Chapter Text
12th of December, 2003.
I haven't seen Yuriy since the 1999 mission. Nobody talked about the mission, nobody talked about Yuriy or his sudden disappearance. The rest of his team had their funerals held a month after the mission, that's what records I found on the case say. But no mention of the medical sergeant, no mention of why nobody ever mentioned him ever again–going silent whenever his name was even uttered.
I don't know why I worry. I shouldn't.
It's for the better, no trace of my past– no trace of who it is under the mask.
But now I can't seem to act like a trained soldier when I see the veiled figure haunting the old abandoned town in the hills. The same place the failed mission was set to happen.
I'd hoped that since I retired from Umbrella's work, I wouldn't need to think about it anymore. Not to worry about the medic who had been sticking to me ever since the trainee missions on the Rockford island, wished that he was gone for good– knowing so much about me.
But now that he was, I doubted. No matter how strange that thought sounded.. me, of all people. Of course.
"Myer."
–"...."
"Myer, don't you remember me?" The veiled face called out, its dirt covered boots crunched against the old and cracked asphalt beneath us– walking almost soundlessly like a ghost.
–"Don't call me that." I said, wishing my name wasn't pronounced with that familiar accent I've grown accustomed to hearing. –"I don't..."
I don't believe that this is Yuriy. I strongly believe it's a B.O.W of some sort, Birkin– the crazy son of a bitch wouldn't hesitate to create something to play with someone's emotions before eventually becoming an ugly mutation of his craziness and kicking the bucket for good.
–"...I don't know you."
"Do you?"
There. These unnecessarily vague comments and questions, the only thing you could ever squeeze out of a person like him. Or, atleast– a thing trying to mimic him.
–“It's hard to recognise someone with a cloth hiding their face.” I tried to .. I don't know what I tried. I wanted to brush it off, but also know the nature of all of this.
“It was never a problem for you”
–“...”
It walked up closer, a weird stench which didn’t stink of rot or decomposition like a corpse would, it was the stench of… sterile nothing. Like an abandoned clinic still having that lingering smell of antiseptics. I didn’t face it, not really. I simply kept a close eye to its movement.
–“What do you want? Aren’t you supposed to hunt your family or a lover?”
–”I just happened to spare you a minute of my time, why are you after me?”
“You don’t speak of your feelings like this with anyone though. Not someone ‘you spared a minute to’.”
–“Those are not feelings, those are thoughts- there’s a difference.”
“No difference, Myer. You tend not to even utter a word if it’s not necessary at the moment–”
“So why….Do you open up so much, talking so much, when you’ve just met me?”
… why was I opening up like that, really ? That's not how I am.
–”... You overthink it.”
“Perhaps.. I look like someone.” It gave a small muse, almost a sing-song tone. Almost irritably teasing, a tone I have rarely heard something like this since…
….
“Do I look like your partner?”
–”No, my former medic.”
At the rare moment of its stiff movements, it reached with its hand for the cloth concealing its face. He pulled slightly upwards– revealing a hazel skin, slightly ashy toned like a corpse.. And that scar, oh that healed burn scar which deformed the skin to stretch itself.
–”I can’t believe it.”
–”That scar, that skin…Yuriy?”
“My name… is Aliy”