Archive of Our Own

The hardest part, once Mia was well enough to notice it, was that Ethan had stopped asking.

After a full month of various stages of quarantine, regularly punctuated by tests and injections and yet more tests, Mia had done little else but answer questions. By the fourth week, she must have told her story to every person in the facility except Ethan, whom she hardly saw at all. Quarantine was the official rationale for their separation, even long after the medical staff gave her the good news that her latest tests were mould-negative, that there was no trace found in Ethan's system either. Even Zoe had been found alive and successfully treated. But Mia had always assumed that it was their stories and statements that were being quarantined, as much as their bodies, kept safely apart, where there could be no cross-contamination.

In the meantime, her life had become a never-ending series of interviews in bright, sterile rooms, a dozen rounds of 'we just need to go back over a few parts of your statement', while Mia herself did her level best to believe the reassurances that she wasn't going to be arrested, that this would be over, someday, if she just played along a little longer. It was like some special kind of purgatory, reserved to punish the sin of deception.

A guilty conscience was no help here.

For the first time, Mia told the truth. It wasn't easy, but the relief of having it all out at last—spoken, recorded, copied down in black-and-white statements, printed and returned for her signature—was humbling in its own way. It was Ethan, as much as anything else, that kept her honest. If he'd been infected, then the BSAA needed every half-remembered detail she'd ever absorbed from the E-series project to offer him the best care. As long as the Connections were still out there, still solvent and operating, the BSAA would need every piece of operational information Mia could provide to have a hope of keeping him safe. A cynic would have pointed out how much disclosure benefitted her own safety too, but to Mia, that was a secondary concern.

At times, parts of Mia were almost offended by her own survival, her failure to do the noble thing and die to save the man she loved. But no, here she was in the aftermath instead, mired in endless medical exams and paperwork, sentenced to live with her mistakes. Objectively, Mia knew she could do so much more for Ethan alive than could ever be achieved by dying for him, knew there was nothing noble in taking the easy way out, but survivor's guilt was a powerful thing (and oh, if that could have been the only variety of guilt weighing upon her conscience nowadays).

The little time she and Ethan were allowed to see each other, they were never alone, meeting like prisoners through glass barriers, attended by figures in full hazmat suits. It was like being back behind bars. Everything they said to one another felt full of empty reassurances, No, I'm fine—they told me I'm fine, I feel fine—what about you? This won't be for much longer, right? How are you holding up?

Even so, Mia cherished those moments. Just seeing Ethan, safe, alive and well, even for a few minutes at a time, was an immeasurable weight off her mind; the relief in his eyes at the sight of her always so more than she deserved. And so they'd press their hands to one another's through the glass, and talk of everything except the things that really mattered.

"I'm glad you made it," he told her, more than once, leaving Mia helplessly tongue-tied. What could you say to that? I'm glad one of us is, would be more honest than he deserved, but, I'm glad you made it too would do her actual feelings about as much justice as greeting-card sentiment in the face of some wartime atrocity. Knowing that you might still be able to make it out was the only thing that kept me going, would have been closer to the truth. Too close.

But Ethan truly meant it, all the same. He was glad she was okay. God, how could he be, after all she'd put him through?

Talking to Ethan at all had become a minefield. Three lost years to catch up on, and what was there to say? He'd spent those years not knowing whether she was alive or dead, not knowing if she'd just left him and run away—and she'd spent them the prisoner of a ten-year-old psychopath perched atop a rising pile of innocent casualties. This should have been their chance for a fresh start, but how could you talk about the future with all that history unaddressed? Which left them mostly trading notes about the minor irritations of the present—god, the food in this place! Or, how much longer do you think it's going to be before we're out?—like awkward strangers reduced to talking about the weather.

"It's fine," Mia joked, on one occasion. "I've spent time in worse cells than this one," only to see Ethan's face fall, and realise she'd put her foot right on yet another conversational landmine.

"That basement I found you in," he asked, haltingly. "Was that really where they kept you, those whole three years?"

"No. It... it wasn't that long," she told him quickly, grasping for something she could offer that wouldn't ring false, wouldn't add yet another untruth to her ledger. "I was... god, I don't even know how long it was. A few months, I think?"

Truthfully, it may have been closer to 'a couple of years', but it honestly didn't feel like it could have been long (except in those moments when it felt like so much longer). In some ways, the cell wasn't that much worse than being free, when even freedom ended at the edges of the Baker property. Mia wasn't always alone down there, either. Eveline would come by sometimes, to play with her dolls; it wasn't as though bars could keep her out. Zoe, too, had once shown up at the door looking like a spectre of death—blood-splattered, carrying her own severed arm and swearing blue murder at Lucas and his shit-sucking traps. She'd promised Mia she'd be back with the key, but she never returned. Mia was pretty sure that memory of Zoe was real. Mia was also pretty sure she recalled escaping at least once during her captivity, hiding on the property for ages before Lucas caught her again, so where would you even count it from? Which version of the truth was the more honest one?

To Ethan, she said only, "I don't even remember most of it."

But Ethan's face only darkened. "Right. Your memory again. I guess it never came back?"

Mia had only meant to reassure him that it hadn't been so bad, not make excuses—but here she was hopping from one landmine to another. "Some things? Not everything." She gave a weak laugh. "I could do without ever remembering some of those months in that hole."

"Yeah," said Ethan, a new note of bitterness in his voice. "I guess there's a lot that's happened to you you'd be happier never remembering."

I didn't mean that, Mia wanted to tell him. Please, just ask me! Ask me anything! I'd tell you anything—god, I want to, it's just... But the watchful eye of the security camera behind her made her second-guess every remotely personal thing she might have shared.

"It was Lucas," she blurted suddenly, needing to tell Ethan something. "I'd been there... it must have been over a year before he got the idea I was too much trouble. Things changed after the..." Even now, the words the Connections stuck in her throat. Would Ethan even recognise it? How much had the BSAA told him? "...after the group behind Eveline got in contact with him, when they shot him up with their anti-control serum." Mia managed a weak smile. "You know, I think I actually liked him better before he got his mind back."

Ethan listened to her with widening eyes. "Fucking Lucas," he growled, when she was done. "Did they tell you he's dead? Chris came to see me a couple days ago—they tracked Lucas down in the mines somewhere. God, they better have made sure he's really dead, not like..." He trailed off, then shook himself, changing tack. "Chris was pretty pissed when he found out they've still got us locked up in here. Said he's going to see if he can pull some strings."

Mia swallowed; that was Ethan's turn to put his foot on a mine. He could hardly imagine how strange it was to hear him say that name so casually—the idea of her husband on first-name-basis with the Chris Redfield! Back in the Connections, the legendary Redfield siblings had been spoken about like regulatory bogey-men, gun-toting luddites standing in the way of scientific progress. Every Connections facility she'd ever visited had security protocols to be followed in the event of a BSAA raid: documents to be destroyed, hard-drives wiped, 'experiments' terminated. Protocols to be followed by the staff themselves in the worst-case scenario usually involved cyanide pills.

"'Least someone's got our backs," she told Ethan, weakly. If any of what Mia felt had leaked into her voice, Ethan didn't seem to catch it.

"Yeah," he said, looking vaguely away, "I don't really know what his deal is, but he seems like a good guy to have in your corner."

He probably did seem that way, to anyone without Mia's history. Ethan wasn't wrong: better to have Redfield in your corner than facing you from the far side of the ring, little as Mia had done to earn whatever strange sympathy he was showing them now. That was, assuming Redfield wasn't just playing the good cop, trying to get Ethan on side.

"I hope so," said Mia. It was all the warning she could offer with the cameras rolling.

Silence fell between them, Ethan looking pensively down at his watch. Not for the first time, it occurred to Mia that every time she saw Ethan, she told herself that this time, she was going to say something. The staff here had promised that Ethan wouldn't hear the truth from them—coming clean would be left in Mia's hands, but what good was that if she never figured out how to start?

"Ethan," she managed at last, "when we get out of here. If you still have questions, if you want to know..."

But that, of course, was the precise moment when one of their jailors called time on the meeting, and shuffled Ethan away.

Some days, they came closer to discussing what had really happened to them than others—such as the one when Ethan came to their meeting looking sheepish, as though he was the one with something to confess.

"Look, if it hasn't got to you already..." he began, "I spent twenty minutes in a room today with someone who had a lot of questions about where I got that submachine gun, and I didn't know what to tell them except that, well, my wife kind of shoved it into my hands right before we were separated, so..." Ethan gave her an awkward smile. "Sorry. You're probably going to have to field some awkward questions about it later."

Mia could only sigh. "Oh Ethan, don't be sorry—what else were you supposed to say?" It killed her that he was trying to cover for her, without even knowing what he was covering for. "It's fine. I've been over it with one of their interviewers already."

Ethan visibly relaxed. "Right. I guess you... found it on the ship somewhere?"

"Yeah. Top deck. I'm amazed it still worked." This was true, technically, but the longer truth—the reason a gun like that was ever on that boat at all—stuck in her throat. Mia closed her eyes. "It saved my life a couple times on the way downstairs."

"Yeah. Pretty nice piece of hardware." Ethan smiled at her, and god, was this happening? Were they bonding over the shared experience of running around wielding a submachine gun against Moulded monstrosities, closing in from both directions? "Well, until you run out of bullets, at least."

Mia laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, I can vouch for that."

Ethan shrugged, but he was smiling too. "I don't think they were going to let us keep it anyway."

"Shame."

"Well, maybe not that big a shame. It's fresh out of bullets anyway."

They both laughed at that, like it was so much funnier than it had any reason to be.

Even before they were married, Mia had always been the strong one in the relationship—the one who took chances, who wasn't afraid to 'make a fuss' when they got over-charged on a bill. The one who—not to put too fine a point on it—could get away with telling her husband that her employers needed her overseas, where she would be suspiciously hard to contact for yet another month this year, and get little more than a 'sure, honey' in response. Even if those 'sure, honeys' did become progressively less sunny over the years, until they devolved into more than one real fight. Ethan wasn't stupid, he wasn't weak, but god, he didn't even like killing spiders. She'd spent so long telling herself the secrecy was for his own protection—that to ask him to live with the knowledge of just how much danger she could be in every time she went away was so much crueler than leaving him in the dark. Ethan was nice, and normal, and sweet, and he'd never survive a day in her world. That much would have been obvious to anyone who knew him.

Or so she'd told herself, right up until the day he appeared in the Bakers' basement. The version of Ethan Mia later glimpsed through the boards of the boat house, grimly reloading shells into a shotgun in between sprinting for cover under the flailing limbs of some horrific, eyeball-covered monstrosity—that man was as much a stranger to her as the Connections' Special Agent Mia Winters would be to Ethan. The same stubborn survivor the whole Baker family had underestimated, time and again, as he stumbled around their property, wide-eyed and slack-jawed—surviving encounter after encounter by the skin of his teeth—but surviving nonetheless. The same Ethan who'd somehow found the will to pick up a gun and point it at his own mad wife as she ran at him with a chainsaw, screaming at him to leave her there to die.

It wasn't as if the Ethan she knew had gone anywhere—there he was, stumbling innocently in on the Louisiana Chainsaw Massacre, like every cliché about middle-class white people in horror movies ever penned. Three years was a long time, certainly, but nothing Ethan had been through in those lost years explained this new side of him. What had been 'obvious' about the Ethan she thought she knew was obvious only in the same way it was 'obvious' the world was flat. What Mia finally saw that day had been inside him all along.

God, just how much had she under-estimated him, for all that time?

She should have realised long ago there would be a limit to how much the world could expect Ethan to just lie there and take. And in the fifth week of their captivity, even hidden safely behind the labyrinthine security of the BSAA, Mia was about to be reminded of that truth all over again.

When the BSAA finally began to lay out just what form her future was going to take, Mia had nodded, asking only a minimum of questions. For once, she hadn't pushed back, making no fuss at all. As long as it got them out of this liminal nightmare, she was ready to accept just about anything.

Not so for Ethan.

Ethan turned up to their next meeting fuming with indignant rage—more animated than Mia had seen him since the moment he'd slammed an open palm into the wire mesh separating them under the Old Baker House, demanding answers she could barely herself remember. But this time, perhaps stranger still, the anger wasn't directed at her.

"Did they tell you? They want to put us in witness protection!" The holding cells allowed precious little space, but Ethan paced back and forth through every available inch even as he spoke. "They're moving us to eastern Europe! They wouldn't even tell me where in eastern Europe, just...!" He threw up his hands.

Mia had been told—possibly in more detail than Ethan. Somehow, it simply hadn't occurred to her how he was going to react. "Oh Ethan, I'm so sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" Ethan's laughter was painfully forced. "You tell them how much you always wanted to see Transylvania? Fuck, it's so crazy." He slumped into the chair across from her, face in his hands. "Can they really do this to us?"

"I think..." Mia didn't know what to tell him. How had she not seen this coming? Was it selfish of her not to consider Ethan's reaction, when all that mattered to her was that their imprisonment was over? "I think they could do a lot worse. If we gave them a reason to."

"That's not exactly reassuring, Mia." Ethan complained. Was he joking? It was beyond her to tell.

"Sorry. Trying to be reassuring hasn't worked out all that well for me lately."

"Fuck. No, I guess not." Ethan scrubbed his hands through his hair, and Mia was still trying to sort out the subtext of that statement when he went on, "But... damn it, they must know what they're doing, right? Maybe it's for the best." Ethan's fingers tapped nervously across the desk. He sighed. "A fresh start, somewhere none of this can follow us. We can begin all over again."

He wasn't looking at her, so surely he couldn't have seen her swallow down the heart that had leapt into her throat at the simple word: we.

"Is that really what you want?" she breathed. The real reason she hadn't processed what this would mean for Ethan hit her all in a rush: relieved as she was they were being released, it hadn't truly sunk in that they might be leaving together.

"Why wouldn't I?" said Ethan, genuinely confused. "I didn't drive all the way out to Louisiana just to tell you I'd moved on."

Just making eye contact with him still felt so fucking fraught. "God, I don't deserve you, Ethan."

"Well, too bad, because you're stuck with me. Mia? Oh, shit, I didn't mean to make you cry. You do want this, right? A fresh start?"

Rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand, Mia nodded, and offered Ethan the truest thing she could. "More than anything."

"Good. That's good. Because I don't know how I'm going to make it through this without you."

It was a lovely sentiment with a poisoned heart: Without me, you'd never have been drawn into this to begin with.

She came away from that meeting with a nest of Margueritte's finest bugs buzzing in her stomach, a whole swarm of new anxieties churn ing among them—and, perhaps more horrible still, hope.

It was, of course, so typically Ethan to decide not to make a fuss, to assume the people in charge of their future knew what they were doing. No matter what he'd been through, Ethan was still her Ethan at heart.

Later, it would occur to her to wonder how much of the European plan had been formulated specifically for her benefit—because it did benefit her, in ways Ethan could hardly appreciate. For Mia, precious little still remained of her old life to lose. Even after three long years without answers, Ethan still had a life in the states to go back to: friends, family, a home and a job. Mia lost all that the day she disappeared. There was no possible explanation for her absence that would allow her to slip back into the space she used to inhabit, as Ethan's ordinary, law-abiding wife. Nice, middle-class people like Mrs. Winters didn't just up and disappear without a word—and if they did, they certainly didn't come back. Mia didn't want the sympathy owed to a survivor of her three years a prisoner, any more than she wanted the truth about her own culpability broadcast to every person fit to cast judgement. A fresh start among strangers, somewhere wholly new—that was the best future she could have hoped for.

Still, the guilt ate at her, like maggots squirming in her gut: if Ethan had left her—as she probably deserved to be left—would they have let him go home? His name wasn't caught up in this the way hers was. There were still people waiting for him, people who'd be left wondering when he disappeared. It was a question that could have fuelled long years of neuroses.

And maybe it would have, if she hadn't realised what a pipe dream it was to suppose either of them would ever have been allowed to go home. Witness protection in a foreign land was the BSAA's way of impressing on the Winters that they would not be allowed to talk about their experiences. Mia would not be allowed to share the systemic failures of BSAA security that leaked word of the Munich raid in advance, with just enough time for Eveline's creators to panic and attempt to move their most dangerously unstable asset out overnight. Ethan would not get to share the story of the three years the BSAA had taken to find her again, arriving barely in time to clean up—and probably wouldn't have found them then if Ethan hadn't made so much noise attempting her rescue. No, much better if the Winters simply disappeared. And for once, Mia was in no state to argue for them, to advocate that they deserved better.

Ethan deserved better, even if she didn't. Mia, by contrast, had been handed a second chance she wasn't even sure she deserved. But if the world really was determined to give her that second chance, who was she to tell herself otherwise? Like fuck was she spending the rest of her life beating herself up over mistakes that were already years in the past. Ethan deserved better—and if being reunited with Mia was what he wanted his happy ending to look like, who was she to tell him otherwise? Who was she to make him face his new life in a strange, new country, alone?

Who was she to force Ethan to face the truth about the woman he loved, if it could only hurt him? If he really didn't want to know?

Days passed, and the great European resettlement plan evolved with dizzying speed. The flight would consist of two seats on a commercial airline under assumed names, the Winters granted permission to bring only a minimum of personal effects. On arrival, they would report to the local office of BSAA Europe, who would resettle them in their new home (or more likely, drop them somewhere temporary while this promised 'new home' was arranged—Mia was resolutely cynical about all such promises).

Moreover, hotel accommodation near the airport for their slated departure would be provided for the two awkward days left between their discharge from captivity and the day of the flight. Now that the BSAA had finally decided it was done with them, it seemed it couldn't be rid of them fast enough.

Generously, they would be allowed one opportunity in those two days of limbo to retrieve those allowed minimum of 'personal effects' from the house they'd moved into a year after their marriage, where they'd lived together for two years of relative marital bliss, followed by the three years Ethan had lived there alone. After that, the house and everything left in it would... well, would go through whatever legal processes applied to the living possessions of a couple who had been officially pronounced dead, and whose wills left most everything to one another. The process had been covered briefly during a meeting with a BSAA legal advisor, but Mia had been in no state to absorb more than the broadest strokes. She remembered signing something, a document still waiting for Ethan's corresponding signature beside her own. There was no real opportunity to read it first.

Mia genuinely wasn't sure whether giving her just a few, short hours to say goodbye to a house she'd long-accepted she'd never see again was kinder than the alternative. She had the impression someone (Redfield again?) had had to pull some hefty strings to buy them even that much grace. But now they were being given that chance, well, there was no saying no, was there?

Their first night at the hotel marked the first time Mia had been truly alone with Ethan since this all began. It might have been nice to imagine they'd fall into one another's arms, and make love on the plush mattress of the hotel double-bed—but by the time they arrived, exhausted, there was little hope of that. Even touching Ethan had become fraught with new anxieties that every point of contact might make him flinch away. Ethan's long sleeves covered the scars on his left wrist, but the fact he wore those sleeves at all in weather this warm remained uncomfortably conspicuous.

It wasn't strictly true that this was their first moment alone together since Mia left the house all those years ago. They'd been alone in the boat that should have taken them to safety, after leaving Zoe behind on the pier, but Ethan hadn't been happy about being forced to make that choice. He'd told her point blank that he knew she had something to do with what happened to the Bakers, and pushed her for answers.

Mia hadn't been lying when she told him she honestly didn't remember, but now? Ethan had every right to ask, and she'd resolved to tell him everything, if he'd just give her a sign he still wanted to know. Any sign, Mia promised herself. She'd follow his lead.

As the hotel room door clicked shut behind them, Ethan leaned back against the wall and let out a long sigh. "I thought they were never going to let us out of there," he breathed.

Mia knew the feeling. After so long in captivity, just standing in the same room as Ethan felt subversive, uncomfortably intimate.

"Don't get too comfortable," she joked. "We haven't even checked the place for bugs yet." It was mostly a joke, at least. Old habits died hard.

Ethan cracked an eye to look at her. "I don't even know if you mean, like, the 'they've-bugged-our-phone'-kind of bugs, or the bedbug-kind of bugs."

"Both, probably." The hotel seemed a little up-market for bedbugs (the room they were in was small but clean: just a bed, a table with two chairs, basic storage, and a 'kitchen' consisting of a mini-fridge) but it probably wouldn't hurt to check. Mia had had enough bugs to last a lifetime.

Ethan groaned theatrically, pushed off the wall and collapsed into one of the chairs. "If the BSAA are that desperate to spy on me alone with my wife, I've got bad news for them: I'm really tired." Silently, he reached out a hand to her.

"And the other kind of bugs?" Mia asked, mostly to cover her hesitation about taking it. The touch of her own husband's hand shouldn't feel this dangerous.

"If they're under two inches, I don't even care anymore, I've seen worse. They can stay." Ethan drew her over by the hand to sit in the other chair.

Taking the hint, Mia sat, surprised when Ethan didn't release her hand again right away. "Ethan?"

Still holding her hand, Ethan finally looked her in the eye. "I really missed you."

Mia's throat was very dry as she replied, "Me too." Just holding Ethan's hand still felt intimate in a way she didn't feel allowed anymore. This wasn't how she'd expected the evening to go.

The ball was in Ethan's court, she told herself, as they fell asleep beside one another later, her fingers still light on his outstretched hand. He only had to ask. And if he didn't... she'd respect that. Not because she didn't want to come clean, but because surely, if he hadn't asked her yet, there was a reason.

The driver dropped them off, not at their front door, but at the alleyway with access to the back gate. The Winters were officially dead, so it was important they not be seen, entering or leaving. Mia exited the car in sunglasses, her hair pinned up under a broad-brimmed sun hat—unremarkable attire for the bright Austin sun, much as it made her feel like a fugitive.

"Take all the time you need," the driver told them, almost as if there wasn't going to be a man standing by the back door waiting for them the whole time they were inside—as if there wouldn't be a car parked out the front of the house, watching, and making sure the Winters stuck to their schedule.

"You ready for this?" Ethan whispered to her, squeezing her hand as the car pulled up.

"No," Mia told him, honestly, but she didn't hesitate to follow him out. "Let's get it over with."

The wheels of her empty suitcase clattered along the pavement behind her; they were to be allowed to fill just one bag each. Ethan's keys clicked easily in the back gate, and then in the back door.

He'd kept the interior clean and tidy in her absence, but time had nonetheless moved on in a myriad of tiny tells. The water stains on the far wall had spread upwards by a handful of inches, the carpet aged with three new years of wear. Empty spaces remained where photos of Mia (and the rare shot of her and Ethan together, when she'd actually coaxed him in front of the camera) had disappeared, packed away when looking at them must have become too painful. But so little had changed. The same ornaments and cheap souvenirs lined the shelves and mantlepiece over the fake LED fireplace. The same old couch that came with them from their first apartment, that they'd always meant to replace, was still there—a little more scuffed, a little more threadbare around the edge of the cushions, but otherwise just as she remembered it.

Three years in the Bakers' rotting property, and no house had ever felt so haunted as stepping into her own living room, the ghosts of her old life competing for space with the ghosts of a future here that would never be.

She was saved from freezing in the doorway by Ethan pushing past her.

"Home sweet home," he said, wryly. Dragging his suitcase into the middle of the lounge room, Ethan collapsed onto the couch with a groan, slumping into the backrest with arms spread and eyes closed.

"Ethan?"

"Gimme a minute. I'm pretending we're just back from vacation. We've only been away a few weeks and it's just so good to be home."

It was so very Ethan it made her smile, despite everything. "We don't have a lot of time here, you know."

"I know. I don't want to spend it all shoving things into bags and worrying about that one important keepsake I just know I'm going to forget until it's too late. This isn't just about packing, Mia. It's our chance to say goodbye."

Leaving her own bag where it stood, Mia dropped onto the couch beside him and curled into his side, trying, for just a little while, to buy into Ethan's fantasy. That she'd never got the call that Eveline had to be moved at short notice, that she'd come home on schedule to her loving and only-gently-suspicious husband, and nothing in her awful double-life had ever come out at all.

It wasn't as relaxing as it should have been. Fortunately, Ethan didn't make her stay there so long that it became awkward.

"Alright," he said. "Guess we've got some packing to do."

"You mean unpacking?" Mia supplied.

Ethan sighed. "Wish I did."

Most of her own things were in storage, he told her, with a note of guilt in his voice. As if he'd done something wrong by not being able to live surrounded by reminders of the wife who wasn't coming home. Clothes that Mia hadn't seen since the day she left now hung in the guest room wardrobe or lay folded into the dresser. Boxes of jewellery and make-up had been neatly packed into drawers, beside the novelty coffee mug he'd gotten her for Valentine's Day as a joke, and—heartbreakingly—the autographed jazz record she'd bought him for his last birthday. The elaborately-carved, souvenir beer mug she'd brought back from her first visit to Germany was there too, along with the knicknacks they'd brought back from New York, one of the few proper vacation trips they ever got to take together. Everything Ethan couldn't look at anymore without thinking of her was here.

When the storage furniture of the guest room gave out, what remained had been packed into cardboard moving boxes. Mia sifted through these to find their wedding album, along with most of those missing photos from elsewhere in the house. Exercise gear she'd bought with good intentions had been packed away, still barely used, beside the flute she hasn't played since high school, padded between beach towels and old paperbacks. In storage, Ethan had said, but Mia was faced with the proof that she'd left Ethan's side only to move a couple of doors down the hall. The only guest to stay here in years was her own ghost. The Mia who used to live here, the unassuming wife who travelled too much for work, hung thick in the air around her.

How had he ever been able to bear living here without her? God, they were going to raise their children in this house, and now...

Choosing what to pack into her single suitcase was at least something to focus on. What was the right balance of practicality and sentimentality? They were being moved halfway across the world, and Mia's faith in the BSAA's promises that they'd be provided with everything they'd need for their new life was limited. But they'd get themselves settled in eventually, however much time and awkward paperwork it took, and you could always buy new clothes, new books, new batteries and hairdryers. Whatever Mia left behind now, there would be no opportunity to come back for.

The wedding album went into the bag first, along with the record and the novelty mug. The framed photos, however, took up too much space. Tempting as it was to think of restoring them to their rightful places in their new home, sentimentality could only go so far. Besides, the originals were mostly backed up to cloud storage long ago; they could always print new copies when they arrived.

There was no question of bringing the beer mug from Germany; Mia had no desire to be reminded of the work she'd done there. No space would be wasted on souvenirs from New York either—a trip suddenly cut short by yet another 'work emergency' that demanded she jump on a direct flight to Brazil, where Project Theta had broken containment. Mia didn't need to be reminded of that either, or of the fight she'd had with Ethan about it after they got home. But that was then, back before the will to ask questions had mysteriously deserted him. Dulvey hadn't been the first time he'd demanded answers from her, the only surprise was that it should be the last.

Too much of their old lives would have to be left behind in this shell of a house as it was. Ethan wouldn't have any reason to question why a few bulky souvenirs didn't make the cut.

How considerate it was of the BSAA, thought Mia, to offer her this opportunity to edit her own past, pick and choose what to bring along. In a few short days, they'd arrive on a new continent, ready to start new lives, with strict instructions not to talk too openly about where they'd come from. No need to talk about Louisiana, or those three years she'd spent in hell while her husband hung in limbo. No need to think about the Connections ever again, or the double-life Mia had led every day they'd lived here together.

Was it wrong, that it would be so easy to hold her tongue and let it happen, to bury her sins and forget them? Was it worse, to admit to that part of her that wanted anything but, raged against the idea of remaining silent, that longed to sit Ethan down right here and make him listen while she unburdened herself of all wrongdoings? What right did she have to ask Ethan to be her confessor? What right did she have to ask him to forgive her?

What right had she ever had to ask him to stand by her, when he hardly even knew who she was?

All those years, she'd clung to the knowledge that at least, if the worst happened, the need for secrecy would be ended. Could she really go the rest of her life with this horrible truth buried in her chest?

God, what was she doing, letting herself get lost in that train of thought now? There'd be time to anguish over every bad decision she ever made back at the hotel, after the driver came to tell them their time was up. She had packing to do, goddamnit. She'd never forgive herself for whatever got left behind today because she was too busy having a breakdown to concentrate.

At the very bottom of a box, wadded away under layers of towel, Mia grasped something square-cornered and metallic, and found herself holding grandma's old, wind-up music box—simultaneously the cheapest and most treasured of all the gifts she and Ethan received on their wedding day. Well, at least some of the decisions she made today would be easy: this was coming with them, no matter how much suitcase space the bulky old thing might take up.

Rather than packing it, though, Mia found herself winding it with the key and listening as it played its familiar, tinny melody—transporting her back to her own childhood, the days of pulling it down off Grandma's shelf and watching the little bride and groom waltz jerkily around one another as it played.

A sound in the doorway made her look up to find Ethan watching her, a look on his face that was difficult to read.

Mia summoned a small smile. "Grandma would never let us live it down if we left this behind," she joked, only to watch Ethan's face fall. "Ethan? What...?"

"Shit," he muttered, looking away. "Mia, your grandma, she..."

He didn't need to finish that thought; Mia knew. The music box in her hands felt suddenly so much heavier.

"When?" she asked, mouth dry.

"Just last year." Mia watched him grasp for words, for what to say about it. "It was... sudden. She didn't suffer."

There it was: the only living family member still on speaking terms with Mia was no longer living. "Grandma..."

"I only managed to go up to see her a couple of times, while you were away," Ethan told her. "She was always convinced you were still out there somewhere. That you'd just turn up again someday."

Poor Grandma, thought Mia, denied even the chance to say I told you so. Not that it could have made much difference, one way or another: the poor woman was doomed to die thinking she'd outlived her own granddaughter whether she passed a year ago, or ten years from now. Mia would never have seen her alive again, either way. Just one less thing to leave behind.

But there was nothing comforting about that thought, and it was all bullshit anyway. While there was life, there was always hope, however shallow and illusory. Mia was proof of that. But for Grandma... there hadn't even been a chance to say goodbye.

Shit, she couldn't just sit here crying on the old music box, you couldn't get it wet, the salt would only rust it faster...

It was Ethan who pulled it from her hands and put it aside, who drew Mia into a hug and held her while she sniffled on his shoulder. It marked the first time they'd been this close since their release, and for a little while, even that was almost overwhelming, as Mia clung to him and wept—for Grandma, for all those lost years and lost moments. Clung to Ethan like he was all she had left.

"I'm so sorry, Mia," Ethan murmured to her. "I didn't know how to tell you."

Rubbing her eyes, Mia released him. "Or whether to tell me at all?" she managed, without rancour. She'd understand if he'd wondered whether he should, when the truth could only hurt her.

Ethan sighed. "I don't think I could've kept quiet forever. But god, Mia—you've already been through so much."

"We both have. It's okay, Ethan. Thank you for telling me." And for humouring a senile old woman who couldn't make herself accept that her granddaughter wasn't coming home.

"I could probably have picked a better moment." Ethan sounded sheepish.

Mia shook her head. "Wait for the right moment and you'll be waiting forever." She couldn't have blamed him for holding his tongue, but better to have it out now than to leave it hanging over them. How many years had she wasted, waiting for the day when she could finally come clean herself, freed from the burden of secrecy?

"Ethan..." she found herself saying, almost before she knew she was going to, "there's more we need to talk about."

"Mia?"

"My memory came back." There was no meeting Ethan's eyes as the confession began. She didn't even try. "On the tanker, after Eveline... I remembered everything. You have a right to know."

Ethan went very still. "Mia, we don't have to do this now."

"No," Mia shook her head. "I think maybe we do. I mean, if you still want to know, if you..."

"Fuck." Ethan exhaled, short and impatient. You'd have to know him well to hear the years of old frustrations, compromises and non-answers, edging into his tone. "Do I, Mia? Fuck, does it still matter? I know that wasn't you, when you tried to kill me—that was Eveline. It was all Eveline. What else matters?"

It was such an inescapably Ethan way of looking at things. "Ethan, I nearly got you killed. You have a right to know why. God, you spent all those years asking me, now I'm finally trying to tell you—you knew I had something to do with how it all went down. It was no coincidence I was on the same tanker Eveline was."

Defeated, Ethan sighed. "I'm going to want to sit down for this, aren't I?"

Mia could only shrug back at him. "You might also want to pace and throw things." This at least got her a small smile.

"Well, the BSAA did say it was fine if it looked like someone burgled the place," Ethan mused, and led her out of the room.

Mia followed him into the lounge room and sat down, facing him across the coffee table. Even if he couldn't sit through what he was about to hear, she at least could be comfortable while it all came out.

"Okay," Ethan said, "I'm listening."

Mia took a deep breath. She was ready for this. She'd only been preparing for this moment since the very beginning. "The company that created Eveline—the Connections," she began. "I was working for them."

"Jesus," said Ethan, not that that hardly covered it. "You... for how long?"

"Nearly four years. Since before we were married." Mia watched as Ethan did the math, putting the past together in his head.

"So all that time you told me you were working for that trading company—all those trips where you said they had you 'babysitting international shipments'..."

"The Connections were always moving assets around. I didn't have to lie about that part."

Ethan stared at her blankly for a long moment before shaking his head in disbelief. "Mia, I... how the hell did you get involved with people like that? Why didn't you tell me?"

"That's a longer story." And if Mia had to tell it while looking at her hands in her lap, at least it would be told. "You remember the state I was in, back when we met? Working dead-end jobs that barely made ends meet. I was a college dropout with a criminal record, thanks to..." Mia shrugged her shoulders; Ethan knew this part.

"Thanks to fucking Joey, yeah. I remember."

Mia nodded. It had always charmed her, the amount of vitriol Ethan could summon for a guy he'd never met, who'd been out of Mia's life long before Ethan ever came into it. The longer, more honest version was, thanks to all the time Mia spent covering for her drug-dealing asshole of an ex-boyfriend, back when she was young and stupid, though still old enough that she should damn well have known better. Mia didn't get to pin all the responsibility on fucking Joey, but Ethan was loyal enough to try. She'd never lied to him about that particular stain on her history—but then, it was easier to be truthful when her sins lay comfortably in the past.

"Thanks to Joey, I didn't exactly have a lot of options. Just a mountain of student debt and nothing to show for it. No job worth doing was going to hire someone like me—not until... you remember when I told you I'd got the job working for the trading company?"

"Mia," Ethan rubbed his face, "are you telling me you started working for bio-terrorists because no-one else was hiring?"

"Not exactly. I wasn't quite that desperate. But then out of the blue, I got this message that someone wanted to interview me for this position. I wound up in a room with two guys who seemed like they had my whole life history spread out on the table. They told me they worked for the CIA. They already had an idea what the Connections were doing, developing bioweapons to sell to military contractors and anyone else who'd pay for them." That the Connections themselves were not technically terrorists, and half their clients were legitimate bodies, was a distinction Mia knew did not make that much difference in her favour. "The CIA needed someone on the inside who could feed them some hard evidence. It had to be someone whose background would be completely clean—nothing that would make the Connections suspect they were a double-agent."

"Jesus." Ethan was leaning forward over his knees, enrapt. "You're kidding me."

"I was pretty much exactly what the Connections were looking for. I'd completed just enough undergrad biomed to have a basic handle on lab safety, and I had the record to prove I was prepared to cover for awful people for money. And I was desperate enough to take almost any job that was going, no matter how dangerous." That was something that had recommended Mia equally to both the Connections and the 'CIA'. "They told me what I'd need to do to get myself on the Connections' radar as a potential hire. Gave me some basic training in how to smuggle information out without getting caught, how to use a gun if it came to that. Before I knew it, I had another interview, and a new job."

"Goddamn," Ethan muttered. "I'm married to an actual secret agent."

Mia's smile was more bitter than Ethan knew. "It's mostly a lot less glamourous than you'd think."

"So... why didn't you tell me?"

It was the million-dollar question. "I... when they recruited me, they told me I'd be safer, the less people knew about it. It was never supposed to go on this long; I was only supposed to be in there a year, maybe two if I had to build up their trust. But, god, Ethan—I was so scared you'd talk me out of it. That you'd say it was too dangerous. I was sick of doing nothing with my life. This was my chance to do something exciting, something that mattered."

Ethan gave a wry smile of his own. "I think we both know there's no way I could have talked you out of it if you'd made up your mind."

"Maybe not..." But you'd still have resented me for it, was probably more than Mia needed to admit. "But you'd have been right to try," she offered instead; that much was more than true. "I had no idea what I was getting into, how dangerous it was going to be. My superiors would do the whole song-and-dance about safety procedures, but the experiments they were doing, there was no way to make them safe. Safety only mattered as much as they had to lose in lost lab hours and clean-up costs. And if you cross people like them, you don't just disappear. You get demoted to research material."

Ethan looked ill. "You were in that much danger, all the time?"

"Not all the time. They didn't show you everything on your first day. It wasn't hard, to begin with. They brought me on as a research assistant, but it was mostly paperwork, playing PA to some of their top scientists. Don't even know why they wanted someone with lab experience; god knows I didn't need it."

"Yeah, tends to be about how it works even when you do finish your degree."

"The training my handlers gave me helped. I got commendations for how detail-oriented I was. But I found out what I'd really signed up for soon enough." Mia hesitated. Should she really tell him about this part?

"What happened?" Ethan prompted her.

No backing out now. "I'd been there less than a year when there was an accident. One of the D-series subjects in my lab went through some kind of mutation. We only had a couple of security personnel on duty, and by the time anyone knew what was happening, they were both dead. There wasn't anyone with the authority to organise an evacuation left."

"Shit. What did you do?"

"What could I do? I got everyone I could find into a room with no windows and barricaded the door. We managed to radio for help, but it still took hours for anyone to arrive." Some of which Mia had spent on an intercom, trying to comfort a scared little girl who didn't understand where the monsters had come from, and didn't understand that she was already dying. Doris, the last of the D-series, was a very different creature to her 'little sister' Eveline, no matter that Doris could be almost as dangerous when upset. Mia had been quietly grateful she'd never had the opportunity to get to know Doris better; that she'd had a room full of other people to worry about to distract her. Most of them probably didn't qualify as good people, but Mia knew them well enough to know how many of them had been as desperate for work as she was, and no-one deserved to die like that.

She gave Ethan a weak smile. "I got home late, and told you... I think it was some story about how someone at the office had had a heart attack and our asshole boss had expected the rest of us to go back to work before the ambulance even arrived, just to cover how shaken I was." They'd spent the evening curled up on the couch watching some silly, old B-movie, Mia strangely comforted by a world where all the monsters were made of rubber, and could be dispatched by plucky teenagers. It made the horrors of the day seem a little less real.

"I remember that." Ethan sounded a little stunned. "You said you didn't want to talk about it."

"I really didn't," Mia told him. "But at least most of us made it out of there alive. I barely held it together that day, but the Connections were so impressed with my initiative they gave me a promotion—well, more of a transfer—over to Special Operations. I was officially the Connections' newest operative."

Ethan frowned. "Meaning...?"

"We were the division responsible for keeping things secret, mostly. Security and intelligence. Making sure transfers got around customs checks. Supervising clean-up when things went wrong. Keeping track of which governments or agencies were starting to ask awkward questions about us. Spying on our own people, to make sure they weren't selling information to competitors."

"Or gathering evidence for the CIA?"

"Pretty much. I was now, officially, a double-agent." Special Operations was also responsible for worse, such as supervising field trials of horrific biological agents, or even assassinations. Fortunately, Mia was seldom trusted with operations that important. On a day-to-day basis, you could usually forget they were happening at all—there was always so much else to do. But Mia was sharing office space with the people who were trusted, and she didn't have the luxury of turning a blind eye. The full confession of the worst things she'd ever done to protect her cover could wait for another time;, there was simply too much else to cover now.

"My handlers back at the CIA were pretty thrilled with me too. Special ops gave me access to so much more information, even if I was too junior to have much authority. They mostly had me doing asset transport. Travelling between facilities with biological samples hidden inside a shampoo bottle in my bags, that kind of thing. That's when I started being away from home more often."

"So, what happened with the CIA?" asked Ethan. "Were you still gathering evidence, all that time?"

Mia squeezed her eyes shut. "That's where it all went wrong. They were never CIA at all."

"What?"

"The more data I sent them, the more suspicious I got. The evidence I'd brought them of what the Connections were doing—breaking international bioterrorism law, experimenting on human test subjects—none of it seemed to matter as much as it should. What they really wanted was formulas, test results—even samples."

"That would've been part of building a case though, wouldn't it?" Ethan frowned. "They'd need that kind of stuff to link the Connections to actual incidents, right?"

"Maybe, but there was something off about it." Learning to be a spy meant learning to be detail-oriented: to suspect everything. Mia, it turned out, was a natural. "There's so much more that I can't get into now, but while I was working in special ops, I found out that the men who recruited me didn't work for the government at all. They were with a rival corporation in the same business as the Connections. They called themselves Triple Helix. I was doing corporate espionage for people who might be even worse."

"Oh my god. How did you figure it out?"

"Long story. All you need to know is at the same time I was figuring out who they really worked for, the Connections were catching on that someone was trying to steal their work. They weren't happy. And by the time they were done... well, let's just say Triple Helix were out of business for good."

"Shit." Ethan rubbed his face. "Sorry, I'm starting to sound like a stuck record here."

"Don't worry about it, it's that kind of story." At least the interruption was something to smile at. "It could have been so much worse though. I can't tell you how lucky I was that none of my superiors ever realised that Helix's most important mole was me."

"Jesus, Mia. So you were..."

"Scared out of my fucking mind, the whole time. Even if they never caught me, I was trapped. I thought I'd gone into this with an exit strategy prepared, but I had nothing. You can't just quit a job like that. I was on my own."

"But you still had all the evidence you'd been gathering against them, right? Couldn't you have taken it to the BSAA, the real CIA—hell, someone?"

"Ethan," said Mia, as gently as she could make herself be, "the Connections had so many moles in the BSAA by then that special ops was seeing most of Redfield's orders before he did. I couldn't risk going to the BSAA. I didn't even have copies of most of what I'd sent to those agents—I panicked and destroyed most of what I kept after everything devolved into corporate warfare. It was a while before I worked up the guts to try again."

"But you did try again, right? I mean, of course you did."

Mia nodded; Ethan knew her well. "I found this private detective. Someone who'd done work investigating bio-terror incidents before, independent enough that I could trust he wasn't compromised. I put together everything I had—what the Connections were doing, the leaks in the BSAA, everything—and sent it through anonymously. Nothing that could be traced back to me. I thought if anyone knew what to do with that information, who to pass it onto, he'd be it."

"It didn't go to plan, did it?" said Ethan, catching the tell in her tone.

Helplessly, Mia shook her head. "I got him killed, Ethan. I don't know how, but they got to him. His obituary didn't say anything about foul play, but men in that position don't just drop dead by coincidence."

"Shit." Ethan rubbed a hand across his face, a familiar nervous tick. "Mia, I don't know what to say. How long ago did all this happen?"

Mia had been over it all in her head enough times that she almost didn't need to think about it. "I'd been working for the phony CIA for over eighteen months when I realised they'd been lying to me. It was another six months before all the dust had settled. It must have been at least a year after that, before I sent everything to the PI."

"All that time, they never realised what you were really doing? The Connections, I mean?"

"The Connections kept giving me commendations. They had this lovely policy of making sure people felt good about the rotten work we had to do. Model employer, really. But after that... I kind of gave up for a while. I was just focused on getting by. But then word came through that the BSAA was onto us, and..." Almost at the crux of her confession, Mia realised she'd gotten this all wrong. At least, there was still one more thing Ethan needed to know first.

"Mia? Are you okay? Do you need some water, or..."

"No, I'm alright. Just trying to figure out how to explain the Eveline in the room this whole time."

"Ahh. Yeah, we had to get to her eventually." Ethan fell silent again, waiting.

Mia took another deep breath. "I'd already met Eveline a few times, by this point. They created her in this lab over in Munich. She was their star project, but she was so difficult to handle. I think they had some idea that keeping from aging past ten years old would make her easier to manage, but boy did that backfire. On one level, she was just this spoiled little girl who'd never really been loved—you couldn't help but feel for her. But she was more dangerous than anyone knew what to do with. She'd killed so many of her handlers that everyone walked on eggshells around her. They were trying this thing—they called it an imprinting protocol, that was supposed to make her recognise whoever she imprinted on as a parent, to make her more willing to listen to them. But even that failed more often than it worked. They got to the point where they were trying it on everyone with field clearance, even agents like me, who were based on the other side of the world. And lucky me—it worked. Mostly."

"Sounds like it worked pretty well on the Bakers too," Ethan observed.

"It wasn't even a protocol-thing with them, she just wanted a family so, so badly. Only problem was they'd fucked her up so badly she saw family the same way as her dolls: just playthings she could puppet around to amuse herself. Take apart and put back together again, throw away when they got boring. Unconditional love that would be truly unconditional." Sometimes, in her darker moments, Mia still wondered if the biggest mistake she'd ever made with Eveline was trying so hard to be kind to her. Without that, perhaps the imprinting protocol might never have worked, and Eveline might never have become so attached. But hindsight was always one mean bastard that way.

"Yeah, I think I picked up on that," said Ethan, voice thick with disdain. "There were documents about her creation all over Lucas' lab down in the salt mines. They talked about her like a tool. No wonder she grew up treating people like toys. Even Jack talked about her like he felt sorry for her at the end. Still wanted her put down for good, but..."

Mia stared at him. "Jack said that? When?"

"Yeah, when I saw him in... ah, fuck, I don't know. Maybe it was just a dream I had when Eveline had me under. Never mind." Ethan looked suddenly embarrassed.

"Are you..."

"Look, don't worry about it," he insisted. "Just—finish your story."

Confused, Mia needed a moment to remember where she was up to. "You remember when I called you from Spain, on that last work trip—I told you something had come up, I wasn't going to be coming home when we expected?"

Ethan nodded. "Yeah. You said they needed you to cover for someone who'd been in an accident, or something?"

Mia nodded back. "That was when the news came through—the BSAA was onto us, there was a team being mobilised to move on the Munich lab. Led by Chris Redfield."

"Oh. Shit." Ethan sat up a little straighter. "Really? Chris?"

"It's how you know this was a serious operation: he's one of their most decorated agents. The Connections went into panic-mode, people were throwing together plans overnight to move Eveline to a facility in South America. I was the closest agent available with imprinting clearance. They brought the head of my whole division on to partner with me—Alan, was his name—but that was it, no other backup, no special transports. They knew we were being watched, so it all had to be kept as quiet as possible. Plans were still being made when we left; they changed our itinerary twice while we were already in transit. We were just supposed to walk out of there with Eveline, posing as her parents." Never mind that the both of them were married to other people, and neither had ever had kids of their own. Still, passing as a couple had been the easy part. "You can't imagine just how dangerous it was, trying to move her like that. She had to have these shots twice a day just to keep her from deteriorating, to keep the mould in check. Even with all that, Eveline was barely stable at the best of times."

"And you just... went along with it?" Ethan sounded stunned.

"I had to. There wasn't much choice."

Ethan seemed to be struggling with something. "Couldn't you have, I don't know, refused? Sabotaged things, somehow? The BSAA were moving in, their days were numbered, surely-"

"Ethan, if I'd refused, they'd have killed me. And then they'd just send Eveline with someone else, who was even less qualified than me." And maybe then, things would have gone south somewhere far worse, where the collateral damage could have been so much greater than a single tanker with a skeleton crew, floating upriver into a swamp in Louisiana. She knew that was true, so why did it still feel like such a weak excuse?

"Things started out okay at first," she told Ethan. "It was all this big adventure to Eveline, a game of pretend with her new family. She really liked me, which made it easier at first, but... god, the shit she'd want to do, even when she was in a good mood. Like get out her dolls for a little tea party, but there was no food, and the dolls had to play eeny-meeny-miny-mo to decide which one would get eaten." Evie had loved the fact so many of her dolls came apart, heads, arms and legs all separable. "Or she'd get them all out and stage an honest-to-god witch burning."

"Sounds like her," Ethan muttered.

"Oh, you have no idea," said Mia. "I've heard of kids having dark imaginations, but Evie? When she was upset, the unlucky doll who got eaten was usually me. Sometimes even when she wasn't upset. I think back at the lab, they used to use those same dolls to explain to her what they wanted her to do to human test subjects sometimes. There was no division for her, between them and real people." And Eveline was far too smart not to realise that handlers and test subjects were all, fundamentally, the same kind of creature. All distinctions existed solely in the handlers' minds. "She wanted me to be her mother so badly, but her idea of a mother was someone who'd never scold her, never tell her she couldn't do something she wanted. Anything less than that..."

"Wasn't good enough?"

Mia nodded slowly. "And nothing ever would be." God knew it wasn't that Mia hadn't tried, as much as she had any notion how to. There was never going to be a hallmark-ending waiting for a child like Eveline, no fixing someone that broken in the space of one inter-continental road-trip, using nothing but the power of love. As much as Eveline's loneliness tugged at Mia's heartstrings, that was, after all, the whole point. You could only marvel at how perfect a monster the Connections had created.

"So where did it all go wrong?" Ethan prompted her, bringing her back to the present.

"The trip on the tanker was our longest leg," Mia began again. "Evie... she was getting bored. Restless. It was no good telling her we'd be there soon, she knew there was only another lab waiting for her at the end of the journey. It should have been relaxing, out there on the ocean, but the crew all knew there was something off about us, and we couldn't risk leaving her alone with any of them for a moment—there was no telling what she might say to them, or do to them. Things were getting worse between her and Alan. She'd never liked him, he'd never liked her, and the stress of all that time babysitting a temperamental superweapon had worn his temper right down. And then the storm hit."

"That was when the tanker ran aground?"

"Eventually. I don't even know how we wound up that far up stream, we must've been miles off course. The crew told us to stay below deck. Evie's cabin fever was setting in even worse than usual. Alan was supposed to administer her shots that day; I wasn't even there for it. But when I got back to the room, the door was locked from the inside and no-one was answering. I had to get a master key from the captain—and he did not want me bothering him when he already had the storm to worry about. When I finally got back in, Alan was unconscious on the floor, and Evie..."

"Was gone?"

"Not far. She came back to gloat, while I was trying to wake Alan. I looked around and she was there in the doorway, laughing about how she'd infected him, saying he deserved it. Then she slammed the door and ran away, and I lost her. I had to go back for Alan, to get my tracker working properly, and by then she was already hours late for her shot, and deteriorating fast. By the time I caught up with her again, she was producing mould so fast I watched her convert a man into one of her playthings in a matter of seconds. I never had a chance. She killed Alan, and everyone else on the boat. She even infected me. I was hurled out a window into the water—the last thing I remember..."

"Mia..." There was a gentle hand on her shoulder—Ethan's. "Breathe."

Mia covered his hand with her own, squeezing it in thanks, and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her other hand. "There isn't much more to tell. I woke up on the Bakers' property. I'd never have made it if they hadn't found me. I tried to warn them about Eveline, not to go near her—but I wasn't in much of a state, and it was already too late. They found a little girl, unconscious and all alone out in the swamp, and they did what any decent people would do. And their reward for that... god, none of them deserved that."

"Well," said Ethan, dryly, "I don't know about Lucas." It was so absurd it startled a laugh out of her.

"Ethan! That's not funny," Mia told him, though she was laughing even as she said it.

Kneeling on the floor in front of her, Ethan shrugged and gave her an awkward half-smile. "Sorry. Just trying to break the tension. Go on."

Mia shrugged back at him. "You already know most of the rest. My memory was in tatters when you found me. Eveline was in my head all the time, she wouldn't let me remember. We left Munich with all the supplies to make new batches of the serum, even the neurotoxin. If there was really no other alternative, our orders were to put her down." Eveline may have been their most valuable asset, but the Connections valued their secrets higher still. Human casualties were acceptable; the attention that came with them was not.

"Eveline still wanted me to be her mommy, but I was the only person left who knew enough to be a threat to her." There's nothing comfortable in knowing that Eveline's obsession may have been the only thing that saved Mia's life. Maybe someday she'll find a way to process that one properly, but maybe not. "I was in and out of her control all the time. Things would come and go. We'd been immunised against her before we left, but it couldn't compete with the spread of the infection. And as hard as I tried to keep it from her," Mia looked at Ethan directly, trying to communicate the scale of her failure with her eyes, "eventually, she found out about you, Ethan."

Ethan blinked at her, understanding setting in slowly. "She made you send that email."

Mia still didn't remember sending it. Some memories, it seemed, were lost for good. "She thought if she could just bring you into her family, make you be her new daddy, I'd have to finally give in to her. She'd have the happy family she always wanted."

Ethan exhaled slowly. "Yeah, Jack wasn't too pleased about that part either. Some family she built up there."

"It was always like that with Evie. She built herself a whole family with the Bakers, but she still wasn't happy. They couldn't understand her the way I could, they couldn't even resist, so they got boring. That was when she started making them kidnap people and feed them mould—always looking to expand her little family, but it never worked. None of them were 'good enough' for her. Didn't help that she was aging and deteriorating at such a rate that she was losing control. It was only a matter of time before she attracted the wrong kind of attention. But before that happened... she finally got to you. You got the email, you came to find me, and... the rest you know."

There was silence for a long moment before Ethan said, "Is that it?"

Mia gave him a weak smile. "That's the short version."

Ethan released her hand and leant back on his heels, obviously thinking. "Your memory, when did it come back?"

"In the swamp," Mia admitted, "after we got separated. She gave it back to me. Somehow, she'd got this idea that if I could just remember again, I could finally be the mother she wanted. We could all be one happy family." Mia shrugged at Ethan's flummoxed expression. "She came up with stranger things in the time I knew her. Always had an imagination."

"Right," said Ethan, vaguely, mind obviously elsewhere. Awkwardly, he rose and dropped onto the couch beside her. Close, but no longer in touching distance. Mia could see him thinking, trying to process all he'd just heard. "This is all... it's so much, you know? I don't even know where to start with it."

"That's fair." Whatever Ethan decided now, at least it was done: the truth was out. Now the hard part began. "Ethan... I can't tell you how sorry I am. She was never supposed to find out about you. I tried so hard to protect you from her-"

"Is that all you're sorry about?" If there was a harshness to Ethan's tone, that was hardly unfair.

"No. God, no. I'm sorry I ever said yes to getting involved in this. I'm sorry I kept it from you when I did. I'm sorry I didn't come clean to you after. You should never have been dragged into any of it."

"You don't think that should have been my decision to make, Mia?" Ethan's hands were fists in his lap. "God, I... this was all going on, from before we were even married? You were trying to do the right thing, I get that, and you've been through so much, but... Mia, what am I supposed to do with all this? All the time I've known you, it's like I haven't known you at all."

It was right that he was angry, Mia reminded herself. He had every right to be. "There've been times over the last few years where I felt like I hardly knew myself anymore," she offered. "And you knew me well enough to realise I was hiding something from you."

"Yeah, but I thought, I don't know, that you were having an affair, or—something normal couples have to worry about! Not... god, I don't even know how to describe this."

Denial was automatic: "Ethan, I'd never do that to you." It was only when he looked at her that Mia realised just how absurd that must sound, in the context of everything she'd already admitted. "...I mean, oh fuck, I just..."

"Mia, I know you'd never do that to me! That's why it messed me up so much that it seemed like..." Embarrassed, Ethan looked away again. "You know the crazy part? I almost wish it was just an affair. At least then I'd have some kind of template for how to deal with it."

"Sorry." Mia could almost laugh—was she really apologising for not cheating? "That might be the one thing I haven't done."

Ethan just shook his head. "Mia. In all those years—why did you never tell me?"

They were always going to come back to this. "I wanted to," she told him—pleaded, almost. "But I was scared to. I was in so deep, I'd convinced myself the truth could only hurt you."

"You don't think the lying hurt me too?"

"I know it hurt you. But the truth might have hurt you more. Even if you knew, what could you do? If you got involved, you'd be in as much danger as I was, and it'd be all my fault—and if you didn't, you'd be stuck sitting here at home, worrying about me, without any way to help. I was so afraid of dragging you down with me."

Ethan looked at her, suspicious. "Mia... was this your way of trying not to be Joey?"

It should have been laughable, to try and bring everything back to him, but... "Fuck. Maybe it was." Mia found herself rubbing her face again. "I can't pretend that's all it was, though. I was protecting myself too. I don't know if I could have gotten through it for so long without you waiting for me at home, somewhere I could at least pretend to be normal. It was all I had to keep me sane." Even if it did mean coming home and pretending to be Ethan's happy, normal wife after hours at the Connections, pretending to be their loyal, dedicated agent. The layers of deception went deep enough to get lost in.

"I hated lying to you, Ethan. I hated myself for lying to you. But the longer it went on, the harder it was to figure out how I'd even begin to come clean..." Without losing you. Part of her had lived in fear that Ethan would leave her, if he found out the truth. Another part was just as scared that he wouldn't. No matter how much he'd suffer for her mistakes, Ethan was too good a man to leave someone trapped in Mia's position, when she'd needed him so badly. (Or was that just the excuse? How far could she even trust herself anymore?)

"I get that," said Ethan. "But that doesn't mean you couldn't have told me something. In all that time."

Mia had no argument for that one. "You're right. You were right, every time you asked me what I wasn't telling you. I told myself the secrecy was the only way to protect you from what I'd got myself involved in, but some job I did of that. God, you would've been safer if I had told you."

"Safer?" Ethan echoed, suddenly skeptical. "I don't know, maybe I was safer not knowing. But at least I wouldn't have had to wonder what was wrong with me, that I couldn't make myself trust my own wife."

It hurt all the more because of how perfectly it hit home. "You're right. I'm the one who should've trusted you, Ethan." Maybe it would have been easier to do this part if she'd been crying; lord knew there was enough remorse bottled up inside her. But for now, Mia's eyes were dry. "Now here you are, about to be deported for walking into hell to save me. I made a lot of excuses for myself over the years, but that's all they were: excuses. You'd never have walked right into Eveline's trap like that if I hadn't kept you in the dark."

Ethan just sighed, short and frustrated. "You don't know that, Mia. You're just saying it because you think you're supposed to—you think it's what I want to hear. Maybe you were right not to tell me, on some level, but I... fuck, I don't know. You're still doing it now—throwing yourself on the landmine because you think it's your job to protect me, to take all the responsibility yourself. Grovelling doesn't suit you."

"Shit." Startled and ashamed, Mia found herself looking at him with new eyes. "Am I?"

"It's starting to go that way."

"Sorry. Shit. Ethan, I..."

"I think we're past 'sorry' at this point," he told her—fairly gently, all-considered.

Mia ran a hand through her hair. "You know, I thought a lot over the years about how this conversation was going to go, when it all finally came out," she admitted. "If it came out. I kind of had a lot more grovelling prepared."

"It's not really you, though."

Mia looked at him sideways. "Maybe you know me better than you think." It's a bit beyond her to summon a smile, just now. "God, I just... at least if I'd told you, you'd have had some idea what you could be walking into, when you got that email from me."

"I'd have walked into it anyway. I mean, maybe I'd have bought a gun and told someone to call the cops if I wasn't back in 24 hours, but... well, it's not like it would've made much difference. I still couldn't have imagined what I was going to find in there. I mean, could you, when you first signed up for all this?" He gave a loose shrug. "And it still worked out somehow, didn't it? Eveline and the Bakers threw everything they had at us, and here we are. Still kicking."

Mia nodded slowly. "Thanks to you. What you did for me, Ethan—I don't know if I told you this, but you're so much better at this than I ever gave you credit for."

"At what, surviving a family of super-powered murder-hillbillies?" Ethan snorted. "Can't say I knew I had that in me either. But if you mean just with a gun—hell, Mia, you've met my grandparents. Taking the kids out back to shoot cans off the wall is what family bonding looked like for the Winterses. Like 'em or not, I grew up around guns. Never imagined that would actually pay off someday." Ethan picked absently at a loose thread in the old couch cushion underneath him. "Actually, I think I like them even less now than when I started."

Mia was still trying to work out how to reply when he added, "Never imagined we were the kind of couple who'd find ourselves bonding over the lousy magazine size of a submachine gun someday, either. But here we are, so..." Looking over at her, his expression changed. "What?" he asked.

"I guess I expected you to be angrier with me."

"Oh, I'm angry," he promised her. "I think maybe I'm going to be even angrier later, when I've got my balance back. Right now, it's all too big to deal with."

She'd promised no more grovelling, but still... "You don't have to be okay with it, you know," she told him, and meant it. "You don't have to forgive me."

"Oh, well nice to know I've got your permission on that."

"Sorry," Mia laughed. "I'm trying to take your advice and keep the self-martyrdom to a minimum. I'm probably going to put you through a lot more 'sorrys', though."

"'Spose you're sorry about that too," Ethan muttered. "Look, Mia, I don't know how I feel about this—I can't even process it yet, I need time. I already lost everything else to save you from the Bakers; I can't think about losing you too. Not over shit that happened years ago. I only just got you back."

You deserve so much better than me, Mia thought, but that would absolutely be grovelling. For a long moment, she didn't know how to respond to him. Eventually, she settled on, "Is that my cue to give you some space?"

Ethan shook his head. "Not just yet. Mia, I... I don't think you realise how much it fucked me up, losing you. And without even knowing. You're supposed to get to a point where you'd be happy even for bad news, that they've found the body. I never got there, I... god, I missed you that much. I missed who I was when we were together."

"Oh, Ethan..." Surely it wasn't the time for confessions like this?

"I did spend some time being really fucking mad at you too, you know. For just vanishing on me, and I didn't know if something had happened to you, or if you'd just up and left me, if you were still out there or what. You know what it's like, losing someone like that? After a year or two, everyone starts telling you it's time to move on, but I couldn't do that. Nothing felt finished. I didn't want to write you off and find someone new. I wanted you." Embarrassed, Ethan looked away. "Maybe it's not all bad that the BSAA are making us move. There's no going back to our old lives, like nothing's changed, is there? I already spent three years without you, trying to move on. It didn't really work out for me. But if there's no going back, maybe the only thing to do is to move forwards." Looking idly upwards, he added, "Wouldn't mind having an ocean or two between me and Louisiana either."

Wiping her eyes, Mia found herself saying, "Maybe the BSAA did tell the world the truth after all—Ethan and Mia Winters really did die in the Bakers' basement. Who are we now?"

"Guess we'll have to find out," said Ethan, vaguely. Then, with a little more force, he added, "Okay, I think I'm done. And I think I do need some space now."

Mia nodded, reluctant as she was to actually get up from the couch. Somewhere in the process, however, reality began reasserting itself at last. "Shit, I almost forgot. We've still got packing to do. They're not going to let us sit around in here forever."

"If they try to drag us out of here early, you can always make a fuss," said Ethan, matter of fact. "You were always good at that." He waved a hand at her. "Go on, you get back to it, I'll join you in a minute. I think maybe I need a bit to sit here and freak out a little first."

Mia squeezed his hand, and stepped away. "Sure. Go right ahead."

In the bathroom, she privately took a few minutes to freak out a little herself. But at least there was the packing to get back to. It was something to do.

When they got back to their hotel room that night, they were again far too tired to make any interesting use out of that nice hotel bed. So when Mia rolled towards Ethan and gently took his hand in hers, as she had the night before, she was surprised to find his fingers moving over her own, tracing gently back along the path of her arm to her shoulder, his eyes meeting her own with a question she couldn't have dreamed of saying no to.

Perhaps strangest of all was how familiar it was, holding one another that night, even after so long apart. To realise the way he murmured her name hadn't changed, like a man wondering how he'd been judged worthy to bask in her presence, to touch her at all. Had she always whispered his name back to him in turn, breathing in the same tones? She couldn't remember, and if Ethan noticed anything amiss, he kept it close to his chest.

It wasn't the end of the conversation she'd begun with her confession on their old, worn out couch, earlier that day. This moment of intimacy wasn't forgiveness. It was far too soon for any of that; Mia had no illusions otherwise. But it was, at least, the chance to pretend (like she had on so many nights before, coming home to her husband after a long, hard day doing unconscionable things for terrible people) that everything would be okay—just long enough that she'd be able to get up again in the morning, ready for another round with an unforgiving world.

In the morning they had their flight to catch, getting up bright and early to begin more than twenty hours in transit. Mia was used to this part, but less used to making a journey like this with Ethan at her side.

Long, jetlagged hours in airport lounges and economy cabins were no place to speak of anything but the mundane. There was another hotel room waiting for them in Bucharest, a city Mia had her first glimpse of through an airplane window in the dead of night, little more than a sea of glimmering electric lights in a dark expanse of shadow. She was not prepared to find herself and Ethan being met at the airport by Chris Redfield, there to personally drive them to their hotel. Chris spent the journey making conversation with Ethan about recent progress tracking down what was left of the Connections in Europe, leaving Mia at a loss about how much to say about her own experience with Eveline's makers, unable to guess if that would make things less awkward for Ethan, or more so.

Chris was back to drive them to the local BSAA headquarters the next morning, where Mia would be informed (to her amazement) that there really was a house waiting for them, even if it was (less amazingly) still a long train journey and at least one transfer away. There were more things to sign, more connections to make, a dozen other minor hassles for two jetlagged Americans who'd stepped from the Texas sun into the Romanian winter, with their old lives packed into two small suitcases. Yet somehow, it seemed like no time at all had gone by before they found themselves on the doorstep of their new home—a compact, homely little place that Mia would never have chosen herself.

None of this was the life they'd have chosen. But watching Ethan wander around the place, speculating about construction differences to accommodate for the climate, joking about the size of the pantry and the bathroom, Mia saw him smiling more often than not. Perhaps they really could make a home here.

It was the most animated she'd seen him since she'd told him the truth, but did it mean anything? It was hard to share his enthusiasm for this new life together when she didn't yet know whether she'd get to keep it. No-one could have blamed Ethan if he couldn't find it in himself to trust her again, after all she'd put him through, but if she was still going to lose him—god, she'd rather it happen now. She could only deal with so much false hope.

All she knew was that Ethan was looking at her, suddenly, his face creased with concern. "Mia? Is something wrong?"

"Shit," Mia felt her own face fall. "I didn't mean to worry you, it's nothing, really. Just..." But if she was ever going to get into the habit of being honest with him, best to start now. "We've hardly had a chance to talk since we left Austin, and I know you haven't had much time to think, but I have to know... are you okay?" Are we okay?

Ethan looked at her, and something in him slumped a little. "Honestly, Mia? No. I'm not sure I am. But I don't think you come out of what we've been through and you're just okay, after." The sigh that he let out sounded so very tired. "But I think I'm going to need you to stick around a while longer while I figure out if I'm ever going to be. If we're going to be. Does that work for you?"

It was less an answer than she might have hoped for, but it made her heart clench around the feeling that maybe, she could hope a little longer.

"Yeah," she told him, "I can work with that just fine."

"Good. That's good," said Ethan, and with that, the moment seemed to be over. "Ready to unpack for real, this time?"

It would always be so easy to look at Ethan and think of him as weak: a man who'd ignore his wife's lies until they consumed her, who'd come running to find her with hardly a second thought at the first word of her return, years after he should have given up—who'd forgive her even after she dragged him through hell. Harder by far to credit him as the kind of survivor who could go in blind and come out swinging, who knew what he wanted, and had somehow decided it was her. Who could still look her in the eye in the end and say, I never asked for any of this, but I might still do it all again if I had to.

They'd had so many plans, once upon a time. They'd both always wanted children, but it was never the right time. It certainly wasn't the time now—things were all too raw. But perhaps, someday not too far in the future, it would be.