Chapter Text
Chris Redfield had called her fourteen times over the course of three days. Ada wasn’t even sure how Redfield had gotten her number, but he had and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to stop calling her.
She had no idea why he was calling her, they hadn’t spoken in almost a year, not since Spencer Estate, and he hadn’t left any messages other than telling her to call him back.
Ada had just finished a job for the BSAA, infiltrating a Tri-Cell operation to make sure Excella Gionne was the only one who’d drunk Wesker’s proverbial Kool-Aid. She’d managed to take out the two other weak links she’d identified as a potential problem, grabbed all the data she could access on her way out and left two offices in flames before she took her leave. The data didn’t spell anything good, the images of infected people exploding into flying monstrosities that appeared to defy the laws of gravity and good taste, but they knew they were on the BSAA’s radar. There were several communications that indicated that this was a known problem, and even referring to Chris by name becoming involved as a potential consequence.
From what Leon had told her in their weekly email exchange, Chris was being sent to Africa to deal with a new viral strain called Ouroboros. The details of the virus were sketchy at best, even to someone of Ada’s considerable skill, but dead or not, it had Wesker’s prints all over it, and if she knew Wesker, it would be bad. She was a little baffled that the BSAA had sent Chris Redfield in as backup, no one else knew Wesker as well as he did, after all, but her's was not to reason why, her’s was just to get the job done and go home in one piece.
Her quiet, empty home.
She closed the door to her house behind her, kicking off her running shoes with a tired sigh. She tried not to think about Wesker most days, it made her heart twinge. At one point, the man had been something loosely defined as a friend, but somewhere along the road from the ruins of Raccoon City to that day, he’d gone certifiably fucknuts crazy. The man she’d known had been brilliant, dangerously so, but he hadn’t been unhinged enough to want to use an unstable virus strain to become the god of a zombie wasteland.
He’d been involved in every disaster Chris, Leon and Jill had had to face, to say nothing of the ones Ada had managed to snuff out before they became a problem the survivors of Raccoon City needed to be made aware of, but she’d always been able to see his reasoning. She and Jill had argued about it more than once, being on opposite ends of the ‘how far will you go for a pay check?’ debate, but she and Wesker had commiserated more than once about how stupid the general populace really was.
Ada may have been in love with one of the protectors of the free world, and she respected the hell out of Jill’s determination to protect people, but Ada, coming up on 35, had long ago decided that people were the absolute worst.
Before Spencer Estate, before Wesker fell and took Jill with him, before Ada had to stand with Chris in front of an empty grave with Jill’s name on it, Ada would have sworn blind on a stack of bibles that she and Wesker had agreed that, while people as a whole were terrible, Jill and Chris were the exceptions to that rule.
But then Chris came back alone from Spencer Estate, beaten to hell and almost catatonic, Wesker had taken a dive off a cliff and Jill was gone.
That was the last day she’d seen Chris Redfield, she hadn’t even stuck around long enough to hear from him what had happened. She’d packed up her things from her and Jill’s apartment and went to one of her safe houses, ignoring Leon’s pleas to reach out, to not be alone in the grief she spent most days trying not to think about.
The months slipped by and eventually, Leon stopped offering to talk. He’d just supported her as much as she would let him and she’d continued doing what she did best: gathering information and committing corporate espionage.
Chris hadn’t reached out to her, and she was honestly relieved. It was hard enough pretending to be okay to Leon, she didn’t want to try convincing someone who loved Jill just as much as she did that she was okay with losing her.
She wasn’t, she didn’t know if she ever would be, but the world had the audacity of continuing to turn, and Ada was expected to somehow keep living in a world without Jill Valentine.
The lock on her front door secure, Ada dropped her go-bag on the floor and decided she’d deal with it in the morning. She stepped over the bag and made a beeline to the kitchen, opening the freezer and pulling out a frozen meal she’d had the foresight to make before she went on that latest mission.
There was nothing worse than coming off a mission and a 14-hour flight to an empty house and a similarly empty fridge.
She put the frozen meal in the microwave and leaned against the nearby counter, checking her email while she waited. Between her dinner and the bath she was hoping for, she decided, seeing nothing urgent and pocketing her phone, her night was full-up. Her thoughts were interrupted when her phone started trilling in her pocket, and she sighed, taking the ringing device out to see who was calling her.
The name ‘rookie’ followed by a blue hat met her, and she sighed again before accepting the call. “To what do I owe the honor of the BSAA’s other prodigal son calling me this fine evening? I’d thought one of you was quite enough.”, Ada asked.
“I’m not surprised you’d answer Leon, but I gotta say, Ada, that hurts.”, the voice of Chris Redfield said to her, sounding like he was grinning. The slight smile on Ada’s face melted off and she seriously contemplated hanging up and tearing a strip off of Leon via email for setting her up. Chris, who had apparently become a mind reader in the year they’d been radio silent, piped up with, “Before you hang up, just hear me out.”
Suddenly, Ada felt bone tired in a way she hadn’t let herself feel since the day Chris came back from Spencer Estate. She tilted her head towards the ceiling, the phone pressed to her ear. “What do you want, Redfield? I’ve had a long day, it's almost 1 in the morning, and I honestly don’t have the patience right now.”
“Then I’ll make this quick. Ada, I found her. I found Jill.”
Ada felt like the counter she leaned on was shaking, and distantly realized that she was the one shaking. “What did you just say?”
“Jill is alive. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last week to get you to come here, she was in rough shape after everything she’s been in through but she’s alive, Ada.”
“How? You said Wesker, she fell.”
“Wesker was alive too, he had her under some kind of mind control. He kept her alive and experimented on her for the antibodies she developed. But we got her back, Ada. Jill is home.”
“You said Wesker was alive. He’s dead then?” She hoped, for his sake, that he was dead, or he would be as soon as she could get her hands on him. A year, he’d faked his own death and had Jill captive for a whole year, that son of a bitch.
“He is. Even Wesker couldn’t survive getting thrown into a volcano and getting a rocket fired into his face.”
“Excuse me? A volcano?” Why everything that happened to Redfield had to be absolutely fucking absurd was beyond her.
“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”, Chris sighed, and in the background, Ada was almost entirely convinced she could hear Leon laughing hysterically, and something about a boulder? “Now, you gonna open your front door or what?”
“I’m not at the apartment, Redfield.”, Ada laughed quietly. The thought of staying in the apartment she’d shared with Jill was something she couldn’t even think of a year earlier.
She heard a firm, quiet knock on her front door a moment after Redfield said, ‘I know, now open the door already’. Ada felt a spike of irritation at having to burn her safehouse, because of Chris Redfield of all damn people, and she stomped over to the front door.
Phone still in hand, she yanked the door open with a snarl of, ‘What the actual fuck, Redfield?!’ and found herself face to face with a figure wearing sweatpants and a hoodie.
The hood fell back and the light from Ada’s front hallway fell gently on the person’s blond hair. Ada blinked in shock, dimly noticing the car at the end of her driveway where Leon and Chris sat, a woman and a man sitting in the backseat watching.
Familiar blue eyes smiled at Ada, and the face that looked back at her was the same one that lived on the lockscreen of Ada’s phone. The woman smiled, and Ada knew that smile, and while she’d spent a year not crying over Jill Valentine, because Jill would not tolerate her spending one second crying over her, never mind a whole year, she would be lying if she denied the tears that came to her eyes.
“Hi Ada. I’m home?”, Jill Valentine said in greeting, smiling gently. Ada could see the scars on her neck peeking out of the collar of the hoodie, red and angry even as they healed and grew shiny.
“Took you long enough.” Ada would deny the choked sound of her voice if anyone asked, but Jill laughed, and that made it worth it. That laugh had been the first thing she’d fallen in love with when they met in Raccoon City, and that hadn’t changed throughout the years.
“Sorry, I couldn’t call my ride.” Jill grinned, and Ada had a second where she remembered that they had an audience. She promptly decided that she didn’t give a damn, then launched herself at Jill in a desperate hug. She buried her face in Jill’s shoulder, tightening her arms around Jill the moment before Jill’s arms wrapped around her.
“I missed you so much. I thought-“ That you were dead. That I’d have to figure out how to live in a world without you. That I couldn’t bear the thought of not coming home to you ever again.
“I know, I missed you too.” Ada felt a kiss get pressed to the side of her face. “God, I missed you so much, Ada. I wanted to come home every day, I swear. I couldn’t control myself, but I remembered everything. I did – oh Ada, I did awful things, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop me.”
Ada stood up, seeing her girl start to tear up, seeing how absolutely devastated she was, and decided that that just wouldn’t do. She rested her forehead against Jill’s, tightening her arms slightly. “I don’t care what you did. You’re still you, and you’re home, and that’s all that matters to me.”
“You mean that?”, Jill asked, her eyes closed even as she smiled gently.
“With all my heart. I’m just so glad you’re okay.”
Jill laughed mirthlessly, and that was one of the few laughs she had that Ada wasn’t terribly fond of. She sighed and said, “I’m not, not really, if I’m being honest. Wesker, he did a lot of shit to me, some of which I don’t even know the full extent of, and that’s not even taking into account the way he tore my brain out, threw it in a blender and then superglued it back together. I’ve been checked over and from what the doctors at the BSAA think, I should make a full recovery, but it’s gonna be a long road, Ada.”
“It’s a good thing we’re used to hard work then, isn’t it?”, Ada asked, seeing Jill blink in surprise. “What’s that look for?”
“I just – Ada, this isn’t what you signed on for in that helicopter.”, Jill said quietly, and Ada frowned.
“I signed on for you, in whatever form that took. If you seriously think I’m going to stand here and let you, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ your way into breaking up with me, Wesker must have really done a number on you, and he’s goddamn lucky Redfield got to him before I did.”, Ada said flatly, taking Jill’s hands in hers.
The scars were new, as was the blond hair, but Ada never thought she’d be able to hold those hands again. And Jill was just still as bright, strong and beautiful as she’d been the day Raccoon City got blasted to smithereens. It would take more than even Wesker could do to change that.
“I spent a year mourning you, Jill. We’ve got a second chance. Whatever he did, we’ll figure it out. We’ll get you whatever help you need, whatever and however long it takes, but if you think you’re driving me away, you’d better think again.”
“It won’t be easy, Ada. I’m – I’m different, the things I’ve done, I had to change to keep myself sane. Not all of those changes are very nice ones.”
“Oh? And remind me, exactly which part of our relationship over the last seven years has been a walk in the park? Was it the night I pulled you out of a car after you crashed over the side of a parking garage? Or how about when you got infected with the G-virus? When Annette Birkin tried to incinerate me? Or, here’s a fun memory, what about when Claire and Moira were kidnapped by Wesker’s sister and we had to go to the ass-end of the Russian sea to get them back?”, Ada asked, her voice deadpan. She managed to startle a laugh out of Jill, and then grinned.
“Ada, that’s not – I mean, okay, fair point, but this isn’t a bioweapon we can just fight off. This – a lot of this is going to be in my head, and I am so scared of what’s going to come out when that Pandora’s box gets opened.”, Jill said quietly. “The last thing I want is to make you shoulder this kind of a weight.”
“My shoulders can handle plenty, thank you, and so can yours. Nothing about our life together has been easy, Jill, so I have no illusions that this will be either. We’re probably going to fight like cats and dogs, and disagree about everything because I want to give you the world and you still somehow think you aren’t deserving of it. We’re both stubborn as hell, so fights will be had, tears will be shed, and tough decisions will have to be made, but that’s what I signed on for.”, Ada said with a shrug, trying to give off a sense of bravado that, from the look on Jill’s face, she could see right through. “That’s what you do when the person you love is having a tough time – you pick up the slack and you get through it as a team.”
Jill smiled at her, her eyes bright. “Seven years together and we’ve never said that.”, she said quietly, making Ada smile back. Between the trauma both of them carried, even relying on someone as capable as the other was a tough thing for both Jill and Ada to do. With Ada’s stock and trade being in lies and espionage, and Jill’s bone-deep belief that asking for help always led to disappointment and if you want something done right, do it yourself, being verbally open was never something they tried terribly hard at.
It’d led to fights, arguments where one person was on one page and the other was in an entirely different book, but through gestures and writing, they’d always managed to straighten it out. Words were meaningless, but before Jill was taken, actions spoke volumes between the two, whether it was Ada having Jill’s favorite takeout delivered after a nightmare of Raccoon City, or Jill strong-arming Redfield into helping her set up a home gym in their old apartment for Ada to use after a shoulder injury left her benched.
“Second chances, Valentine.”, Ada replied, making Jill’s grin widen. She rested her head against Jill’s again, a voice in the back of her head remarking on the new freckles she had sprinkled across her nose and forehead. “I lost you once, and not making sure you knew was one of my biggest regrets. I don’t want to carry that any longer.”
“I always knew, Ada. Neither of us were ready to say it.” Jill still wasn’t, Ada could feel it, and that was fine by her. They’d have more than enough to say to each other, and the rest of their lives to say it, if Ada had any say in it. Jill smiled, adding, “I’m so glad to be back. What happened to our apartment, by the way?”
“It’s still ours, I just rented it out. The son of a friend needed a place to stay.”
If she’d known that Wesker was alive and had taken Jill captive, would she have agreed to let his son stay in their apartment after Irene passed? Absolutely, if only because she knew Jill wouldn’t stand for any kid – even Wesker’s – to be left to fend for themselves. She’d managed to keep the kid in the dark about who his father actually was, just writing off her concern as being a friend of his mom’s who promised to look out for him, and she wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. Pseudo-comic book villain or not, the Wesker she’d known before Raccoon City had been a bastard, but he’d also been her friend and they’d looked out for one another when their jobs lined up.
“That’s good, I’m glad someone is using it. I don’t think I’m up for a trip back to Boulder any time soon, I’m exhausted.”, Jill admitted.
Ada propped open the front door of her safe house with her foot, then leaned to the side. “I’ll bet you are. Go on in, living room is on the right so take your shoes off and get comfy. I’ll get the Goof Troop down there and we’ll order dinner.”, Ada instructed.
Jill laughed. “Ada, it’s almost 1 in the morning.”
“So? I’ve never known you to turn down 1am pizza. Also, who are the two in the backseat? And do they know that I can see them pining for each other from here?”, Ada asked, making Jill snort. Ada was sure she’d never again be as fond as someone as she was of Jill in that moment.
“They're friends. Sheva fought Wesker with Chris in a volcano-“
“Wait, really?“
“Yes. It’s a long story, honey, I’m sure Leon would love to be the one to re-tell it to you. He hasn’t stopped laughing about it since we got back. And Josh helped get us all out alive. They’re both BSAA, and they’re both good people so please don’t ask them if they know they’re into each other.”
“But they know, right? They have to know. I haven’t even met them yet and I know.”
“No idea, Chris and I spent a lot of time talking about that when we couldn’t sleep on the flight here.” Which meant she hadn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours, if the bags under her eyes and the tired slouch to her shoulders were anything to go by.
Ada already knew that there would be some sleepless nights in her future – Jill’s nightmares after Raccoon City had led to Redfield being a semi-permanent fixture on their couch. She had no doubt that this latest addition to Jill’s nightmare gallery would cause the both of them to be sleep deprived and cranky for the next long while.
Frankly, she thought with a grin as Jill walked past into the house, she had never been so thrilled at the prospect of a sleepless night.
She glanced back to where Chris and Leon were parked, then waved for them to drive up the driveway. Ada heard the tv in the living room switch on, some kind of mindless reality tv show beginning to play, and her heart hurt from how happy she was to hear something other than her own thoughts in her house again. Sure, it was the kind of tv show that she herself would never watch, but it was Jill’s particular brand of de-stressing after a long day, and Ada hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it.
When the car parked a few feet in front of Ada, she crossed her arms and waited for the four people in the car to get out and stretch their legs. She and Leon exchanged a grin, and she nodded to Josh and Sheva as the group approached.
She looked Redfield right in the eye as he got within earshot, inhaled, and then said, “So, Redfield. Tell me about this volcano.”