Chapter Text
He didn’t have a name.
Not yet.
He had a designation, scrawled on the side of a metal crate, the same way you'd mark a box of supplies or dead meat. T-00. Variant: Male. Subject Age: Functional. But none of those words meant anything to the oversized, trembling figure huddled inside.
He was cold. And he was hungry.
And above all else, he was afraid.
You were the first thing he saw when the crate hissed open in the dim, sterile lab. His eyes were wide, confused. He was nude but for a harness of leather straps and thick cuffs around his wrists and ankles, not because he posed a danger—but because someone expected him to. Preemptive violence. A baby locked in chains.
You stepped closer slowly, arms at your sides, no clipboard, no syringe in hand. Just you. A real person.
“Hey,” you murmured, soft enough to cut through the sterile buzz of fluorescent lights. “Hi, big guy.”
His pale eyes locked on you. Trembling. Breath shallow. No comprehension in the human sense—more like animal instinct. You were the first warmth he'd seen. You didn’t smell like the others. You didn’t scream or shout instructions. You didn’t prod or jab or bark through intercoms.
You crouched to his level.
“Are you cold?” you asked.
He didn’t respond. Of course he didn’t. But his shoulders hunched deeper, like your question had touched a nerve he didn’t know he had. He made a low sound—a grunt, but broken at the edges. Like it was leaking out of him. His hands were shaking.
You reached out, and he flinched.
So you pulled back.
“That’s okay,” you whispered. “You don’t have to let me touch you.”
He blinked slowly, jaw trembling. Like he wanted to understand. Like he wanted to trust you, but didn’t know what trust even was.
You left, just for a minute, and returned with a thick thermal blanket, navy blue. You folded it slowly and placed it on the floor between you both like an offering. Then you sat beside it.
He stared. Stared so long, you thought he might shut down again. But slowly, uncertainly, he leaned forward—and snatched the blanket in both massive hands, curling around it like a lifeline.
You smiled.
“That’s good,” you said. “You can keep it. It’s yours now.”
You didn’t know when it happened.
The bonding.
Maybe it was the way he began watching you with quiet awe when you cleaned his wounds after stress tests. Maybe it was how he stopped reacting with panic to your approach. How he let you feed him slowly—nutrient slurries from reinforced bottles at first, then globs of processed protein he barely chewed.
Or maybe it was the way he looked at you after his first nightmare.
You’d been asleep on a cot nearby, assigned to monitor Subject T-00 overnight. The scientists expected data. You gave him humanity.
He made no sound, but the moment you opened your eyes, he was sitting upright on the floor, arms around his knees like a child. The blanket you gave him bunched at his feet. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t have the muscle memory for it. But he was shaking.
“Bad dream?” you asked.
His head twitched. The movement didn’t mean yes or no. Just... effort.
You rose slowly. Sat beside him.
“I used to get those too,” you said. “Still do, sometimes. Nightmares about things I don’t understand. Or things I do, and can’t forget.”
He looked at you then.
You knew the look. A kind of fractured awe. The first time a creature realizes someone else is alive the way they are. Not just noise and movement—but feeling.
He leaned toward you.
And, after a pause that felt like forever, he rested his head on your shoulder.
You didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
But you raised your hand, ever so gently, and touched the crown of his bald head. Like a mother to a sick child. Your thumb stroked once—slow, soft.
“I’ve got you,” you whispered.
The stress tests got worse after that.
More electricity. More fire. More screaming subjects thrown into his field chamber, made to provoke.
You were helpless to stop it—but you were there after. Every time. You stitched what the others broke. You sat beside him and read books aloud, even if you didn’t know if he understood. You sneaked in clean clothes, books, soft towels. You hummed lullabies as you cleaned the blood from his chest.
You taught him how to hold things without breaking them. How to sit. How to listen.
And eventually… how to hug.
Not perfectly. Not without risk.
But one day, he extended his arms toward you in a slow, almost confused motion. Like he didn’t understand it, only that it was a need. You stepped in carefully. You let him fold his massive arms around you.
It was clumsy. His touch was too tight. His whole frame shook.
But you held him back.
“I’m right here,” you whispered into the space of his neck. “I’ve always been.”
You never gave him a name.
Because you knew someone else would take it.
But he gave you one, in his own way.
He would press his hand to your chest, slow and gentle, and tap with two fingers. Not a word. A symbol. A heartbeat.
You.
And you’d return the motion, pressing your hand gently to his sternum.
Me.
By the time they fitted him with a trenchcoat and gloves, when they gave him the hat to hide the brute nature of what he was—he still looked back at you.
Even when they dragged him out of the holding cell.
Even when they took him away to transport him to Raccoon City.
Even when he couldn't fight it.
Even when he never came home.
He turned. Struggled to look back.
You placed your hand over your heart, lips trembling.
His hand twitched to mirror yours before the restraints pulled tight.
And in that moment, you swore:
Whatever they turned him into.
Whatever weapon they made him be—
He had once been yours.
And you had once been his.
Even when he never came home