Chapter Text
'Clearing out the attic might be fun, he said. You might find something cool he said.' Rose thought in annoyance as she moved yet another dusty old box full of junk to the left side of Chris's spacious attic, where similar boxes of junk had been stacked, ready to be moved downstairs and thrown out.
Moving over to another box, a medium-sized one, Rose opened it and hoped that this alleged 'something cool' Chris had mentioned would be inside. But as she shifted through the contents she was disappointed to see that all that was inside was bits of old moth-eaten clothing and crumpled yellowed paper. "Ugh, more junk. Great." Closing the box with a sigh, she shifted it over to the junk pile before she set about opening another dusty box which, like the countless other boxes she'd opened, contained nothing more than rubbish.
'I might as well just throw everything out. I can't see anything cool being in here,' She complained as she picked the box up and carefully made her way across the wooden floor to the 'throw out' pile. After placing the box down, Rose turned and faced the towers of other brown boxes of various sizes decorated with fine dusty cobwebs that twinkled in rays of the afternoon sun coming in through the skylights.
She still had a awful lot of boxes to go through...
'Here we go.' Rose thought as she approached a big brown box, 'more junk incoming.' Kneeling before the box, she brushed the dust and cobwebs off the top with her left hand halfheartedly as she just knew that there was going to be nothing interesting in this box, just like the others.
Before she pulled her hand away, however, she noted a small, harmless, black spider go scurrying over the top of the cardboard box, clearly unhappy at having its cobwebs destroyed. Rose smiled and placed her palm before the thing, letting it crawl onto her hand. Slowly bringing it up to her face, she examined the spider which just idly wandered about her palm. "Sorry little guy. I didn't mean to destroy your home." She chuckled and turned her hand, with her palm facing down to the floor, as the little spider ran onto the back of her hand.
Now, whilst most people hated spiders, Rose loved them and in all honesty, she kinda related to them a little. Both she and spiders were judged at face value. People took one look at them and avoided them, feared them because they were 'weird' and 'gross'. People never really gave either a chance to show that they weren't as bad as they believed.
Rose lowered her hand down to the ground, letting the small spider scurry down one of her fingers and onto the wooden floorboards. "Off you go." The spider scuttled off, going into a crack in one of the wooden boards to presumably rebuild its lost home.
Rose's attention was brought back to the box in front of her. 'Alright.' She internally began as she crossed her fingers and closed her eyes. 'Something cool please be in here.'
Opening her eyes, Rose quickly opened the box with a heart pounding with anticipation and found... Rusty tools. Boring, uninteresting, stupid, damn, tools.
"Oh, come on!" With a groan of annoyance, she closed the box up and all but threw it down next to the junk pile with a mighty thump!
Rubbing her face in frustration, she inwardly muttered, 'I regret asking if there were any jobs to do now...' The teenager had asked Chris is there was anything to be done around the house since she had just finished her studies and was beyond bored. Usually, Chris gave her fun tasks like gardening or grocery shopping (the fun part about the grocery shopping being the fact she was allowed to buy herself some treats such as big tubs of chocolates, movies, music CDs and the like as she shopped.)
The task he'd given her today was far from fun. It was a tedious task. A task she had initially believed would be, as Chris had said, 'interesting. Because you might find something cool up there. I haven't been in that attic in a long time. So who knows?'
Given all the boring stuff in the place, Rose could see why Chris hadn't come here in a long time! Because there was nothing in the attic that was worth going in for!
Rose miserably scanned the boxes, hoping to see a special one that'd catch her eye. But they were all brown, all dusty and all cobwebby. However, she soon perked up and reassured herself, 'there might be something interesting. They all can't be full of crap.'
About six boxes of boredom later, she found a small, beaten cardboard box tucked away in the corner of the attic.
Sitting herself down, she carefully scooped the box up and placed it on her lap. Upon opening it, she was met with a sight that made her heart skip a beat.
This was the 'something cool' she'd be looking for.
Reaching into the box, she pulled out a single rectangular photo the length of her hand that was creased in the middle. The photo depicted two men from the waist up. One of the men was beaming and had his arm around the other man's shoulder. This man with the arm around his shoulder had his arms folded, trying to look displeased, but he was smiling slightly.
The man who had his arm slung around the other man was young, in his twenties. He was about five foot eleven inches in height with short black hair, pale skin and blue eyes and he was dressed in a strange uniform consisting of a white shirt, a green vest and black trousers.
'Oh my god...' Rose quietly gasped to herself, 'that's Chris!' She clamped a hand over her mouth and laughed as she stared at the young version of Chris with a goofy smile on his face, but she soon stopped as she realized something. 'I've never seen Chris smile like that before.'
She looked at the other man, a blond in black shades, who was slightly taller than Chris. He was wearing a strange uniform, just like Chris was. He was wearing a blue shirt with a black vest over the top, an earpiece with a microphone, and black trousers.
'Who is this?' Pondered Rose as she went to take a look at the back of the photo where, written in black ink was, 'Me n' Wesker in 1998!'
"Wesker?"
Turning the photo over again, she stared at the photo of Chris and this Wesker fellow. By the looks of it, they were good friends. But yet again, the way Chris was looking at this other man with such adoration in his eyes as he smiled widely... Maybe they were... More than friends? She couldn't be too sure.
Giving one last check to the box the photo came out of, Rose found nothing else interesting, so she jumped up, full of adrenaline at her discovery, and sprinted downstairs to show Chris the photo.
She hoped it'd bring him some happy memories and make him smile like he was smiling in the photo with this Wesker guy.