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Chris has never said I told you so, although he could, and he’d be right. The words are there in his eyes now and again, but he’s never outright said them. Claire is grateful for that. After all, they had both trusted Albert Wesker once upon a time. Back when he’d been Chris’ boss (and friend?), back when he’d been the tall, handsome, mysterious man that had made Claire’s chest flutter every time she saw him.
It had never stopped, that silly feeling. Not even after the first time Albert kissed her, or the first time he was inside of her, murmuring pleasant encouragements against her ear. One month, two, six, ten… Every time he stepped into a room and met her gaze, she fell in love with him all over again.
The mansion, then? Racoon City? Hearing about Albert’s involvement in it all?
And his death at the Arklay facility—
She doesn’t have time to process it, honestly. Sitting in her college dorm hours away, Chris’ calls being few and far between, Claire is so displaced and out of the loop from it all that none of it feels real.
Not until she packs her things and gets on her bike to head home.
At the Raccoon City Police Department amid a zombie-infested city, Claire stands in the middle of Albert’s office. She runs a hand along the worn wooden desk where papers used to be neatly stacked, traces a small frame containing a picture of the S.T.A.R.S. team—and her. Something she’d snuck there a few months back to see how long it took Albert to notice.
She sits in his chair and waits as though he’ll waltz in the door any moment with lunch for them to share. Now, the only thing that’s likely to join her is that stupid creature wandering the halls.
What other choice does she have but to keep going, though? If she just stays focused on anything else—Raccoon City, finding Chris, protecting Sherry, getting her and Leon to safety—then she doesn’t need to think about the things that she can’t wrap her head (and heart) around.
God, she wants to see her brother. She needs to know that he’s safe. She comes so close to it there at the Umbrella labs in Paris…and then—
Rockfort Island. The Ashfords. Steve.
Albert.
Alive and in one piece, though everything about him reads differently when he steps out from the shadows. From the glow of his eyes to the menacing, predatory way he moves… The man standing before her is something she’s only ever caught the briefest of glimpses of before.
After everything he’s done, after whatever he’s become, she ought to be afraid of him. Instead, she’s fucking furious. Devastated. He starts to explain it to her, this vision of his, and some small part of Claire wants so desperately to find sense in it. If he had a good reason for betraying his team and the people he’d been sworn to protect, then she can forgive him. They can find a way past it. Just a misunderstanding that could be ironed out…
There is no logical explanation, though. Only the ramblings of a man Claire does not recognize and cannot seem to get through to.
Albert could kill her. He could make it harder for her to get off the island, even. Yet after they part ways, Claire stumbles over signs of him that no one else would notice, things that make her wonder if he left them specifically for her, if he’s attempted to clear her a safe pathway out. She catches one final glimpse of him from the plane as she and Chris escape, and her eyes never leave him until he’s long out of view.
Claire doesn’t want to talk about it after the fact. Unusual for her, the girl who normally wants to discuss everything and can’t stand to let an argument sit untouched. It isn’t even that she doesn’t think it needs to be talked about, but every time she tries, the words catch in her throat and her vision blurs. Chris sits beside her on the edge of a hotel bed, and they remain silent, two siblings trying to absorb everything that has upended their lives in a such a short period of time. He has no comforting words for her, and no doubt he can’t fully grasp how she feels. But at some point, he puts an arm around her and hugs her to his side while she cries.
She doesn’t know if thinking that Albert had died back in the mansion hurts worse or less than the truth.
*
It would’ve been their five-year anniversary today. The last few years, Claire spent the night moping around. This year, she tells herself she needs to get over it. Over him. Whatever it was they had, it was brief, and she’d been so stupid and blind and there are a million other guys out there worth her time and effort who aren’t psychopathic megalomaniacs.
She dresses up, even puts on a bit of makeup, heads to one of the clubs downtown for a few drinks with friends. There is no shortage of men who are happy to come talk to her or ask her to dance. It’s exactly what her friends say she needs.
And yet not what she wants at all.
She calls a cab and goes home early, shuffling up the stairs to her apartment with her heels dangling from one hand because her damned feet hurt and her head hurts and her heart hurts. Drunk and tired and full of God, Redfield, you are so pathetic, she falls into bed stares at her phone. Pulls open her email. Enters an old email address that she knows damned well would’ve been deactivated years ago. She’s effectively screaming into the fucking void for all the good this does.
I hate you
I miss you
I hate how much I miss you
Do you still think about me?
*
If she had known where Jill and Chris were going, she might have begged to go with them. In retrospect, they hadn’t expected Albert to be there with Ozwell E. Spencer’s body lying at his feet, but with Spencer’s death came the loss of so many answers to questions they had.
Jill Valentine: Killed in action
The weight of it is a kick in the gut for Claire, so she can’t begin to imagine what it feels like for Chris. She’s waiting there at his apartment when he gets back, looking as though he hasn’t slept since it happened.
(He hasn’t.)
She does what she can for him. Cooks his meals, makes sure he showers, eats, sleeps. She curls up in bed beside him and runs her fingers through his hair and tries to leave him alone when he seems to need it.
Jill is dead. Albert is dead.
Supposedly.
It’s a stupid hope to cling to, Claire knows, but after the last time…is it so strange to think that the absence of bodies means they did not have a definitive answer? Not that she voices as much to Chris. She won’t try to give him false hope based on her own inability to handle the loss of a woman she looks up to as a sister, and the man she loves (again).
Claire doesn’t ask if he wants to talk about it because he will if he wants to. She knows what it feels like to choke on pain so great you can’t begin to find words.
*
Now and again, her phone rings from an unknown number and there’s nothing on the other end when she answers. Most people wouldn’t think twice about it. Spam calls, telemarketers, whatever, and yet…
Claire stares up at her ceiling, phone cradled to her cheek, listening to the dead silence.
“… Albert?”
Click.
*
Growing up, she and Chris talked often about their parents. Like a ritual, they went to their graves every year. Sat, talked to each other, talked to Mom and Dad, caught them up on things they had missed. Now she felt guilty showing up—alone, at that—when she’d missed the last few years.
She doesn’t even know what to say to them anymore.
After an hour, a shadow falls over her and she lifts her head to see Chris there. She’d sent him a text a few days ago telling him of her plans, but he was so busy these days that she hadn’t expected he’d be able to grab a flight and join her.
He’s been doing that a lot lately; keeping himself so busy that it can’t possibly be healthy, trying to cope with…well, everything. Claire doesn’t like the changes she’s starting to see in him. Worries about him, constantly, but trying to broach the subject of his mental health rarely ends well. Stuck between wanting to help him and not wanting to drive him away, Claire doesn’t know what to do anymore. Her brain keeps getting stuck on the thought of, I should ask Jill—
Just like Albert, Jill is a topic they do not touch.
Though unlike Albert, Jill’s name is sacred and fragile when Chris speaks it, while Albert’s comes out coated in venom. They can talk about Jill if he wants to. They cannot talk about Albert.
Not now, probably not ever.
Not when Chris is so justifiably angry.
Not when Claire hates herself for how badly she still wants to see his face.
*
“Kijuju,” Claire repeats. “Yeah, I’ve been reading about it. We’re slated to start delivering supplies and be on standby for rescue operations once the BSAA has cleaned up.”
Chris is silent on the phone in a way that makes her pause. It’s not unusual for him to call her before a big mission, just to touch base. For whatever subjects are forbidden territory between them, that much has never changed. There are wedges between them neither want to acknowledge, and yet in many ways, they’re closer than ever.
“…What is it?”
“There’ve been some reports,” he responds slowly, choosing his words with care.
“Okay?”
“Wesker.”
Silence.
“Claire?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I heard you.”
“Look, I just thought…you were going to find out and you should hear it from me instead of some report. That’s all.”
Claire stares at the paperwork spread across her dining room table. Forms to update her passport, boarding passes, TerraSave reports on the current situation in Africa. Nothing has mentioned Albert Wesker. Why would it? They aren’t frontline response. They have no reason to know.
“Okay,” she says again, unsure of what reaction Chris expects from her or what would be appropriate after all this time. She’s pretty sure getting on the next plane to Africa to see if Albert is there is not the first thing that ought to pop into her head. “Hey, be careful, yeah? Please don’t do anything stupid.”
“Never in my life,” Chris says, followed by a pause, a held breath. She thinks he’s debating if he should say something further, but—“I’ll drop a line when I can. Love you.”
“I love you,” she echoes.
They hang up. Claire flounders with the influx of emotion.
Hope, as though seeing Albert again would do anything for either of them, as though even if she could something reach him, she could change a damned thing.
Guilt that she even cares after all this time, after the horrible things he’s done.
Fear.
Fear of failure, of disappointing her brother, of never seeing Albert again and having any kind of fucking closure. Fear of what will happen if Chris and Albert cross each other’s paths because which one of them would walk away from it?
They would both set themselves on fire just to watch the other burn.
*
The tear-filled reunion with Jill should be nothing but joy. Claire hugs her, trying not to sob in sheer relief. She wants to know everything, of course. What happened, how the mission had went, how Chris had found her… But the way Jill and Chris exchange looks makes her chest fill with dread.
Wesker’s dead, Claire.
God, how many times has she heard that now? Enough that she has no initial reaction. Until Chris clarifies:
Mutated. Volcano. Rocket launcher.
No one could have survived that. Not even Albert.
All Claire can do is listen and stare at them, maintaining a schooled expression of neutrality that she’s had to practice over the years for this exact reason and now all that practice is being put to the test. He’d kept Jill prisoner all this time. Used her like a puppet in his grand scheme for no reason other than revenge against her and (especially) Chris.
Had he thought of Claire throughout that, she wonders? Even once?
Had it mattered to him?
Before she leaves that evening, Jill catches her alone and asks, “What is it? What are you thinking?”
Jill is the last person that Claire expects to understand after all she’s been through. No one has more of a reason to hate Albert more than her. Maybe it’s the way Jill is watching her, though. Maybe it’s that she asks where Chris never dares. Either way—
“I’m thinking…that I wish I could have done something. I wish I could have saved him.”
Jill’s brows furrow. “Saved him…? From Chris?”
“No,” Claire amends. “From himself.”
*
It’s the first time she’s been home in two months. A neighbor has come in a few times to drop off her mail and to water her plants that somehow seem to do better when Claire is away than when she’s here.
It’s also the first time she’s truly had time to be alone with her thoughts. Kijuju and work and Jill have occupied her for weeks, allowed her a way to push Albert from the front of her mind as much as she was ever able to. Now the only way she can distract herself is by cleaning away the few weeks of dust and making a shopping list for a grocery trip tomorrow. She showers, throws some clothes in the washer, changes into her favorite nightgown and falls into bed to…well, work. Decompression work, though, which involves more skimming over submitted reports to sign off on, and—usually—take comfort in seeing the results of their work. Families reunited and cared for. Dangerous situations done and over with.
The relief she usually feels in these moments is muted tonight, blocked up by everything else vying for real estate in her emotional queue.
It’s all over. He’s really gone this time.
There would be no stupid, movie romance reunion. No more kisses, no more Albert humoring her with silly dates, no more long nights spent on the phone talking about his research and theories while Claire desperately tried to keep up and educate herself. No more quick-witted retorts and dry one-liners in response to everything.
No more fingers trailing down her spine as she drifted off to sleep with her head resting on his chest. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Of course, Claire Bear.”
“I love you.”
His fingers had paused, his head tipped inquisitively like he was analyzing that statement to determine a solution to it.
Then, finally, his lips pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, followed by, “I love you, too. Get some sleep.”
Now that she thinks about it, that was the last time she’d slept beside him at her college dorm, where fitting the pair of them in a small twin bed hadn’t been pleasant but it’d been possible. She’s got a queen-sized bed these days, plenty of space for company, not that she ever has any.
After she finishes going through her inbox and feeling no less ready to sleep, she goes through her personal account to see what she’s missed. Some SPAM, a wedding invite, a couple of dumb chain letters and joke emails from Barry…
She stops, finger hovering over an unread message from [email protected].
That’s not possible. Must be an automated message saying her last dumb letter was being rejected because yeah, hi, that address isn’t a thing anymore. Yet there it is, dated three months ago, just before Kijuju. Her thumb trembles before she touches the message to open it.
Do you still think about me? she had asked in her original email.
This body of the message reads:
All the time.
How very vague and simple and apt for Albert.
And how very much like him, Claire thinks. He’s gone, for good this time. He’s gone and yet she’s reading the last message he’ll ever send to her and of course it breaks her heart in the same breath that it makes her fall in love with him all over again.
She wipes the tears forming in her eyes. The words blur as she clumsily begins to type out one final letter to a dead man.
Could it have gone differently?
Were there any other outcomes that didn’t involve so much death and heartache?
You had your goals and you had me.
I made you choose.
Did you ever regret that choice, even if only for a moment?
Was it worth it to you in the end?
I’m not so sure that it was for me.