Work Text:
Trigger warning for self harm.
Landfill
“Cause this is torturous electricity between both of us and this is dangerous cause I want you so much but I hate your guts. I hate you.”
“God fucking damnit, Claire…” Wesker growled. He lifted her body out of the small puddles of blood and she muttered something incoherent. Wesker set her down on the couch and immediately proceeded to the bathroom to retrieve a first aid kit.
Claire's tears warmed her cheeks.
“You have to stop doing this.” Wesker says as he sits down beside her, popping open the top of the kit. “What if I can't make it to you in time, hm?” He scolded her and Claire clenched her jaw. He began to dress the wounds on her wrists and it stung because of how deep they were this time. It stung because of how many times he'd done this before. It stung because she didn't want him to make it on time. Once he was finished, he quickly inspected his work and then began to clean up the blood and glass on the kitchen floor.
“Wesker…” Claire says softly, her throat was dry.
“What?” He responds from the kitchen. His tone is irritable, she can tell he's becoming sick of this routine.
“Leave… please.” She asks.
Wesker was silent for a moment as he gathered the shards of glass from a broken bottle of cheap whiskey, its contents halfway drank and halfway dumped down the sink.
“Absolutely not.” He says.
Claire curls up into the couch some more, hiding her shame under a blanket. “Just let me… just let me go.”
Wesker finished cleaning the mess and returned to the living room, looming over Claire in the dark. “You're drunk.”
“And you're not doing what I'm asking.” Claire says, as she sits up again. Her words bite. She feels like challenging him.
“You want me to leave?” Wesker says sharply. “You want me to let you bleed out and die like a dog?”
“That’s-”
“That's foolish.” He says, cutting her off. “What if your brother found you like this, hm?”
Claire stood up. “Like you'd give a shit about that. Like you give a shit about any of this!”
“You're being unreasonable.” Wesker says. His words sting and they sound unfair to her.
Claire clenched her jaw and her hands began to ball into fists. “Stop.” She warns.
“You're acting like a child, Claire.” Wesker barks. His words are now fiery and they burn. “You're immature and selfish. Would you let Christoper get away with killing himself?” They both stood still and their eyes locked, Claire's are brimming with tears.
“Would you?” He asks again, his voice roars.
“No…” She croaks.
“You're a fighter, Claire.” Wesker mutters in the dark. “So fight.”
Claire is on him in a second but her arms are held at bay, fingers itching to claw out his eyes and she realizes, again, that it's futile. She slumps against him, sobs wracking her body. Her hands clench around his arms and she can't control her breathing. It's messy and ugly and raw. She cannot stand him. She hates him. She needs him.
“How much longer are we going to do this, dearheart?” He asks after she begins to settle down. She looks up at him, revealing wetted features that play against the shadows of the room and his shimmering, almost crystal-like eyes, burn right through her and straight to her core.
“Forever…” She says. A mere whisper against the darkness that seemed to follow wherever he went.
Wesker sighs lightly and runs a hand over her hair. “Alright.”
XXXXX
The scars felt old. They were old.
His eyes did not change, they still burst in the darkness of his shadows and her scars did not go away. It had been forever and sometimes, she would press a knife to those scars and feel nothing. They were dull and ragged, the blade feeling nonexistent on her skin. She had other scars too but those were not nearly as significant as these. People could see them, they could cluster her into a stereotype, they could assume the kind of woman she was solely based on those scars.
But that was forever ago. There weren't any people anymore. Not anyone sane, at least. There were survivors and infected, both grim reminders of what had taken place years ago. Claire watched everyone die . She had no control, she had no help, she didn't have the guts. And she hated herself for it. She hated every moment since the moment they met, since the moment her life would forever be clasped against his. She had all this time to change, to evolve just like him but her eyes still spoke of pure humanism, something that, no matter how long it had been, Claire coddled and nourished. She could not forget.
Even if those eyes changed.
They glowed and sparkled. Unlike those which burst and sharpened. They were a deep amber that swam with warm orange tones and almost gold-like flecks. Unlike those which were harsh and red, melting with deep, rich cinders. Those eyes swallowed her whole, ate up the little distance between them, locked onto her like prey. Claire scoffed and rolled a knife between her hands, she overlooked abandoned roads and buildings, windows blown out, rubble crumbling into alleyways, small fires still burning over debris, black smoke rising towards the red sky. The top of the building she waited on sent small tremors through her feet as the winds swayed the structure, she could hear it ache and creak. She watched a small herd of infected bramble through the street below, they bumped into one another lifelessly, she could hear their teeth snap in their skulls, she could smell their rotting flesh, she could hear their meaningless and garbled “speech”, words of the undead weren't words at all. They were terrifying reminders of what everyone eventually became, regardless if you died by the bite or died by the blade or died by the bullet.
Everyone turns.
“Lovely weather.” A voice says from behind her, startling her only enough to tighten her grip on the knife.
Claire relaxed a little.
Wesker took his place beside her, both standing on the edge of the building, peering down at their world.
“If you call this lovely…” She says. The atmosphere was always hot and humid, fresh air was heavy and sticky. Ash constantly rained down onto the streets, the smell of burning skin and organs was hard to escape.
“We should move.” He says.
Claire bites her tongue. “Where to now?” She watches him peer down onto the street, unshaded eyes following the movements of something she cannot see. She could shove him off the top right now, watch him fall downwards and die on the sidewalk. But he wouldn't die. His skull would leak, his limbs would twist but he would not die.
It would only piss him off.
“I thought we'd visit somewhere.” Wesker says lowly. “Somewhere we haven't been in a long time.”
Claire is silent. There really is nowhere to go these days and she wonders what he has in mind. She's tired of cold, underground facilities. She's tired of the surface too, it's all dead. Everything is dead. She wishes she were too. She wishes the scars on her arms would suddenly open, spilling her blood until she was nothing.
“Okay.” She says. “Where?”
His body stoops toward her like black serpent, almost as if he were ready to strike. Instead, he kisses her temple softly and his gruff, baritone voice is in her ear:
“You'll see.”
XXXXX
They are standing outside of her home and she is frozen in gut wrenching sorrow. She felt her stomach drop when they turned onto the street she still vividly recalls, it turns to stone when they get out of the car, it burns when they stand in silence together. It is dilapidated and somewhat charred, the windows are foggy with grime, the garden has claimed it as its own, but it is still her home. It still holds memories.
“Why are we here?” Claire croaks, her voice is small and heavy.
Wesker is standing beside her and he places his hand on the small of her back, giving her a light usher forward. “You've changed a lot,” he says as he inspects the door. “You've been unhappy with that change.”
He forces the door open with little effort and Claire hesitates to follow him in. Her gun is drawn, these days you never knew what's in the dark. She didn't need the gun, neither did he. They were both weapons. Her gun was at her side now as they stood together in the living room. The home looked as though it was frozen in time. Aside from a layer of dust, everything was where she had left it.
“Remember?” Wesker says suddenly, jolting Claire from her trance. His tone is unlike anything she's heard from him for quite some time. It is soft and it is low, his singular word rattling in her skull.
Claire nods because yes, she did remember. She remembers the visits, the moments cut from time. A place where it was just two and nothing or no one else. She remembers having sex on the couch sometimes, hasty and rough, in the middle of the night. A storm triumphs outside her walls. His soaking hands roaming over her. Droplets of cold water fall from his face onto hers when their lips crash together. She remembers having light conversations afterwards, her head resting on his chest. She remembers making small meals with him over a cup of coffee, admiring the way his solid form leans against her counter. She remembers fighting, screaming, begging him to leave, to let her die in a gout of her own blood. She never asked for this life, she never asked to be apart of him like this but it was her life and she would live out of spite. Or maybe she was alive because she fought so hard to stay that way.
She moves silently into the kitchen, a large, rusty red stain on the tiles makes her hold her breath, a lump forming in her throat. She had tried to take her own life so many times on this floor but it became her birthing place. She had turned into him on this floor. She had died in this very spot, revived into a beast she hardly recognized.
“I know you're still sentimental.” He says. “It's something about you that will never change.”
“What about you?” She says quietly.
“I hold sentiment for nothing.” He responds. Claire's stomach knots. “Except for you, dearheart.”
Claire stays silent, only she leans into his solid form and his arm pulls her in. Both gazing down to the dried stain of blood that was her end and beginning.
“I know it hurts to die.” Wesker says softly. “I know…” he pauses and Claire watches him clench his jaw, his uncovered eyes wander over to her “I know it hurts to become.”
“It hurts to be alive...” Claire says. “It hurts to be what we are.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
Claire shakes her head. “You’re right, it doesn’t have to… but it does.”
Wesker says nothing. He always says nothing. Claire is used to his silence in situations that concern the two of them. She has been with him for nearly ten years and as they walk through shadows together, she cannot help but be thankful for his arm around her. He is a constant and vigorous blight leading her through the darkness he projects but he is still here and so is she. She is in her home with him again but there is no warmth, no light, no tomorrow, only them. He brought her here to remind not only her, but himself. That there was a time before all of this. And even though neither of them can return to it, there was still the memory… cut from time and held safely in their hands.
“It’s only forever, dearheart.”