Chapter Text
“Claire? I had that nightmare again,” a little girl stood in the doorway, wiping her nose in an upward motion.
“Oh, dear. Come on, let’s get you back to bed, darling”
“Could you tell me a story about my dad?”
“Don’t you want to hear anything about your mom?”
“No. Never”
College applications really weren’t supposed to be hard. Not for Rosemary Winters. Not with her GPA, or her extraordinary history. And yet, her fingers either hovered helplessly over the keyboard, or typed two paragraphs only to delete both.
Nothing she typed felt right. There was no consistency, unless she really wanted Chris to yell at her for using classified information for an essay.
Rosemary deleted everything and stood up. There was absolutely no use overexerting herself right now, it would be much more productive to take a break and come back to it. That’s what everyone says. Take breaks.
She exited her room and went downstairs, stopping to glance at a photograph on the wall. It was from her first day of school, she had a backpack almost bigger than herself, and a giant bow in her hair. In the picture, she was holding hands with Claire Redfield - her primary caretaker since the age of three.
“Claire!” Rosemary called out, looking around the first floor, “Weird… she should be home…”
It’s when she entered Claire’s room, her bed uncharacteristically unmade, the medication on the nightstand for the day not taken, that Rosemary realized something was much more wrong than she anticipated. It’s not that she was unfamiliar with weird situations, but Claire stayed out of them as much as possible.
She grabbed the phone from her pocket, and called Chris. As much as their relationship was strained at times, not understanding each other in the slightest, Rosemary knew she could count on him. Especially when it came to this.
“Chris? Claire is-” she began speaking and was quickly interrupted
“I know. I’ll send someone to keep you safe while I’ll handle this”
“If you know, explain it! I have to know,” Rosemary furrowed her eyebrows
“You have to stay put,” Chris rebutted. One of the worst mistakes of his life, probably.
“Oh! Oh, I see! When it’s having to join your stupid force then I cannot waste my so-called natural talents not doing it, but when something actually happens then I gotta stay put and be babysat by one of your people. You wanna say it to my face?”
Rosemary could practically hear Chris pinch the bridge of his nose in annoyance.
“You’re… so much like your parents,” he groaned, “Fine. Claire has been taken hostage. Very far away. It seems that whoever it was wants me specifically to show up there”
“Take me with you then,” Rosemary demanded, and before Chris could refuse, added, “She’s my family too”
A few long seconds of silence followed. Rosemary stared at a picture on Claire’s nightstand next to her pills. It was of Rosemary, age three, when Chris just brought her. She was wrapped in a worn-out red leather jacket, holding a huge teddy bear, looking into the camera with a shy smile.
“Fine. But whatever happens, you stay by me. And do everything exactly as I say. This isn’t child’s play, Rosemary, this is serious,” Chris finally answered, “Don’t make me regret this”
“I won’t, I promise”
Chris picked her up in half an hour, having shown up with a squad to search the whole house top to bottom to see if there’s any valuable information that could be derived about the kidnapping. Rosemary was rushed into the vehicle. As they were being taken to the airport, Chris kept silent.
Usually he would’ve been all in her business, Rose thought to herself, and that made the pit in her stomach feel even more shallow. She never saw him like this, not even when he would trail off talking about his past. For the first time in her life she saw Chris as an old man, but not an annoying one. Like an old man deserving some sort of pity and comfort.
She thought back to the few moments Claire talked about when she was a teenager. The times when Rosemary would be mad at Chris, and Claire would sit her down and talk about how that man quit the Air Force to care for her when their parents died. And that one time when she sighed and said that she regrets never really talking to him about how much that meant to her. How being hurt and scared made her lash out at him, and how he still cared regardless.
Claire caught herself and apologized back then, but Rose kind of wished she didn’t. It was scary to see the cracks in the one person in the whole world who’s made her feel safe and comfortable, but in an odd way, the humanity and sincerity of that moment was comforting too. Remembering that everyone regrets something.
But words escaped Rose. She didn’t even know how to ask Chris if he wanted to talk, let alone try to comfort him. So they both stayed silent, even when it was time to get on the plane.
Rosemary watched Chris dryly joke with the pilot, feeling the repressed fear churn in her stomach, making her sick. The danger was real. Not just the danger to herself - that was something Rose didn’t care about much - but the danger to the people she loved and respected. It wasn’t just stories anymore, it was real and there and palpable.
They boarded the plane, and Rosemary sheepishly approached Chris.
“I… I’m sorry. For getting all angry at you,” she squeezed the words out of herself with a strain, he looked at her and his face became just a bit less tense and stern.
“It’s fine, Rose. You should get some sleep. We’ve got a long flight ahead”
Rose really tried to follow his advice - or order, more likely - but she couldn’t force herself to fall asleep for long. She kept waking up, the empty feeling of fear followed her into her sleep. And another feeling too. As if something inside her was moving around. Like a billion tiny worms.
It was far into the night when a sound of scraping on metal and alarms cut through the silence, so loud it hurt her ears. And before she could even properly react, the whole thing was going down. Rosemary screamed in horror, free-falling, and the last thing she remembered seeing was two giant bird-like creatures fighting in mid-air. One of the creatures looked like it noticed her and, just before Rosemary got knocked out by a tree branch, seemed to start flying towards her.
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HANE UNLOCKED A NEW TAPE: Claire Redfield Therapy Session Excerpt 1