Work Text:
Colorado Mountains, 2028 - Raccon City Memorial Site
The wind bit through the mountainside like a blade. Cold, sharp, relentless. Chris Redfield barely felt it. He stood motionless, staring at the scarred valley where Raccoon City used to be — now just a crater veiled in snow and silence.
They built a memorial here years after the blast. Quiet. Clean. A line of black stone monoliths, each etched with names barely visible through the wear of time. But Chris didn’t need the names.
He remembered every face.
Every scream.
Every loss.
Thirty goddamn years. And it still hurt.
He reached out, fingers brushing the cold surface of the monument. It was slick with frost. He traced over a name — Richard Aiken — and felt that same ache bloom deep in his chest. Not a sharp pain. Not even sorrow. Something heavier. Something like being hollowed out and filled with ash.
His breath came slow and shallow, clouding in the air.
"I should’ve saved you," he whispered, not for the first time. Not for the last.
He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. He wasn’t supposed to smoke anymore — doctors told him last year that his lungs were showing early damage. But he didn’t care. He needed something to fill the silence when his thoughts got too loud.
The wind caught the smoke and carried it away toward the crater.
The same way the government had carried away the truth.
The same way they carried away bodies.
So much had changed, but Chris hadn’t. Not really. He was older now. Slower. There were mornings when his knees ached before he even left bed. Old scars pulled tight under his skin. His shoulder — the one he busted in Kijuju — clicked when he rotated it. But none of that hurt like this.
None of that touched the pain that settled in his chest whenever he remembered them. His team. His family. Lost in halls soaked with blood and betrayal. Lost in a war no one but him and a handful of others even remembered anymore.
Sometimes he’d wake up drenched in sweat, a scream caught in his throat, thinking he was still there — in the mansion, in the labs, in the jungle.
Always fighting.
Always losing someone.
And then there was Wesker.
Chris's hand curled into a fist.
He hadn't spoken the name aloud in years, but he thought of him often. More than he cared to admit.
Even now — nineteen years after he’d watched Wesker fall — that fury still lived inside him. Not the clean kind. Not righteous anger. This was the bitter, festering kind that never healed.
“You’re still in my head, you son of a bitch,” Chris growled under his breath. “After everything… after all the blood you spilled. I killed you. And it still wasn’t enough.”
His pulse ticked in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenched tight.
Wesker had taken so much. Manipulated them. Betrayed them. Lied to their faces with that calm voice and cold stare — while plotting their deaths. And Chris? He was too loyal. Too trusting. He saw him as a leader, even when the signs were right there. Even when it nearly cost Jill her life.
Chris had snapped his spine. Sent him into the lava. Watched him die.
And still, some nights, he dreamed Wesker survived.
Still, some part of him wanted him to — just so he could kill him again.
Chris opened his eyes, chest tight, heart thudding hard beneath his ribs. He stared down at the names again and felt the grief crawl up his spine like fire.
He hated himself for surviving sometimes. Hated that he had to carry all of it alone.
“I’m tired,” he admitted to the wind. “I’m tired of fighting. Of watching new kids die in wars I started.”
Every time a new bioterror attack happened, they called him back in. BSAA. DSO. Blue Umbrella. Different names, same mission. Same nightmares.
And he always went. Because who else would?
Because he couldn’t walk away.
Because he didn’t know how to live without a rifle in his hands.
But now… his hands were shaking. His chest hurt. Not just the emotional kind — the physical weight of years of stress, trauma, and pushing past the limits of what a man could endure.
He stared out over the crater and whispered, “I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.”
The wind didn’t answer. It only howled.
---
He sat on the bench near the edge of the site, where the wind wasn’t so brutal. He looked older than his years. Deep-set lines around his eyes, sun-weathered skin, a hard stare that never softened. His body was that of a soldier, but the war had left its mark. On his bones. On his soul.
Chris pulled a flask from his coat. He hadn't touched alcohol in months, but today? Today was a grave.
He took a swig and let the burn remind him he was still alive.
Memories came in waves. Jill's laughter echoing in the STARS office. Barry grumbling about his family. Rebecca, bright-eyed and brilliant. Even Brad, God help him. And Forest... Forest with his stupid jokes and that guitar that never left his side.
All gone.
"I miss you all," he said quietly. "I miss who I was when you were around."
He paused. The wind stirred again, cold and restless.
"Do you think it was worth it?" he asked, voice raw. "Do you think any of this stopped the world from going to hell?"
Because sometimes, it felt like they were just shoving sand against the tide.
Jill had told him once, years ago, to take a break. To retire. "You deserve peace," she'd said.
But peace was a word Chris didn't understand.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it. He knew what it was. Another mission. Another report. Another crisis.
His fingers tightened around the flask.
He didn't want to go.
He didn’t want to fight anymore.
But he also didn’t know how to stop.
He let out a slow breath, watching it fade into the wind. Then he stood up, heavier than before, and walked back toward the truck waiting at the trailhead.
Behind him, the wind whispered through the trees.
Like voices.
Like ghosts.