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Jill Valentine had seen more death than your average person. More than your average person deserved to see. Whether it was her doing the killing or her losing someone, she was still way ahead of anyone else in either regard.
For all the killing she'd done, her only victim that actually deserved his fate was that bastard Nicholai. His selfish motive had trumped his morals. The bullet she'd put in him was but a paltry justice.
In the helicopter as they flew away from Raccoon, Jill could do nothing but watch as the missile sailed past her, toward the heart of the city. She did so with a blank expression, because she was still partially of the mind that everything that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours was some kind of hallucination.
But when she twisted in her seat to look at the man flying the helicopter, feeling the leather of the seat groan under her weight, and the weight of his soulful brown eyes settling upon her, she knew it was real.
That broke her. It broke her heart, it broke her mind, it broke her soul. But instead of releasing that pain, she kept it inside, let it fester.
Carlos stared at her for longer than necessary when they exited the helicopter. She glared back, daring (hoping for) him to say something, anything. He didn't, and Jill felt a strange rush of anger. If he had, she might have told him about how the image of Tyrell twitching and spewing blood was still seared into the back of her eyelids. Or how she had to watch Mikhail sacrifice his life, only for the Nemesis to come back, and stronger than it had been before. Or how she was with that poor soldier — the one Nicholai murdered in cold blood without so much as a twitch in his eye — in his final, fearful moments alive.
But he didn’t, so she didn’t.
They booked a room at a motel… somewhere. It wasn’t like state lines were drawn into the ground in a way that was visible from bird’s eye view like they were in the maps. Hell if she even knew the name of the town. Unfortunately, the only room available when they checked in had only one bed. With her mind miles away in the ruins of her former home, she didn't have the energy to give a shit even if she had to sleep on the floor.
She went with Carlos to the nearest thrift store to get some new clothes, because there was no way she was letting him out of her sight. Her sanity depended on it.
He modeled a bit for her, holding a plain black t-shirt over his upper half, over the military vest that reeked of zombie guts. He struck a few poses as he did so. “Whaddya think? Chic?”
She scoffed and turned to pick a few clothes off the shelf for herself. She felt Carlos’s gaze upon her, and she swallowed, but didn’t turn to meet his eye. Jill knew what he was trying to do; lighten the mood, help her forget. But he had no idea what it was she wanted to forget. She couldn’t deny that he had seen his fair share of nightmare fuel, but unlike her, he was handling it remarkably well.
There was the likely possibility that he was coping the only way he knew how. Even as he fought off zombies, he was cracking those stupid jokes, making those harmless passes at her.
They walked back to the motel, and Carlos continued to steal glances at her, even as she kept her eyes forward. It was the only way she’d be able to hold it together. If she could just avoid those puppy eyes, she wouldn’t shatter, break down, force him to rescue her again.
Carlos told her to take a shower first, and she was about to protest but when the first syllable she forced out of her mouth was a croak, she stopped because the next would be a sob. His eyes had lit up as she began to speak, but immediately extinguished when she cut herself off.
She turned on her heel and shuffled into the bathroom. When she glanced into the mirror she was reminded of her nightmare, where the veins in her arms suddenly darkened and her skin wrinkled, bled, grew scaly, right before her eyes. Looking just like the dozens, no, must have been hundreds, of former people she had been forced to hack or gun down in order to protect herself. Her friends, neighbors, semi-strangers she remembered passing on the street just the day before.
After that, she averted her gaze immediately and stripped, hissing slightly when she peeled the fabric off of her wounds that were sticky with dried blood.
She turned the water to the hottest setting and cleaned off the outer layer of grime and blood caked onto her body. Then she let her face get pink under the scalding heat, leaned against the wall, biting her lips to the point of bleeding to keep from letting out a sob.
When Jill was sure she wouldn’t cry, she turned the water off, wrapped herself in a towel, and picked her ruined clothes up off of the floor. She opened the bathroom door and shivered at the cold air that welcomed her. Carlos was sitting on the bed he had evidently claimed, having turned on the warm lamp on the table next to it. His arms were splattered with blood and there was a rather large hole in the sleeve of his shirt where she had shot him.
“Your turn,” she said.
“Your clothes are on the bed,” he said, grunting as he stood up, taking his own into his hands. But he was smiling. Jill knew why.
She made her way to the mattress, taking a seat and exhaling deeply as it sunk under her weight.
Carlos glanced back at her as he pulled open the bathroom door, then closed it behind him. She didn’t understand why he kept doing that. Maybe he was trying to push her in the right direction, toward some kind of release of emotion. Well, it wasn’t going to work.
When she heard the water start to run, she unwrapped the towel from around herself and pulled her new clothes over her body. When her wounds stung again, Jill knew she had to start dressing them. She did what she could, which amounted to spraying the cuts with first-aid spray, but when it came to wrapping them, she couldn’t do it without grunting in pain. She would need Carlos's help.
So she crawled up onto the bed and settled with her back against the headboard. She waited for him to finish his shower, and when the door finally opened again, he came out looking completely different; almost like a normal guy with his t-shirt and sweatpants on. Then he sucked his teeth when he shifted his arm, and the illusion was shattered.
Carlos had brought the med-kit that was in the helicopter.
"I can't wrap my wounds," Jill said. She found it easier to speak if she focused on the now, the readily apparent, rather than what lay beneath the surface of her broken body. "Can you..." she trailed off.
"Of course," Carlos answered. He opened the med-kit and got to work. He handled her body with the most delicate touch, turning her small hands over in his massive ones, asking her to turn, lift her shirt only as high as he needed her to in order to reach the wounds on her stomach and back. In his hands, she felt like fine china, like she could break with even the slightest slip. But she held it together as Carlos alternated between peering into her eyes and focusing on her cuts and bruises, hoping she would say anything other than “Thank you” when he was done.
Then came his turn. He took his shirt off, which under different circumstances would have made her blush. Now, it was nothing more than a necessity. It was a reminder that there were still remnants of last night riddled all over their bodies. The bullet wound in his shoulder was a bit of a shock to her. She regretted shooting him, even if it was either them or Nicholai. Carlos noticed her hesitation and told her, “You did what you had to.”
She swallowed and proceeded to listen to him grunt in agony as she dug the bullet out of his shoulder. When she showed it to him, nearly waved it in his face to show him it was out, he panted and almost smiled.
“You were digging around in there for a while,” he said. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say you got off on watching me in pain.”
“Shut up.”
“Sorry.” His grin dissipated.
It was just starting to get dark, Jill noted as she peeked between the curtains of the hotel room. She was tired, but she knew sleep would not come easily, not with all of the terrible things swirling through her mind.
Carlos gave her some pain relievers from the pack, which she downed dry. She heard Carlos start to say something, but he just shook his head and drank from the water bottle that he had held out for her to take as he popped his own pills.
“Should get some sleep,” he said after sitting back down on his bed. “We’ve had a long day.”
Understatement of the fucking century.
Jill demonstrated her agreement by crossing to the other side of the bed and throwing the covers over herself, flopping her head down onto the pillow. She twisted around a few times, trying to get comfortable, and eventually found herself facing him, looking into his eyes for the first time since the helipad. He, too, maneuvered under the covers, holding eye contact with her as if breaking it meant the end of the world.
She held his gaze now. She tried to read his thoughts in his warm brown eyes, but in the low light, all she saw in his dilated pupils was herself; her small, shameful self.
Carlos reached behind himself for the lamp's switch and turned off the light, shrouding the room in darkness. That was all it took.
Jill froze. She gasped, “Turn it back on.” He obliged, and the room was filled with warm, orange light once again, but the seal had been broken, and hyperventilating overtook her as the memories of last night began flickering in the darkness behind her eyelids.
“Jill,” Carlos said. She turned her head to look at him. He had propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at her with that probing gaze, and she avoided it completely this time.
“Stop,” she muttered between breaths, sitting up and waving him away. “Stop."
“Jill,” he said again, his tone staying level. “We need to talk about this. You know we need to.”
“N-no,” she said, her voice shaking now, the images of all the gore she’d seen starting to make her head pound; the blood, the viscera, the bones. “I’m fine," she lied. "We’re fine. Go away.” Her vision clouded. Her hands began to tremble. She wrapped them around her knees, curling into a ball.
“You’re not there anymore. We’re not there,” he said. His hand hovered over her shoulder, but it stayed aloft.
“I'm fine,” she said again. Her breaths were shallow, panicked. That was what was happening. She was panicking. The first traitorous tear dribbled down her cheek. She dug her face into her knees to hide it.
Brad. Mikhail. Tyrell. They’re all dead. Because of you.
Stop, stop, stop. Make it stop. Fuck. Make it stop.
“Jill, breathe,” she heard Carlos say over the blood rushing in her ears.
“I’m not weak!” She shouted unprompted, her head still buried between her knees. The look in his eyes reminded her of pity. “You don’t need to h-help me.” Her voice slowly lost its anger, giving way to a whisper. “I’m not weak.”
“I know you’re not,” Carlos said, his voice remaining soft. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You need to breathe. Look at me, Jill." Reluctantly, Jill lifted her head up so that he could see her, but she still looked away from him. “Just look at me. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay."
She felt his hand ghost beneath her jaw. She allowed him to lift her chin up and turn it so that their eyes were level and meeting. She couldn’t avoid his gaze anymore. Tears covered her cheeks now, and continued to stream down her face as they looked into each other’s eyes.
She felt compelled to say something, now that her breathing had somewhat regulated. “I saw them die.” She hiccuped. “I saw Mikhail blow himself up, and I saw that… thing kill Tyrell.” The flow of tears increased at the words she let slip from her mouth. When she blinked she got a flashing image of Tyrell’s body, the blood quickly pooling underneath him on the formerly pristine floor of the lab hallway and gurgles escaping his throat as he took his last wet, bloody breaths.
She had run away like a coward.
“There was nothing you could do,” Carlos told her. His voice was gravelly, grounding. But his words stung all the same.
“That’s what I can’t take,” she said. “I was helpless. I couldn’t—”
She couldn’t finish that sentence, for starters, over her sobs.
“You’re not invincible, Jill. I know you did everything you could.”
Carlos’s eyes were glistening. Tyrell was his friend, his brother-in-arms. Mikhail was his captain. It was hitting him just as hard, if not harder than it was Jill. She was forcing him to comfort her, even as his own world had been torn apart.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save them.”
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice breaking. “You’re still a supercop. You saved me.”
Jill had been about to say something about the obnoxious nickname, but was cut off by that last sentence.
You saved me.
Jill untangled her arms from around her knees, and leaned forward into Carlos. She tucked her legs beneath her, buried her face into his neck and tightly gripped his broad shoulders, quietly weeping. Beneath her hands, his shoulders shook gently with sobs of his own, but for the most part he stayed silent.
His arms made their way around her back and his fingers interlocked, effectively trapping her in his embrace. But Jill felt the opposite of trapped. She felt lighter, a bit freer from her pain, now that it was out in the open.
She also felt like there was nothing between her and Carlos now. They had been strangers, on opposite sides of the conflict, even, or so it seemed. If Jill from yesterday looked at the current one, who was crying messily onto the collar of Carlos's t-shirt, she would have been confused out of her mind. But she just had to be there. She would get there eventually.
When finally, Jill’s eyes were dry, and Carlos had stopped shaking, she pulled back, but her hands didn't leave his shoulders, and she thought he would let go of her, but his hands only settled on her hips. They looked at each other with flushed cheeks and quivering lips.
She almost succumbed to the urge that hit her then. She almost closed the small gap between them, and pressed her salty mouth against his. It would have been so easy, coming to her like a reflex, like an inevitability. Everything that had led up to the moment, though, undercut any potential for them to take comfort in carnal pleasure. They were two broken people, beginning to help put each other back together.
After that, they silently agreed to go to sleep, keeping the light on as per Jill’s request. At first, they awkwardly kept to their own sides. Eventually, though, she felt the back of Carlos’s hand press against her own, and she curled her fingers between his and held it.
That was all she needed to finally surrender to sleep. Even if she woke up breathing hard and sweating from a nightmare, she still had Carlos’s hand in hers to keep her from slipping away into a panic.
She felt a little bit safer.