Work Text:
August 23rd, 1998.
Raccoon Police Department. S.T.A.R.S. Office.
Chris’ hastily scrawled note was stuck to Jill’s desk with a strip of evidence tape.
CHAMBERS—NOT COMING. SOUNDS WEIRD. CALL?
Jill read the words twice.
Across the office, Chris was hunched over a map of Paris, one hand buried in his hair and the other drawing lines between Umbrella facilities with a red marker. His Walkman sat forgotten on the edge of his desk. His duffel bag was open beside the desk, packed with ammunition, three shirts, a passport, and apparently no socks.
She lifted the note. “What does this mean?”
Chris looked up slowly, eyes bloodshot. “Rebecca called.”
“I see.”
“She said she wasn’t coming.”
“Is she all right?”
He stared at the note as though seeing it for the first time. “I thought I wrote down more.”
Jill turned the torn piece of loose leaf over in her hand. The back was blank.
Chris rubbed both hands over his face. “Okay…” He tried to gather his recollection. “She didn’t sleep much. Said she had some symptoms she wanted to monitor. Then she reminded me to hydrate and maintain a consistent sleep schedule.”
Jill straightened. “And what are her symptoms?”
“She didn’t specify.”
“And you didn’t ask, Redfield?”
“I did.” His brow furrowed. “…I think.”
Jill was grateful for every remaining member of her team, but a month after the Spencer mansion and they were beginning to scatter. Chris was leaving for Paris within a week. Barry remained in Raccoon City for now, but Kathy and the girls were already in Canada, waiting for him to join them. Brad was also staying local to investigate with Jill.
Rebecca’s solution to dealing with the post-mansion fallout had been to become indefatigable. She had drawn blood, taken temperatures, catalogued injuries, and distributed questionnaires on sleep, appetite, cognition, and unusual sensory changes. She had developed an alarming, ongoing interest in the condition of everyone’s lymph nodes. Jill had watched her recite incubation periods form memory while running on three hours of sleep and vending machine crackers.
The medic had asked Jill about her nightmares with gentle clinical precision, then redirected every question about her own. Whenever anyone asked how she was doing, Rebecca answered with somebody else’s vital signs.
She was coping beautifully, provided nobody defined coping as eating, sleeping, or acknowledging that several of her teammates were dead.
“I’m worried about her.”
“I don’t know. She seemed stable yesterday,” Chris said, though less confidently now.
“There’s a difference between stable and high functioning. Rebecca doesn’t know how to not perform the latter.”
Chris leaned back against the wall. “She’s been keeping busy, Jill. Taking it one day at a time, like the rest of us.”
“I’m going to check on her.”
“Hold up, think about this. We agree the rookie hasn’t been resting enough, so isn’t this a good thing? Her taking some time away to recuperate, process everything?”
“I’m not going to bother her with next steps. I just need some visual confirmation she’s doing okay.”
Chris’ expression shifted. “Want me to come with you?”
Jill paused. “No. If she’s having a bad morning, two people showing up might feel like an intervention.”
“And one person using her emergency key won’t?”
Jill huffed. “I was obviously going to knock first.”
“Very respectful breaking and entering there.”
Jill rolled her eyes, collecting the folder and Rebecca’s cold coffee. “She gave me the key.”
“Under duress?”
“After I reminded her that living alone after escaping a bioterrorist incident warranted basic precautions.”
Chris nodded gravely. “So, yes. You insisted.”
Jill started toward the exit.
Behind her, Chris called, “Hey. Let me know if she’s okay. And tell her I said hi.”
She glanced back. His levity had thinned, leaving the honest worry behind it. “You got it.”
Music thudded faintly through Rebecca’s apartment door. Jill knocked again, harder.
“Rebecca?”
No answer.
The radio continued; the bright, circling guitar of the Cranberries’ Sunday, turned up loud enough to blur Dolores O’Riordan’s voice through the walls. Either Rebecca genuinely couldn’t hear her over the vocals, or she was in no condition to answer.
Jill removed the spare key from her pocket. “Rebecca, it’s Jill. I’m coming in, okay?”
She waited several seconds before turning the lock.
Warm, humid air met her inside, carrying the scent of chocolate and something aggressively strawberry. The apartment itself was intact. No overturned furniture, no broken glass, no obvious sign of a struggle.
A large pair of black boots sat beside Rebecca’s white sneakers near the entryway. Jill stopped.
A dark jacket had been folded over the arm of the sofa. A man’s shirt rested on top of it, neatly folded and stacked. Swallowing the rising bubble of panic, Jill’s hand drifted toward her sidearm.
The radio blasted from behind the closed bathroom door at the end of the short hallway. The music was loud enough to disguise movement inside. Jill called Rebecca’s name again.
No response.
Then, she heard another sound beneath the music. A soft, rhythmic clicking from the kitchen. Jill steadied herself, then moved toward it carefully.
A small toy locomotive rounded the near edge of the kitchen table, pulling two passenger cars behind it. Its wheels caught at one poorly joined section of plastic track, shuddered, then continued around the curve.
The track formed a tight oval across nearly the entire tabletop, encircling something at the center.
Green and red gummy worms littered the route. Not spilled, rather arranged. Several stretched across the rails as though attempting to stop the train. One hung over the locomotive’s roof. Another had been caught beneath a wheel and flattened through the middle. More converged from inside the track in a makeshift swarm.
Only then did Jill see what the train was circling.
A small chocolate cake sat on one of Rebecca’s ordinary dinner plates. It had risen unevenly, listing slightly to one side beneath a thick layer of homemade frosting. The icing had been spread with a butter knife in earnest, visible strokes, leaving crumbs caught along the edge and one bare patch near the bottom.
Pink letters crowded the top of the cake:
HAPPY COOPERATION DAY
COOPERATION narrowed desperately as it approached the edge. DAY sloped downward beneath it, the final letter nearly sliding off the cake altogether. Two dessert plates waited just outside the track, each accompanied by a fork and neatly folded pink paper napkin.
The train completed another cheerful circuit around the display.
Jill stared, uncomprehending.
Behind her, the bathroom door opened, spilling steam into the narrow hall.
A man stepped through it barefoot and shirtless, sweatpants hanging low on his hips. A thick, fluffy pink bath towel lay across his shoulders, absurdly soft against the black ink winding over one arm. Water tracked from his dark hair, down his throat, catching against the dog tags resting on his chest.
He stopped when he saw Jill. Jill drew immediately on him.
“Don’t move.”
His hands lifted slowly in reply. His dark eyes dropped to the gun, then returned to her face.
“Oh. You must be Jill.” He paused. “It’s…nice to meet you. It’d be nicer if you’d lower the gun.”
Recognition landed all at once. She had seen his photograph tucked into Rebecca’s precise, albeit brief report of her experience in the mountains, nearly buried beneath stacks of medical notes on her desk.
“You’re the prisoner from Arklay.” She bit the words out, adrenaline singing through her veins. A convicted killer inside her friend’s apartment. Maybe he had tracked her down, seeking some form to twisted revenge. “No. You’re supposed to be dead.”
He only frowned. “Yeah. Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
But the scene was all wrong. There was no forced entry, no struggle. His boots sat neatly beside Rebecca’s shoes. Jill glanced once again at the pink towel slung around his neck, the boots by the door, then back at the cake behind her.
“Holy shit. Is this an anniversary?”
From somewhere behind the still-partially closed bathroom door came Rebecca’s immediate, scandalized reply.
“No! It is not an anniversary.”
The bathroom door opened wider.
Rebecca emerged in an enormous rose-pink terrycloth robe, the belt knotted crookedly around her waist. The hem nearly brushed her ankles, the sleeves swallowing her hands past the knuckles. Her wet hair brushed her flushed cheeks, still dripping onto the robe’s absurdly plush collar.
She took in the scene: Jill’s weapon, Billy’s raised hands, the rigid set of both their shoulders.
Her indignation disappeared.
“Jill,” the medic began carefully, “lower the gun. Did Chris not give you my message?”
“Rebecca,” Jill returned, her aim unwavering, “there is a half-naked war criminal in your apartment.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
She slipped around Billy’s shoulder and stopped at his side. He glanced down at her, then shifted subtly forward, trying to put himself between her and the muzzle. Rebecca caught his arm and held her ground. Jill adjusted her aim away from the both of them.
“But more importantly,” Rebecca continued, “this is not an anniversary.”
Jill blinked.
It was difficult to reconcile a hostage situation with Rebecca Chambers standing barefoot in her pink bathrobe, correcting terminology while the assumed hostage-taker attempted to shield her from the gun.
Exasperated, Jill lowered the weapon, but did not holster it.
“The cake says Happy Cooperation Day.”
“Correct.”
“One month from the day you met.”
“Mm. That does not make it an anniversary.”
Billy rubbed the towel over his hair. “That is basically the definition of an anniversary, Becca.”
Rebecca’s brow furrowed and she looked up at him. “Okay. Let me handle this.”
“Cooperation Day recognizes the successful formation of an emergency operational partnership under extreme conditions. Billy’s continued presence here is unrelated.”
“Unrelated.” Jill repeated the word disbelievingly.
“He is acting as a non-mansion-exposed civilian comparator for ongoing post-incident surveillance. Billy experienced a separate Umbrella-associated outbreak within the same geographic area. He therefore provides a useful operational negative control when evaluating symptoms among Spencer Mansion survivors.”
Jill looked back at the folded clothes on the sofa. “He lives here.”
“Continuous observation improves reliability of longitudinal assessment.”
Jill’s gaze moved between their wet hair, Billy’s bare chest, and Rebecca’s hastily donned bathrobe.
“You take baths together?”
Rebecca stiffened. “That is resource conservation.”
Billy leaned against the bathroom doorframe. “We’re very environmentally conscious.”
“The hot-water tank has a limited recovery rate,” Rebecca elaborated.
“Forget the hot-water tank for a second.” Jill turned to directly address the fugitive now. “How the hell do you even fit in there?”
Billy rubbed the fluffy pink towel over his hair. “Poorly.”
“He fits adequately,” Rebecca corrected. She peered up at him. “You still have some soap behind your ear, by the way.”
“Hard to rinse properly when somebody’s knee is in your ribs.”
Jill closed her eyes briefly, unsure whether to start laughing, screaming, or shooting. “So. Does longitudinal assessment usually involve frosting?”
“Morale is clinically relevant.” Rebecca countered immediately.
“I made the cake,” Billy offered.
Jill’s gaze returned to the painstakingly crooked lettering. “For Cooperation Day?”
“Yeah. Becca likes chocolate.”
“And what about the gummy worms?”
“A visual aid for reconstruction of events,” Rebecca answered.
Billy nodded towards the train. “She arranged those.”
“You suggested the one hanging off the engine!”
“I stand by my artistic choice. It needed drama.”
Rebecca rolled her eyes, then reached up with the swallowed cuff of her robe to wipe the soap from behind his ear. Billy bent his head without being asked, making himself easier for her to reach.
Jill watched the practiced little exchange.
The train completed another circuit around the cake.
For fuck’s sake.
“So…he’s your boyfriend or something? Is that it?”
Rebecca wore a look of passive indignation. “I just told you he’s a comparator.”
Jill finally holstered her weapon. “Listen. I came over here because I was worried about you.”
Rebecca’s expression softened. “I’m really sorry. I did leave a message.”
“I know. Chris wrote down, Chambers—not coming. Sounds weird. Call?”
Rebecca closed her eyes briefly. “That was not the full message.”
“I figured,” Jill agreed, though doubted the full message involved cohabitation with a fugitive under the guise of medical research. “You weren’t answering the phone or the door.”
“Crap. The radio must’ve been too loud.” Rebecca gathered the robe more tightly around herself. “I’m okay, Jill. Honest.”
Jill took a moment to study her; the wet hair, clear eyes, her color far better than it had looked last week. Whatever this was, it did not look like a breakdown.
“Yeah. You look like you’ll survive,” she said at last.
Billy’s mouth twitched, as if hiding a smile. Rebecca breezed past his amusement. “And the situation is not what it seems.”
Jill looked pointedly at the poorly constructed cake.
“Yeah, it all seems…extremely specific.”
“There are relevant circumstances I omitted from my report.”
“Tell you what,” Jill exhaled, “I am letting this go today. Tomorrow, you and I are having a very long conversation about those circumstances.”
Rebecca nodded. “That’s fair.”
“Eight o’clock sharp.”
“I’ll be there.”
Jill looked at Billy.
He straightened slightly, still clutching the fluffy towel around his shoulders. “You want to take a piece of cake?”
Jill raised an eyebrow.
“For the road,” he added. “No hard feelings about the gun.”
“Billy,” Rebecca murmured.
“Just trying to be polite.”
Jill moved toward the door. “Oh, and Chris says hi.”
“Tell him to sleep!” Rebecca replied.
“Believe me, I have.”
Jill opened the door, then looked back at them: Rebecca nearly disappearing into pink terrycloth, Billy barefoot beside her, the little train completing another lap around their homemade cake.
“Happy anniversary.”
“It is not an anniversary!”
Jill shut the door on Rebecca’s outrage.