“Why not?” his tone was innocent, like he didn’t get that it couldn’t just be him lifting up the world. He wasn’t Atlas.
“Bec-Because… Because you’re just o-one person. Y-You c-can’t carry it a-all.”
He held her closer, rocking her a little, it felt nice, “I don’t carry it all. At least not anymore. For a long time I thought I had to. I still sometimes feel like that. But… I have others I can rely on. People I can turn to when the load gets too heavy. And you do too.” He paused, “This one… This one was brewing for a while, wasn’t it.” he concluded, more than asked. He didn’t need to specify what.
“Yea… It was.”
“Next time you feel things getting bad. Reach out, okay?”
“B-But it’s been over half a y-year, I should-”
“Be over it? Never.”
He said it with no room for argument.
His tone softened, gaining a vulnerable note, “You know. I still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about my first ever zombie encounter. I’ve faced so much worse since. Hell, I faced way worse things that night, and yet every once in a while, I think of that slow, shambling T-virus zombie as it turned its head and stared at me with those milky eyes. And that was… Heh, wow I’m old. Twenty-nine years ago.”
“D-Does it get better?”
“It does… With time. As much of it as you need. And by maybe crying every once in a while. Don’t make my mistake, I thought I was above crying well into my forties.”
Grace’s laugh was shaky, but sincere, “Well… I-I already cried to-today. Your turn.”
“Heh. I can’t exactly do it on command.”
“Just think of baby seals, th-those got you pretty close when we were w-watching that documentary.”
He laughed, the rumble of his chest bringing Grace comfort.
Then he went quiet.
She slightly unstuck her head from Chris’ chest, glancing up, his expression was far away.
“We all kind of joke about the boulder thing, but you wanna know something?” his tone was a bit more hollow now, “I still get nightmares about that mission. Jill was presumed dead for three years before it, then reappeared as a mind-controlled puppet by the bad guys, piloted by this device that was essentially fused with her chest.” He paused, taking a shaky breath, “I can sometimes feel her ribs breaking beneath my hands, killing her. That I just got her back and then took her away myself…”
Grace let her hands rub his back comfortingly, tucking her head back in.
“And in that volcano. The B.O.W.… He used to be my superior officer. Back in Raccoon City. Albert Wesker. We had a… complicated dynamic.” Grace felt hot tears fall on her shoulder, “And even though he wanted to wipe out basically all life and he deserved to die… I still… miss him. In a weird way. I feel bad for taking Jake’s father away. E-Even though I know he never cared about him. I know he never cared about me, about anyone.”
His tears were more silent than hers, small sobs and hitches of breath compared to her outright weeping, but Grace could tell he also needed this. If he didn’t, he could have moved on with the baby seals out.
“J-Jake is his son?”
“Y-Yeah… It’s why we’re so… distant. We both understand Wesker had to die but. We can’t let go of him in our own ways…”
They sat there for a long time, just enjoying each other’s space, before the front door could be heard closing, bringing with it the echoes of two excited little girls and two tired adults.
They both froze. They really didn’t want their daughters to see them all tear covered like this. Tears being healthy with other adults? Sure. But their baby girls could not see this.
Thankfully the ‘forbidden-ness’ of Chris’ and Leon’s bedroom due to its status as ‘the parents’ bedroom’ meant that instead of face full of child there came a soft knock at the closed door instead.
“Chris?” came Leon’s muffled voice.
“In here.” Replied Chris, his voice still a little rough.
Leon opened the door and saw them curled up on the side of the bed, both wet with tears, but smiling. His face softened he walked inside and closed the door behind himself, kneeling in front of them.
He cupped Chris’ cheek with one hand and put the other on Grace’s shoulder, “Well aren’t you both snotty and gross.”
He gave Chris a sweet kiss, before leaning down and kissing the crown of Grace’s head softly, “See you also had an adventure of your own, ours was probably more fun tho. Do you still need a minute or do you think you’re fine.”
Grace replied, “I-I’m okay now.” Chris only responding with a look.
Leon shifted his hand from Chris’ cheek to his shoulder, patting both of them at the same time, “Well then, me and Claire will distract the girls, you get cleaned up.”
He stood back up and left, closing the door behind him again.
They untangled from each other, Grace finally realising how uncomfortable their spot on the floor was, shaking out one of her legs, “Ugh, my leg fell asleep.”
“Yea,” said Chris, cracking his back with a groan, “we really didn’t think this one through.”
They looked at each other before laughing. God they must have looked ridiculous.
Chris looked down at his snotted up t-shirt, his face pinching a little.
“S-Sorry about that.”
“Well it’s better than baby vomit.” He shrugged, looking her over, “Thankfully I only cried on you, I think everything we have here would be comically big.”
Heh, wasn’t that an image, even one of Leon’s shirts would probably swallow her whole, and he was just a tiny blueberry compared to Chris’ bulk, “Heh, yea.”
He went to one of the dressers, pulling from it an identical t-shirt to the one he had on now, tossing it on the bed and then stripping without fanfare in a way that spoke of years of sharing barracks with random people, but making Grace turn away with a blush.
That was basically her dad right there, ew.
Huh. Gross family feels.
It made Grace smile to herself. Yea. That was kinda her dad right there. What did Leon say all those months ago? ‘No take-backsies’?
Dang, she missed Father’s Day this year. She’ll totally pester them next year though. Him and Leon both.
Chris was (thankfully) clothed again and now at the door, waving her over, getting into a practiced tactical half crouch, “Come on, I’ll check if the coast is clear and then we make a run for the bathroom.”
Grace smiled fully.
“Okay, Captain.”