Chapter Text
There is blood under Rose’s nails. More brown than red by now, dried crescents that makes her think, strangely enough, of her mom gardening in the spring, hands covered in dirt, a slight frown on her face as she tried to decide where to put the new rhododendron.
Her mind is stuck on that memory, like a loop. Her mom digging into the soft earth with her bare hands, the smell of sun-warmed skin and grass around her, the red spots on her cheeks. The distant sound of a hedge trimmer, the buzzing of the bees around the flowers. The taste of the heat in Rose’s mouth, the cold glass of water her mother handed to her after it was done, asking her to wash her hand before going to play.
Why is she thinking about that?
She’s cold. Maybe thinking about warm spring days can make the cold go away.
Blood under her nails. She should wash her hands – before dinner. Her mom always insisted on that.
Not dinner. Her mom isn’t here. Rose isn’t six anymore. Nobody is going to take her hand and tell her everything’s fine.
She closes her eyes, hard enough to make bright spots dance in the darkness. Her body feels stiff, unmoving, like a clay statue about to crumble. If she moves, she’ll collapse in a pathetic little pile of dust.
She opens her eyes, forces herself to look away from her bloodied nails. The corridor is empty. The smell – it makes her throat close up, nausea climbing through her esophagus and threatening to spill acidic bile all over the floor.
Death and disinfectant.
The walls are white, with one blue stripe in the middle. There is a sign on her left – INTENSIVE CARES written in bold, menacing letters. It takes her a few seconds to decipher them, her vision blurry.
She’s not crying.
“Rose,” a soft voice says beside her. She didn’t even hear the footsteps, or maybe she did and didn’t care.
Or maybe there were no footsteps.
“Take a shower and eat something.”
She feels like a puppet when she turns her head to look at the figure sitting beside her, her movement jittery and stiff.
Her father looks at her, his face swallowed by the shadows. There is an eye somewhere in here, soft and sad.
If Rose opens her mouth everything will collapse.
Blood under her nails.
Chris’s blood.
(Ours.)
“Rose.” Her father’s voice is too loud. “Get up.”
A hand on her shoulder, shaking her too gently.
Rose needs to move. She can’t be a burden right now. She needs to take care of herself. She’s an adult. She’s responsible. Her mom isn’t here to tuck her hair behind her ears and say that everything’s going to be fine.
Her father is here, but he won’t, he can’t stay long.
She gets up. She almost expects her knees to give under her weight, but they stay locked, supporting her pathetic shuffle toward the elevator. Her father’s hand doesn’t leave her shoulder.
(I told you it would happen.)
(You shouldn’t have waited.)
“This is not your fault, Rose,” her father says softly. His hand is cold on her shoulder, but his voice is warm.
(Do you really want to lose what’s ours?)
She focuses on the sound of the elevator running to drown out the voice.
(You will regret this.)
She briefly closes her eyes. Her father stays by her side, slowly rubbing her shoulder. He should go, it’s not safe for him to be here.
(Protect what’s ours.)
The elevator dings cheerfully. The doors open, and her father pushes her forward. He stays in the elevator as the doors close behind her, and she can feel his worry weighting on the back on her neck.
Chris has an eight percent chance of waking up.
He has been put into an artificial coma after an eight hours long operation.
He has three broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a ruptured esophagus, a broken collarbone, a pierced liver and, the least important thing, a sprained wrist.
He’s also, as the doctor puts it, “way too old to be taking risks like that”.
The doctor has a German accent. She’s the kind of woman who doesn’t do sentimentality, and says things as they are.
Which means: the team is ninety-two percent sure they’ll not have a leader tomorrow morning.
Rose sits by Chris’s bed and listens to his ragged breathing. He’s wearing a breathing mask. There is a wound on his head, near his eyebrow, neatly stitched back. The cover hides his injuries. The heart monitor beeps irregularly.
Rose looks at the grey in his hair. The lines on his face. Even in sleep, Chris has a severe expression.
Rose doesn’t dare to take his hand.
(We should have been faster.)
She was careless. She should have seen it coming. Her role was to keep the attention on her so her teammates could be safe.
She failed.
She will not cry. Not until the situation is resolved, in one way or another.
She hates hospitals. It’s the smell, disinfectant and sick bodies. It lingers all over her, seeping in the walls for decades. She wants to throw up.
Chris’s eyes don’t move. He’s not dreaming.
(We could fix this.)
They could. The mold can do wonderful things. It can heal mortal wounds and bring people back from the dead. Rose has died a dozen time and walked away just fine.
“We can’t do this to him,” she whispers. Chris would hate her. She won’t take away his choice. “We will ask him, when he wakes up.”
(If.)
“Shut up,” she says, and she grabs Chris’s hand. The skin is dry and calloused. There is a scar on his palm, another one near the bone of his wrist. They have faded with time, almost invisible now. They are dozens of similar marks on his body, ones he wears with the same grim resolve that pushes him forward despite the pain.
There have been a lot of close calls over the years. In his most poetic moments, Chris likes to say he’s been flirting with Death for a long, long time, and that one day he will accept the date.
Not on my watch, Rose thinks, rubbing her fingers against Chris’s skin.
It scares her, sometimes, the possessiveness she feels toward him.
Right now, she couldn’t care less. It’s something to focus on.
She hears footsteps in the hallway. They stop behind the door. Rose stares at Chris, his furrowed brows, the sickly pallor of his skin.
People die. All the time. It’s normal. The cycle of life, all of that.
But Chris can’t die.
(We won’t let him.)
The door opens without a sound, and Rose forces her eyes to leave Chris.
“What are you doing here?”
Wesker stands in the doorframe. He’s not wearing his usual goth-get-up, a smart move if he wants to avoid being followed by security. He looks almost normal, dressed like that. He’s carrying a small briefcase, which only adds to his weird accountant vibe.
“Well, Miss Winters, a little bird told me our beloved Captain had gotten himself into troubles again,” he says, his voice almost amused, like the situation is funny to him.
“Came to finish the job?” Rose tries really hard to harden her voice, but she knows she sounds pathetic.
If Wesker tries to hurt Chris, she will kill him. The thing under her skin won’t let him touch him, won’t let Chris go like that.
(Ours.)
Wesker steps into the room, closing the door behind him with careful movement. He shouldn’t have been able to walk into here without Marta standing in his way. Rose distantly hopes he didn’t do anything stupid.
“Please, Miss Winters. As if I would let Redfield die of something as stupid as this.”
Rose feels the cogs turning her head, rusty and creaking, trying to find the balance between the numbness seeping through her vein and the usual rush of anxiety and exasperation Wesker triggers in her.
“He deserves better than a pitiful death on a hospital bed,” Wesker adds, standing at the end of the bed. He’s frowning, eyes probably roaming across Chris’s body from behind the safety of his tinted glasses. His lips twitch in a poorly-concealed sneer before he turns his head to look at Rose.
She’s still holding Chris’s hand.
“What are you doing here?” She asks, again, too tired to inject suspicion in her tone.
Wesker adjusts his glasses. A glint of red flashes before disappearing.
“I’m making sure the good Captain gets the ending he deserves,” he declares, his voice too soft, too oily, his smile a bit too knowing.
Rose never really took the time to untangle the mess that is Chris and Wesker’s relationship. They’ve known each other for longer than she has been alive if you account for Wesker’s forty years-old nap in a volcano. Chris says he hates Wesker and wishes he had stayed dead but he never actually takes action to get rid of him for good; Wesker’s bitterness toward Chris seems to be fuelled by more than mere hatred, as are his attempts at getting a rise out of him.
Rose is an outsider, and will probably never understand what’s going between these two, but she can hazard a guess and say that, no matter how you look at it, these two cares about each other in a weird, fucked-up way. It’s borderline obsessive, toxic, the kind of relationship psychiatrists write books about – they profess their undying hatred to each other while refusing to let go because, on a fundamental level, they are the same. Different side of the same coin, but the same.
“What ending?” Rose’s voice is barely above a whisper.
She can’t imagine Chris’s ending. Her mind resolutely refuses to picture a world where he doesn’t exist anymore.
(It won’t happen.)
Wesker looks at her. He smiles, almost as if he can read her thoughts on her face.
“Preferably one where I’m the one who kills him. Call that poetic justice if you’d like, Miss Winters.”
Of course. Even in this situation, Wesker can’t help but be a dramatic bastard.
The heart monitor beeps irregularly. Chris’s hand is limp between her fingers.
“And?” She stares at Wesker’s concealed eyes, willing herself to look strong. “Did you develop healing powers since the last time we saw each other?”
It makes Wesker smile, that slow, unnerving grin of his, the one he reserves for Rose’s rare bouts of humor.
“No, Miss Winters, I did not. But I have a proposal.”
He lifts his briefcase and presents it to her like they are at a birthday party and he has somehow been invited, and he’s very proud he remembered to bring a gift.
Rose’s brain has to stop presenting her with those ridiculous scenarios – because just imagining Wesker with a party hat is almost enough to make her laugh hysterically.
She very gently lets go of Chris’s hand, and takes the briefcase. Asking what’s inside is useless.
Wesker looks at her closely, hands clasped behind his back, as she opens the case.
The interior is tastefully black, making the lone syringe sitting inside all the more shiny. It’s filled with a bluish liquid, and when Rose gingerly pokes it, it sloshes in the container, thicker than water, thinner than mold.
“What’s this?” Her voice is low.
“My own take on the T-virus, Miss Winters.”
Rose blinks. The syringe sits innocently in the briefcase, unaware of the terrible damages it could cause if Rose were to drop it and let it shatter on the floor.
A zombie apocalypse in the palm of her hand.
She takes a deep breath. Focus on the syringe, on what Wesker is trying to do. Why did he bring that to her?
She tries to remember what she knows about the T-virus. A strain of Progenitor virus. Responsible for enough damages to warrant his disappearance, eclipsed by other, less volatile virus.
The same virus that turned Albert Wesker into the absolute insane disillusioned bastard he is today.
Wesker looks weirdly proud when she lifts her eyes to stare at him.
“Are you fucking serious?” Rose whispers, as if Chris could hear them.
“I am, Miss Winters.” Wesker tilts his head on the side like a curious cat. “The T-virus caused terrible mutations in its hosts, and turned most of the infected into cannibalistic husks, but it was only the beginning.” He has switched in lecture mode, and Rose really wants to throw the briefcase at his face. “If the unpleasant side effects are eliminated, the virus can be used to cause advantageous mutations in its host.” At Rose’s blank look, he adds, almost vexed, “I have a doctorate in virology, in case you forgot.”
“I’m not… listen, even if you did manage to make a wonderful little virus that can heal Chris and not make him crave brains, why the hell would you think injecting him with it is a good idea?” She closes the briefcase with a loud snap. “I’m not letting you turn Chris into some horrible mutated monster just because you… you want him to live.”
“It’s a booster, Miss Winters. It’ll only enhance the natural mutations Redfield’s body went through years ago.”
Rose blinks. “What?”
“Redfield has already been infected by the T-virus. He was cured, of course, but the genetic coding of the virus is still dormant in his cells.” Wesker smiles smugly. “Your precious Captain is not going to turn into a zombie. I find your lack of faith disturbing, in all honesty.”
Rose stares at Chris. She already knew that, Wesker can’t go five minutes without talking about how Chris is a big hypocrite who has been infected by so much shit during his career that his body is not a hundred percent human anymore. It explains his strength, his physical appearance, the way he brushes most injuries like they are nothing and keep moving forward.
There is a limit, as his presence in the hospital bed proves, but he’s still… tougher than most people.
“Tell me exactly what it will do,” Rose demands. “Ten words or less.”
Wesker lifts his brows. “Did you skip the biology lesson in school, Miss Winters?”
She grits her teeth and forces the anger back – it’s useless to scream now.
“You know damn well I didn’t go to school, Wesker.” She lifts the briefcase in the air, shaking it slightly. “Ten words. Or I take your little virus to Marta.”
She can almost see the exasperated eyeroll Wesker makes behind his glasses.
“The virus will boost Redfield’s immune system and heal him,” he says slowly, as if talking to a dull child.
“That sounds too good to be true. What’s the catch?”
Wesker chuckles, low and dangerous. “The usual, Miss Winters.”
She doesn’t want Chris to lose his mind. She doesn’t want him to turn in a mindless husk, a vague echo of the man he was, just because she can’t bear to let him fade. Even if the side effects are not that bad, she can’t be the one to do this to him.
(We could do it.)
She presses her fingers against her temple, mentally willing the voice to go away. She needs to think this through.
Because she’s not convinced Wesker won’t just inject Chris with the virus himself if she says no. He probably has a dozen other syringes with him, and even if Rose guards Chris until whatever end they are heading toward, he will get what he wants. Wesker has a sedative that works on Rose, he can simply put her under and work on the most fucked-up resurrection of all time while she peacefully sleeps.
She knows this and he knows this; he’s only presenting her with the illusion of a choice, nicely tucked in a black briefcase and waiting for her to take a decision he will not respect.
“Miss Winters, I’m only proposing because you’re obviously not going to do it,” Wesker says, and it takes Rose a few seconds to understand what he’s talking about.
(We could do it.)
She slaps her hand on the briefcase, wincing when the voice echoes eagerly in her mind.
“I’m not infecting Chris with the mold, Wesker,” she declares, but she can tell her voice lacks conviction. “I know you think it will be absolutely fascinating, but I won’t. I can’t.”
(We can.)
“You’ve read the files, doctor. The mold is instable. And it binds people. It’s a network, and there is a source, and in that case I’m the source and Chris would be… he would belong to me.” She swallows past the bile in her throat. “It’s a parasite. It colonizes and even if Chris survives, even if he stays – himself, he will be…”
Mine.
(Ours.)
She slaps her face, once, to shut the voice, and Wesker looks at her with an expression she has learned to recognize as scientific curiosity.
“I won’t take his freedom,” she grits out, ignoring the overwhelming feeling of ours thrumming through her body.
“You will let him die?”
Rose looks at Chris’s slack face. He’s still breathing. She can hear how his lungs struggle, his heart stuttering like a panicked animal, the blood sluggishly rushing through his veins. He’s still here. Almost gone, but not quite. Eight percent.
“I will take my chance,” she whispers.
It was a test, she knows it. Wesker is rather keen on pushing her limits, delighted when he finds the cracks in her human façade, always pushing and pushing her to go beyond what she restricts herself, trying to see the full potential resting behind her heart, and it’s terrifying.
Because the limits are stretching. Because Rose thinks about it more and more, and Chris is dying and she can save him.
Wesker sights, and moves, too fast for the human eye, taking the briefcase from her hands.
“Not yet then, Miss Winters,” he says, almost gentle.
She closes her eyes briefly. Her gloved hands lower to her lap. She feels it again and again, the need to take and hold close, to protect and conquer, deep-set instincts of a thing that is her and not her at the same time.
She opens her eyes. Wesker is watching her closely. He smiles.
“I will make the choice for you then.”
She doesn’t move. She lets him take out the syringe and ever so slowly plunge it into Chris’s arm.
She’s relieved, and she hates herself for it – but Chris won’t die tonight.
Chris wakes up in the morning.
It’s slow at first. He drifts in and out of consciousness, mumbling intelligently, his eyes squinted against the dimmed lights. The doctor says it’s normal, and she looks begrudgingly impressed by Chris’s half-assed attempts at tearing off his IV.
And by the fact that he woke up at all.
“For a man his age, it’s a miracle,” she says, in a strange, pointed tone. She stares longer than it’s comfortable at Rose, and Marta smiles nicely and asks when Chris will be discharged.
Rose lets Marta take care of things.
She tells herself than she’s not running away, but as soon as Chris is lucid enough to sit on the bed and ask for a report, she leaves.
She’s not bound to him anymore – she left the squad two years ago, he’s not her boss anymore, he can’t ask her to stay. But Marta’s gaze is all-too-knowing on her back and the guilt is so heavy she can almost taste it, iron and dust on her tongue.
She goes home. Her apartment is dusty and smells like must. The vegetables in her fridge are rotten and she has to clean the whole thing. Amidst the spam and junk in her mailbox, there is a letter from her mom.
Their correspondence started when Rose was twelve and her mom lost custody of her. Paper was safe, paper couldn’t be monitored and listened to, paper could be burned and erased from the world with a simple match. Chris was their unofficial mail-man, passing the letters back and forth without any complain.
Her mom always had a lot of things to say. Rose, not so much, on account of being twelve, very angsty and furious against the whole world.
The habit stuck. Nowadays they can see each other freely, call whenever they want and say all the things they used to keep locked, but the letters are still here. Paper is safe. Paper doesn’t judge you.
Rose has learned more about her father through the letters. How they met. Why her mom fell in love with him. Why she lied, again and again, trying to protect selfishly the only good thing she had found in her life. What happened in Louisiana, in Romania. The guilt and the grief mixed with love and happy memories of Ethan and Mia Winters making plans, thinking about baby names and clinging to each other after the dark.
Rose keeps the letters in a safe, in a storage unit rented under a fake name.
She sits on her couch, breathing the dust, and reads the letter.
The tone is light. Her mother now works with a small team of doctors and researchers, her doctorate in biology making her a valuable addition to the team – it’s Chris who helped her find the job, introducing her to Rebecca Chambers, a biochemist.
Her mom sounds happy. Doing something good for the world. She’s asking how Rose is doing. If she needs anything. When they can see each other again – it’s already been two months. The letters was send before the mission; there is no mention of Chris.
Rose puts the letter away and busies herself with cleaning up her apartment.
She doesn’t turn her phone on. Her mom probably tried to call her as soon as she learned Chris was in the hospital – news travel fast, and Rebecca is one of Chris’s oldest friend.
There is a knock on her door as she wiping the counter with more force than necessary.
She knows who it is. Only Chris and Marta know where she lives – and Wesker, because he’s a noisy asshole who likes to be in control. She can pretend she didn’t hear the knock, but he’ll stay here until she opens the door, and a small part of her is terrified that her very nice neighbor, an old, chatty lady with three cats and bright green hair, will stumble across Wesker.
She opens the door.
“I hate you,” she says to the dark, looming shape of Albert Wesker, but there is not heat behind her words, only a bone-deep exhaustion.
Wesker grins. “Is this a way to welcome your good friend, who only came here out of concern?”
“We’re not friends,” she says, letting him in, because fighting on the doormat is not an appealing option.
He’s never been in her apartment before – and she can feel the disdain and judgment rolling off him in waves, the way his eyes analyze every nooks and cranny before settling back on her face, his lips turning down in disappointment.
“Shut up.” She knows her place is a mess – clothes strew all over the floor, cleaning supplies on the counter, dust dancing in the light, her unpacked bag on the couch.
She doesn’t offer him a drink. She doesn’t say anything at all, arms crossed, waiting for him to speak so she can go back to her cleaning session. He stands here, an incongruous sight in her messy living room, arms clasped behind his back, head tilted on the side. Like a gigantic, noisy, sadistic bat.
“You look terrible, Miss Winters. Do you regret it?”
Her mouth tastes like dirt.
(We could have done it.)
“I regret letting you put a virus in Chris’s body,” she grits out.
“You didn’t try to stop me, Miss Winters. Don’t be hypocritical, it doesn’t suit you.”
“You were going to do it no matter what.” She leans against the counter, trying to sound as angry as she feels.
It’s the guilt. The guilt is eating her up and she doesn’t know what to do, so she picks anger and clings to it.
“Our dear Captain is perfectly fine,” Wesker points out, sounding very satisfied with that fact.
It doesn’t make sense, his refusal to let Chris go. He should be happy to see the man who killed him die painfully.
But at the same time, it makes sense, and Rose hates the fact that she understands Albert Wesker’s way of thinking. He can’t let go. Chris represents too much for him. Without him, Wesker doesn’t have anything worth living for.
He probably has a carefully crafted twelve steps plan on how to kill Chris. It probably involves way too much theatrical monologues and world-ending threats. It probably also involves a volcano, because Wesker loves dramatic irony.
“You knew,” Rose whispers, letting her eyes settle on the dancing speckles of dust in front of the window. “You knew I wouldn’t do it. But you still wanted to… I don’t know. Torture me.”
Wesker almost looks sympathetic. “Oh, Miss Winters, it’s not torture if you want it to happen.”
His voice is terribly soft, a mimicry of compassion that makes Rose’s head spin.
She doesn’t know what the truth is anymore.
(Ours.)
“You’re wrong. I didn’t want that to happen. I want Chris to live but not… not like that.” Her voice is too low, pathetic to her own ears.
“Not like us?”
Wesker is smiling, she knows it.
Wordlessly, she nods, the gesture stiff and jittery.
“He’s fine, Miss Winters. The side effects were minimal. He’s back to being the delightful grumpy old man we all know and hate.”
Rose can’t help the disbelieving lift of her brows. “I don’t hate him, Wesker. And you don’t either. Or at least, you don’t just hate him.”
Wesker loses his smug grin, staring at her for a few seconds. She feels a smile worm its way on her lips.
“Yeah. You don’t. Don’t pretend this is just about me and my limits.” She’s finding her balance again, enjoying the little thrill of satisfaction Wesker’s blank face brings to her. “You would have done it even if I wasn’t here for you to play your little mind game. Because you can’t live without Chris.” Her smile grows. It’s probably not a pretty sight. “You’re worse than me, Wesker.”
Wesker is old enough to regain his composure swiftly; he straightens his back, looking at her with something that looks like appraisal.
“I wouldn’t say worse,” he says, calmly. “Different, perhaps.”
She stares at him. The beginning of a headache is pushing against her temples. The voice is quiet, but she can feel the familiar thrum of mine under her ribcage.
“Yeah, different” she answers softly, and nothing else. They stay silent for what feels like hours, but is probably just a few minutes, Rose watching the dust dances in the air and Wesker watching Rose.
“It will happen again,” Wesker says, his voice low. It almost sounds like he’s savoring the words. He looms above her, taking advantage of their height difference. “And maybe next time, I’ll not be here to absolve you from the choice, Miss Winters.”
Rose refuses to look at him. Her eyes are dry, her mouth tastes like rot, and she knows he’s saying the truth.
“You’ll have to choose one day. Death, or creation.” She can hear his smile in his voice. “I look forward to it, Rosemary.”
And with that, he’s gone.
Rose stares at the empty space in front of her. His smell still permeates the air. Gunpowder, disinfectant, leather. She opens the window and let the summer breeze wash away any trace of his presence.