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Piers remembered the escape pod’s door closing with an airtight hiss and then nothing more. Chris’ look of panicked horror as the realization of what he’d just done when he pressed that button and made the ultimate sacrifice to die with H.A.O.S. rather than risk harming the other soldier was permanently etched on the canvas of his eyelids. The moment was tiny, a drop in the ocean, but it replayed in torturous slow motion every time Piers closed his eyes. The instance when Chris stared at him, screaming his name but with the door already sealed his voice was muted.
He could see the hope in the brown eyes flaring to the very last second searching for some miraculous way he could pull his lieutenant, his partner, to safety. Piers was blessedly spared the sight of that spark dying out. He imagined at some point during the ascend of the capsule through the silent waters, Chris must have witnessed the inescapable fires consume the sub-aquatic research facility and had no choice but accept Pier’s death. To hold onto hope would have been insane because nothing alive could have survived that. Both the monstrosity that was H.A.O.S. and tragically, not a young man who chose to die for the one he loved were returned to dust. Piers died for the world but really, for one man.
He remembered that final moment in agonising detail and his confusion was justifiable when he ‘woke up’. It wasn’t like a normal slip between slumber and awareness though. Piers felt like he’d been shuffling about, existing but unaware. He felt like he returned to himself, like he blinked and he was able to comprehend the world around him. He’d always been in it but suddenly he was aware of the fact. It was odd. He didn’t really have a comparison for the sensation and he didn’t want to linger on it. Piers felt like if he did he might slip away again and he didn’t know where to.
Frankly, he didn’t understand anything! He was dead. That was the one absolute he knew as acutely as he’d known he was alive in the past. It was more than a thought. It just was. The memory of his demise was still fresh, so fresh he could almost feel the chill of the water and the burn of the fire fight to consume him first. It was ridiculous to think he’d experienced any of this. His life ended instantaneously and he didn’t think he felt anything but when the memory invaded his thoughts, he saw the details of the moment like he was some silent figure watching himself get destroyed. Or maybe his brain was filling in blanks and imagining things. He didn’t think it mattered.
Piers stared at his hand, the one which had began changing with the infection. It was normal. He tentatively pressed his fingertips to his face and found his eye was normal too. He very distinctly recalled the unpleasant loss of it when the C spread to his face. It was like he’d never injected his flesh with the vile concoction and for just a brief instance he felt panic flutter inside his chest. Had it all been a dream and he’d failed to save Chris? Was he dead for nothing?
He turned around in alarm and wide eyes finally focused more on his surroundings. He was becoming aware of too much too quickly when he’d known nothing at all. It was a quick glance but the familiarity of his home rapidly registered to him. This was his quarters on the B.S.A.A. base. This was the home he shared with…Chris.
And that’s when he saw the man. Piers was shocked he’d been unaware of the other’s presence this long when he was right there, an arm’s length away from him. Immediately his nerves settled when he saw Chris alive. He was seated at the kitchen table and Piers didn’t care about another detail. He rushed to reach the soldier.
‘Chris! Thank god-..’ His voice lost its enthusiasm and his smile froze when his hand passed right through the man. He tried again but his fingertips met the solid mass of the older soldier’s slumped shoulders and kept passing. Piers swallowed down the lump in his throat and understood what was happening with odd clarity. He knew he was dead and this proved Chris wasn’t. It was terribly succinct. ‘Chris…’
‘He won’t hear you.’ Piers flinched back, shocked at the unexpected voice. Chris didn’t stir. He looked around the kitchen wildly but saw no other. No other person.
He had no way of knowing if the dead paled but he felt the blood drain from his face. In the corner of the room was another figure and there was no allusion of it being alive. The creature was tall, taller than most men but even if it’d been as tiny as a ladybug, the soldier knew the imposing presence would feel immense. It was reclining against a dimly lit wall and the shadows seemed to melt into it, cloaking it.. They shifted around the bony, literally skeletal, figure like flames so dark they voided light. And the face…Eyeless sockets and a rows of teeth exposed in a permanent grin. It had no face. It was a skull and Piers didn’t bother wasting time asking the obvious. This was Death. He knew it as effortlessly as a new born knew to suckle at their mother’s breast.
‘Why?’ Piers asked in a surprisingly steady voice and he realized he wasn’t afraid. He stared at this spectre of mortality and felt no more trepidation than being around any other.
‘Pretty sure you already figured it out. Takes a little bit but I think you just woke up. It’s what most of you call it and I’ll take your word for it since I don’t sleep. You figured out you’re dead, yes?’ Piers wasn’t sure what he expected Death to sound like but it was just a nondescript voice. To him it sounded like a man, someone familiar though he couldn’t place the exact person.
‘Ok… Hold on, I don’t understand.’ He held up his hand, gears racing to catch up.
‘Of course, you wouldn’t. There’s no rush. I literally have an eternity and I know you have questions. You mortals are always such an inquisitive lot. Not at all annoying…’ Piers thought the Reaper was attempting some levity to ease his nerves because he couldn’t hear any genuine irritation in the oddly comforting voice.
Questions. Yes, he had a few. But first Piers had to retake stock of the other man in the room with them. He stared at Chris and genuinely looked this time. He didn’t catch it at first but the man looked different. He looked older. Not only in years but his face looked sallow, hooded. The dark circles under his eyes were worse than any of the myriad of times when he overworked himself to the brink of physical exhaustion. He looked like that day in the bar when he’d finally found him again and the man was killing himself one shot glass at a time. With an acrid realization he noticed the half-filled bottle of scotch beside the hero. And then he noticed the other three emptied bottles on the table.
‘How…How much time passed since I died?’ Piers couldn’t tear his eyes away. He was so aware of all the aged details now. He saw some white hair stand out in relief against the dark brown. He saw the furrowed wrinkles on the man’s forehead. He’d always been a frowner but the lines never looked so deep. Piers yearned to reach and smooth the skin but stopped himself because he couldn’t bear to have his touch phase right through again.
‘… 4 years.’ Piers snapped his eyes to stare at Death, convinced his hearing was playing tricks on him. That couldn’t be! It felt like he’d literally just been underwater. He opened his mouth to say exactly that but he couldn’t quite seem to find his voice and he looked in helpless confusion between the spectre and Chris.
‘Let me explain.’ The voice was soothing and Piers was glad to have it take over. He felt like he couldn’t think as he looked around the room, suddenly finding it too hard to see all the signs of advancing age on Chris’ inebriated face. This was definitely the home he’d briefly shared with the other soldier but now that he took a little more to note the appearance of it, he realized everything was aged. Things were missing or broken. Paint was flaking. It looked like their home if nobody looked after it…for years. A ruin of their old life, all kept the same yet so disturbingly different.
‘First of all, time is not linear here. When you’re alive, you understand it as a beginning, middle and end because it’s how you’re able to make sense of it. Once you reach and cross that end, there’s no longer any need to limit the twist and knots of time. Honestly, that’s one of those things I’d be wasting my breath, not that I have any, trying to explain because you won’t get it until you experience it for a while. Don’t worry, it’ll happen eventually. You have plenty of time.’ The spectre chuckled but the sound was flat. Obviously Piers was not the best audience but he also didn’t say anything until the Reaper resumed.
‘Right, well, this waking up happens when a soul is ready to deal with their transition. For some its immediate. For others it’s decades. There’s no rulebook to this stuff. When you’re ready, you’re ready.’
‘Wait, so…Where was I until now?’ Piers felt like the first time Chris explained to him what B.O.W.s were. Back when he’d been a sniper in the army working on his military career only to have his world blown wide open. The man saw something in him and offered him a choice. Piers was never prouder of any decision than the second he took the handsome B.S.A.A. recruiter’s offer.
‘Here.’ Piers blinked at the Reaper, obviously not understanding. ‘Ok, think of it this way. You were sleepwalking. And now you’re awake. You drifted about, always around this one.’ The bony finger gestured at Chris.
‘I watched him become…’ A shell of himself? Piers couldn’t say what Chris was like 4 years later based on one instance but the bottles were not an encouraging sign. He’d seen the man at his lowest and he had that same look in his eyes. Once upon a time his loyal lieutenant tracked him down and brought him back but maybe this time around there was nobody to do it.
‘Yes. Don’t blame yourself, there’s nothing you could have done.’ Piers wanted to argue. Of course there was something, there was always something to be done. ‘I’m going to tell you what I tell everyone at one point or another, all you mortals pride yourself on your free will which comes with some caveats. You can’t influence his decisions anymore than some higher being. You can’t have it both ways. Chris made his choices, as you made yours.’ Piers didn’t find it strange for the Reaper to know the other man’s name. They were Death.
‘Can you tell me what happened while I was…Sleepwalking?’ Piers’ gaze was drawn to the movement of Chris’ hand as it raised his glass to tilt more liquid poison down his throat. There was no pleasure on the haggard face as he swallowed. This man was drinking to forget. He knelt by the chair and hovered his hands over the man’s thighs. Even if he couldn’t feel anything he just wanted to be close to him. Turning away from Chris’ pain was unfair and cowardly.
‘You can see it for yourself. They’re your memories, albeit you weren’t aware you were making them. Let me help. Takes a bit of time to get the hang of it.’ Death moved towards him and it was like watching liquid mercury take form. He expected the rigidity of bones grinding against one another but there was an ethereal movement to the skeletal shape’s hover. It took him a moment to understand the spectre wasn’t walking, but rather floating over the ground. The shadowy cloak moved with it, seamlessly separating from the room’s darkness. Death didn’t make sudden movements are gave Piers any reason to feel alarmed. It reached him and raised a hand to gently press against his temple.
And Piers saw. He saw the entirety of four years’ worth of events play out in rapid fire. He expected this sudden overloading of information to leave him staggering but it didn’t. Death was right. All this knowledge was already inside his head, but now he could recollect it like any other memory. Piers saw the B.S.A.A., the hunting for the Megamycete, Ethan Winters, Jill , Claire, Leon , but he brushed all of those aside because he was only truly interested in one.
He saw Chris’ retreat more and more into himself and work after his death. He saw the man double over and weep in the empty house he refused to abandon or alter. He saw the attempts to compose himself and keep going, slipping into an all too familiar pattern of distracting himself and shoving his trauma deep down. Just like he had in 1996. Chris did such a good job he was cleared for duty buy the trauma therapists. Even Claire and Jill stopped looking at him funny though he could see the women knew Chris better than some shrink but they also knew he’d just ignore their worries if they hovered. They had their own battles to handle but they were always within reach. Sadly Chris wasn’t the sort to reach out. He hadn’t reached out to Piers and he certainly hadn’t changed his ways with age.
Piers recognised the pattern all too well. Chris disassociated, living for the fight because it was the only thing which made him feel like his life was worth a damn. He saw him stare at his gun when he drank too much and wonder why he was the only one always left standing. The shame of it was like a gut punch. Chris opened up about his survivor’s guilt once to Piers and he recalled how raw the older soldier was in that moment of vulnerability. The wounds might be scabbed but they were just a scratch away from bleeding all over again. Piers’ death ended up being that scratch.
He watched Chris consider pulling the trigger and he’d always lower the weapon, eyes moist with unshed tears. Piers knew what kept him going because Chris told him. He couldn’t spit in the face of his friends’ sacrifices like that and now, he couldn’t insult Piers’ death by quitting. So he watched Chris keep going, fighting with more vigour and taking more risks because he knew the old soldier hoped one of those times his reflexes would kick in just a fraction of a second too late and it’d be over. Piers didn’t think the man was deliberately trying to hasten his death but he knew Chris was far too intelligent not to know he was taking unnecessary risks.
He watched Chris visit the memorial of his fallen friends, the ones back in S.T.A.R.S. and every fallen soldier along the way. The list was long and now Piers counted one more flower in the bouquet. He knew Chris lost others after but he must have stopped counting. Piers’ death drew a line in the sand for the man and he watched as Chris refused to allow anyone else to cross it. He didn’t dare. Maybe with a bit more time but it had taken him decades and Piers’ patient love to heal from the Mansion Incident. He had no idea what mammoth force could begin to glue the broken pieces of this war hound back together. Again.
He watched Chris pace the empty rooms of their home like a prisoner in solitary. He could see being in this place where the walls were soaked in memories of their shared past was toxic to the man but he could see Chris couldn’t leave the carcase of their love to rest in peace. He was gripping onto it with a desperation which both destroyed and kept him going. He saw the dark exhaustion, a soul crushing fatigue, slip over the man’s features when he entered. He took off his functional image like it was a work uniform and once he was behind closed door he could finally crumble.
The drinking didn’t start slow. He picked up the numbing habit as if he’d never left that dingy bar and Piers witnessed his hero crack and crumble, gulp by poisoned gulp. Chris was a paragon of stoicism and strength when people called on him but Piers saw the hurt man under all that glorified heroics. He was just a man. So many forgot Chris Redfield was just a man who lost so much, again and again. Piers realised bitterly he’d been one of those many once. He wondered if he’d been wilfully blind while Chris hid his pain away because he’d needed his captain to lead, he’d needed Chris to save the world and he’d been selfishly expecting the man to be unshakable. The cracks were there. But he’d wanted to see the strength, not the weakness.
‘I’m so sorry…’ Piers blinked and he was back to the present. His sight was blurry and he touched his fingers to his eyes to find them moist. He returned to kneel by Chris and look up at him but of course the man didn’t hear his apology. It was too late for that.
‘Please don’t… Please….’ Piers watched helplessly as Chris brought the glass to let more of the liquor burn through his torment. ‘Is there really nothing I can do to help him?’ He glanced at Death who remained by his side. The spectre looked at him but it was impossible to discern expression on the ivory skull.
‘I’m sorry Piers.’ He nodded because he knew the answer but he had to hear it.
‘Then why am I here at all? What’s the point if I’m just going to watch him destroy himself?!’ Anger stole over him but it come from a place of sorrow.
‘I can’t answer that. Souls tend to gravitate towards those they considered significant in their lives. Some had no one. Some had a special place. Chris was your anchor point. I can’t tell you why that is. I only meet people once, a few twice.’
‘You mentioned…You mentioned moving on. What does that mean?’ Piers reached for Chris’ hand, letting his ghostly fingers slide over the man’s. He couldn’t feel the warmth of his skin.
‘As I said when someone wakes up, it means they’re prepared to confront the fact they died. Sometimes it takes longer especially if the death was violent.’ The Reaper paused and Piers knew he fell under this umbrella. ‘But once the pieces fall together, as they inevitably must for all, it’s time to pass through and go on your next journey.’
‘Pass through to where?’ Watching the Grim Reaper shrug was almost comical, although Piers didn’t smile.
‘I can’t tell you that. I honestly can’t. I don’t know. Out of my jurisdiction and all that crap.’ Piers looked down and his uncertainty was palpable. ‘I know it sounds scary because it’s a leap into the unknown. Trust me, every single soul feels the exact same terror but there’s no need for it. You weren’t afraid to start your journey in life and this is basically the same thing. I assume. Wouldn’t know much about Life’s nick of the woods.’ Piers couldn’t help it, his lips curled a little.
‘You’re not what I expected.’ Piers watched Chris’ hand move through his as he raised his glass from the corner of his eye. ‘What happens if I don’t go? Can I stay here with him?’ His voice was heavy and he looked deeply into the unseeing eyes of his beloved. He wasn’t ready to leave him, not like this.
‘Nothing happens and yes, of course you can stay. You had free will in life and death doesn’t change that. But!’ The reaper held up his hand before Piers could speak. ‘There are some things you need to be aware of before making this sort of decision. You’d do well to listen. Many souls feel too emotionally tethered to the ones they loved in life and aren’t ready to move on. I see it all the time and I tell them the exact same thing I’m about to tell you. It’s a bad idea.’
‘Why?’ Piers eventually asked after a few silent heartbeats.
‘One, you can’t help or reach Chris no matter how hard you try. That won’t change. Two, I won’t return until his natural life is over and it will get lonely. I’ve seen it too many times. As well intentioned as your decision is, you’ll be stuck on this nothing in between state with no one else and eventually you’ll grow to resent him for it.’ The spectre pointed at Chris. Piers shook his head vehemently.
‘I’ll never do that.’
‘Perhaps. I’ve seen love so strong it endures centuries so I’m not one to make predictions. I’ve also seen love turn to anger and to hatred. A lifetime is a long time when you’re unable to reach the man you love. Just be aware of that. Though…’ The spectre turned to Chris. ‘…The way he’s going, I might return soon.’ Piers would have loved to disagree but Chris reached for the bottle to top up his glass and he stayed silent.
‘I can’t leave him…’ Piers looked beseechingly at Death who just shrugged.
‘I’m not telling you to. It’s your decision and nobody, certainly not I, can make it for you.’ Piers nodded and moved to press himself up against Chris’ body. He was close enough to hear the man’s loaded sigh and he reached to run his hand over the tired cheek. Maybe Chris felt something or maybe it was coincidence but there was a tiny raise of his brow when their skin touched. Piers glanced at Death who didn’t miss the motion.
‘I wasn’t going to mention this part since it can be more of a disappointment than comfort but in your case it might just happen.’ Piers waited, feeling a shift in the air as the spectre moved closer to the two of them. ‘In some rare cases, a bond is so strong one can subtly influence the other. It won’t be anything grand, just a suggestion here or a thought there. Sort of like a second voice of reason. That’s not to say he’ll listen to you but he might hear you.’ Piers’ gasped and held his breath.
‘I can help him?’ He stared at Chris, new hope starting to draw breath inside him.
‘I’m saying, it’s a possibility. Your voice might never reach him. In most cases it doesn’t and it’s as you lot say, soul crushing. Or he might ignore you entirely. Just as people ignore their good sense on the daily, your advice might fall on deaf ears.’ Piers thought about it but hesitated only for an instant. The hope was growing. Maybe was infinitely better than never.
‘I’m staying.’ He felt as resolute as the moment he made the decision to plunge the virus into his veins.
‘Sure, if that’s your decision.’ The spectre turned and walked back towards the same dark corner he’d emerged from. The umbrage reached out to welcome it and Piers watched the way it melted into the void. Just before it disappeared completely, Death turned to look at Piers one final time.
‘Last chance. I won’t be back until his last breath and Chris is especially gifted at dodging me. Been on his heels since 1996.’ Another wry chuckle and this time Piers did smile. He glanced at Chris, this broken mess he loved till death and beyond.
‘I don’t mind. He’s worth the wait.’ The Reaper nodded and in the time it took Piers to blink, was one with the silent shadows.