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Chapter Text

“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” – Frankenstein; Shelley, M.

And there he had slept the dark months by, his Prometheus.

Naked as he were born upon the altar, beneath the stained glass and an empty wall space where the icon of Christ once resided. Candlelight upon his cold, still skin made it seem as if inside the still shell of flesh a heart may still beat.

A martyr, a hero, a problem, once.

Rain thrashed against the glass, bitter salt spat up from the frothing sea from the cliff on which the near-on castle was poised. The storm had been raging for several nights now as Albert Wesker came to the climax of his most difficult, and private project as of yet. With the electricity having been cut off due to the ongoing storm, and the castle cold enough to draw fog from breath, it had been a difficult feat. Although, it had slowed down the unfortunate side-effect of decomposition.

With deft fingers he had sewn shut the gaping slit sliced from the nape of the neck up through the hairline into the middle of the head. Eyes sore, but driven by that plain, sick excitement, it was not enough to slow him down. And at last, he cut the thread, and stepped back and around to admire his finished patchwork of a man laid out upon the altar, hands resting upon his taut and hollow stomach.

He put his gloved fingers to caress the hollow of the man’s cold cheek, a thumb to gently lift the eyelid to see the white-gauzy dead-fish-eye underneath. Candlelight caressed the ridges of his muscle, cast soft shadows upon skin that once glowed with the radiance of the sun. Tiny stitches patched together pieces of flesh, some grafted from other sources (himself), but it had been the utmost importance to him to ensure the final product was as close to the original as anything more.

Albert Wesker leaned down, face drawn up close to the apparent sleeping sepulchre of Chris Redfield.

 It was as if he had merely closed his eyes and laid down a minute or two ago, rather than having died almost five years prior. And oh, what a long five years it had been. Keeping his Chris in stasis, ‘on ice’, Alex had always said with her vague kind of cool amusement.

Any scent of the man was gone, replaced by antiseptic and latex, faint blood although he had not bled since he had been originally fragmented. An anatomical model.

With a careful flick of his fingers, he brushed some of the lovely brown hair off from Chris’ face – it was odd unstyled, but Wesker had never been able to replicate it quite as Chris had used to do it. But the face was correct to the nearest millimetre. It had been Wesker’s greatest toil, besides rebuilding the shreds of brain into something that could think for itself, but he had to congratulate himself. It was as if Chris had not met an untimely death after all – and had instead laid down to sleep. Peaceful, beautiful.

Chris Redfield was as handsome as the day he had died. Handsome enough to warrant his second death. And his third, and fourth. So long as the brain and body was not damaged beyond his capabilities, his best man was now as close to immortal as Wesker himself.

His fingertips touched the thin white line around the base of Chris’ neck where he had carefully reattached the head to the stem, and down to the thin silver chain from which his necklaces hung. The only two things he had recovered from the original corpse – the clothes were quite beyond ruin. And yet he had never given them much thought beyond the fact they were Chris’.

His dogtags, and a little silver cross weighed light upon his chest.

During all the time Wesker had known Chris, even playing ‘friends’ back in the late nineties, he had never realised the foolish man had tried to believe in a god. Perhaps it had been after the betrayal, with the hopelessness and darkness that fell in the advent of bioterrorism, Chris Redfield had nobody else to beg for help from other than some dead omniscience that did not ever return his prayers.

It did not matter now, for indeed a god had come, and that god was the only one who truly held the power over Chris’ cursed life or death.

Looping the chain of the cross around two fingers he snapped it clean from the neck, and lifted it into the air above the corpse. The silver object glinted quite beautifully in the candlelight, a blasphemous insult.

“Oh, Chris,” Wesker murmured into the still, cold air of the chapel, “even in death you continue to prove why you and I were never truly rivals. After all, it would suggest that we had been equals at some point.” A slight curve of his lip, and Wesker let his eyes fall down upon the sleeping soldier, perhaps watching for something. A sign. A twitch. “I doubt you’ll be needing this anymore,” he whispered, “why would you, when your true god stands here before you now in the flesh?”

Tilting back his head, and closing his eyes, Albert Wesker parted his lips, and allowed the cold silver object to slide down into his throat. For a moment he stood, feeling the cold of Chris’ devotion and sanctity drop down into his stomach, and heeded the champing spitting roar of the ocean down below the chapel glass.

From the blackness behind him, a soft whisper. A name, maybe. And Wesker spun with a hand on his hip where he’d kept Redfield’s gun for all these years and faced only the few rows of empty pews, and the tightly shut chapel door. Two pillars stood holding up the tall, elegant ceiling – and for a moment he might’ve sworn a shape slipped behind one out of the faint candlelight. Something that had called to him.

A wry smile at his own fears, he let his hand drop from the gun, still scanning the black. It was the estate, crawling into his brain and infecting him with the very same madness Spencer had acquired. Disembodied voices and shadows, but ghosts were not real, he knew that all too well. Hallucinations of the mind – tired and sickened by the proximity to death – a sure sign he must sleep soon.

A soft ‘thud’, and the blonde’s red-hued eyes snapped back toward the altar.

One of Chris’ hands had slipped from his stomach and now lay at his side. The gentle rise and fall of his chest too, and Wesker fell almost to his knees, ear pressed to his dead man’s chest in an effort to hear that rhythmic tick that confirmed his place over mankind.

Wesker rose and took a step back, suddenly feeling that thunderous anticipation of hot adrenaline burning through him in a way he had not felt in far too long. Combing back his loose hair into something akin to his usual practical style, he could hardly stop the cold smile of a cruel victory take hold.

He had done it. Become the master of death. And subsequent enthraller of his oldest nemesis.

Vengeance was not enough from a single death. He would ensure Chris Redfield knew precisely the toll for his crimes, how long he had waited to see that nauseatingly heroic visage contorted in agony once more. See the light of hope dashed from those lovely warm eyes.

The wind died down, and all of a sudden a terrible stillness fell upon the chapel.

And there they were. Chris Redfield peeled open his eyes and gazed up at the painted ceiling with something akin to euphoria and abject terror. Wesker watched, hardly breathing for bloodlust as Chris sat deadbolt upright, gasping for air as his body yearned for the oxygen it had not known in several years.

“Chris.” A gentle, rolling pleasured call. Laced in all manner of poisonous wonder and satisfaction.

Chris turned his head to Wesker, the white already fading from his eyes although he still seemed to be a little blind, squinting in the dim light of the candles to the man all in black borne from between the dust-choked wood-rotten pews.

“Chris,” he called again into the velvet darkness, voice echoing in the emptiness of the holy ceiling, now the only sound but the soft patter of quietened rain on coloured panes. Albert Wesker extended out his hand to the man, “come to me.”

As if still in a dream, Chris swung each leg from the altar, and set bare, uncertain feet down onto the ice-cold floor panels. Unsteady like a newborn foal, he walked, and fell into Albert Wesker’s waiting arms.

“Wesker?” He whispered, voice hoarse and rough as though his throat was dry with dust.

That heat, the weight of his body, Wesker let his arms slip around the reanimation. Chris leaned in, face pressed into the crux of Wesker’s neck and shoulder, shaking and still taking deep shuddering breaths. Wesker was shaking himself, having not expected Chris to fall into a natural embrace, whilst revelling in the fact he had done it.

His right hand slid up Chris’ spine, and felt the careful sewn slit that would leave a beautiful white scar upon the back of Christopher’s skull, and a deviant smile of sincere pleasure overcame him before he might help himself.

“Welcome home, Christopher.”

***

Chris still kept that grey pallor as Wesker led him through the carpeted hallways of the castle, saying nothing and stumbling every now and then on the way to one of the many unused bedrooms. And once he had the man dressed in a spare t-shirt and jeans (slightly too small for his bulk), he had allowed him to sit on the edge of the bed. He looked quite ill, dark circles around his eyes, scratching at the thin scars latticed over his body from where his reanimation had rapidly begun to heal them already. Thread melting into his flesh.

The few candles Wesker had lit did little to fix his corpse-like physiology. But Wesker had anticipated something like this – a rebirth would be no easy thing to comprehend for a man as simple as Chris Redfield. But his interest in studying the effect a little further meant that he would have to wait up on his vengeance just a little longer. Until he had ensured everything had come back right.

Wesker leaned back against the marble carved fireplace, empty grate, wind whistling softly from within. Arms crossed, he observed Chris as the younger man flickered his eyes nervously about, then back to Wesker as if ashamed of what he wanted to ask.

“What is this place, Wesker?” The words came slow and gravelly. “What’s going on?”

It would’ve been easier to explain to Chris the process of his reanimation, than the entire history of Albert Wesker’s interesting upbringing.

But Wesker indulged his best man, the least he could do. “We are at my late… father’s old estate.” Calling Spencer his father was a lie and a vile concept, but there was no reason to bore Chris with the details now.

“Estate?” Chris repeated, looking surprised. “I didn’t know you were rich, Cap.”

“Well, I suppose-…” Wesker frowned, “’Cap?’”

Chris gave a nervous little laugh, one Wesker had not heard in far longer than five years and scratched his neck lightly. “Sorry, Captain.”

The blond blinked behind the safety of his shades, and inhaled deep through his nose. “Chris, what do you last remember? Before I… found you?”

“I… I don’t know…” Chris’s expression melted into one of vague confusion, “it’s like… there’s fog in my head. I can’t really… make anything out…” his brow furrowed deeply and he wrung his wrists anxiously, “nothing. There is nothing.”

“And yet… you remember who I am?”

Chris nodded slowly, clearly stiff still as his limbs warmed back up to being alive. “Of course, I know you.”

Wesker pressed his lips together and made himself a mental note to record this fascinating detail. That his subject had lost all fragments of his previous memory aside for those of his former boss. Admittedly Wesker had grafted some of his own flesh into Chris’ new body, perhaps the DNA retained some form of memory, something that had not been previously studied. Hence why Chris still could connect dots.

“What year is it, Chris?”

“Nineteen ninety… eight?”

A strange plummeting sensation hit Wesker’s stomach, and he felt the blood drain from his face as realisation set in. The Chris Redfield sat before him was still the handsome, built thirty-five-year-old he had prematurely killed five years ago in Kijuju, and yet the mind puppeteering the feat of scientific artistry was somehow stunted at the twenty-five-year-old STARS agent who had not existed in well over fifteen years.

“Chris…” Wesker said, methodical and calm despite the desperate whirring of his mind, “Valentine, Chambers, Alomar. Do any of these names mean anything to you?”

Chris seemed to stop himself, digging through foggy haze in some effort to seek out these words being presented to him. “No… no I don’t think so. Why, are we lookin’ for them?”

Wesker exhaled deeply, and strode to the window. Outside beyond the heavy crimson curtain was only black. No moon, no stars. Not even the sea could be seen. The entire world might’ve faded out of reality in that shadowy dreamscape. He put a hand to the glass, trying to slow the chaotic tumble of his own brain as he tried to reason with why this had been the outcome. And whether this would affect the original motives of his plan.

In the reflection he watched as Chris eyed him curiously, trying to fix his hair with shaky hands. “Temporary amnesia,” he concluded, “perhaps you were injured, or suffered some kind of shock.” He almost could laugh at saying such a thing.  “Don’t be alarmed, Redfield, these things tend to sort themselves out with enough time.”

“Oh,” Chris’ expression melted into relief, “thank god. I guess I woke up feeling pretty sore.”

“Perhaps a little muscle memory will be quite enough to fix you,” Wesker said cooly, turning on his heel and approaching the man sat on the bed, and looked down on him. He grazed the backs of his fingers under Chris’ eye, and the younger stared up at him confused and unable to move. “You and I have had quite the physical history,” his fingers dragged down Chris’ cheek, brushing over the wiry stubble at his jaw, “I daresay you’ll remember this sensation.”

He clamped his leather-gloved hand tight around Chris’ throat, light at first, and applied a little pressure. As he had done on Rockfort Island all those years ago, back when Chris was still that roughneck youth full of valour and a happier determination.

"W-what do you mean?” Chris stammered, growing slightly red in the candlelight as he tried to push Wesker’s hand away, “you mean like in sparring?”

Wesker didn’t reply, squeezing tighter and feeling Chris gasp raggedly, trying harder to push him away. Those lovely eyes staring up at him with shock and a blank. He could very easily kill his man here and now, fulfil that sweet sensation he had craved after the first kill had been over all too soon.

And yet Albert Wesker knew it would not truly satisfy him to kill this Chris. One who could not repent or beg for mercy knowing what crimes he had committed. This Chris, struggling for air and unable to push him away as a strained tear dripped from his eye was that foolish boy he had once trained into a man. It would not do, not at all.

He released Chris and stood over him cold and daunting as the man caught his breath and held his throat, an angry look glinting in his eye. That flicker of pride that set Wesker’s blood to fire. His Chris was indeed still in there, but perhaps it would take some time to coax him back out.

Patience – hadn’t he shown enough already in the past five years? What was five more, if it allowed him to bring his greatest obstacle to his knees in his might at last?

“The hell was that for?” Chris snapped as he rubbed his neck, “if that was some kind of joke, it wasn’t fuckin’ funny, Wesker.”

Wesker clenched his fist, and resisted the urge bubbling up inside of himself to laugh bitterly at the semi-failure of his plan. Of course, he had succeeded where even god (should he exist) could not, and yet he had still managed to shoot himself in the foot. It was Chris Redfield, the entity of that man always somehow sticking his obnoxiously heroic military boot into his plans. Even the most meticulous. It was as though his blundering foolish meat-headedness couldn’t help but want even subconsciously to ruin Wesker’s fun, even after being dead for so very long.

And seeing him now, alive and angry, wet-eyed and flushed, spilled back on a bed with a t-shirt riding halfway up his abdomen. It was as if every horrid human dream Wesker had endured since Chris’ original passing had manifested itself before him now. A second chance, perhaps, to finally ensure his plans finally succeeded.

“My apologies,” he said smoothly, quite clearly not apologetic in the least, “I got a little carried away with myself.”

“Damn right you did.” Chris grumbled, still rubbing his throat. “You gonna tell me why I’m actually here in the first place, Captain? Maybe that’ll jog my memory more than you tryin’ to choke the life outta me."

“Perhaps so,” Wesker knew very well he could not tell Chris the full truth if he wished to study his condition in a willing manner. He would fabricate something, and hope that his subordinates general dimness would prevent him from questioning the fluff as it stuffed his ears. “But first, perhaps we should go have something for dinner. I imagine you must be hungry, Christopher?”

Chris’ anger faded almost immediately at the thought of something to fill his violently hollow stomach. “Starving.”

Wesker couldn’t even try to hide the thin smile this time. At the very least, young Chris was a predictable man. A little more swayed by vices before he grew up to become a genuine threat. Although Wesker had hungered for that man who could look him in the eye with both fear and fury, and fight to his dying breath for a cause that did not matter, he couldn’t deny that he was intrigued by this younger model.

It had been a very long time since he’d met Chris at twenty-three, bright-eyed and full of spunk. A truly disgusting artefact of a heroic age long passed. It would be something to crush him again into that jaded hunk of a man he had come to utterly despise in later years.

“An easy fix,” Wesker assured him, “and then I’ll brief you on just why we’re here at the home of the late Oswald E. Spencer.” 

***

Wesker looked down the long, dark wood table to his recently resurrected with a distinct sense of not quite knowing what to do.

It was very uncommon for him to ever reach this conclusion. It was certainly still the same Chris who had cleared his plate without complaint, and now sat back gazing up awestruck at the elaborate plasterwork and paintings strewn about the dining room. Although Wesker had admittedly neglected the place whilst he had taken up brief residency, there was still some of its faded glory clung in the drapes and meticulously detailed wallpaper.

Nobody had dusted a single thing since Wesker had seen to Spencer’s demise in 2006, and yet Chris didn’t seem to recall at all that fateful night they had crossed paths once again, and Wesker had stolen from him his dearest companion. The man seated down with his back to the fireplace didn’t even spark to the name of ‘Valentine’. It was very odd, and not at all what he had anticipated.

He had wanted Chris to get angry, shameful. To wrench between the anguish of his death, and the suffering of Jill, and his overspilling hatred. That determination and unbeatable nature Wesker had sorely missed since his departure. It had gotten ever so boring without a suitable boy-scout to stick a thorn in his side every now and then. There were very few people left in the world who thought they had an emotional connection to Wesker, it had been what had made his once-best-man quite so special.

“I suppose you’re wondering why we’re here, Redfield?” Wesker broke the thick, dusty silence, and watched as Chris’ candlelit face turned back to him. Wesker would do his best to replicate his STARS Captain persona from all that time ago, but admittedly, he was a little rusty.

“Yeah. You said it was your dad’s right?” Chris nodded, pushing his empty plate forward and leaning on the table with his forearms, “the whole place looks like it’s been deserted for months. Years, maybe. Are we here on investigation?”

“Yes, something like that.” Wesker cleared his throat, and gestured to the painting above the mantlepiece, the oil painting of a slightly younger Spencer, back when he had just become a core founder of the Umbrella Corporation alongside Marcus and the Ashfords. “My father died under some… mysterious circumstances, and I was offered reason to believe there may be some clues left behind in this mansion. It was going to be purely personal business; however you were so eager to offer your assistance I couldn’t bear to turn you down.”

Chris observed the painting thoughtfully, apparently entirely buying the premise of his reason for being there. “Man… I’m sorry to hear that Captain,” Chris said gravely, throwing a sympathetic look down the table, “I know what it’s like to lose a parent, even if you are old enough to deal with it better, I can’t reckon it gets much easier.”

Wesker – who had never actually known or cared to investigate his own ‘real’ parents – offered Chris a thin smile. His younger companion really did wear his heart too openly on his sleeve, that had always been his great weakness. He took a slow sip of water as he watched Chris stand and look up at the painting again, a deep frown on his face. Was his brain finally starting to work things out? A face he had already seen before, dead by Wesker’s hand?

The patter of the rain tapped lightly on the dark windows; a darkness eager to crawl inside.

“How about your mom?”

“Dead too, a long time ago now.” The lie came quite naturally. He had been telling people variations of this story for his entire life post the Umbrella Training Facility. Wesker had never felt any kind of longing for parents, and never recalled any memory of what they might’ve been. Not even a faint song or the sense of being cradled in a mother’s arms, in his childhood all he knew were those white walls, and the smell of antiseptic.

Chris was silent as he turned around again, observing Wesker with a little squint. “Well,” he said, conclusively, “she must’ve been pretty beautiful, ‘cause no offence, Cap, but you don’t look much like your dad.”

Ah. How he had almost missed the foolish quips the little man could produce when he wasn’t frightened for his life.

"You would enjoy my sister then, it is she who took most of that beauty” the older man chuckled.

Wider eyes, somehow. “You have a sister?”

“Pick your jaw up from the floor, Redfield. I’m afraid I may need to remind you we are here to investigate the death of my father.” His monotone, cautionary voice was enough for Chris to flush with embarrassment and nod gruffly.

“Right. How’d he die?”

“Apparent suicide. Although I have reason to believe there was foul play at hand,” Wesker mused, getting up from his chair and readjusting his shades, “it seems he was involved in some secret plots, although I am not certain of the specific details. There may be letters or the likes strewn about this castle, but it is far too large for me to tear through on my own. Which is why you will be such a great help to me, Chris.”

Chris Redfield visibly swelled his chest in pride, and flashed his signature boyish grin, one that still suited even his maturer, stubbled face. “You can count on me, Cap.”

“Good man.” Wesker glanced at the grandfather clock, it was very nearly gone midnight, and he was admittedly even feeling tired. It had been a long few weeks, and particularly a long day. All his anticipation, all his excitement, and the odd nostalgic wonder had left him in dire need of a good long sleep. Besides, he would need to call Alex to update her on the progress of his little project. It would do some good to gloat after all of her scepticism.

“I’ll show you to your room first, Chris, and we’ll get started tomorrow morning.”

Upon depositing and locking Chris away in the aptly named ‘King Arthur’ suite with a heavy bronze key (Spencer always had his inane romanticism for myths), a deep crimson decorated bedroom several doors down from his own ‘Guinevere’ emerald suite, Wesker had closed his bedroom door and locked it. And listened.

Silence in the hallway. It did not seem that Chris was making any attempt to leave as of yet, perhaps frightened by the deep shadowy corridors sans moonlight, with the kind of darkness that ate away at your skin should you linger a second too long. It was true, even Wesker felt uneasy residing in such a place. Particularly fully knowing what lay beneath the castle in the dungeons – and what evil Spencer had brought into his own home.

Between him and Chris was the shared bathroom – a door leading in from both sides. With any luck however the younger would lay down and rest, and not cause any more nuisance than his amnesia had already.

Studying the man would be the logical following step. He rifled through the notes laid out upon his desk, all the scribbled illustrations and footnotes, Spencer’s research in Romania before his own birth. The old man had abandoned it all in the wake of Umbrella, and the promise of success via a virus rather than something as ancient as the mould. A fool he was. And how difficult attaining a sample of the mould had been – although he had met some quite interesting individuals in doing so.

But none of them had successfully managed what he had. None of them had mastered death, nor harnessed the mould to such a potential. Engineering it to suit the needs of one man – perhaps vengeance was the key element after all.

And yet Spencer’s research had been left unfinished, with Wesker left as always to fill in the gaps. And nothing but pure trial and error had brought him to Chris’ resurrection. He had no data, nothing to compare his scenario with. Therefore studying Chris would be only sensible – if only to develop a more complex theory to apply to his next necromantic scheme.

Perhaps then it could also sit alongside the unutilised Uroboros in a warehouse somewhere up in the Arctic Circle until Chris was alive to see the extent of Wesker’s destructive ability. And to truly test and see whether Chris could survive to live (and die) in his new age of creation. It would be no fun dispatching such a plan until all the players were back in place, Wesker was a showman as much as he was a scientist, after all.

A long, heavy sigh left his lungs, and he flung himself down into his desk chair, resting his head in his hands after removing his shades.

He was tired, so damn tired. Perhaps meeting the young Chris once again had finally allowed him to realise his age, and the slowing of his t-virus’ potency. For over a decade it had resisted the signs of aging, but as of the past few weeks, it had finally begun to allow little flickers of his true age leak through - a grey hair, a wrinkle around his eyes. That dull ache in his back from how he hunched at his desk for a little too long. Something William had always used to complain about, back before his untimely death via his beloved g-virus.

Shaking away his exhaustion, he lit the lamp and reached for his phone. Although the castle’s electrics were still out, he had enough signal to dial in the number and wait, phone ringing as the rain began to patter heavier on the window once more.

“Hello?” A concise, female voice answered.

“Alex,” Wesker said, quietly, “my apologies for calling so late.”

“No matter, Albert. I’m still at work,” she said clearly. “Your project, its completion was today, yes? I do hope you’ll return to the laboratory sooner rather than later, it’s been quite a drag without your expertise. None of these fools know a thing about synthesisation.”

Wesker couldn’t help but silently laugh to himself at the haughty uptightness of his pseudo-sister. They were of course, not related by blood. But both being victims of Project W, and the final surviving children, it had been hard not to find kinship. “It will not be long now,” a promise, and subsequent hesitation before; “although I have hit a snag.”

Alex sounded slyly amused as she asked; “a night of disappointments for you as well, I hope?”

“Not all the way. It worked,” he said calmly, “and Redfield is currently breathing and dreaming only two doors down from my own as we speak.”

There was a long pause, and Wesker could only imagine the pale woman as she fought off her irritation. Alex had never approved of his little side project – deeming it a waste of time.

“What’s the snag?” She asked, sternly. “I don’t recall you having much luck before in building and raising the dead for your own means, Albert. Please do not tell me you are calling me to report another hole through your stomach.”

“Not quite.” Wesker leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply once again, looking up at the dusty chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, glinting in the flickering candlelight, and swaying softly in the breeze from the poorly sealed old windows. The same that fluttered the curtains as if somebody stood playing behind them in the dark. “It seems he has lost the majority of his memory. Only brief snatches of 1998, and of me.”

“And how exactly is this a problem?” Her voice dripped in venomous ice, as if disbelieving of Wesker’s tenacity to interrupt her work for this. “Give him a grand speech and dispose of him, I thought they were your speciality.”

“It’s a problem as that Chris Redfield within this house with me, is the wrong one. Too young, not one who could possibly comprehend the purpose of his reconception.”

“Sever the brain and start again, you must’ve forgotten something. Not that I believe it matters… just kill the man and move on, it’s been far too long for you to continue your obsession in this way, Albert.”

“I will not kill him,” Wesker said coldly, “not immediately.”

Time was fickle, and cruel. Moreso than any one man might be. And yet even that he had mastered in his replication of Chris Redfield. Turned back time to before the fateful night in the Arklay Mountains, when Chris was still that loyal, cheeky hound who had bitten his heel as much as stuck by them. And now he had found himself at that crossroads once again – with a choice. Kill Chris, and bury him as he should’ve been before. Or…

“And so what now?” Alex sighed, “you mean to keep the man as a pet?”

“I shall study him, I believe Spencer may have indeed been on the verge of a breakthrough,” Wesker mused, drumming his fingertips on the desktop, “and what I saw in Romania… well, I think this might be something worth observing, Alex. And equally as viable an option as Uroboros.”

“Ever confident, you truly do never change brother.” He could hear Alex shuffling something about on her own desk, and the quiet mutterings of what he assumed was another person entering the room. “I shall come down this weekend,” she announced, “and meet the project. Whilst I know it to be a waste of your time and efforts, I am admittedly intrigued.”

“Hmmh”

“Don’t sound so pleased, if your man turns out to be as much of a waste as I anticipate, I will not hesitate to put him down myself so you might get back to work.”

“That is not your pleasure to do. Chris Redfield is mine and mine alone,” Wesker warned her, “only I have that right to kill him now, after all I did to return him to life.”

A scornful laugh. “You have no divine right. You are only a man.”

“Try to lay a finger upon him, and then we shall truly see.”

Alex gave another short, sharp laugh. “Well now I am intrigued. Just what could this soldier have that has gotten you so defensive, Albert?”

That earlier image of Chris Redfield, flush and afraid, the skin of his abdomen exposed to candlelight as he fell back upon the bed, the ghost of Wesker’s hand still around his throat. Wesker frowned to himself and tried to slow the sudden sensation of excitement that flickered through him at the vision. Perhaps it had been too long, and he was too tired, and the madness was taking its toll.

“Aren’t all of us protective of our things?” Albert Wesker said shrewdly, “but you are very welcome to come to observe. Perhaps in your infinite wisdom, you might offer me some real council rather than mockery.” Wesker ran his fingers through his hair, catching a glimpse of himself in the tall mirror beside the door. It was not a point of discussion that he no longer looked thirty-eight. “ And may I remind you, none of my plans yet have directly failed-”

“They have however stunted, or led to lesser outcomes,” Alex finished smugly, “but no matter, it is late and I can hear you’re in a foul mood, when do you propose on returning to your true work, brother?”

Wesker was about to reply when he heard a muffled noise from beyond the bedroom door, and shut off the call without warning. He held himself dead still, listening to the piercing silence of the castle all around him and the quiet groan of old brick. And the stifled, carpeted footsteps approaching his door. He had not heard Chris’ room rattle open – how could it? The man was locked inside via the key that sat on his desk.

The man reached for the desk drawer and silently retrieved his pistol and slipped back on his glasses. He was still, enough to phase through the slashing rain. He could hear it in the hallway outside his room – soft, rhythmic thudding of foot on carpet. Something he had heard before many a time since his instatement in the damned castle, always only to find the hallway dark and void of intruder.

Something had been stalking him ever since he’d come back to this place. Something that lurked just out of sight, ate away at his sanity, and whispered his name in the night.

On his feet, light and quick, the man crossed to the door and peered through the keyhole. But there was nothing, only that seeping, choking blackness. And that sound of foot on carpet, coming nearer and nearer.

That crawling, seeping tendrilled dark.

Wesker quietly clicked the lock, and turned the handle before throwing the door open.

“Jesus!” Chris’ white face in the darkness spun around to face him, brandishing a heavy bronze candlestick in his hand. “Fuck me..” he gave a little laugh and lowered his weapon, “you scared me, Cap.”

“And where do you think you’re going, wandering about in the dark at night, Christopher?” Wesker asked, the tension leaking from his bones as he crossed his arms disapprovingly. “I want you well and rested for work tomorrow.” But… he could’ve sworn he locked that door. He’d have to check in the morning – no doubt he would’ve heard if Chris had bashed his way through.

“Sorry, I know,” Chris shrugged, “but I could’ve sworn I heard something-“

“And ran off to investigate?” Wesker finished, “it’s an old house, Chris, it’ll make noises. Now please, return to your room and get some sleep.”

“I can’t sleep, I’m not tired.” Chris peered past Wesker to the piles of books and papers on his desk, “looks like you’re not, either. Want some help?”

Obstinate boy.

“It is nothing of interest to you,” Wesker assured him, raising an eyebrow. It was very odd to hear Chris offer him help.

“Or at least let me bunk in your room tonight, then,” Chris grinned sheepishly, “this house is giving me the creeps, I might be able to sleep if we’re bunked up. It’ll be just like that time we had to sleep over at the RPD-…”

Wesker could not remember that at all. Whether it had been a good experience or (more likely) ultimately frustrating. “And where do you propose on ‘bunking’, Christopher?”

“It’s a big bed,” a vague shrug, “I’ve shared with plenty of friends before, no big deal. You stick to your side, and I’ll have mine.”

A deep sigh, one that accepted Chris would only be a pain if not kept under close surveillance. He had forgotten how much of his STARS career had been babysitting a bunch of young adults with little higher education beyond boot camp and streetwits. He supposed it would stop Chris from wandering off and finding something he shouldn’t be seeing. That which lay beneath the house. At least, not until Wesker was ready.

“Fine,” he murmured, standing aside and allowing the marksman to trundle inside. He peered out into the black corridor once more, but there was nothing but the dust in the air and the faint smell of mouldering carpet. Although he clicked the lock again, just to be safe.

“Our rooms are pretty similar,” Chris commented, sitting on the edge of the bed in pyjamas he’d rifled out of the closet, “what’re you up to?”. He watched Wesker as the older man crossed to the desk and began to clear up his notes into neat little folders.

“Lay down, Chris, don’t make me beg you.”

“I told you, I’m not tired,” Chris muttered, “I feel like I’ve been asleep for days, I’m ready to get back to work.”

“Hmph.” Wesker hummed to himself in sly amusement, the poor man had no idea, “I however, am exhausted. And if you wish to stay here in this room, you will very well do as I say. Understood, Redfield?”

“Yes, sir.” A grumble.

Wesker waited for Chris to select his side of the bed (facing the curtained window), before retreating to the bathroom to change and clean up before bed. When he returned, Chris was laying down under the duvet, asleep, he hoped.

Snuffing the candle, Wesker climbed into the cold bed and lay facing the bed canopy above. He set his glasses on the bedside table, and felt the ache of strain soothed in the darkness. Strange as it was, to have his rival in his bed, he felt oddly at peace in the quiet dark. Rain, the distant whisper of the sea, the ticking of the clock down in the main hall (it somehow permeated every inch of the castle). The steady breaths of the living Chris Redfield within his fingertips reach.

Things had not quite gone to plan, and yet, Wesker was not entirely dissatisfied. Had he not been an absolute egotist and cruel gamemaster things would have emerged quite differently that evening. But here he was, and how odd that sense of calm was.

He turned his head, and through the dark could just make out the shape of Chris upon the pillow. Unmoving, facing away. Wesker turned on his side, and rather wished Chris was facing him instead. He had spent ever so long reconstructing that face, and now even with its spider-web scars, he couldn’t have been more satisfied.

An ‘art project’ Alex had called it once. And perhaps she had been quite right.

It was the utmost of importance that the face that he killed again was the very same. His Chris. And when he did so, he would not touch the handsome item again. Sewing together a body was simple enough – but the face and brain were too precious, if too much was lost, it would mean the end of his plaything for good.

In the dark, he reached out his ungloved hand, and lightly stroked the white scar on the back of Chris’ neck. Tracing it up into his thicket of brunette hair, short and soft, a slight curliness to it. Beneath it was that beautiful brain he had worked his blood and sweat in to. Tears too, if he had ever had any to shed.

Perhaps when he was bored of playing resurrection, he would preserve only the head. Although it would be a shame to lose such an interesting body, too.

He could hear Chris’ breathing hitch as he let his fingertips drag through the locks and retreated his hand.

“Sleep, Christopher.” He whispered into the dark, turning over and finally letting his own heavy eyes fall shut.

In his restless dreams he dreamt of that stone cold body on the slab, hollow of soul and life, dry of blood and spit. The world all around was silent and black, and only the altar in the pale candlelight stood out from the endless night-sea. Strange stars hung up above, and no sound filled the air. Not his own heart, not his own breath, not the rain or wind or water. As if everything was gone.

Albert Wesker was afraid. Sweating, shaking, fearing what lay before him. It dripped down his forehead and neck, and the shadowy tendrils that slowly entwined his legs and torso dragged him in closer despite his voiceless pleas, scratching at his own eyes to try and blind himself, hot blood dripping down his cheeks as he tried desperately not to see the face of what awaited him in that silent temple.

And yet he could not blind himself, and was forced to look upon the face of his creation. On this side, the sleeping marble of Chris Redfield – and yet that nauseous pit in his stomach and the instinct crying out inside his brain told him this was not the man he had wanted to bring back. He hung, limp by shadow, drawn in closer and closer, until the stench of rotting meat and necrotization stung his eyes and made him choke. And standing now looking down, he could see that the other side of Chris was rotted almost to complete decomposition. Ribs, teeth, visible and strung with greying flesh. Blackened lips, and that same fish-eye white gauze to his loose eyeball.

Chris… he wanted to moan in anguish. Fall to his knees at the knowledge that his plan had failed. But in the silence he could do nothing but be drawn in closer, closer, face almost touching Chris’ as the darkness seeped into his brain and down his throat, and the whispers of a voice from beyond the veil poured into his mind.

An inch between them, and Chris’ preserved eye snapped open to reveal a black void inside, and the half-corpse grinned in spite as it grasped Wesker with its skeletal claw, clutching him by the throat. All the whispers were growing to a roaring crescendo like the crashing of the stormy ocean, Chris opened his mouth, and out poured black tentacles that wrapped themselves around Wesker’s face, and brought with it the taste of death.

A horrible cry – like the death rattle of a furious demon. It split the darkness, tore through Wesker’s eardrums and brain. He could not see for the black worms burrowing into his flesh and eyesockets, the skeletal claw piercing his neck, and the moving lips of the dead man as it continued to whisper terrible things.

“…I’m coming back,” the dead man whispered into the fragmentation of his soul, “and this time, I will leave whole.” Wesker felt the peeled back decomposed lips grin against his own. “Wesker…”

He sat up sweating and trembling, gasping for air as he touched his unpierced throat. The bedroom was still dark and cold, although the bed was warm, and the rain still pattered on the window panes. The pale, nervous face of Chris was peering at him from the other side of the bed, and Wesker almost threw himself back in shock – before remembering it all.

“Nightmare?” Chris whispered, in his deep, warm voice. Nothing like the rattle of promised doom. Here he was alive and full of blood and light, not that creeping dark. Kind, brown eyes like the promise of a warm autumn.

The younger man sat up a little as Wesker wiped the sweat from his brow, and Wesker could almost still feel the ghost of those dead lips upon his. Something he had never once lusted for when the man had been alive before. And there they were, poised and soft in the comfort of his bed, an offering of sanctity from the terror and the sickness. “Wesker,” Chris called out, trying to refocus his dazed Captain, “do you want me to go grab you some water or something? You look awful.”

Chris began to slip from the bed before Wesker had a chance to respond, and the older man grabbed him harshly by the arm.

“No,” he hissed, “don’t you dare step foot from this room until sunrise.”

The younger man made a pained face; “Wesker- you’re hurting me-”

Wesker blinked, and let go as quickly as he had grabbed him. Watching Chris rub his sore arm and give him a stare of distinct suspicion. The older man sighed, and rubbed his sore eyes. “Sorry, Christopher. I don’t know what’s come over me.” Apologising to the man. How certain Wesker had been that he would never have to do so again.

The bed lowered as Chris sat back down, and shuffled up a little bit closer.

“You look exhausted,” he nodded, “my little sister used to get nightmares all the time when we were kids, and she’d wake me up and crawl in to sleep in my bed. She used to say my hugs kept all the nightmares away,” he grinned sheepishly, “if you want, I can hold you until you drop back to sleep, Captain?”

Albert Wesker could think of nothing less appealing than such a man clinging to him in that moment as he lay back down, facing away from Chris, still feeling distinctly nauseous and as if the dark all around slithered with disembodied limbs.

“What do you think you are doing?” Wesker sighed, as Chris shuffled up behind him and snaked his large, solid arms around Wesker’s waist, “did I say ‘yes’ to your foolish suggestion, Redfield?”

“Nope,” Chris pulled the unhappy older man in close to his chest, holding him secure and tight in his warmth, soft breaths tickling through Wesker’s hair. “You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one, Cap.”

Too tired to fight, too sick to argue, Wesker grit his teeth and tried not to think too hard about the bizarre scenario he had found himself wound into. This man who had been a still corpse only several hours prior now held him as if it were only natural. This man made of a combination of their sewn flesh. In the stillness, he could hear the beating of Chris’ heart. Feel it, even, thudding against his spine.

Had Chris always been so touchy? Wesker certainly couldn’t remember the younger ever forcing the skinship before – in fact he had revelled in later years how Chris shuddered at any brush of their skin. He couldn’t quite comprehend why the reincarnation had somehow come to find Wesker touchable. Again, his conclusions rolled around to the concept of Chris’ immaculate conception via his flesh and hand, but it was distracting trying to think with the creature wrapped around him and starting to snore quietly.

For a minute or so, he tried to wriggle free, but gave up upon concluding his heart just was not in this fight. He would deal with Chris for his cheekiness in the morning, but for now, the welcoming call of sleep rang out again. And he followed down its winding path into the darkness, this time with an armour upon his breast.

The great clock in the hall rang out for eight o’clock when Wesker’s weary eyes flickered open again.

Through the thin gap in the heavy green curtains, the foggy, greyish light streamed into the chamber and lit up the awful paintings adorning the dark wood-panelled walls. Gulls screeched, and their shadows flitted against the opposite wall.

Chris Redfield’s arms were still tight around him, and the younger man was still apparently dozing judging by the soft snores and sighs. It was warm, and Wesker could feel his exhaustion reign on despite several hours of undisturbed sleep, eyelids heavy and the strange sense of comfort. Wrapped up in that pair of firm, god-defined muscles that he had once thought was lost for good.

Albert Wesker had never had such an experience. Love had never had the time for him, nor he for it. Never had he had his head turned, nor felt the urge to seek it out. Never dreamt of being held, or touched, and in fact wore his gloves in the distinct disgust he felt for touching others. And yet he felt no panic – only quiet, sombre warmth. Perhaps he had known Chris long enough he knew the man meant him no harm in this state, perhaps he hadn’t realised just how much he had needed it.

He shifted a little – and that was when he felt it.

Embarrassing as it was, Chris was indeed only human. And if anything this stood to prove the experiment an absolute success. But it was hot and hard and pressed up against his thigh in a most demeaning and uncomfortable way.

“You little bastard,” Wesker muttered to himself. He should’ve known better than to allow his enemy to get so comfortable around him, and he most certainly did not want to get involved any deeper than things were already progressing. He tried in vain to break free from his prison without disturbing the sleeping man, but Chris held onto him tight. And with no other option, he was forced to wrench himself out.

Chris moaned sleepily and rolled onto his back as Wesker rolled out from underneath the warmth of the bedsheets and out into the cool air. The young man was staring blearily up at the ceiling, hair a scruffy mess. Had they still been in STARS Wesker might’ve told the soldier to clean himself up and look presentable. But he supposed there was little need for that now.

Not waiting for the younger to get up and realise his embarrassing situation, Wesker went about finding himself an outfit for the day from the closet. Something practical, in black or deep ocean blue. He was aware of the stare burning into the back of his head as he began to shrug off his sleeping shirt, and turned to give Chris an accusatory stare.

“Something the matter, Redfield?”

The younger man was awake now, lying on his side in a somewhat provocative position, a wry sleepy grin etched on his face. “No, no. Keep going, don’t mind me.” He certainly looked his age now in this grey, unkind light. All shadowy eyes and stubble, the distinct face of a man who had seen many battles in his short life on Earth, and still somehow lived to tell the tale. It was hard, however, to see the scars. And Wesker had for the moment an eerie sense that he was caught in a time that never existed.

He turned, shirtless and arms crossed, to face the man disapprovingly.

“You seem awfully relaxed,” he commented coldly, “forgotten you’re on the clock, Redfield?”

Chris shrugged. “Closest thing I’m getting to a vacation this year.” Then, he squinted, and a little frown tilted the corners of his lips. “Come here a sec, Wesker-“

Wesker frowned too, but sensing Chris was still too oblivious to attempt anything foolish, he stepped over to the side of the bed, and watched as Chris sat up slowly, bedsheets falling away and allowing him to see the younger man was still proudly hard – and still seemingly unrealising of it. How much of a distraction Wesker must be.

He stood still as cold marble as Chris reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, leaning up and in somewhat.

“Your eyes…” Chris said, curiously, “did you hurt them? I could’ve sworn…”

Wesker spun away, clasping a hand over his face as he realised his blundering error. “Ah- no,” he said quickly, “it’s nothing, Redfield.” In the timeslip, he had quite forgotten he still had the vivid red rings from the t-virus still flourishing in his blood. “My glasses-“

“I’ve got ‘em,” Chris assured him, “come back here Cap.” And as Wesker continued to hesitate, he sighed and added; “I won’t ask any questions.”

Without lowering his hand, Wesker turned back to Chris.

“I can’t put them on with your hand in the way, Captain.”

“You are cheeky. Just give them to me, Redfield.”

Chris laughed softly, “you don’t have to call me that outside work, Wesker, you know my name.” He pushed Wesker’s hand aside and Wesker could feel the soft breaths fluttering on his eyelids and lips as he waited, expectantly.

Wesker fought back the urge to decimate the boy into a little red smudge on the ceiling, and gave an almighty sigh of dismay. “Chris, I would like it if you returned to me my glasses.”

The shades were slid onto his face, carefully and precisely, and Wesker opened his eyes in time to be pulled back down onto the bed by the immense strength of the younger and rolled underneath him. Had Chris always been so strong? No matter how he tried, he couldn’t push the weight of muscle and brawn off of him.

“Christopher,” a warning note, back flush to the warm cotton sheets.

Chris was grinning triumphantly, face slightly pink as he looked down onto Wesker. “I was happy, y’know, that you let me tag along with you here,” he was remembering a false memory, another thing to note in his research, “I always wondered if you… y’know… too.”

Wesker stared up at Chris through the safety of his glasses. “I don’t believe I know what you’re hinting at, Christopher.” There was a sudden sense of doom pitting his stomach wide open.

“Well, it’s not like it’s a big secret between us, right?” Chris was certainly dusted magenta now, and he swallowed nervously before continuing, eyes aglow with wonder and stars.

“There is a time for play and a time for work. Let me get up right this minute, Redfield.”

“I don’t wanna play coy the whole time we’re here, Wesker, and if you don’t want it you can tell me to go back home and we’ll forget about it.” Burning eyes that showed the fire of his burning heart; “Let me kiss you,” a demand, hopeful and sincere.

Albert Wesker blanked for a moment and didn’t realise his lips had parted in slight shock until he snapped them shut again. What the hell had he done to make his reincarnate believe they had some previous entanglement? It was certainly not something he had counted on, those gentle, hopeful eyes behind the shadow of age. It was too much for so early in the day. Too much for a man who had never been asked that of anybody.

He put a palm to Chris’ chest, trying to keep him at bay. “Chris,” he began carefully, “you’re here to assist me, not make dewy eyes at. I’m sorry if you thought…” he trailed off, feeling the thunder of Chris Redfield’s reconstructed heart beating its way out of his wolfishly hairy chest. He shook his head in vague wonder. “Since when were you so shameless?”

He had asked half in exasperation, half in pity. For he truly couldn’t understand it, after everything he had done to make this stupid man suffer.

“Says the guy who invites me to his house and cuddles with me all night, and then tells me he doesn’t want me.” Chris looked a little hurt, but as he began to pull away, Wesker yanked him back in again.

Chris had nowhere else to go, and Wesker was now curious. Curious to see just what kinds of thoughts and memories Chris thought they shared, what emotions might’ve seeped beneath the skin of the warrior who had always faced him with such bold disgust. Whether victory might taste all the sweeter if he built up a new rapport, only to reveal the truth at sweet crescendo again – a la 1998.

“Don’t play around with me, Wesker. I’m not a kid, I can handle rejection.” Stubborn, bratty, foolish.

“I do… want you to stay,” Wesker said slowly, “I am interested in the workings of your heart, Chris. And yet, I don’t quite understand it. What it is that you want from me.”

“I can explain it all,” his Chris promised, that starry look taking hold once more, and the lacing scars of his flesh clear to him now. Wesker brushed a fingertip along the thin line down the centre of the younger man’s lips, as if still in a dream, and didn’t shy away as Chris lowered his head and pressed his scarred lips to Wesker’s own.

For a second he lay there, stone still and unsure of what to do. Chris Redfield was upon him, kissing him soft and slow and wanting in the grey light of that morning. Fifteen years. Of comradery, enmity, burning hate and fear. The man he had dreamed of for the past five years, of torturing him to insanity and taking his all before disposing of him over and over in all the sadistic ways he might’ve pleased. And here he was, allowing him liberties of his virgin lips.

Wesker didn’t know when he’d begun to kiss back, snaking his long ivory fingers into the tousle of that darker hair, still catching that scent of antiseptic behind the musk. Chris moaned satisfactorily, warm and golden even in that morning’s gloom, and Wesker felt himself starting to slip.

He pushed the younger up again, frightened by the tightening of his own chest.

“I think you’ve made yourself perfectly clear, Christopher.” He touched the thin scar around Chris’ throat, where he had reattached the offending, beautiful head, and admired the glow upon the visage of his creature. He truly had done a marvellous job. “Go get yourself dressed, we have a lot of work to do. And you…” he let his eyes drift down, to the distinct bulge in his subordinates pants, “have some working of your own to complete before then, I see.”

Chris glanced down, and gasped in horror as he threw himself back off of Wesker, clutching his dick through his clothes as he scrambled off of the bed. “Fuck, sorry-“ he apologised, now a lovely shade of puce, “seriously Cap, I didn’t mean-“

Wesker sat up, and gave Chris a slightly forced smile. “Only natural, Christopher, Go take a cold shower, or perhaps you need to express your feelings a little more at eight o’clock in the morning?”

“No sir,” Chris muttered, stumbling into the bathroom and locking the door behind him.

Wesker sighed heavily through his nose. And lay back down again for just a moment, breathing in the pheromones and musk Chris had left behind.

Things had turned out quite strange after all. Alex would know what to do, she always did. But he still had a day or two until she might arrive, and until then he had to deal with investigating just who this man was.

Heart heavy and dull, he wrenched himself from the haven of his bed and drew back the heavy emerald curtains to peer down through the glass misty with condensation. With the back of his hand he wiped clear a section and peered out at the grey, foggy beach crawling away from the castle far down below, at the gulls pecking some great dead fish upon the shore.

Perhaps he would put Chris’ memory to the true test first and show him just who waited down in the cold dark of the dungeon for a hero who may never now come to her. Not at least, with any intention of saving her. If Chris could not recall Jill Valentine, then he was truly lost, and perhaps, entirely and unequivocally Albert Wesker’s – although he was not sure if he wanted this or felt sickened to the darkest sinful depths of his rotting soul.

Master of death he might’ve become, but the cost of such a crime might just prove to be somewhat beyond his means. Beneath the leather and the shades, he was (unfortunately, as Alex promptly put), still only a man.

And the dream of godhood that Spencer had always craved, was dead long, long before their time.

Chapter Text

“To you O Lord, we commend the soul of Christopher Redfield your servant; in the sight of this world he is now dead, and in your sight may he live for ever.”

The priest bowed his head, and the few onlookers followed suit around the hollow in the Earth before them. 

Grey mizzle of that early spring dampened the black suits and flattened hair to skull, and wet the soil wherein the simple coffin waited to be lowered – ready to be swallowed up into the ground, and left forevermore untouched.

Several yards back a solitary figure stood, hat pulled low over his eyes, and leather gloved hands clasping the top of a cane as he observed the priest sprinkling holy water onto the coffin. He stood sheltered somewhat beneath a fairly barren ash tree, which whispered in the respectful silence of the morning. Only that, and the distant sighs of the main road a little way away.

The cemetery, some way from town, chosen for its relativity to the city in which Chris Redfield had grown up, was minimalistic and lacked any beauty deserved for the preservation of a soul. All plain granite stone and unkempt, crumbling seraphs. No natural beauty, nothing to welcome and soothe the soul. It was cruel to have such a man interred somewhere so undeserving of his influence.

“…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the priest continued, voice heavy and heartful, “bless, we pray, this grave, and grant that he whose body is to be buried here may dwell with Christ in paradise.”

A woman all in black, red hair tied back from her young, freckled face hid away in the sleeve of her coat. A familiar face, one he had not seen in many years – and bore a little resemblance to the dead. Another figure laid a hand on her shoulder, and she wept silently on.

“Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him; present him to God the Most High. A friend, a brother, and a hero. O Father take him into your merciful light, for he did to die in your favour in hallowed sacrifice for the sake of the human race. Grant this, O merciful Father, for the sake of Jesus Chris our only saviour, mediator and advocate. Amen.”

The intimate collection huddled in the grey mizzle around the grave mumbled their amens, and laid flowers down onto the coffin before it was lowered down and down and out of sight. None of them knew the body had not been recovered – a small mercy the BSAA had thought – a chance to lay the dead honourably. His only remaining family had fought for him not to buried in a military graveyard, and so they had been permitted the empty coffin with the lies of a corpse within.

“Funerals, such a dreary affair,” a female voice rang out from beside the man, and he looked down to his right to see his companion. A woman in a fitted black veil and dress, blond hair wound up elaborately upon her head. Only her lips were visible of her face, painted a blood-rose red. “They truly are only for the living.”

“Alex,” he addressed her, stern and cold. “I was not aware you were invited.”

“So I hear, you were not either,” she scorned him as they watched the living weep for the empty coffin, "I doubt a single one of these people would be glad to see you here, even if you fell on your knees and begged for their God to strike you down for your sins.”

“I seek no absolution. And I do not mean to intercept.” He pulled his hat brim lower, and gestured for the woman to follow him as he turned to start walking through the rows of unkempt graves all green with moss and brown with rotten leaves from last autumn. “Why are you here?”

“I ought to ask you the same thing, brother.”

“To pay my respects.”

A short, incredulous laugh. “To gloat, you mean. You must feel so proud to know you’ve caused the emotional strife of his family and friends. And I heard from a little birdy that the coffin is quite empty. I’m here in curiosity only, Albert. As to the whereabouts of such an infamous corpse.”

They stopped beside the crumbling sculpture of an angel, and Alex perched herself upon the top of a granite gravestone quite decently. She seemed not to care for the rain, or for the strange attire and expression pouring out from her companion.

“I haven’t the faintest what you’re implying,” Albert said smoothly, glancing again across the cemetery to where the gathering of black still pecked about the grave like crows. “He was utterly destroyed, I told you that myself.”

“Do not lie to me.”

A snap of his head to face the woman again, and a wry smile on his lips. “I truly could never fool you, could I?”

“I heard you had your men pick up every little piece from that temple floor, every shred and limb as in your anger you had torn him quite savagely apart. Most uncouth. Most unlike you, Albert.”

“An accident.”

“A betrayal of your self control,” she corrected him coldly. “You are powerful, you knew as much. And you meant to kill the man – hated him, from what I gathered. So why is it you mean to keep his body as a trophy? I did not think you to be the sentimental sort.”

The man’s hands tightened on the head of his cane, and his lip twitched for a second into a snarl, before righting himself again. A droplet of water dripped from his hat, and splashed onto his black dress-shoe. “It was not his time yet. I had… further use for him.” He spoke a little hesitantly, “my plans cannot be completed without him.”

“Hence why you had Uroboros sent up North?” Alex questioned, deeply unimpressed. “Your petty obsession with one man will be your end, Albert. Hasn’t he been trouble enough for you? Shouldn’t you be glad to see him dead at long last?”

“I only wish for him to know the true depths of my hatred, and to taste vengeance as it should be delivered. It was a mistake to kill him so soon in such a crass method, I mean to rectify my error.” His voice shook a little as he spoke, trying his damned hardest to stay even whilst he pushed the cane down into the soft, wet earth.

Alex’ lips twitched into a frown. “You cannot change the past, Albert. As you and I both know, what’s dead is dead.”

“Perhaps, once upon a time.” Wesker turned his head away again from his sister and up toward the thickly clouded sky, feeling the cool rain on his pale, exhausted face. “I was close before with the t-virus. The progenitor… but I have found another way, in Spencer’s journals. Those of which he meant to destroy along with himself.”

“Albert,” she sounded oddly strained, as if attempting to display any form of pity she might’ve managed. Although he had never known her to own a shred of sympathy before. “What you’re implying… it is not possible. You killed that man, and you must live with these consequences. Even if you succeed, it will not be that same soldier you hated from before – but a reanimation of your own jaded memories. You are a fool if you cannot realise that.”

“I know what I did,” a snap in his tone, “and I will not allow death to be his end. For him there cannot be salvation, and there is no merciful god. I will keep to my work, Alex, and you to yours.”

Her red lips pressed tightly together, and she slid down from where she had sat herself upon the grave. With an idle, silk gloved hand, she wiped the rain from Wesker’s cheeks and sighed deeply as he stood and stared without a flicker of thanks.

“You and I both do not know the word ‘mercy’, it is a weakness, a fallacy in the human makeup. But in this instance, I must insist that you learn to ‘let go’. You cannot change the past any more than you can change the rotation of the sun. That man you destroyed has done his damage, and you unto him. There is nothing more you can gain from his continued existence except your own suffering. And whilst I do not go as far as to claim that I ‘love’ you, brother, it disturbs me to see you this way.”

Wesker grabbed her hand tight to hold it at bay. “I will decide when it is time to ‘let go’, my suffering is a myth, I want his to be his eternal life. You do not to know how long I waited for that day, to ruin it all in a moment of wrath. It cannot end this way. I will not allow it so.”

Alex Wesker shook her head in apparent pity, and withdrew her hand from the grip of her brother’s. “All this, for one normal man. Even for you, this is odd.”

“He was one of my best, once.” Wesker turned his body away, back toward the ash tree, and the grave now dutifully deserted with the people having taken shelter back inside the plain, box-built church. “Even normal men must serve their punishment for their betrayals. That is the one thing he and I always understood. I will enact my mercy, and show him how wrong he was to put faith in the wrong higher power.”

A brief pause, a realisation Albert Wesker was far beyond reason in his own weird grief, and Alex Wesker turned away. “I will wait for you in the car, do not be long.”

***

“How far does this place go underground?” The younger man’s voice echoed through the stone-lined stairwell as he followed close behind Wesker, burning torch in one hand and pistol in the other.

The walls were wet with damp, it dripped and echoed in the darkness they descended into, along with the scent of organic rot and stagnant water.

“Does it go all the way down to the sea caves? Sure smells like it. Nasty.”

“I am not sure. I never thought to check.” Wesker’s voice came as a murmur, having answered many of Chris’ queries since they’d begun the day. They reached the bottom of the stairs, and he glanced over his shoulder to the man. White-faced with nerves in the dark, dressed up in the jeans and white t-shirt from yesterday, one of Wesker’s black jackets thrown over his broad shoulders. “Down here was used as a prison during the war, although its history extends deeper than that."

“Yeah?” Chris asked, a little nervous as he swept the beam of the torch up and around the wooden beams keeping the stone from collapsing down upon them. A soft cry from somewhere deeper in the darkness, and he seized up. “What was that?"

“Only the wind, Chris, only the wind.”

They carried on down a long, dingy corridor into the summoning black and the wailing of the wind trapped beneath the castle. Perhaps Chris was right and the caves really did stretch all the way down to the sea – perhaps that had been how Spencer had manoeuvred experiments in and out without getting caught quite so easily.

“A few nights ago I intercepted a young woman attempting to infiltrate this castle, no doubt seeking some of my father’s fortune,” he explained as they passed down into the belly of the undercroft, and into the main prison ward. Two tiers of empty cells, rusted iron beams from the dripping water, floorboards bent out of shape. The distinct sweet scent of death and human misery. Although he had to thank the darkness for not revealing so soon the skeletal remains and iron cuffs askew amongst the filthy floors.

“As the electricity is still down I cannot call for the police to apprehend her, so I had her instated down here in the meanwhile.”

“Some people really are evil,” Chris concluded solemnly, looking up and around in sick fascination at the out-of-use prison. “But Captain, does she really need to be kept down here? Isn’t it a bit…”

“It is for our safety as much as hers,” he assured the younger man, drawing them down the next corridor and to a cell on their left. The most intact, and the only one locked up tight. “As soon as I am able I will have her transported elsewhere. But for now, unless you would like to be killed in your sleep, she will remain here.”

Chris stood behind Wesker, peering over his shoulder into the cell. The light of his torch swept through the silky dark, until it rested on the face of a woman. She was stood perfectly still in the centre of the cell, blond hair tied up, a black cloak adorning her shoulders and hiding the rest of her body. She stared at Chris, piercing and startling.

“Jesus…” he whispered, moving in next to Wesker and leaning on the bars with his gun-hand.

Wesker watched Chris’ reaction with the utmost curiosity. Was the man remembering at last? Jill Valentine, fully under his control and yet still the very thing he knew had hurt Chris the most to lose. Perhaps it had been in some jealousy he’d kept the bitch alive, just to make Chris suffer again when they rendezvoused at the temple, knowing Chris to waste his loyalty and strength on someone so weak when he offered him the world, once.

“Are you alright in there?” Chris asked, voice hoarse and a little upset. He gave a sideways glance to Wesker after she did not reply; “is she alright?”

“She’s fine. I am an officer, Chris, I know how to take care of a prisoner.” Wesker turned his attention to Jill’s face.

She was staring dead at Chris and although she could not move, weep or beg, he knew all too well that she was desperately screaming inside the prison of her own manipulated mind. But it was clear Chris did not recall her. He banged his fist on the bars, and the rattle had her turn her head back to him. Eyes burning with silent sick hatred, and a ‘how could you? How could you do this to him?’

Valentine had been there that night he’d killed Chris. And she could do nothing, not even fall to his side. And now Wesker had brought him back in some ghoulish experiment of sheer power, and she could again do nothing to save Chris from his eventual fate – or twisting into the dark side. And she hated Wesker, despised his every breath and step, but as a slave to his will would have to stand idly by in the darkness as she waited for her next command.

Chris was still looking in at her in a face bent all ways in confused grief and disjointed shadows of a memory. Perhaps some fragment of him still knew and mourned this woman, a smile from a time long ago, a lifetime already passed. But as quickly as the expression had come, it had faded away to passive indifference.

“Do you know this woman, Christopher?” He asked, voice hollow in the echo of that dismal place.

“No,” a firm answer, “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Albert Wesker put a hand on Chris’ shoulder, the leather-gloved little finger lightly brushing the skin of his neck. Chris didn’t turn to look at him this time, but even in the gloom the tinge of his ears was evident. “Perhaps we ought to return upstairs, Redfield. We have a lot of ground to cover, and our visitor has not been kind enough to impart anything of use.”

“Right,” Chris nodded, although he still looked conflicted. “Are you sure she’ll be alright down here? Aren’t there rats?”

Chris, always the humanitarian. Even for the puppet that had been complicit in his first death.

“She will be fine. Now, come.” He placed a hand on the small of Chris’ back, and turned him around, leading him back down that dark corridor towards the exit of the undercroft. But before they made the turning, Wesker glanced back one final time to see Jill Valentine stood right at the bars, white fingers skeletal as they gripped the iron, her piercing eyes glinting like gold in the mire.

He stopped them on that corner. “Chris,” he called, forcing the younger to look up to him, and to accept the sudden kiss. Wesker kept his eyes on Valentine as he did so, almost smiling maniacally to himself as he indulged in one half of his past, and indulged in torturing the other. A knee between his subordinate's legs, a light push to have him up flat against the cold stone wall. And poor Valentine, forced to watch on as Wesker took time and time again, without remorse, and without ethics.

“Woah-“ Chris pushed him away after a second or two, “is here really the place for that, Cap?” He hissed, although he looked pleased nonetheless.

“With you, Christopher, it seems all my reason is tested.” A murmur, satisfied and yet solemn as he stepped back from his subordinate from another lifetime. 

Chris flashed a grin in the gloom. “Slick. C’mon, let’s get outta here. It’s giving me the creeps.”

Wesker followed Chris back up those tall stairs, up from the wailing of the wind and cries of all of those damned to walk the dungeon halls forevermore.

He had thrown Spencer’s corpse in the cell beside Valentine’s, a long time ago now. The man had all but decomposed, but he supposed it did for Valentine to have some company in that choking darkness. The browning bones of a man whom she had already met dead once before, on the worst night of her life. The idea had entertained him once. But now he felt nothing. Two figures of another timeline. Whilst the one he had wanted all along now walked in his pace, and smiled again in his presence.

“You asked me if I knew that woman, Captain. Whilst we were down there. Should I have?”

They were walking out in the gardens after lunch. For a brief hour or two the rain had looked to finally let up, and they had meandered their way down through the unkempt topiaries and fountains, through the overgrown gate in the hedgerow into the inner ‘secret’ garden. Beneath the flat, endless granite of the March sky.

Lush and overgrown, tall grasses and ivy crept up the crumbling remains of an old guardhouse now left to ruin, and the peppering of white and blue wildflowers brushed across the grounds. But the true wonder was the roses. Blood red, Spencer’s delight. They decked every bed and wall, and brought into the wet grass the scent of obscure perfume. It battled with the salt-brine air of the sea that sighed and washed not too far from here. Somehow they had survived on even without Wesker's attention, and in the summer permeated the entire estate in their sweet stench, a reminder of Spencer's ever presence within the gloomy halls.

“I did not expect you to,” Wesker assured him, “I had for a moment wondered if she recognised you.”

Chris was silent for a moment as they walked, then; “y’know, I had that feeling too. Something about how she was lookin’ at me… like she knew me…” he shook his head slightly, “but I feel like I’d remember if she was important to me.” He threw a glance to Wesker, as if to say ‘like how I remembered you.’ He shrugged, and continued on. “But do you really think she was here to steal shit?”

“Information, I expect. As I said, my father had a lot of his work strewn about this place. He was a somewhat renowned biologist and virologist in his day. Some of his work remains unpublished, and could be quite significant for companies determined to utilise his research for… unethical gains.”

“Huh.” Chris looked up as a light rain began to fall again, and he grabbed Wesker’s hand before dragging him into a nearby alcove of the final standing guardhouse wall.

They stood in that small space side-by-side, watching as the heavens burst open and lashed down a fury of rain upon the garden. Flattening grass and tousling the roses with fierce howling wind, and with it came that scent on thick impenetrable air of incoming storm black off the sea.

“Guess we’ll have to wait for it to let up,” Chris stated blandly as the guardhouse wall groaned and shivered in the wind all around them. He looked up at the arch above them, and touched the aging stone with a faint worry. “Do you reckon this place will fall down?”

“No. It has stood for long enough to know better.” Wesker put his hand on the old stone too, and shut his eyes. The pounding of the rain on sodden soil, and Chris’ warmth at his side despite the bleakness of the day.

“Cap… Wesker?”

“Yes?” He murmured, eyes still shut.

“Can I ask why… why you kissed me down in the prison?”

To spite Valentine, to make her stand within the prison of her flesh and weep knowing she could not save you from me, even in your death.

“Because I wanted to," he answered, without opening his eyes, "is that not reason enough?”

Chris gave a shy laugh at that, and Wesker felt the man lean into him a little more, sharing the warmth in that little alcove out of the rain. “I was relieved y’know. I thought this morning I’d got it all wrong. I didn’t want to force myself on you, Cap, I just… wanted to know if you felt the same way.”

“You think I would let you force yourself upon me, Redfield? How cheeky of you.”

“Even big guys get taken advantage of Wesker, even guys like you. I know you’re not really the feelings type, but I think you’d struggle to push even me away. You’re not too good at the whole self preservation thing when it comes to the people you care for.”

Wesker peeled open his eyes and turned his head slowly, as if by clockwork, to look at his once ‘best man’. Chris with his soulful eyes, gazing out into the storm and seeing only beauty rather than the bitter lie of the roses. How a man so young could have a soul so old beneath the childish verse was quite beyond him. Redfield, in his moments, was wiser than many of Wesker’s closest had ever been. Even if he was a pure meathead the other twenty-three hours of the day.

Well, maybe perceptive was the word, rather than distinctly wise. He was a little too much like Alex in that way.

Although ‘care for’ might be the wrong word for how he felt, Chris was nauseatingly close to a truth Wesker had done his very best to ignore up to this point.

Idly, the older man let his gloved fingers tousle the younger’s damp hair, affectionate as if he were a dog. “Believe me Chris, if you did something I did not enjoy, I would make myself quite clear.”

Chris smiled to himself.

For what felt like an hour, that might’ve been only a minute or so, they stood in silence to listen to the rain, and watch the mud pool around their boots. It felt oddly calm there in their alcove-shelter, to hear the wind in the trees whip about the barren branches, and heed the gulls screeching through the gale.

It was as if the past fifteen years had been a long dream, and Wesker had now woken up back in the centre of one of his STARS missions, the kinds he had dreamt of night after night ever since the turn of the century. A bitter longing perhaps, when at that time he could not wait for the nearest moment to rid himself of his human baggage.

What a fool he had been as a younger man to waste the only opportunity he had ever been extended to pretend to be of any pleasant standing. The only time in his life he had been extended a mercy of friendship, and of love from those he had gladly sent to their deaths. And though he had never once regretted, nor felt the cruel blade of guilt in his gut, a small piece of him still craved those simpler days. As if he had not been a piece in Spencer’s machine. Even if that was what STARS entirely was.

“I must ask, because I cannot for the life of me reason why,” Wesker broke the silence with his murmured question; “why it is you settled on me, Christopher. I am older, and I am bitter. Wouldn’t you do better to waste affections on somebody closer to your own disposition?”

“I reckon we’re pretty similar actually, Cap,” Chris intercepted with a vague smile on his lips, “you could be fifty-five and I’d still feel this way.” (Wesker could’ve laughed, again.) “You act all tough, but it’s ‘cause you just want to do a good job. But you’re not a lick-ass either, you’re cool ‘cause you want to be the best. You’re just damn cool. And I guess I find that pretty hot.”

“Cool.” Wesker repeated the word, as if in disbelief. Never had he thought of himself as such. Chris had no idea how much of his life he had spent as a puppet to Spencer’s will, even without knowing it, how nothing he had ever been or would be was of his own free volition. He never would be free, it was too late for that, and dragging out the dream in this castle with the reanimation of his distant past was not going to change that. He was the furthest thing from 'cool'.

“Yeah. Cool.” Chris nodded, “every time I thought I was gonna quit, I didn’t. Because I want to be just like you, Captain. I want to be the kinda guy people can rely on, and trust in. I want to lead people to a better future. I hated the army because it was so damn nihilistic but working with you… you always made me feel like there was something worth a damn in what we were doing. And I think that was it for me.”

Wesker exhaled softly through his nose, and couldn’t help the surge of wonder that shivered through him at Chris’ confession. He had always been so blunt, his marksman. In some way he knew in later life that Chris hated him because he had lied about his personality in STARS. He knew Chris had idolised him, kissed the very ground he walked upon, and that had made their mutual betrayal ever so much sweeter for it. It had driven Chris to the very brink of his anger and his means, to realise everything he wanted to be was nothing more than the façade of a man who had never been real.

“I don’t think that means you are in love with me,” he said, almost gently, “you are young, Chris. And you might not understand the nuance between idolatry and affection-“

“I’m old enough to know,” Chris cut in, a little annoyed now, “I know damn well it’s not normal to fantasise about being on my knees with your cock in my mouth, and sure as hell isn’t only ‘idolatry’ to want you to lie in my arms and say my name in your voice, Wesker.” He turned his body to face Wesker, still pressed in close thanks to the tiny alcove. One of his hands laid upon Wesker’s shoulder, thumbing the muscle as he gazed up with trepidous wonder. “I want you in a way I shouldn’t want my boss. I know that. But I can’t help it, Captain. I’m really head over for ya.”

 Wesker placed his gloved hand atop Chris’, and noted now that the man was still wet and shivering a little from the cold, and yet his face and eyes burned bright and hot like the July sun. There was that tightness again in his chest that he had felt that morning when he had allowed Chris to express these emotions more physically. And perhaps pity came over him in that sliver of time, that this Chris was still doomed to love what did not exist. And wanted sexually from a man who had never spared a minute to it before.

“Oh, Chris…” he murmured, deep and almost mournful, barely audible over the thunderous downpour, “you never do make it easy for me.”

Chris put his other hand against the wall beside Wesker’s hip, and leaned in ever closer. Bodies flush. Hot feathering breaths against Wesker’s uncertainly poised lips.

“I don’t want it to be easy for you,” he whispered, coy and determined, “say my name again, Wesker.”

Wesker knew he could very well shove the man away from him now. Trapped by this body he had built again, their flesh married into the replica of the man he had killed. And for a moment he wondered if Alex had been right after all – that no matter how perfect the recreation, he would never know for certain if this was the real Chris, or just the Chris he had built within his own brain. And what clung to him now was somewhere between a ghoul and an innocent. So handsome, so perfect – he brushed Chris’ jaw with the back of his hand – and yet who was to say there was even a soul within this gollum of his own hubris?

It unnerved him, even with Chris’ warmth and his heartbeat and the fire in his lovely eyes. That he might be held now by an empty shell, running on fragmentary memories from a brain that was not its own. And wanted Wesker only because it knew nothing else. The thought momentarily devastated him, although he could not comprehend why he ought to feel as though he should weep upon his knees for forgiveness.

But Albert Wesker had never cried, and he knew he couldn’t, for Spencer had never deemed it so.

“Wesker.” There it was again, that yearning voice.

Pleading for him to say his name. A name he had no right to own. But on the other hand… perhaps Alex had been wrong after all, and this was indeed the right man. And Wesker was only getting wound up in thoughts most unbecoming of his own self-confidence. This man before him now, it was Chris Redfield. In flesh, in brain, in fragmentation of the past. All he needed was a little more rethreading and in time he would be whole again. Just as the phantom in his dream last night had promised.

“Christopher,” he murmured, “Christopher… Chris… “ the name rolled from his tongue so naturally, in ways it only had after the younger man’s death. The chime of a bell in the storm. A little desperate, summoning a ghost from the remains of the heat of passion. And as he spoke, Chris shut his eyes and looked as if heaven had struck him with a euphoria unlike any other. “Christopher,” he said again, voice almost a darkened whisper now with his face creased into an uncommon frown; “please, don’t make it any harder for me.”

Chris’ lips were upon his before he had time to move away. His head pushed against the stone, Chris took him as his own with all his innocent love and want, and Wesker could not find it in himself to reject it all over again. Eager the man as he worked his lips against Wesker's, until the older man reciprocated into the kiss and parted his lips a little in the way he had seen only ever in film. Fingers once again winding into Chris’ damp hair. Receptive, Chris held Wesker’s jaw with his own slightly rough, calloused hand, and let his tongue graze the inner of his captain’s open lips, until he broke away again. Lips an inch still from Wesker’s.

“God,” he whispered, flush and grateful, “I just wanna eat you, Captain. Doesn’t that sound insane? It’s like I can’t get enough of you.”

Wesker – realising he had allowed himself to be swept away again – turned his head away and gave a small cough of embarrassment. “You always were very blunt, Redfield. I think you’ve once again proven your point quite concisely.”

Chris grinned, and leaned in to kiss Wesker’s neck. Soft and wet, bruising in a lovebite as the older man sighed and fell back against the crumbling brick, all the fight sapped from him once again by Chris’ undampenable affection. And then Chris pulled away and stepped out into the rain, reenergised and bearing a broad, indefatigable smile of grace on his face.

“Stay there, Cap," he commanded, pulling his jacket up over his head, "I’ll go get you an umbrella. Or else I’ll have eaten you by the time the rain stops.”

“Chris-!” He reached out to grab the man, to yank him back out from the storm but already the younger had sped off with his arms raised against the slashing tempest. And Wesker sighed as he heard the garden gate slam shut.

He slid down the wall, until he was resting on his heels above the thick mud, head in his hands, lips still buzzing from what had just transpired.

***

It had lured him down here, those velvet light footsteps on the carpet outside his bedroom. And in silence he had slipped out after them on bare feet, pistol clasped in his damp palm.

Night after night, within the crawling black hours from whence the sun set, it had tried. Set the lure of curiosity, and led him down that familiar path. Of motheaten hallway runners, and he was peering through the black as if blinded. But he knew this castle too well, each corner and crevice, and walked without even putting his hands before his face.

Down each carpeted stair, across the cold flagstones of the entrance hall, and between the elegant stone pillars. The tendrils of black curling around his feet like cats as he walked as if in a waking dream. To the soft whispers that called to him, his name jumbled among the ghost-latin.

The door to the chapel was ajar, and in that moment he halted. A stream of golden candlelight spilled out onto the flagstones, and yes indeed that heavy oak door was agape. The plain ogival arch an open mouth, and from inside came the voice that had haunted his dreams for five long years, the site of which he had chosen to raise up from the dead his nemesis. And Wesker stood in the shadows, heart thundering so hard he thought he might vomit up what little dinner he had managed to stomach.

That he might turn the arch, and see upon the altar the decomposed Chris, that he had indeed been lost in a dream and been playing with just the ghost of his own tortured, threadbare motheaten memory.

Again, he had been quite certain he had locked the chapel tight, by the very key that sat heavy now in his pocket. He had not wanted Chris to go inside, something had told him it would be sacrilegious for Chris to wander within the effective ‘womb’ that had bore him, that he might fade into dust the same as everything else in this godforsaken castle.

Step by step, hardly able to control his own ragged breaths of fear for what he might see waiting within, Wesker approached the door. Careful to keep clear of the light. As if it might sting him to stand in its glory after the sins he had doused himself with since returning to this place on ungodly terms. Never before had he feared the wrath of a God, but he feared that which he did not know. He feared what had been born in the shadows of this place, and what had formed itself with their five years of cohabitation. Even if it was only that, shadow.

Swallowing his horror, he peered around the stone arch, and into the ribbed vault of the chapel. Like the belly of a beast.

And here he felt his heart sink back into its regular place as he spied Chris bent forward at the second pew from the front, hands clasped in prayer, muttering to himself. Of course, he had quite forgotten that this man was supposedly Christian. The name should’ve been enough of an indicator, that and the cross that he had swallowed two nights prior.

He had been foolish to think that was enough to convince Chris that he was the god he should be praying to – but more the fool the youth who sought council from that which could not return his words.

“Chris, I thought I told you not to wander around this place at night? It’s dark, and many floorboards are broken. I cannot have you remain here if you break an ankle.”

Chris jumped in surprise, and craned his head around to see the man leaning against the archway – as if unwilling to step into the chapel. “Ah, sorry Captain,” he gave the man an awkward smile. “I thought I heard something and went out to have a look around, but ended up in here.”

Wesker sighed. It was truly impossible to restrain such an inquisitive soul. “I hadn’t realised you were religious, Christopher.”

“Only when I need it,” Chris admitted, looking guiltily up at the empty space on the wall wherein the figure of the crucified Christ was once displayed. Wesker followed his gaze.

“If you need to talk, Chris, I am very happy to do so,” he crossed the threshold, and sat himself down beside the younger man in the dusty pew. “What troubles you, young man?” 

Chris grinned sheepishly, and tucked his hands away from where they had still been clasped in prayer. “The whole point of talking to God is that he doesn’t answer you. Not right away. Sometimes you just need to chat to him until you figure it out yourself.”

“Surely you do not need to believe in a greater omniscience to do such a thing?” Wesker asked, in pure earnest for he had never truly understood the great appeal of religion.

A nonchalant shrug. Chris didn’t seem willing to try and explain, and he kept his eyes on the blank space. Perhaps he thought Wesker had come to make fun of him, perhaps he didn’t even know himself.

“I do not mean to belittle your beliefs,” Wesker corrected, “I only wish to understand why it is you will not talk to me, Chris. Are we not...” he hesitated, "friends?"

“I guess I don’t want to sound pathetic in front of you,” a sigh from the younger, “I dunno, Captain… ever since I woke up the other night, I just feel so lost. Like I don’t even know my own head anymore – and there is nothing in there, it’s really like everything I was is gone.”

“And so you came to beg for God to return it all?”

Chris gave him an odd look, which melted then into a half-smile. “Yeah, well. You know I was an orphaned kid right? I grew up in a pretty Christian orphanage. Nuns and all that shit. I guess it got pretty ingrained into me to just tell God, ‘cause at least he wouldn’t berate me for wanting more outta life. I guess it’s just force of habit now.”

Wesker didn’t know what to say for that. He had always been vaguely aware of Chris’ upbringing, but much like his own, he had little interest in revisiting that piece of the past. But whilst young Chris had had God to turn to in his darkest hours, what had little Albert had but those white walls, and the faceless men with latex gloves that wrote a report with every day he lived. And how visitors to the facility had been shocked that these children did not know how to play nor cry like any other child.

How differently things might’ve shaped out, if he had ended up in an orphanage rather than orphaned by the decision of a greater eugenics programme. Or even, grown up in the love of his own biological parents. Not that it seemed they had any for him, giving him up to Spencer without any apparent question.

“It’s not your job to comfort me, Captain,” Chris assured him gently as he misread the conflict creasing Wesker's face, “like you said, it’s probably just temporary. Sorry for dragging you down here so late.”

“Don’t apologise, Christopher, anything and everything you have to say, I want to hear it.” His voice was firmer now, and he put his naked palm upon Chris’ forearm and watched the way the younger man’s eyes widened slightly. “Put your faith in me,” his tongue was running before his mind could stop him, desperate almost, to compete against this other power in Chris’ life; “I can be the god that will listen, and the god that will return your words.”

“Wesker…” Chris pressed his lips together, as if very quickly trying to make a rational decision. “Okay… okay…” he breathed, moving around and much to Wesker’s shock, he slipped down and knelt on the flagstones between the older man’s legs, hands creeping up Wesker’s thighs as he looked up at the man in absolute romantic reverence. “I don’t want you to be my god, Wesker, I just want you to be mine.”

“Chris-“ Wesker caught the hand that had slipped to cup his crotch, and gave the younger a shake of his head. “You don’t have to do such a thing to impress or please me.” It had half been in panic for the fact he did not even know if he could get hard, given that he had so far lived a sexless life. Did he really want to break his resolve to the one man in the world who had once been the absolute furthest from it? And yet those wanting eyes, that waiting mouth. So close now it seemed ridiculous to refuse.

“Maybe I’m just being selfish, huh? Maybe I just want to please myself?”

All of Wesker’s fear dissipated at Chris' baseless confidence, and he sighed heavily. “You are far too bold for your own good, Christopher.”

“I’ve dreamed of this for long enough, Wesker, and I know you don’t have the guts to resist me,” Chris’ other hand drew careful fingertips up to the man’s erogenous zone, and danced over the shape of his manhood with knowledge unbefitting the innocent adoration of his gaze. “Let me, please.”

Wesker’s ivory fingers let go of the younger’s hand and crept through Chris’ hair, pushing his face back to witness the fine scars by candlelight. Impossible it seemed now that the altar a metre away had been the place of his rebirth not so long ago. “Are you sure, in here, Christopher? Under the eyes of your god?”

He could feel his own nerves wracking through him again most uncomfortably. For never had he had need to be nervous before in his life. Everything perfectly engineered. Prepared. Planned to the second. And here came Chris Redfield from beyond the grave to once again drag him from the straight and narrow into the wide open, star-full sea. For sensations he had never known, for that pain of feeling anything other than control. It frightened him, and yet…

Chris leaned in, and pressed his lips to the shape of Wesker’s manhood through the fabric of his trousers. “Let him watch,” he whispered, sly as a fox, eyes creasing with a naughty resolve, “let him see what he’s missin’ out on by not replying to me.”

Wesker could do nothing, frozen still as Chris’s fingers released him from his trousers and pulled his cock out into the cool air of the chapel. And it was so very quiet, aside for the soft breathing of his companion and the rain on the windows, there was not another sound from the castle. He watched as composed as he could muster, as Chris spat into his hand, and seized the soft appendage in his rough and worn grip, and gave him a few gentle pumps.

“Nervous?” Chris grinned.

“Shut it.”

But he needn’t have worried, for the natural reaction overtook his mental concern, and Wesker stifled his own gasp as Chris leaned in and let his tongue languidly roll around the tip as his cock began to finally stiffen. Of course, he’d had erections before, but it was quite something else to have it in the hand and lips of another man. Wesker gripped the backboard of the pew, arms stretched out like Christ upon the Cross as he held his tongue and allowed Chris to continue on.

Chris’ mouth wet the tip, and his wrist worked in perfect circles as he eased Wesker into his arousal slow and sure. And then his lips brushed forward, kissing the flesh of Wesker’s stomach as his hand continued to work, working up a decent slick and flicking his thumb across the tip, until the foreskin peeled back and revealed the swelling glans beneath.

“Oh…” Wesker breathed, catching himself as Chris looked up with predatory eyes, still kissing up his abdomen and sucking the skin with hungry love.

“You must not jerk off much, huh, Cap? You’re pretty sensitive,” Chris murmured, licking the faint abdominal muscles of the older man before dropping his head back down and letting his tongue drag from the base of Wesker’s cock, all the way up to the tip, letting his saliva soak the sensitive, delicate flesh. A soft suck on the tip, enough to make Wesker’s thighs tense and brow furrow, and Chris pulled away again to blow cool air on the damp slit. “Or maybe I’m just too damn good.”

“What child of God are you?” Wesker muttered, feeling the coils of arousal fighting his every instinct not to submit to pleasure in his stomach.

Chris laughed softly, squeezing and working only the base of Wesker’s cock with his hand now as he leaned in and took the tip into his mouth. Tongue rolling round the sensitive tip, until he let it bump the roof of his mouth, and slide a little ways to the back of his gullet. He rubbed it there, testing his own gag reflex with eyes tight shut in concentration, no doubt bruising his palette a beautiful purple in the process.

And then he swallowed it, as deep as he could into the tight restriction of his throat. And Wesker couldn’t stop the roll of deep, unknown pleasure from passing his open lips.

“Oh… Chris…” He let his head fall back, face tilted up to the top of the elegantly ribbed vault, and realised how sick he was if in this instance he was Chris’ metaphysical god and thereby reconceptual father, to allow this unholy act to transpire. But he would not stop it, not now, that he had tasted the sweet flesh from the apple of sin.

Apparently invigorated by Wesker’s unrestrained pleasure, Chris began to move his head. A bob up and down, soft gags from allowing the appendage to dip into his throat again and again, a little lower with every consequent bob. His fingers loosened from the base of the cock and cupped the man’s testes, massaging them gently in his palm to eek more of those gorgeous sounds from a man trying all his human strength to prevent them from escaping his lungs. Breathy, unwilling pleasure.

And how wrong it was for them to fill the holy chamber with such a lewd cacophony, filled the shadowy corners not reached by the candlelight, and shivered in the stained glass.

Chris pulled his head back up to catch his breath, other hand squeezing the wet length and stroking it up and down quick and tight. “Captain, you’re so hot,” he almost purred, “fuck… this is better than all my dreams.” And without needing to be told, he reapplied his mouth and let Wesker’s cock sink into his throat until his nose almost brushed the man’s stomach. He moaned around it, and the trickling vibration had Wesker’s nails digging into the rotting wood of the pew as he shuddered a gasp.

“Chris… you…” he growled, but couldn’t find the words as he grabbed at his own hair, pulling it to try and remind himself via the pain he was still tethered to some reality as waves upon crashing waves of pleasure wrecked him and led him astray. When all of a sudden, far too soon, the riptide tore right through him and he gave a strangled groan as sweet release claimed its prize.

Spluttering, Chris pulled off again and choked up some of the semen he’d been unable to swallow. “Shit- that was fast,” he teased, voice a little hoarse from the fucking of his throat. With his wrist, he wiped the excess filth from his chin, and looked up at Wesker once more with that expression of great reverence, “so, you reckon god’ll reply more often to me now?”

Wesker (who was still breathing hard and shakily tried to adjust his glasses from where they’d slipped down the bridge of his nose) could only force a faux smile of cool composition at the odd creature he had created. “Yes, I think I will.”

***

The clock in the hall counted out the tolls for midnight, and Albert Wesker lay alone and supine upon the heavy duck-feather stuffed duvet of his bed. His eyes were closed, and he was listening.

Toll, Toll, Toll.

The running of the water in the bathroom, where Chris was cleansing himself of that evening’s filth in the large, marble tub that stood in the centre of the tiled room. Humming a little song to himself, tuneless and deep.

Toll, Toll, Toll.

A quiet wail of wind through the dungeons sunk in the underbelly of that castle, and the darkness that lurked all around the solitary Valentine waiting for command, unable to even run and hide from fear. Or the dead that surrounded her in her cell.

Toll, Toll, Toll.

Tapping of rain upon the window panes like skeletal little fingers, begging to be let inside. 

Toll, Toll, Toll.

A steady silence that followed.

And yet it was not, for the footsteps had returned. Soft, light, treading the hall outside his bedroom door locked by heavy key. Back and forth, back and forth, and then it was inside the room. Wesker felt his breathing cease, and he listened hard with fear creeping up his throat like vomit, a little groan of horror as he realised the steps were treeading closer in the dark. Up to the side of his bed, and here it stopped, and said his name although it was not a voice. Eyes closed he could sense its presence as it bent over him, here to take his soul.

His phone rang, and Wesker’s eyes snapped open. The light from the screen illuminated the room, and he could see he was alone. Nothing stood over his bedside, or whispered to him. The door was firmly locked. And Chris was humming to himself in the bathroom next door.

“Damn you, old fool,” he whispered to himself, picking up his phone and checking the caller ID before answering. “Alex,” he said, gravely and yet somehow relieved.

“What’s the matter?” She always had been horribly perceptive. “You sound as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”

 “Nothing. I was almost asleep.”

“In that case I am sorry. I meant only to remind you I will be arriving tomorrow afternoon to meet your project.”

He could imagine her now, in her perfectly aligned apartment packing the very minimal essentials for the trip. It would be quite something to see his sister in her favourite white pantsuit parading these halls with blonde great head held high, come to observe the latest in bioterrorist mistakes.

“Ah… yes,” he couldn’t help but sound a little glad. Alex always knew what to do. She might be able to help him figure out just what the hell he was doing – something he very well could no longer rationalise on his own.

Chris Redfield had become quite the wild card, unpredictable and yet unstoppable. And Wesker knew he was not in his right mind to be dealing with it. Too tired, fatigued by his own brain. And he was falling into Chris’ admittedly benevolent hands knowing fully that he had not resurrected this man for such petty reasons as playing lovers.

“How is he?”

“Still slow on the uptake. He did not recognise Valentine, although she most certainly remembered him.” He couldn’t help that creeping satisfaction in his voice as he murmured down the phone, conscious Chris may still be able to hear every word he spoke. Whilst he wanted the man to retain his memories, now was not that time. Let the man wash and sleep, he could deal with the guilt of opening his mouth on his knees in a chapel in the morning, moreso once he recalled why Wesker should be the figurehead of his nightmares. “But otherwise, I am still not certain whether or not it is… him.”

Alex gave a deep, long sigh. “Does it matter?”

“I wonder… why the brain settled on that memory of the man, and another thing, he’s…” Wesker hesitated. He had never felt any urge to well and truly lie to Alex, not when she always found out sooner or later. And yet trying to divulge the surprise element of a new sexual relationship, when he had lived an entire adult existence without ever needing one, might be a little too much information to share in that moment. Particularly whilst he was still processing it on his own. “He seems to have quite a different interpretation of our relationship,” he said, slowly, still listening to the low voice humming in the bathroom a wall away.

“In what way?” Alex asked, sounding largely uninterested, “again, does it matter? I thought you meant to kill the man, not cohabit with him.”

“And I will, when the time is right. I will not repeat the same mistake twice.” Wesker swung his legs off the side of the bed, and let his toes brush the soft emerald carpet where the ‘ghost’ had walked not too long ago. He must be getting senile, to think such a thing possible. Enough to feel afraid. All his life he had never been afraid of the dark – why now? “I think you will like him, anyhow. I only worry that you might steal him away from me.”

Alex Wesker laughed. “Do you think our tastes so similar, Albert?”

Wesker smiled despite himself. “Unfortunately, I do.”

“In that case, you needn’t worry. I am in no great need for a man-pet. Or perhaps… you’re afraid he may favour me?” This was the cold, sly voice she could get as close to a teasing tone. But when Wesker did not respond, she gave another sigh. “Oh you can be boring sometimes, Albert. I am merely interested in this man who has given you such a difficult time – from his reports, he sounds to be painfully typical. Soldiers rarely have anything more to them than muscle. Something I don’t believe you or I are that swayed by.”

“There is more to Chris Redfield than muscle. That, I can assure you.”

“I will need to see it to believe it,” Alex concluded snidely, “in that case I will leave you to your rest, and expect to see something worth my while tomorrow afternoon. Good night.”

She hung up, and Wesker put his phone down on the side table before shutting his eyes and listening again.

Chris had stopped humming.

Alarmed, he stepped across the carpet and tested the doorknob to the bathroom. He pushed it open, and saw to some relief that Chris was still there in the tub – facing away from his direction. The air was steamy and scented with lavender, it fogged the mirrors and misted around the few alight candles dotted across the surfaces. Through the crack in the door, he could see Chris’ back and the scar that ran up his nape. And he could hear the soft little groans as the man touched himself just out of sight.

In his shock, Wesker shut the door again and walked quickly back to his bed, lying supine and trying not to allow perversions into his mind. Of course – after they had finished the chapel, Chris had not even asked if he might touch himself. Frustrated, young, and no doubt excessively virile. It was unquestionable that the man would think to finish himself off in the privacy of that bath. And yet to his utter dismay, even the thought of such had aroused his loins to such a degree he had begun to stiffen. Never in all his life had this been a problem before. A physical reaction to another person. And merely at the thought of one, too!

And in that stillness of the night, he could still hear the slap of water and the soft, breathy moans of Chris Redfield distant and quiet in the adjacent room. The murmur of his name; ‘Wesker’, in that way the shadows loved to toy with it.

Albert Wesker, as if he were still that child that knew better than to show his true emotions, hid himself under the thick duvet of his bed and clamped his hands over his ears, determined not to lose himself again. Once more he found himself waiting out the storm, and for the first time felt just how large and cold this bed could be.

Chapter Text

Raw brine and sweet death fogged his senses as he walked down the rows of cells in the deep underbelly of the castle. The cold clung to him like clammy hands, pulling him deeper and deeper into the gloom even despite the burning torch held up in his right hand that barely kept the dark at bay. And the terrible whispers that rattled behind bars, and shapes that shifted in shadow too human to be only a mind’s trick.

This whole place might have been out of commission since the war, and yet it was teeming with life. Well, the unalive. They told him things in tongues unknown to him. Latin, Greek, ancient Akkadian for all he knew – and yet they punctured his flesh and wound into his soul like worms into a rotting brain. A warning, a lure, of paths that should be left untrodden and light that should’ve been followed to the end.

Only the wind, Chris, only the wind. His mentor had spoken. And Chris knew even then the man had been lying for the sake of his own sanity. For what wind knew his name, and called through the gauze of life as if sent from the Western shore?

He walked on light feet across wet stone, and felt the miserable air cool his sweat-sheened face. And in his chest his heart beat steady and loud. Thud, thud, thud, as he approached that cell once more.

She was standing in the black, the same place as she had been left before. In her dark cloak that must’ve done little to keep the cold at bay, and pale eyes unnaturally anguished for such a structured expression. Once upon a time, Chris might’ve found her quite beautiful. But clearly time had worn down any softness to sharp edge and hollow cheeks. A victim to her work, wilful or otherwise.

Chris set down the torch inside of her cell and pressed his sweaty palms to the cold iron of her cage.

“I brought you some light,” he whispered, “I couldn’t stand the thought of you being down here all alone in the dark.”

The woman said nothing and did not move closer to the light. But he thought he might’ve seen a little twitch in her eyes, one of gratitude unspoken.

“Do you know me?” He asked, unable to keep his voice from shaking somewhat. As for the past few hours he had tossed and turned in bed, seeking out the answers in his cotton-stuffed head. And all that had come to him was impenetrable mist. The question hung in the briny air, and again the woman said nothing. “I think… I know you,” he said falteringly, brow furrowed as he fought the waves of white amnesia consuming everything but the present. “From somewhere, long ago. But I can’t even remember your name.”

His voice spilled out hopeless and quiet. Guilt for having forgotten somebody his heart pounded so hard for. Enough it hurt and brought him to nausea. The strings of his heart spun that melody of a distant kinship, tripping over one another in his anxiety to just remember.

“I’m sorry,” he said, bleak and hollow. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember you.”

And he felt his throat close as he watched a tear drip from the woman’s right eye and down her hollow cheek. But she didn’t break from her statuette pose, or sob for air. She could only stand, and shed a tear in the soft gold light at the man who stood a world away and knew nothing more.

Chris extended his hand through the bars. “C’mon, I’ll keep you warm. It’s cold down here.” And to his relief, the woman placed a hand in his palm. He pulled her close to the bars, and sank down to the floor. Sitting with his back to hers against the bars, holding her cold little hand tight and trying to massage some warmth back into it. “The phones should start workin’ again soon, and then you’ll be outta here,” he promised her in his gentle voice. “So get some rest, alright?”

She said nothing, and for all he knew may have already fallen asleep.

And so he would keep watch, his heavy eyes staring through the blackness of the corridor from where he had come before, where the slithering shapes moulded in and out of the stagnant air and gave their mournful wails.

“Only the wind,” he whispered to himself, “only the wind.”

But as he stared into the black with sleep threatening to come again, a door opened at the other end of the corridor. A white rectangle, and it poured out clean, white light through the grime up to the toes of Chris’ boots still splashed with mud from that afternoon in the garden. It had opened with no sound, an ominous gateway.

Curious, Chris rose back to his feet and turned to whisper to the woman he was going to investigate. But as he turned, the white door swept forward and he stumbled back into it, and all of a sudden he was in a bleach-white classroom. The smell of antiseptic and chalk from the chalkboard, and his eyes burned from the strained winter sun through the windows as it battled with the overhead fluorescents.

He was sitting at a desk, crying as he nursed the purpling bruise from a belt struck across the back of his hand. Hot tears dripped onto the sore skin, and his shoulders shook as he tried not to make a sound.

He seized up as a little hand was put on his arm, and he turned his head to peer through the glassy tears at the face of a little girl who might’ve been a porcelain doll. Clear skin and eyes, blonde hair neatly coiled at her shoulders. She looked at him with glass-dolly eyes, and he sobbed and clutched his aching hand harder.

“Albert.” A voice from the doorway. The two children turned to it, but it was a summoning.

Chris got to his feet, knowing already what was coming. He walked in his small lace-up shoes to the pair of legs in the doorway, and stared dead ahead at the stomach of the faceless being. He dared not look up any higher. Settling on the white lab coat crisp and unmarred in front of his sore eyes.

The voice hissed from up above, “really Albert, you only have yourself to blame for the pain. Crying will only serve to bring you more.”

Chris sobbed aloud, and was met with a sharp slap across the cheek with a latex-gloved palm. It shut him up immediately from the shock, and he brought his injured hand to the swelling hot skin of his face.

“You are an embarrassment to this entire programme. Crying at your age. Now go and wash up before supper.”

He could feel the gaze of the little girl on his back as he slipped past the adult, and walked down the clean white corridor to the bathroom. Climbing up onto the step-stool, Chris looked into the mirror and saw reflected back the pale face of a little blond child no more than seven years old. Grey eyes red-rimmed from the tears beneath the long blond lashes, and his cheek swelling up in an unsightly red welt.

“Wesker,” he whispered to his reflection, in a voice that was not his own.

Chris Redfield woke to the tapping on glass. His strange dreams had left him directionless and lost in a field of memories that were and not his own.

Tap tap tap.

He sat up in his bed and tried to figure out just where that sound was coming from, running fingers through his sleep-skewed hair.

Tap tap tap.

The window.

Quietly he stepped down onto the carpet and drew back the heavy crimson curtains. The pale light of the overcast early morning momentarily blinded him, and he squinted through the white until he realised who his visitor was. A great black bird had perched on his windowsill and was tapping at the glass with its slightly curved beak.

He didn’t know much about birds and couldn’t tell if it was a raven or a crow, or something else entirely.

“Hi,” he said to it, uncertainly, blinking sleep from his eyes as he observed the feathered creature. It was the smooth kind of jet black found in an oil spill, sleek and beautiful. And as he observed it through the foggy glass he realised something silver hung and flashed from its beak.

Tap tap tap.

“Alright, alright,” he muttered, feeling he must be going crazy to talk to a bird. He opened the window and shivered as the morning sea air cooled his naked torso and brought with it the stench of rotting seaweed from the shoreline down far below. As he did so, the bird took flight and soared away, out again into the mist. But it had left behind that curious little object on the sill for him to take.

Chris picked it up and shut the window again. It was a plain silver cross.

“Huh.” Strange. Maybe God really had been listening to him last night, and this was a casual reminder to seek faith rather than lust in his time of need. A wry smile on his face, he took to the long mirror beside the closet and clipped the chain around his throat to hang between his dogtags.

And for a moment he stood and observed himself in that grey morning light. A body wholly unfamiliar to what he recalled, attractively muscled and lined with thread-scars he had no recollection of gaining. He had noticed it before, in the bath, but somehow seeing it in the light of day only brought more questions to mind that he could not place to answer.

Absently he let his fingertips trace the lines of his skin, pathways he did not remember walking.

It was the kind of body he might’ve dreamed of as a child, watching cartoons of heroes and warriors on the display TVs outside the television store. He touched his face, felt the unfamiliar prickle of stubble on hands worn down by work he did not recall. For certain he no longer looked as he should, twenty-five-years-old. It was as if an entire decade had slipped past in the blink of an eye, or a very long dream, and he had woken up inside the casing of another Chris Redfield. One who he would never really know.

He dressed himself in his uniform and cleaned up in the sink. And curious, opened the bathroom door into Wesker’s bedroom. For a moment he held himself in the doorway to look at the man asleep amongst the emerald bedclothes - barely illuminated in the faint morning light reaching through the crack in his curtains.

Wesker still looked the same as always, pushing forty and yet pleasantly handsome and built, peaceful in his sleep without that furrowed brow and glasses. Chris recalled his strange dream and wondered why his brain had spun such a story. Admittedly he knew nothing about Wesker’s life prior to STARS besides his time spent in the army. And nowhere near enough to imagine a childhood for the man or picture the face of that doll-like little girl.

Quietly he approached the bed and knelt down at the side to watch the sleeping face of the man his heart drummed for. With gentle fingers he brushed the blond hair from his eyes, and watched the eyelids twitch as if the man were in the middle of a dream of his own. It was difficult to contain that gnawing hunger he felt for the man, as if his destiny was to consume him whole. Melt into his being until they lay beneath the same skin. In all his life, Chris Redfield had never felt so sorely in love as he did in that dreamlike grey morning.

It ached him, and yet he wanted the pain.

“Albert,” he called, the name from that dream. And without response, leaned in and pressed a feathery kiss to Wesker’s forehead.

When he returned to his own room the bedroom door was slightly open. With a frown he walked to it and peered out into the gloomy corridor. But he hadn’t heard anybody else approaching or even felt the lock click. The same thing had happened the previous night. The door must be broken, but it was still a little unnerving. An image of some third-party walking around and watching them, opening doors and peering through curtains.

He shivered despite the warm green fleece jacket he’d thrown on from the closet and holstered his pistol before heading out to start his day’s investigation.

All that morning he walked the empty, dusty halls and felt the peeling wallpaper under his palm. Straightened frames, peeled wax from shelves, opened curtains and coughed as the old fibres filled the air. It was the first day without rain he could remember, and after making himself some toast in the kitchen, stood out on the kitchen-garden terrace and watched the sea lap at the grimy sand down below.

More driftwood and seaweed had been washed ashore in the aftermath of the storm, and gulls picked at the dead things amongst them.

It was a large, loveless old place. So many locked doors and empty rooms. It was hard to imagine anybody had wanted to live here at all, but he supposed it made sense if Wesker had been telling the truth. His father, an old man, would have no need to use more than a handful of the rooms. The castle might once have been filled with servants and ladies and gentlemen in all their finery, live orchestra and endless feasts, but now stood a relic to a time bygone. The romance to it was almost there, if not for that creeping sense of something quite wrong about the place. As though there wasn’t a single right-angle in the entire castle.

The clock struck midday and Chris had found himself in the second-floor library. There had been no sign of Wesker all morning – but having seen how exhausted the man appeared, he’d not gone to rouse him. There was no need, Chris was capable of investigating on his own. He was STARS, after all.

Two-tiered with a ring mezzanine around the second floor, the library seemed well worn and comfortable. A little draughty however, the stained glass appeared to have been smashed by something rather large, and it had been poorly boarded up and not well enough to keep the wind entirely out. But that didn’t matter for now.

Letters, one of the things Wesker had mentioned before. Something to keep an eye out for. Correspondence which might point the finger toward anybody with a connection to the death of his father.

Walking back and forth along the rows and rows of colourful bookshelves lined in all manner of leather-bound tomes, he’d picked out those with the least dust or the most curious titles and stacked them on a desk before he sat and began to leaf through them one at a time.

Old alchemical works on myths like the philosophers stone, Herodotus and Thucydides, a compiled history of the ‘Fountain of Youth’. This one he read a passage of, enticed by the ancient smell of its well thumbed pages and the dog-ear to mark it as a valuable entry.

‘When the Ichthyophagi showed wonder at the number of their years, he led them to a fountain, wherein they had washed, and found their flesh all glossy and sleek… and a scent came from the spring like that of violets.’

The following pages showed some illustrations, and he settled on one in particular. A painting from the 15^th century titled ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’. A lamb bleeding into a chalice before what Chris assumed was the so-named ‘Fountain of Youth’ or life. Similar to a font, he supposed. He had been baptised when he came to the orphanage and asked for it specifically, afraid he might die and never go to Heaven. His sister had done so too. Somehow he felt sad to look at this painting, struggling now to even summon Claire’s face from memory alone.

He quickly flicked through the book to move on, and a fine slip of paper fell from between the pages down onto the desk in front of him.

‘The Thirteen’ it read, scrawled in barely intelligible handwriting. And the names which followed: Hans, Felicia, Marco, Jonah, Irma…

Chris for a moment lifted his head at the faint sound of the piano playing. A sweet, melancholy tune that again he should’ve been able to place, like that woman down in the prison cell. But as soon as he focused to listen, it was gone again, and only the sigh of the sea beyond the poorly boarded up window arose to him.

Attention returned to the paper: Ken, Laura, William, Hiro, Derek, Miles…

A door creaked open up on the mezzanine, and Chris stood, shoving the paper into his pocket.

“Wesker?” He called, walking into the centre of the library and scouring along the upper balcony to see the intruder, only to suffer a small shock at the vision of an angel perched at the top of the stairs looking down upon him with pale, pale eyes.

No, not an angel. It was a woman.

Blonde as the winter sun and in a perfectly white suit. He stood in awe as he watched the woman descend the stairs in slow, purposeful steps. Angular brows, painted lips, coming closer without words like an Angel of Death.

She looked familiar, and as she reached the bottom step he lifted a finger accusingly. “I had a dream about you last night.”

The woman stopped, and her lips almost curled into a curious smile although her eyes remained stern and icy. And then she began to walk again, until she was stood right before Chris, and with a light touch reached out and stroked her fingers along his jawline. He couldn’t move, somewhere between afraid and enraptured.

“He hadn’t warned me you would be charming,” her voice was smooth and words well-spoken, and Chris shivered as he realised just who she must be. “I presume you are the Chris Redfield who’s gotten my brother into such a tizzy?”

“Y-yeah,” he replied, feeling the pink rise on his cheeks as he held out his hand, “I’m guessing you’re the sister?” He grinned, coyly, “he had warned me you’d be more beautiful.”

“Hah,” she gave a sharp laugh, and did not clasp Chris’ outstretched hand to shake it, but instead took it and ran her thumb along the white scar down the centre of his palm. Chris shivered at the touch, intimate and obscure in purpose. There was something of wonderful admiration glinting her eyes. Her skin was soft against his own, and she smelled like violets. “He did a very good job,” she mused, “very good. You do look very much like your photographs, Mr Redfield.”

Chris was certainly blushing now. Had Wesker sent her photographs of him? How embarrassing.

“Call me Chris,” he said weakly, unable to muster up anything else under her intrusive gaze. “What’s your name, sorry? Wesker never told me.”

She smiled, a familiar cold smile. “My name so happens to be Wesker, too. But I assume you mean my given name – you may call me Alex.”

“Right. Yeah.” How stupid of him, of course they would have the same surname. “I guess I’m not used to calling the Captain ‘Albert’,” he laughed awkwardly. It felt wrong after that man being only ‘Wesker' for so very long.

Alex glanced to the desk, and the open book. “May I ask why you’re in Spencer’s library, Chris? I don’t believe there is anything of interest to a soldier like yourself in these useless old spellbooks.”

“Ah, well… I’m helping,” he expressed awkwardly, walking over to tidy up the mess he’d made. “Looking for stuff, for Wesker- I mean, Albert.” He wasn’t sure how much of their work Wesker had already explained to his sister, and didn’t want to have that awkward conversation about rooting around her deceased father’s belongings all alone.

“And just what is your relationship with my brother?”

Chris stopped what he was doing and gave her an odd look. “I’m his marksman, what did he tell you?”

She was walking to the window now, running her hand along the boards with an air of knowing more than she should’ve. “Enough. Although the depth of his infatuation is curious.” She gave him a very purposeful look up and down. “You hardly seem my brother’s match, Chris. Albert always was an opportunist. He would not waste his time on something that offers him nothing in return.”

Chris was now not sure whether he liked this woman. A brief flush of anger struck him and he stood up straight. “Wesker- Albert’s not like that,” he returned as sharp as he dared, “you’re wrong.”

“Oh?”

“People get it wrong when they think he’s all business,” Chris added, feeling awkwardly defensive, “yeah, he’s practical, but he’s kind too. The best goddamn guy I’ve ever worked for. And yeah, maybe i’m not his match in brains or whatever but I’d die for that man.” His hand ghosted the pistol on his hip, “I’d do anything to make him happy. I offered him my gun-hand, and I don’t reckon that’s nothing to a guy who values loyalty.”

Alex Wesker had stopped in her tracks, bemused by the outburst. “How odd,” she smiled a little more genuinely, “to hear anybody else think of that awful man in such a way.” Chris frowned, but she continued. “Tell me, Chris, are you in love with my brother?”

A glare of defiance as he lifted his head. “And if I am?”

“I see.” Her voice was softer now. “I see why it is he must’ve missed you quite so dearly, you might’ve been the only fool in the world to have ever tried to love him.” Her eyes flickered up, to the door opening again from the second-floor mezzanine, “Chris Redfield, do you believe my brother is in love with you in return?”

“Well, I-“

A throat cleared from the floor above, and Chris tilted his head up to see the man of the hour looking down on them with displeasure.

“Albert, kind of you to join us,” Alex called up to him, a satisfied smile on her face.

“Alex, would you mind leaving my man to do his work?” Wesker returned coolly, apparently unimpressed by the conversation he had walked into. Much to Chris’ horrific embarrassment. “we have much to discuss, that does not concern him.”

Alex gave Chris a little raise of her pointed eyebrows. “I shall see you at dinner, little soldier. Try not to rifle up too many ghosts whilst you’re playing in here, there is no need for more than one at a time.”

And with that, she ascended the stairs to join Albert Wesker. Chris looked up at his Captain, questioningly, and was only met with an obscure expression from the older man’s face before he disappeared, and the door slammed shut.

Chris sat down at the desk, still feeling wound up and angry from that woman’s provocations. Almost angrier still that Wesker had said nothing to defend Chris’ honour, glossing over the pointed question entirely. He had not expected Wesker to be as blunt as he about the feelings between them, but it hurt him even more for the man to heed his confession of love and return it with only a look of translated pity.

Momentarily he touched the silver cross around his throat and took a calming breath. He knew Wesker had an appearance to keep up, and was hesitant to enter a relationship with a subordinate thirteen years younger than himself. He had to stay rational. Of course, he hadn’t expected a grand show of affection or anything – but all the same…

Letting his heart calm down, he reached for the next book on ‘Death Mythology from Around the World’ and flipped through the colourful illustrations.

One he settled on, a monochrome plate of an Ancient Egyptian relief. The dead body of Osiris lay out upon the gilded bed, and his wife Isis, the goddess of magic, atop him in the form of a bird. The description read ‘impregnated by the body of Osiris, following the reconstruction of his fragmented corpse.’ Chris read through the story, still somewhat distracted.

Of a battle for the throne, the tearing to shreds of a righteous one by a jealous brother, and how his wife pieced him back together over years and years of grief. Until at last he was whole again and descended in peace to the afterlife after giving her a son. After all Isis had tried, there was nothing to undo what had already been done.

Death was master of even the gods.

***

“It was terribly rude of you to introduce yourself to him without me there. How do I know you haven’t said anything compromising in my absence?” There was a distinct twinge of annoyance in his voice as he walked – strode –down the corridor back toward the main hall two paces ahead of the blonde woman.

It had been his own fault for sleeping in. Something that had never happened before. But strange dreams of pulling endless chains from his throat had kept him restless all night long.

Alex kept up with him in her own brisque click of immaculate white heels. Clearly satisfied with herself.

“I said nothing that would get in the way of your budding romance,” he laughed, although it was scorn more than humour. “I wanted to talk with him alone, to try and see just why you’re obsessed with such a miserable little man.”

Wesker stopped abruptly at the door, and without turning around; “and?”

“You want to know my thoughts on your experiment?” There was the faintest smirk even in her voice. But as Wesker refused to ask again, she continued; “he’s a fool. Gratingly optimistic, quite lacking any sense, although he has some charm to him. But nothing I could’ve thought might win your steel heart, Albert. But I must commend your handiwork.”

“Redfield has always been that type,” Wesker returned between gritted teeth. Alex was quite correct, although it somehow annoyed him to hear Chris be spoken of in such a way by his own sister. “He shed most of that optimism after the Mansion Incident, but the foolishness…” he felt his shoulders sag before he even realised how tense he had been rushing to intervene their meeting, “but make no mistake, I do not feel any love for that man.”

“That, I can believe. He seems to be quite disgustingly in love with you, however.”

Wesker shook his head a little as he led them out into the second floor of the main hall and began to descend the red-carpeted stairs. “I don’t understand it,” he admitted, bluntly, “why that has become a truth. I assure you, there was never that between us, even back before the Incident in ’98.”

Alex hummed, clearly growing less interested in Wesker’s inane love troubles. “Are you quite certain?”

Wesker stopped and turned to face his sister. On the step above him, she looked down without any joke in her expression. He fought for words for a moment, wracking his brain through the faded memories of that time before. Certainly, he and Chris might’ve been as good as friends, but had Chris been harbouring a secret affection simultaneously? There had never been any sign of such, so far as he could recall.

“Yes,” he said, a little boldly considering his uncertainty.

Alex continued to look down on him, her eyebrow raising slightly as if noting the slight pink tinge to the man’s ears. “And now you have raised your enemy from the dead, your most handsome enemy I may add, and he has fallen quite deeply in love with you. How unfortunate, Albert, that you have had unconditional love thrown upon you.”

“Handsome?” Wesker repeated.

“You said it yourself, we have quite similar tastes,” Alex smirked slightly and glanced back over her shoulder. “I believe this entire project to have been quite the waste of your time, but for a moment in that library I did understand why you took so long to perfect that face of his.”

Albert Wesker sighed and rubbed his eyes in frustration. “Please, Alex, don’t make light of this subject. I am in fact quite lost on what to do with him. I can't very well kill this man in this state."

"Whyever not? You’ve never hesitated at killing innocents before?”

“The whole point of the past five years was to regain the Chris who was not innocent,” he snapped, turning away again and starting to march down the stairs once more, Alex again in tow. “How am I meant to reenact revenge upon a man who doesn’t even know what year it is?”

“Then tell him, see how he responds to the information.”

“No. Not yet. I need to understand why his current state is the way it is.”

Alex sighed deeply, evidently unimpressed with Wesker’s ridiculous methods. “So you will keep this man who is very much in love with you around as your pet until you grow bored enough to find reason to kill him? Are you quite certain you’re not also in love with the man?”

Wesker spun and pointed a leather finger at his sister, fury creasing his face. “Now listen here. I have goals far beyond the flimsy concept of ‘love’, Alex, but it is no crime worth killing Redfield for. You know nothing of our past, nothing of why-“ it’s so difficult for me, he almost said, but bit his tongue instead.

Alex was staring at him without concern at his outburst, pale eyes almost clouded in a kind of loveless pity for the man clearly falling apart at the concept of being loved for the first time.

“Have you slept with him?”

“No!” Indignantly, too much so. “I have my professionalism,” he hissed, “and you know very well I do not indulge in-“

“Sins of the flesh?” Alex laughed, as though it were something Albert had said quite often across his lifetime. “In that case, give him to me. He may be a fool but it is not often I take fancy to a man. And I’m certain his body will satisfy as much as his face.”

“Out of the question-“

“Why, Albert? Keeping him on ice for later? Or do you feel quite sick at the thought of my copulation with your tenderly reconstructed past? You always were selfish.”

Wesker knew she was only teasing him, trying to get him to say something incriminating and humiliating for her own satisfaction. But another small part of him knew her interest to be quite sincere. Alex did not often joke about 'copulation’.

He could not bear the image of his Chris with all his scars in the darkness of some bridal suite with the pale creature of his sister upon his lap, forcing sounds from him that’d make an angel weep. His eyes that were so full of stars and wonder, gazing up at a face that was not his to whisper his confession of love. Those which belonged now to Wesker. He could not stand it. Even if he did not love the man, by Hell if he would share such a precious thing with anybody who did not know the extent of his strife to bring him foremost.

Clearly the dismay on his face read well enough that Alex understood that line of dialogue should come to a close.

“Don’t look so green,” she patted Wesker’s cheek smartly, “I am not here to steal away your sweetheart. But perhaps you ought to consider the alternative if you do not mean to kill him, you cannot very well release such a famous face that has been dead for five years out to the streets, the BSAA would do your job for you.”

Wesker’s chest tightened again uncomfortably. To keep Chris at his side would mean to accept the man’s romantic advances, even if at an arm’s length (or mouth). But he could not kill him, and would never allow the BSAA the pleasure. It was a terrible stalemate of a situation. And yet if he strung things out too far Chris may grow suspicious, or realise that Wesker was not in fact returning his exact feelings. Keeping the man as his prisoner sounded quite unpleasant too.

Whether he could accept it or not, he had almost come to enjoy the company of Chris in the past few days. It would be even more miserable to lose that good rapport now.

“Albert, do you know what it is you want from that man?” Alex asked after another long pause. “If you are suffering, I can remove the issue for you. Whilst you cannot kill him, I have no such problem. You would not even need to see it happen.”

“No,” another blunt response, “no. He will not die. Not yet.”

Alex looked deeply unimpressed. “You are a martyr of indecision today, Albert. That man must be quite special to you, for you to harbour such uncommon traits. I must say that has intrigued me quite dearly, particularly after realising the man is something quite lacklustre. That woman you had before, Gionne, did she not offer you quite the same thing? After your withdrawal from the real world, she went quite mad in the search for you.”

Wesker turned his head and began to walk again, slower this time, toward the door that led out into the gardens. “It is not love that I seek,” he stated, tiredly this time, “but answers, yes. If you have come here to mock me, you have done your duty and you may leave. Otherwise I will show you the method of my work, and perhaps you may offer me some counsel of actual assistance.”

 “So many have wasted their lives on you, Albert. And truly I do not understand why. Yet it is somehow pleasurable to see you squirm in your own wasting,” Alex mused as they left the mansion and wandered down through the gardens, out through the thicket of the trees and into the old Spencer family cemetery. Quiet and overgrown, now.

They stopped by the greying crypt – once a stark offending white – and Wesker pulled an old iron key from a ring he kept in his pocket. It was thin and slotted into the keyhole of the rusted iron door partitioning the dead from the living.

“Trust me when I say I do not understand, either.”

The resounding defeat in his tone had Alex bring a manicured hand to her brother’s shoulder. “Then we shall figure it out together, for a change.”

Albert Wesker threw her a gaunt smile. “Thank you.” Before descending down into the darkness, leaving the woman quite shocked in the wake of this unfamiliar gesture.

***

The grandfather clock ticked the long minutes by, over the clink of cutlery on china.

At the head of the table beneath the watchful eyes of the painting of Spencer, Albert Wesker, food untouched on his plate and fingers laced on the table in front of him. He was looking at his hands in great interest, as if to try and ignore the looks being sent up to him from the other end of the long dark-wood table. Where Chris Redfield pushed his food around his plate and seemed to harbour some ill will toward the older man ignoring him.

Sitting in the middle, facing nobody but the dark window blitzed in the night’s incoming storm, Alex Wesker. Her plate was empty, cutlery set upon it elegantly. And she had quite shamelessly broken into Spencer’s private wine cellar and selected a fine bottle to enjoy all on her lonesome. She looked between the two men, perhaps in amusement, perhaps in frustration.

Wesker couldn’t bring himself to look up, afraid that the bleak answer to his problems would be sat looking at him with those terribly starry eyes again. Afraid it was the only solution. Afraid it was what he wanted now. The conversation with Alex earlier had only stood to make him more unsettled by that tense feeling in his chest as if he were being constricted by a swath of black ribbon.

“Chris,” his sister finally spoke up, “a drink? It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Albert told me much about you, you know.”

Wesker could feel the heat of Chris’ look, and he instead shot a glance at his sister. She did love to toy with people, but it was rare for it to be at Wesker’s expense to such a humiliating degree.

“No thanks, I can’t drink on the job,” Chris said cautiously. “Albert never told me a thing about you.” He said the name with an edge of bitterness, and Wesker felt his chest tighten again quite horribly.

“Well you are not working now, and don’t be upset, you are clearly more interesting than I,” Alex continued, haughty and not to be let down by stubborn refusal.

“Am I?” Chris asked the question not to the woman however.

Wesker finally lifted his head, and met Chris’ face. But he was shocked to see the man was not upset so much as angry. Was he being punished for how he spoke in the library earlier? Was Chris regretting that intimacy they had shared yesterday? Somehow the thought made him feel queasy.

“Chris,” he said gravely, “is something the matter?”

“No, Captain.” Sullen, like a scolded boy.

A deep sigh from the older man as he watched Chris return to pushing cold potatoes around his plate. “I do not mean to keep information from you, Christopher. I am a private man, I thought you knew that.”

“Not with me,” Chris returned, sounding quite hurt this time, eyes burning with a kind of anguish. “You know everything about me, Captain, but I still barely even know your first name.”

Wesker’s fingers laced tighter in front of him. “I don’t know everything about you, Christopher.”

Chris shot his fire at Alex next. “What did he tell you about me?”

Alex was smiling, tipsy and clearly quite enjoying the spat. “Everything and more,” she purred, eager to stir the pot no doubt. “I have never seen Albert care so much for one individual ever before.”

“Alex.”

She looked at her brother, still pointedly smiling. “If only you could’ve seen how your absence destroyed him. Oh, Albert, did you never tell Christopher here how you can only ever think of him when you are apart? I’m sure he would be quite glad to hear the finer details.”

“Alex, do not speak in my stead-“ he hissed, but she continued.

“Five years,” she said, light and delicate, “an awfully long time to string somebody along, or together.”

“You’re drunk,” Wesker said, “Chris, don’t listen to a word she says.”

Alex laughed, in a cold manner the same way Wesker did. As if all the humour of her life had been sucked clean out, leaving her pale and unimpressionable. “Chris,” she turned back to the young man, “I knew before I met you the way your hair was styled, and of your indominable spirit. I knew what colours suited you best, and how you never left your food half eaten unless greatly upset. My fool of a brother might be short of affection when it comes to words and action, but you have left an impression in him so deep I do not believe he can bear to live without you.”

“Alex-!”

Chris stood up suddenly and pushed his chair out. It ground sharp and loud on the floor.

“I’m going to bed,” he stated, and hastened from the room before either of the siblings could catch the look on his face. The door slammed shut behind him.

Wesker sighed and put his head in his hands. “Why did you do that?”

“I’m here to help, aren’t I?” Alex shrugged, taking a sip of wine with relish.

“What you just did only complicates the matter,” he snapped, taking off his sunglasses to give her a proper glare, “you have put ideas into his head that I cannot remove. And now he thinks me some pathetic obsessor.”

“No, I made you sound pathetic and shy,” she corrected him, “believe me, Albert, given the looks he was sending your way this evening I almost thought he might rush the table and strangle you. You were unkind, earlier, but I daresay with the seed of sympathy implanted, such a simple-minded boy cannot stay angry at you for long. You will see.”

“Why did I ever let you come here,” the man murmured, putting his head into his hands again.

Alex took another sip of wine, and looked around at the door that had slammed shut. “I have changed my mind, he is quite cute. I rather like that he does not endure your languid bullshit. Are you sure you will not loan him to me? I would like to study the detailing of his heart, it is fascinating.”

“I already did that,” Wesker muttered dismally, “and still I was not prepared for this.”

A small haughty laugh from the woman. “That is because you are stupid in these matters. That is your privilege as a man, it is something I have not been able to avoid by the curse of my gender. Tell me, why is it you call him ‘Christopher’ when attempting to soothe him?”

Albert lifted his head, and said simply and weakly; “it is my name as much as his, now.”

***

The moan from his lips rose to a cry of anguish as he sank to his knees in the temple.

Fingers tearing through his hair, surrounded by the remaining fragments of his blind unconscious anger. Shreds of red interspersed with the green of his uniform, and on the ground before him one quarter of his face, torn away as if a mask, with the brown eye staring up at him sans merci.

He choked on his misery as he reached for the shape of a man that could never have been his match in battle, and felt under his hands the cooling flesh and organs of a butchery site. It soaked his gloves, and the smell had him vomit up violently a sprawling mass of black worms. He cried out again in sickened horror as they dispersed and began to eat away the last remains of the only one that ever mattered.

“No, get away!” He cried, hoarse and strangely quiet as he swept his fingers around, trying to kill them. But they had begun to eat him too, burrowing under his skin and crawling inside his veins. He was screaming, tearing his own skin from bone, fettering the charnel house floor with his own desecration atop the first.

And again that terrible death rattle rang in his ears;

This time… I will leave whole… with you, Wesker.

“Wesker,” the voice had followed him out of his dream.

Wesker scrambled for the gun on the nightstand and aimed it dead at the shadow standing at the foot of his bed. “Who’s there?” He spat, for this time it was no sound, he could see the outline of a man in the darkness.

“Woah, wait- Wesker, it’s me!”

A heavy exhale, and Wesker let the gun drop as Chris backed away from the bed and lit the candle on the desk with his lighter. He looked concerned, barefoot and in his pyjamas.

“Chris,” Wesker hissed, “did you come in that door?” He gestured to the door that led out into the corridor.

Chris nodded, nervously. “Yeah, why?”

Wesker flew up from the bed and pulled the handle down on the door. It did not budge. It was still firmly locked as it had been earlier. He felt an eerie sickness rise in him as he turned to face the younger man, before grabbing him by the wrist and dragging him through the bedroom to the bathroom door.

“Wesker-, wait, what’s wrong?” He sounded alarmed as the older man tore through the bathroom and through the door into Chris’ chamber, where he proceeded to tear the bedsheets from the bed and fumble through the curtains like a blind man. “Wesker-“

But Wesker wasn’t listening. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest he felt he might faint. He reached the door, and as he tried the handle, it opened out into the corridor without any resistance. And out there waiting for him was the shadows. But before they could creep inside he gave a cry of horror slammed the door shut again.

“Wesker-“ Chris was coming nearer again, sounding panicked now. He reached out to touch the man, but halted as Wesker spun and aimed the gun to his head.

“This door, Chris, do you have a copy of the key?” His voice was thick with wavering tension, bordering insanity.

“N-no?”

“I locked this door, and I locked my door with the key under my pillow,” Wesker hissed, “pray tell me how the fuck you not only unlocked this door, but also materialised through mine?”

“Wesker- listen to me, those doors were both open, really!” Chris urged, eyes wide now as he realised how sickly afraid his Captain was. “That door keeps opening on its own anyway. Like you said, it’s an old house-“

“Houses do not open their own doors!” He had snarled without meaning to, and cursed himself for giving in to his own panic. “How can they be open, how?”

“I don’t know, the locks are probably just faulty or something. Honestly Wesker, I’m no master of unlocking y’know.” Chris looked indignant now, grabbing the muzzle of the pistol pointed at his head and shoving it roughly to the side. “Honestly get a hold of yourself Cap, why’re you so worked up?” He let his voice soften slightly; “nightmares, again?”

Wesker held his stance for a moment longer, before the realisation of how mad he must appear set in. He lowered the gun and put his free hand to hide his eyes. In the darkness of the second bedroom, he was glad Chris could not see the look upon his face. There had to be a rational explanation. There was no good shouting at this man who was as clueless as he.

“My apologies, Redfield… I must be… going mad in my old age.”

Chris seemed to relax, and he took hold of Wesker’s wrist affirmingly. “It’s alright, Captain. Spooky fuckin’ castle and all. C’mon, let’s get you back to bed old man and I’ll double check the doors for you.”

Wesker sat on his bed, still feeling a little faint as he watched Chris in the candlelight check both doors were locked up tight, then check behind the curtains, in the closet, and finally under the bed.

“Chris, there is nothing there,” he said, tiredly, “I am not concerned about any monsters under my bed.”

Chris gave him a comforting grin, before climbing onto the bed and sitting almost beside him. Although there was still a good distance between them for now. “Force of habit, younger sister remember?”

Of course, it was only natural, Wesker supposed. Normal children who cared for one another would complete these meaningless rituals, if only for the other to feel safer. But he was no little girl, and Chris was far from his older brother. Wesker had in fact had older ‘siblings’ at the facility – although he very much doubted any of them might check under the bed for him. Maybe Alex, if only to laugh at his fears.

“Why did you sneak into my bedroom in the dead of night, Christopher?”

“Oh, well…” Chris looked embarrassed, fingering a necklace from around his throat. “I wanted to apologise for storming out at dinner. And for getting angry. I know you’re private and not great at this stuff, but your sister was really grinding me the wrong way, y’know?”

“Alex is quite good at that,” Wesker chuckled, despite himself. He was in fact quite relieved for Chris to have been the one to approach him about this first. “It’s quite alright, Christopher. I can tell it is a touchy subject for you, and I’m sorry I’m not more… aware of how to approach it.”

Chris shrugged. In the soft light he looked quite boyish again, an expression of almost shy guilt. “I also wanted to ask if… well…” he couldn’t meet Wesker’s eyes. “If what she was saying was true. Or if... I dunno, she was trying to get under your skin or something.”

What Alex had said was unfortunately misconstrued from the seeds of truth. Wesker would gratingly admit to himself that yes, he had ‘missed’ Chris, but not in the way the nervous man wanted to have been missed. He had missed the threat the man posed, the light to his shadow. The excitement of the chase and being chased. A nemesis, was it any less valuable than a lover? Had they not imprinted enough upon one another to make it so?

He had missed the presence of Chris Redfield in his life, for it was the one piece of himself that seemingly could not be destroyed, and yet couldn’t seem to abandon Wesker. Uncanny persistence, the face of the human race. And when he had disappeared from life the gaping hole he had left in Wesker’s peripheral had been immense. As much as he had hated the man for his refusal to bow to Wesker’s power all those years ago, Chris represented the best his hollow life had been. Without him, it seemed no longer that he had any purpose to his crimes. What good was the suffering of mankind, if Chris was not there to watch and weep as civilisation fell? And Wesker there to wipe his tears and remind him whose fault it all was, as the world burned around them. To leave them alone in codependent suffering.

Wesker took a slow and steady breath, and lay himself down on his side. An honest answer was best. “Most of it.”

“Even the stuff about my hair?” Chris asked, sounding suddenly full of gladness as he followed suit and lay down upon his side, facing the older man. “And about my colour?”

“Yes… fern green. It always suited you best.”

Through his eyelashes, he could see the smile on Chris’ lips, and again felt that twinge of tightness in his chest. The candle burned a soothing glow, and all of a sudden the darkness seemed quite still and gone now Chris was here. A soft wind howled down the chimney, and the rain wept on, but for now he felt quite glad to be in the company of a man who could pierce the shadows that had troubled him for so long. Although it seemed in his absences now, they grew ever longer. Perhaps it was for the best to keep Chris closer than he had initially planned.

“Do you want me to sleep here tonight, Captain?” He asked, quiet and gentle. Moreso than Wesker knew he deserved. “I don’t mind.”

“Do as you wish, Redfield,” Wesker murmured.

“Don’t call me that, not when we’re alone, please?”

“Since when did you get so demanding, Christopher?”

“I realised the only way to convince you of anything is to demand it,” Chris returned, with his own sly laugh.

Wesker opened his eyes again, and drank in the sight of Chris before him. The younger man looking at him again with starry eyes, his shirt a little pulled up from his stomach, a coyness about him that he seemed to have lost in his later years. Without realising he was doing it, Wesker reached out and touched the skin of Chris’ bicep. He felt so warm with blood and life. Fingertips grazed the sleeve-hem of his shirt, stroking gently at the strip of skin beneath with abject wonder.

How had he managed to create this man from a million little pieces. In such a way he could breathe and sweat and look so full of a life Wesker had never even known.

“In some ways, I am quite jealous of you, Christopher.”

Chris echoed back; “jealous?”

“You speak your heart so easily. And you are always true to your word. That is something very few possess.” He spoke with the same graveness as one speaks at a funeral.

“I guess it’s just easier that way. I’m not smart enough to play mind games,” Chris grinned, “but you’re kinda dumb about these things, Wesker. I’ve been trying to make a pass at you for months. I figured that the only way to finally convince you was to tell you to your face.”

Wesker sighed deeply. He hated it when Alex was always right.

“But why now, Chris? Couldn’t you have told me any time?”

“Nah, there’s a time and a place for this sorta thing, Wesker. And it damn well isn’t in your office.” Chris shifted, moving in a little closer. Close enough for Wesker to pick up on the scent of his natural musk. Woody and spicy. “I guess I was afraid,” he said, voice a little quieter, “that you might slip away if I waited any longer. Right now…” he looked at Wesker’s hand still tracing the muscles of his bicep, “I feel like I’m still in some kind of dream.”

“Odd,” the older murmured, “I feel that way too. For some nights, now. Every day I wake up, and wonder if you might’ve melted away into the shadows, and I’d be left all alone.” Again.

“Captain…”

Realising how embarrassing what he had just said was, Wesker began to retract his hand. But Chris grabbed it and pulled it back. Down to where the skin of his stomach was exposed.

“Captain, touch me,” he whispered, demanded, “feel me. I’m here, with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Wesker’s cool palm kissed the hot skin of Chris’ stomach, and beneath his fingertips he could feel the light pubic trail leading from the navel into the younger man’s pyjama pants. He felt so human, and so unlike how Wesker had ever felt his own body. When he had resewn Chris, he had not touched him in such a non-clinical way, so that right now he felt almost perverse for doing so. But the heat was enticing, magnetising. And there was no way he could possibly free himself from the trap Chris had unknowingly set.

“Don’t be afraid,” Chris murmured, “I want you to touch me. Every inch of me. Please, Captain, show me you want me to be yours.”

“I thought I told you I didn’t want you to make it any harder for me, Christopher.” He said it with such conviction, although his fingers now slid up the abdomen of his pride and joy, up, up that golden skin to feel the cold chains of his dogtags resting over his thundering heart. He looped his fingers around them, holding as it were, the name of his soon-to-be strung within his fingers.

“Don’t you want me, Captain?” He whispered, voice low and gorgeous the way it hung in the still air between them. “I want you.” He dragged Wesker’s hand down again, down his rippled abdomen to the hem of his pants, for Wesker to feel the rousing stiffness of his desire. “Every inch, I’m yours.”

Starry eyes, brunette hair that curled ever so slightly. Handsome, handsome, handsome. There was only one word for him.

“I know,” was all he could manage in response, a well of brand new fears storming inside of him as he realised Chris wanted to step across that boundary. He could not be satiated with words alone, a physical being to the end. His fingers hesitated from touching Chris’ manhood through the fabric of his clothes, that realm unknown for him for fifty-five years beckoned, and Albert Wesker could not even think.

Afraid, of the unknown, the uncontrollable, and the pleasurable. Afraid he might disappoint his subordinate with a bad lay, he was not even quite sure how to do it with another man. There was no biological benefit to it, so why would he? But there was that curling tension in his gut, and that constriction of his chest, and he knew he could no longer push Chris away from the events unfolding.

“What’s wrong, Wesker?” Chris murmured, concern in his gaze as he held Wesker’s slightly shaking hand in his own, no longer guiding him down but holding him with abject care. “If you don’t want this, I won’t force you.”

“I want you,” Wesker said in his strangled uncertainty. “But I don’t- I’ve never-…”

Relief washed over Chris’ face, and for a moment Wesker was afraid he was about to laugh. But the younger man only gave him a careful smile and moved so he now hovered over the older man. Looking down upon him with great want and wonder.

“Don’t worry, I can lead you,” the damned man promised in his voice like a beam of sun on that storm-ridden night. He pressed his lips to Wesker’s wrist, and kissed up his forearm, up his bicep, drifting his lips over the man’s shirt to his neck. Soft kisses, up his jaw, and finally upon his waiting lips. And Wesker did not fight it, and let his eyes shut as he kissed back deliriously.

Chris’ fingers were lifting his shirt, and their kiss parted for a moment for the item to be removed, and then Chris came crashing down upon him once more. New hunger as their skin touched, and Chris straddled the elder’s lap.

He pulled up and away, and sat upon the older man’s hips to catch a breath and remove his own shirt. And Wesker lay beneath him to stare at the body he had fashioned, the one yearning for him.

“Touch me, Wesker,” Chris whispered, “start slow, with my chest until you are ready to see more.”

And as if in a dream, Wesker raised his hands and placed them on the small of Chris’ waist. Sliding up over the ridges of his ribs, to cup the pecs and let his thumbs glide over the man’s slightly cold-stiffened nipples. He was horribly aware of his own heart beating as he touched his man, hot skin perfumed with his natural scent and crisscrossed in scars and old wounds from the life he had already lived.

His right palm drifted South again, to touch the shape stirring within Chris’ pants. It was quite clear that the man was excited, no doubt euphoric to finally be the subject of his Captain’s affections. And Wesker had to swallow his own mad laughter at the very cruel truth of the matter.

“It’s hot,” he murmured, fingertips caressing the outline and rubbing over the tip. Chris tensed, and a small dampness appeared under Wesker’s finger. He looked up at the subordinate’s face, a handsome grimace of control and flush desire. “How long, Christopher. How long have you wanted this?”

“Always,” a gravelly whisper, hoarse with self-restraint.

Pity, an unchangeable fate, a terrible sense of what might’ve been.

“I’m sorry, Christopher,” the words leaked from his lips before he could stop them, “I’m so sorry.” An apology this Chris could never wholly understand the depth of.

Instead his subordinate cracked a smile. “It’s okay now, Captain. No more apologising, alright? Sex is supposed to be fun, not depressing.”

A weak chuckle from the elder, and he slowly drew down the waistband of Chris’ pants to reveal the his stiff cock. Chris spat into his own hand, and stroked himself once or twice, before inviting Wesker to take over. The older man’s hand wrapped around the hot length and felt it pulse beneath his palm, and with a tentative stroke he was rewarded with the soft moan of his Christopher atop him.

He worked his wrist in a fashion replicating how Chris had touched him the previous night. Working up a slick with the saliva, until Chris had grown fully hard and gave soft and wondrous moans in the efforts of being touched. Wesker was breathing harder than he had realised, and Chris evidently felt the shock of excitement from the older man, as he began to slowly move his hips down, rubbing still clothed body parts against one another.

Wesker sat up a little, and Chris moved his body in closer, eye contact never breaking. Wesker rubbed his thumb over the slit of his younger lover’s cock, and exhaled sharply at the feeling of precum dripping down his palm, and the sensation of Chris riding his cock through the constraints of their clothes.

“I’m guessing you wanna fuck me, since it’s your first time and all?” Chris asked with a knowing smile.

"'Fuck’ is such a nasty word,” Wesker murmured, “but… if you wouldn’t mind, Christopher.” It felt foolish to be at the mercy of Chris’ kindness, but being sodomised seemed a step too far beyond any vague realm of comfort he had left.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” Chris chuckled, holding Wesker’s head in his rough hands and lifting his face properly to edge his lips nearer once again, “I like it. In my dreams it was usually that way, too.”

“Usually-?” Wesker could feel the sly grin as Chris’ lips ghosted his, and he couldn’t help but give a small laugh at his own expense. “Oh, Chris. You are terribly cheeky.”

Wesker accepted the kiss with a soft growl of pleasure this time. With one hand he pumped Chris until the younger was moaning softly into his mouth, his other hand shyly creeping up Chris’ thigh to grope the curve of his ass. Tight and toned, like the rest of his body. His cock was beneath it, and he could feel that he was so painfully erect it hurt him to still be clothed.

Chris bit his lower lip, and pulled back, a sultry look in his deep brown eyes. Wesker realised then that his own eyes were exposed, sunglasses sat untouched on the nightstand. And yet he no longer cared whether or not Chris could see, or know. Grey eyes, red eyes, brown eyes. He knew he must look a fool all flush and breathless, certainly not the ‘cool’ Captain Chris had loved.

“Do you have any lotion? Hand cream or anything?” Chris murmured, still rolling his hips down, “spit’s not gonna be enough. I haven’t done it in a while.”

No, he most certainly had not. Wesker didn’t even want to know who the last person had been. The idea of anybody laying a finger on what was his cut him to the bone, and his grip momentarily tightened – forcing a little grunt of pleasure from the man as he gave the swollen cock a pleasurable squeeze.

“The dresser,” Wesker nodded, “there should be something there.”

Chris shucked his pants before climbing back onto Wesker’s lap with a small bottle of lotion, but set it down to first pull down Wesker’s pants enough for the older man’s cock to spring free at last.

“You really are blessed, Cap,” Chris said, envious and hungry as he looked upon it. He settled himself so that his own cock rutted against the older man’s, and uncapped the lotion to douse his fingers, before dribbling some down onto their cocks. “I’m gonna prep myself,” he explained, looking very much as if he’d rather take Wesker there and then, “and then we’ll get to the best bit.”

“Can it get any better?” Wesker smiled thinly, wrapping his hand again around Chris’ cock, before then giving himself a few slow strokes. He touched himself as he watched Chris’ expression shift into a flush twinge of pain as he slipped a finger inside of himself. Jerking himself slowly as he admired the ways in which his man’s face faltered between pleasure and pain, lips a little parted, the noises lewd and wet as he played himself open out of sight.

Wesker could feel himself grow hot, suddenly so intensely aroused at the view he had to stop touching himself and return to stroking Chris. His cock ached, the tightness in the pit of his stomach so intense he had the mad urge to throw the man down and sodomise him no matter how much he wept in pain. But all these crueller thoughts dissipated as Chris moaned his name; “Wesker…” and place his forehead upon Wesker’s shoulder as he coiled his fingers within himself, a steady whine of need resonating from his throat.

Wesker’s other hand held the man’s back, feeling the ridges of his spine, and caressing the soft, smooth expanse of skin as gentle as he could manage. He was pleasuring Chris, and Chris was overcome with him. Such power to make the strong man weak he had never even known before.

“Beautiful,” he said, voice smoother and surer than before. “How much longer must I wait, before I can have you, Chris?”

Chris sat up straight, looking dazedly handsome with his slightly damp hair drifting down into his eyes. He put a hand to Wesker’s swollen cock, and breathed out a long sigh. “You’re still hard,” a voice of relief. “I was worried for a while, that you might not be able to get it up for a guy.”

“You’re not just a ‘guy’, Christopher,” Wesker chuckled, hands coming to rest on Chris’ hips as the man positioned himself at long last, holding Wesker’s cock beneath him until the tip came to rest at his prepped rim. “More curious am I, that it could possibly feel good to be penetrated as a man.”

“I’ll show you some time,” Chris grinned, and lowered himself.

Wesker gasped before he could help himself, the tightness that enveloped him unlike anything he had known before. “Oh…” he almost groaned, almost hating the satisfaction on Chris’ own dewy face as he took him inside and came to rest ass flush upon his hips. He was inside Chris, embraced by the body of his nemesis to feel how he tightened and spasmed around him.

“Don’t cum yet,” Chris warned him, pushing back Wesker’s sweat-loosened hair and leaning down to kiss the man between his furrowed brows. “Mmh… gimme a sec,” he adjusted himself, sighing at the shape settling inside of him, “I’m gonna ride you, alright?”

“Do as you wish,” but this time his voice came out heated in concentration, stroking the skin of Chris’ hips with his thumbs as he could not tear his eyes from the face of the man upon him. After all this time, after everything that had transpired between them. It felt unreal to have Chris Redfield come to him to make love. He deserved none of it – the lips pressed to his forehead, the hands caressing his shoulders, or the surrender of the younger’s body unto himself. And now he couldn’t remember how he had ever existed with it in any other way.

Chris began to move, a slow rise and fall of his hips in knowing, grinding circles. Deep and slow at first as their breathing aligned and they both fell into comfortable silence. Only the movement of their bodies, entwined and burning up. And as he moved, his pace picked up and his heat enveloped Wesker over and over, fucking himself down onto the older man with intense want.

“Chris,” Wesker muttered, fighting back his own groans of pleasure as the younger moaned deliciously into the still air, enough to make his cock throb, “what spell have you put on me?”

Chris said nothing, and instead dragged Wesker into another deep kiss. More tongue and teeth this time, gasping for air from the older man’s lungs as he thrust his body down, and Wesker tensed himself and shivered. His long fingers wound around Chris’ cock again, stroking him in some small kindness to his hard work, feeling Chris twitch under his touch, and whimper into his mouth with the conviction of a man doomed to his pleasurable fate.

“Captain,” the erotic whisper seeped into his brain. “My Captain.” They were no longer kissing, just parted lips upon one another to drink in each other’s sounds and sighs and words. “I’m so happy. I’m so happy you feel this way, too.”

Wesker felt his chest tighten again horribly, and he closed his eyes as his face contorted into a guilt he had never believed possible. “Don’t talk, Chris,” he murmured, fingers tracing the scars of his sins on the other man’s body as Chris rode him, grinding them both into deep-seated pleasure.

I can’t stand it, to hear those words from you.

He ran his fingers through Chris’ hair to sweep it back, and watched those eyes as they both drew to the edge. And Wesker was overcome by the spirit of his undeserved lust, and dropped Chris beneath himself. Now back to the pillows, Chris reached up and wrapped his arms around Wesker’s neck, pulling him down into another kiss as the older man rolled his hips in the similar pleasurable circles. Not rough, but deep and sensual. He could feel the younger coming apart beneath him, ragged breath and sweat-sheen on his neck. He could feel how he tensed around him inside, and how his stiff cock rubbed its wet tip up against his own abdomen.

Bodies flush, seeking every inch of one another.

Albert Wesker moaned low and soulfully, overcome by the sensations.

“I’m close, Captain,” Chris whispered, legs wrapping around Wesker’s hips to pull him in ever deeper, “touch me, make me yours.”

Fingers deft and cold worked Chris to his completion, stroking the man until he writhed and whimpered out his orgasm with head tilted back and eyes half-closed in sheer euphoria. Spilling over his body, between Wesker’s fingers. Wesker continued to roll his hips, sweat dripping from his forehead as he gasped for air, pressing his face into the crux of Chris Redfield’s neck to inhale his scent. And at last he came, deep as he could penetrate into the younger. And he collapsed, arms circling the younger man as he held him tight. Afraid that if he let go now, the dream would end and Chris would indeed melt away into the shadows.

For a while they lay in satisfied silence, wrapped up in one another’s arms as the storm raged beyond the shivering glass.

“You finished inside,” Chris finally whispered, voice a little shaken from the glory of such a long-awaited orgasm. His fingers toyed with the short hairs at the nape of Wesker’s neck, winding blond strands between his gentle fingers.

Ashamed and feeling repulsed by his own body, Wesker began to pull away. But Chris chuckled and pulled him back down again.

“It’s good,” the younger assured him, “I wanted to feel it, your heat inside me. I wish you could stay there forever.”

Wesker finally lifted his head and looked at the coy, pleased face of Chris Redfield in the soft darkness of the low-burning candle. But he couldn’t find any words to say, tormented by what he had allowed to transpire, and the thoughts that fought within his own once rational brain. Never before had pleasure been an element of his world, never before had he known the euphoria of physical love.

Chris must’ve read his complicated expression as one of shyness, and he held Wesker’s face in his two firm hands and brought the man down into another deep and wanting kiss. And Wesker held him again, afraid now too, that this taste of love might ebb from his palette before he had the chance to savour its sweetness.

***

Albert Wesker stood on the outdoor second-floor covered walkway of the castle, and leaned on the carved stone fence to look out onto the gardens below that had been tossed around in the whipping storm. It had stilled now, but the wind off the sea still stung his cheeks and tore at his clothes, well past midnight now, and he breathed in the briny air to try and clear the fog from his mind.

Hours and hours of lying in Chris’ embrace, watching him, still with that ridiculous fear. Until he had realised his desperation for air and torn himself from his vigil, leaving the younger man asleep and peaceful in his sheets.

“Well well, seems I’m not the only one out for an evening stroll.”

Alex.

He turned to look at the woman, too tired and filled with complex brain threads to formulate any kind of smart response.

“You were right,” he said, voice a little mournful, “why is it you are always right?”

Moonlight suddenly poured from between parting clouds, and a brilliant white light fell upon him as he looked out to his sister for any kind of wisdom. Anything that might stop him from going completely mad in his own weird grief.

"Albert, it does not do for you to waste away on silly things like love,” Alex chastised, although her eyes were oddly bright with an amusement that said she knew exactly what had brought him to such a thought. “Your relationship with that man will not be one you can bring back to the real world, you understand. And you know very well you cannot keep a secret lover – you cannot protect him from the truth forever, either.”

“I cannot kill him,” he returned, voice grey and old, “you know I can’t, the way things are now.”

“You and I… love is not something that we know,” Alex spoke carefully now, “whatever you may come to believe it to be, you must remember it is not in our programming to love. It is all a falsehood, a pipedream. You may have your fun with him now, but he will be a liability and eventually return to being your enemy. Do not forget that, Albert.”

Wesker looked away in disgust at Alex’ words, staring down at the moonlight illuminating the water feature of a seraph in the gardens down below.

“I will not let you self destruct,” Alex warned him, “while it amuses me to see you this way, I will not allow it to seep back into the role you ought to be playing in the grand scheme of a new world order. You have done the impossible, but now you must make that sacrifice and move on. And if you do not find a way to deal with Christopher Redfield, then I shall have to intervene.”

“Leave me,” Wesker commanded, not wanting to hear any more from her smug gloating, “he is not your concern.”

Alex sighed. “No, but you are, you foolish man.” And she turned and slipped back into the still darkness of the castle, leaving Albert Wesker to his self-pitying moonlight watch.

Chapter Text

“Now, let’s finish this. Once and for all.”

In that moment, those words had been merely a petty threat.

A little taunt, just to see the determination stern Chris Redfield’s face under the strange fiery light of that temple. It had always suited to give this man an incentive to fight, an incentive to push himself to his very last breath. Chris Redfield who had the fate of the entire human race upon his broad and scarred shoulders, facing a god now with only a gun in his hand.

The fight had been short and sweet, as all their battles had been before now. He had not meant to kill him. Rough him up, lure out that classic anger from a man still bitter from a betrayal a decade prior. Squeeze out every cry of pain and anguish and put to the test the skills of the man he had trained. That was one thing Chris seemed to have forgotten. He could never win, because even now, after everything, his body still ran through the programming of Wesker’s teachings.

 And then he stood at the top of those stone steps to admire the breathless and beaten man still standing on the ancient flagstones down below, still glinting with that indominable American spirit, still clasping a weapon that had no true power. He faced Wesker as he always had been, unashamedly a man, unashamedly weak.

“You disappoint me, Chris,” he had said, holding his hand up to cease Valentine’s attack for now. “After all this time, I thought you might’ve come to realise that fate cannot be changed. Why must you continue to fight, knowing fully well you cannot defeat me?”

Chris’ hands tensed almost white around the butt of his pistol, jaw clenched, in a bold and provocatively proud stance. “Because I’m not about to let some madman like you destroy the world and the people I love,” he spat back, “give it up, Wesker, haven’t you caused enough damage already?”

A shrewd smile blossomed on the blond man’s face, and he raised his hands in an idle shrug, taking a step down toward the beaten man. “Can’t you see, Chris, your world is already well on its way to extinction, who are you to try and stop it? With my new age, there will be no more death, no more suffering. Isn’t that what we both are fighting for?”

“No,” Chris returned grimly, “it isn’t. You have no idea what you’re doing, Wesker. A guy like you has no idea, because you never even tried to have anything to lose in the first place.”

“What good is keeping what will only die,” Wesker raised his eyebrows, taking another step down, “what good is love, when it brings only pain. I have seen it time and time again in this godforsaken world. And in you, Chris.” He could see the flicker of fear pass over the younger man’s face now, and again he was almost smiling in vile pleasure as he probed into the heart of the man who had never learned to seal away his emotions.

Chris might compartmentalise his pain, but his heart… well, Wesker had never forgotten how to pluck those strings.

“You put so much love into the wrong people, Chris, because you are a fool. Too much so to realise how it weakens you,” he spoke now almost in a whisper, “Valentine, STARS, your idiot sister. Each have in turn led you to your doom, each beneath my hand. And yet again, you are here now to enact your little revenge are you not, Chris? Putting your faith in me, all those years ago. I tried to teach you that lesson then, but perhaps you were too young and naïve to hear it. Love is the poison of the human race, it courses through your veins, and it shall be your end, Christopher.”

 “I don’t need revenge,” Chris’ lips twitched, and he took a step back, still aiming his gun to Wesker’s head. He was an expert shot, and it would be only too easy for him to make that deadly attempt. But Wesker knew then that he could and would not. Predictable, as always. “It seems like you’re being punished enough for what you did, you’ve lost everything Wesker. You’re bitter and twisted, because you never knew how to cherish the people you had. You only knew how to hate, and to destroy. And that’s why you’ll never win.” Chris furrowed his brow. “Love is the best hope in the damn world, and that’s more powerful than any bioweapon or maniac like you could ever understand. You have nothing, Wesker, you are nothing. That’s why I don’t need revenge. Because all I see right here is a scared man with nothing left to live for, and that’s why you’re taking it from everybody else.”

“Chris-…” his voice emerged a growl this time, the rising tides of fury that he had kept so well in his control up until now, seething inside of him like molten lava. “You know nothing about me, what I have or have not.”

“When I realised it was you who betrayed us, sent us to our deaths,” Chris cut in again, voice stronger this time, “I didn’t even feel angry. I just felt pity for you, that you couldn’t see everything you had, that you were just another pawn of Umbrella’s.”

“Chris, don’t speak such foul lies before me-“

But Chris had stepped forward once again, lowering his gun just a little. Suddenly he did not look afraid, but an expression of intense pity and disgust clouded his handsome visage, and sent a bolt of flame right through Wesker’s innards. How dare this little man stand to defy him, and say such baseless lies.

"You still are, Wesker. A pawn,” Chris said, “and I’m sorry it’s too late for you to realise that. I can’t hardly bear to kill you, because when I look at you now all I can see is a scared little boy who never had anybody there to protect him. And I’m sorry, Wesker.”

“You’re wrong,” the blond snarled, dashing forward and knocking Chris back with his fist. Chris tumbled back along the floor, coughing and pulling himself to his feet, but Wesker was upon him again, kicking him hard in the jaw and picking him up to send him flying into one of the heavy stone pillars. "How dare you!” He spat, hair falling from its precision as he beat him again and again, until Chris was retching blood. Wesker knew Chris was no match for him. He never had been. And yet now with all the rage breaking from the slits in his skin he could not think to hold back any longer. “How dare you look down upon me, how dare you think of me as weak,” he lifted Chris by his shirt and punched the man hard in the face, breaking the man’s nose and bursting the blood vessels in his eyes.

Chris was half-blind, barely coherent from being tossed about. Every inch of him bruised and bloody, bones broken, limp in Wesker’s grasp.

“Have I not proven time and time again that I am no longer a man, Chris?” He spat into that beaten face that no longer registered the anger he had always craved, “why are you so afraid to seek your vengeance, why must you humiliate me with your refusal to see me dead?”

“Because-“ Chris croaked out, hoarse and rough, lungs damaged and blood spooling from the corners of his mouth, “you don’t need anyone else you love to hurt you, do you, Wesker.”

And in that split second, Albert Wesker disappeared and in his skin was the killing machine programmed into him since the time of his earliest cognitive memories. And when he came to, breathless with the shuddering of his furious brutalism, he stood in the centre of the temple in tortured silence.

He lifted his hands, and felt the blood seeping through the soft leather of his gloves, felt the way it dried on his forearms and face. All around him across the floor were the pieces of what had once been his nemesis. Anger ebbed from his trembling fingertips, and he looked up in time to see the BSAA woman Chris had brought along turn to leave hastily with an expression of abject horror. But he could not send Valentine to stop her, unable to find his words as the realisation sank in.

Chris Redfield was dead. And he had killed him.

Hadn’t that always been his greatest goal? To seek the pleasure of drawing out his oldest foe’s fears and fight, to meet one day that crescendo of raw power and crush him like the insignificant pest he had become? So why was it now as the adrenaline thinned in his veins, he felt a sense of deep harrowing horror inside. To look upon the torn remains and cracked bone, and know it had been too brutal and quick a death. And that after all these years, it had done nothing to resolve that bitter resentment he had felt toward the man in his life.

Even now, dead by his hand, Chris served to cause him pain. It was unforgivable. It was unfair.

Wesker turned to look at Valentine, and could only whisper to her; “he’s dead.” And see the anger locked inside her eyes, as the hot tear ran down her pale cheek. She could not move, she could not reprimand him, she was a witness to his weakness and still savoured none of it. “He’s dead,” he repeated again, uncertain why his voice emerged so rough and heavy.

The man sank down to his knees, and felt the slow methodical thud of his heart as he realised in that second that everything was all over. Bloody fingers dragged through his hair, Chris’ blood drying on his lips, he felt a small moan of bitter comprehension spill out from his throat. Although he could not reason why.

And then that resurgence of flooding hatred, as years of resentment now could never be resolved. Redfield had allowed himself to be killed – he realised it now – the man’s final curse to Wesker, that he might never reach the closure that he was prepared to destroy the world for. Chris was trying to teach him a lesson, martyr that he was, and a fool to believe that his sacrifice might be the trigger to Wesker’s humanity. And he was a fool again to think that it might work.

It had been too easy. Too easy.

He reached out, and picked up a shred of what remained of Chris’ once handsome face. That white dead-fish eyeball almost hanging out upon the sliver of skull. Wesker felt the mad urge bubble up inside to laugh and laugh and laugh until his lungs burst inside his chest. But as he attempted to do so, a strangled noise emerged instead and he quickly shut his lips, terrified at what threatened to reveal itself instead.

He got back to his feet, and turned again to Valentine. His voice shook slightly; “bring my men, have them pick up every fragment of this man. If anything is missed, I’ll have them all to the same fate. Be quick about it, we have no time to lose.”

Valentine gave a nod, and turned to carry out her task without complaint, tears still streaming down her once cheerful little face.

“I won’t let it end that easily, Chris,” Wesker spoke to the fragments of his nemesis once he was quite alone in the darkness of the temple, “death is too kind an option for you, after all the trouble you have put me through. I will teach you what it means to be my enemy. And when you awake again, I only hope you finally learn how to beg for your pathetic little life and realise that only I may command whether you live or die.”

Throwing down the fragment to the stone floor, he took two unsteady steps up the staircase, before falling down and vomiting, emptying his churning stomach until the acid burned his sinuses and tears began to drip from his long, blond eyelashes onto the cold, cracked stone below.

***

“What does ‘Ouroboros’ mean, Captain?”

Albert Wesker set down his tea so hard upon the desk it splashed the documents he had been reviewing in the quiet of the library. Chris had insisted that the books had to contain more hidden secrets, hints to the supposed ‘cult’ that Spencer may have been involved in. Across the table, face in vague confusion, Chris was staring back at him. With those sensitive, warm eyes he had had ever since that morning, when Wesker had awoken to the crippling realisation he had been unable to resist temptation. And felt no more satisfaction than he had killing Chris in the first place.

And yet the younger man had awoken so full of light and warmth.

“Uroboros?” Wesker repeated hollowly, a faint flicker of excitement in his gut. “Why do you ask, Chris?”

“Well, this page was marked,” Chris held up the alchemical book he had been pawing through, and showed Wesker the illustration he must’ve been confused by. “Do you reckon it might mean something? Seems like some kinda important symbol. I feel like I’ve seen it before somewhere, or heard the word… maybe something popular on those internet forums?”

Wesker restrained himself, retaining his cool composition as he picked up his tea again and took a small sip. “Ouroboros… the serpent which eats its own tail. It’s a very popular symbol of death and rebirth in many beliefs and ancient traditions across the world,” he explained, slow and careful. It had been himself who must’ve dog-eared that book, a long time ago now, before he had killed Spencer and thought of the man as still only a mentor. Back when he still craved that destruction without greater purpose, a chance to be reborn without the shackles of allegiance to one corrupt corporation or another.

Chris put the book back down on the desk in front of himself, face creasing up in concentration as he ran a fingertip around the circle the illustrated serpent formed. He silently sounded out the word, rolling it around his tongue as if seeking a familiar pattern. The first split of sunlight in weeks had cut through the clouds, pouring through the tall glass of the library and threading Chris’ brunette hair with delicate twists of gold.

It wasn’t the first time Wesker had commended himself for his needlework. All the effort had been quite worth it.

The soft Autumn brown glanced up, and caught Wesker’s intense gaze with a shy grin. Wesker felt his boot being touched under the table as Chris stretched out his leg, a gesture of his attention. It was so very odd to experience such pointless rituals. Sex – he could at least understand, an offering of one body to another. But meaningless caresses? Looks such as these? It was all so very pointless, as was Chris reaching out one hand across the tabletop, and dancing his fingertips over the knuckles of Wesker’s hand laid flat on his own unread book.

“Did you know your ears turn pink when I touch you, Captain?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Wesker slipped his hand under the table, a scowl despite himself. “Get back to work, Redfield, now is not the time for your fruitless shenanigans.”

“Yeah yeah,” Chris was still grinning.

“What are you so jolly about this morning?” Wesker had to ask, it was starting to unsettle him. As though Chris were harbouring some great joke at his expense.

Chris lifted his eyebrows, as though the answer were quite clear.

“Don’t play coy with me, Christopher. I cannot read minds.”

“You’re more of an egotist than I thought,” Chris laughed, “you really want me to tell you how high I feel right now? I just fucked the sexiest guy in the world that I’ve been crushin’ on for months. ‘Course I’m fuckin’ ‘jolly.’”

Wesker pressed his lips tightly together. He had suspected it might be something along those lines. And again felt that cold disgust at himself he had felt yesterday evening after their coupling, that he had allowed his body to fall into the trap of temptation and shame the programming he had been raised upon. Here, under Spencer’s very eyes. At least Chris’ shame might be confined to only the chapel, in this castle Wesker had no such option of privacy for his shame. He had not meant for things to drift so far into bodily territory. And it had, and he had not fought hard enough to resist it.

Chris’s smile faded for a moment. “You don’t regret it, do you?”

I am abhorred I allowed it. I betrayed my own senses, my own pride. Sinking to such a level as to sleep with the only man who was ever stupid enough to have me, and even then in great part due to his innocence of my sins. Nothing I can do or say will absolve me of this mistake.

“No, Christopher,” he said instead, voice oddly heavy, “I think… it was a long time coming.”

In the past five years, the unnatural intimacy he had shared with Chris from his death to his rebirth had greatly impressed upon him. Sex held little of the true raw emotions he felt for the man. The bitter hatred now bled down to a dull headache of guilt, the vague respect to pity, the euphoria of his pain once, to the misery of this torture now. Chris would never know any of it. Sitting there in his fern-green fleece jacket, smiling in the sunlight, thinking he had found a sliver of Heaven in Wesker’s rotten flesh.

Sex, however, was the only way he could possibly begin to translate these feelings into a language Christopher might understand. The desperate longing for him, not in carnal desire, but at the hollowness he had left behind. The terror that he could lose control, and destroy what may no longer be reborn again. Chris was not the serpent of ‘Ouroboros’, he was a man living on stolen time. And Wesker would do better to remember it.

The younger man’s shoulders relaxed, and he smiled warmly again in the pale golden light. Perhaps again reading Wesker’s conflict as awkwardness. “I figured you’d be rougher, to be honest Captain. I was surprised at how gentle you were. It really felt like…” it was Chris’ turn to start turning pink, and he quickly looked back down at his book. “Well… not like any sex I’ve ever had before.”

“In what way, Christopher?”

“The way you held me, like you were scared I was going to disappear, just like you said,” Chris said quietly. He bit his lower lip as Wesker sipped his tea again, unable to formulate any kind of reasonable response. “In that moment, I really felt like I was the only one you ever cared about, Wesker.”

Wesker smiled faintly. Ever perceptive, this boy. “And you believe it?”

“Yeah, I do.” Chris let the sentence hang for a moment, before he stood up abruptly. “Your tea must’ve been cold for an hour by now, Captain,” he said, voice louder than before as if trying to move on from saying something so heartfelt, “I’ll go make you another.”

He strode around the table, and reached for Wesker’s half-touched teacup, only to stop as he realised Wesker was looking up at him with that continued expression of difficulty.

Without reason, Wesker put a hand to Chris’ back, holding the man still as he allowed the urge to lean in and put his forehead to the man’s chest. To hear his beating heart, singing with an unrequited love. To inhale the scent of a man he had thought long gone from the world, replaced at one time with only latex and disinfectant, the smell of his childhood.

Chris’ hand came to rest tentatively on his head, afraid at first of touching the well-groomed hair of his Captain, before letting fingers drift through the blond hair in awe.

“Y’know, Cap’… you really do need to rest sometimes, you’re starting to get grey hairs,” Chris teased softly.  And when Wesker lifted his head once more, to look up at his creation with guilt ridden anguish, Chris whispered; “can I take your glasses off, Wesker? Just for a sec.”

Wesker said nothing, and didn’t resist as Chris carefully slipped the sunglasses from his face, forcing him to blink through the piercing sunlight. His hideous red eyes, where once they had been grey like the fog on winter sea.

“Yeah…” Chris breathed, stroking his fingers along Wesker’s high cheekbone beneath his right eye, not allowing him to try and move away, and he looked a little sad before whispering, “beautiful.”

He leaned down, and Wesker accepted the golden kiss to his stoic lips. And felt the heat against his marble, the fullness to his hollow. His fingers tightened hold on Chris’ jacket, and he fought back the sudden burning sensation in his eyes, that similar feeling to when he vomited stomach acid. Ashamed, and sickened he had the gall to do such a thing not only under Spencer’s eye, but to a man he had once respected as much as hated. Humiliating the memory of a proud man, and not even to his own satisfaction aside for some salve to the burning ache he knew no other way to fill.

Chris broke away as the library door opened, and they both held each other’s gaze for a split second longer, until Alex cleared her throat from the mezzanine.

“Albert, I have something to discuss with you before I leave this afternoon,” Alex announced airily, as if pretending she didn’t see her brother wrapped up in another man.

“Leaving so soon?” Chris asked, still sounding stiff as if he didn’t trust the woman. And Wesker supposed that was a wise approach. "We never got to have that drink.”

Alex gave her haughty laugh, one that Wesker knew all to well to read ‘you insolent fool’.

“And pray we never will, Mr Redfield.”

Albert Wesker stood, and let his hand slip from Chris’ back, lips still buzzing and the sickness still welling in his throat. “I shall see you at dinner, Christopher,” he murmured, touching the back of Chris’ neck, and feeling with a jolt that scar that led into his hairline. A reminder. “Stay out of trouble until then, yes?”

Chris smiled, a little sadly this time. Although Wesker couldn’t try to place why.

“Yes sir, I always do, don’t I?”

If only. If only.

***

Seven o’clock came and went, and Chris realised he had been drifting away into sleep, leaning on the windowsill of his bedroom after taking a good, long bath. For an hour or so he had stood here, looking down onto the beach as the sun set below the thick blanket of fog and doused the world in silky blackness once again. His arms were cold, where they rested on the glass, and he pulled back to rub them, finally realising the darkness of his room.

He walked through into Wesker’s room, then out into the hall and through the few unlocked doors on the way to the main hall. Here he stood at the top, and called out; “Wesker?” To only the response of the dully ticking clock, and the soft groaning the old castle offered in the wind.

His Captain had been gone for several hours now away with his sister, and Chris was starting to feel a little concerned. For one thing, he didn’t much like the thought of being all alone in the castle. Not with all those locked rooms and impenetrably black corners, not with the cutting chill alleviated only by the presence of another person. He walked down the stairs, wishing in that moment he had brought his gun from his room.

Idiot. He thought to himself angrily, what’s there to even shoot, shadows?

The ringing of his boots on the floor echoed through the hollow lungs of the great stone beast, and once or twice he had to stop himself, just to be assured there was not a second pair following close behind.

And then at last, he found himself once again in the chapel. This time he closed the door firmly behind himself, before lighting a few of the half-melted candles still stuck into their standing-holders.

Chris knew Wesker wasn’t religious, and assumed his father, Spencer, wasn’t either. Why else would the image of Christ have been taken away? There was not a single cross or icon in that bleak vault, nothing but the stained glass depicting Jesus and Lazarus, and another of St. George and the dragon, difficult to make out in the candlelight. The altar was bare, and he ran his palm lightly along its marble top. Cold. A shiver ran down his spine and he stepped back from it again, letting his eyes wander in a way they hadn’t yet within that room.

The pew where he had shown Wesker his adoration on his knees. He knew it had been sacrilegious to do so in such a holy place, but with his blond hair and handsome face softened in the candlelight, his words so earnest and almost desperate as he had clung to Chris, and requested to be his god… Chris was no monk. And while in his youth he had often knelt to the wrong man, in that split second it seemed a sign. As though after all this time, it was Albert Wesker, his destiny.

Nervous fingers tugged the cross necklace out from beneath his clothes, and he raised it to his lips. It was still a little heated from resting on his skin all day. A reminder that Heaven walked with him, even in this dark and godless place.

Chris Redfield turned his back to the altar and looked up at the timber vaulted ceiling with vague impression, cross still pressed to his hesitant lips.

All of a sudden, he felt a chill and watched as the candle by the door snuffed itself. A small pillar of smoke flurrying into the chill air. And when he breathed, his breath was fog. He could sense it, behind. Something, something lying on the marble altar. Dead still, but aware of his presence. That if he turned it would reach out, something beyond comprehensive conception, something more terrible than a mortal man ought to see.

It breathed. Deep, drowsy breaths. A faint rattle in its throat as if teetering on death’s door. Unmistakably the sound seeped into the surrounding darkness of the chapel, and the remaining lit candle fluttered nervously out of the corner of his eye.

“Cool it, Redfield,” he muttered to himself, getting a hold of his fantasy and stiffening his spine. What was he afraid of, some kind of ghost? He was far too old to be playing that game.

Slowly, horribly slowly, he turned his head to the side. Eyes wide, aching with the intensity of his stare through the gloom. The altar now sat in almost entire darkness, and he felt a lump seize his throat as he caught sight of a pale foot peeking out from the black. A man’s foot, and whatever connected to it suddenly shifted, a shape in the black, and began to sit up.

Chris spun on his heel, cursing as his hand automatically flew to his hip and clutched nothing for his defence. Only to let out a deep and furious sigh of earnest relief, to see the altar was empty. Candlelight danced on the places where he had touched, shifting the dust from the polished surface. Or… as he inspected it closer, it seemed rather that the dust had been shifted far more than his bare hand could achieve. A vague outline of a human shape, the scrapings of fingers. Chris had little reason to believe Wesker would roll around on the platform, so who else could possibly have left such markings?

Unsettled, he let his eyes draw down, wandering around the altar to the back, and running fingers down until he felt something. And pushed.

There was a rumbling, and for a moment the entire chapel shuddered so intensely Chris had to grab the wall, fearing the floor might fall into the dungeons down below. Instead, he watched in utter shock as a portion of the plain wall to the right slid open and revealed a once hidden passage.

He approached tentatively. A stairwell, old but most certainly recently used judging by the very clear shoe-prints scuffing the thick layer of dust. The smell of damp, wet stone, sweet decomposition like down in the dungeon wafted up to him. Whoever it was who had made a mess on that slab had to be down here, down in the choking darkness of whatever else lay beneath this sprawling castle on the clifftop. It was silent down there though, unlike the dungeons. And he had a suspicion it must lead to some other location instead.

Cursing under his breath and wishing he’d brought a proper torch with him, he flicked open his lighter and began to descend the stairs. The flame fluttered a little, drawing into the darkness before him as he took each careful step, mindful of any rotten boards. And when he reached the bottom, he looked up to see the mouth of the chapel grinding closed and trapping him in that eerie underground corridor.

“Shit.” But his trusty lighter burned on yet, and he began his way onwards.

It seemed a lifetime until he had come to the other end, shivering now from the cold. The door opened without resistance, and he stepped into what seemed to be some kind of laboratory. Chris allowed his lighter to click shut, eyes adjusting the faint light emanating from several tanks lining the far wall, illuminating a few metal-topped benches. Within the tanks hung fleshy, organic material with no apparent shape. And a cooling case sat beside them. Chris peered in as he walked past, drinking in everything so as not to miss a single detail. All that sat under the pale white light seemed to be several slides, little black dots on each.

He walked between the benches next, each spotlessly clean. The strong scent of disinfectant hung in the air, and a thick plastic curtain hung from the grey concrete ceiling, slicing the bunker into two separate spaces. There seemed to be a shape behind it, slightly raised, and as Chris walked to the curtain and gingerly pushed it aside, he realised it was some kind of operating chair. A metal table waited beside it, with clean tools: scalpels, tweezers, even a small bone saw, all waited to be picked up and used.

Chris could feel a certain unwellness churning inside of his gut now. Looking at the chair, touching the soft leather under his nervous fingertips, he had a distinct sensation that it had been waiting for him.

“What the hell is this place?” He muttered to himself, turning away from the chair in vile horror at the implications of its existence down there in that hidden bunker.

Did Wesker know about any of this? Had he set it up for some odd reason? The man was a soldier, not a medical professional. So why on Earth would he have prepared something like this? Chris grit his teeth against the very thought. It had to have been something more, whatever Spencer had been involved in, this had to be connected. All those books on resurrection in his library, alchemical novels and histories of death-mastery. It all had to connect somehow. And whoever had been the one to kill him must have had some hand in preparing all of this. And seemed to still be doing so right under their very noses.

Pressing onwards, sensing he was close to finding something that might finally impress Wesker, he opened a metal door into what seemed to be an office.

A desk cluttered high with books and papers and thick documents, a dozen empty coffee mugs, notes pinned to the walls and crushed up on the floor. A monitor beeped softly, on standby. It seemed as though somebody had been in here, busy, for quite some time. Anatomical prints lined each wall, plastered until the concrete was no longer visible. Gruesome displays of veins, muscle, the brain.

Chris ran his thumbs along the spines of the books on the bookshelf. Notebook after notebook, files each numbered and coded in ways he could not read, odd trinkets sitting here and there. A small pin badge sat on the top-most shelf, pride of place, and Chris gave it a once over before putting it down again. The letters ‘BSAA’ did not sound familiar. Could that be the organisation behind this whole place?

He sat at the desk, and pulled forward a new notebooks, each filled with scrawling handwriting he could not discern.

There was another book, slid under the others. The deepest, and the most hidden, and Chris flipped it open with a crease between his brows. Only to almost jump as he realised he was looking at his own face. Sketched out in graphite, so accurate he may as well have been looking into a mirror.

“What the-“ he flipped through, and felt a swooping sensation as page after page showed sketches of his face, of his body. The new one he had acquired through uncertain means. Little notes detailing ‘mole’, ‘scar’, and such littered around his multitude of faces. Some he came to pause at, heart thumping uncontrollably as the sweat pooled in his palms. His face, the one he did recognise but no longer owned. Younger, a smile. And he realised he was looking at a sketch of his STARS ID.

“STARS,” he whispered to himself, searching desperately through the vault of his mind as to how he knew that name, why he was affiliated. His eyes were running hungrily over the sketch, as if drinking in something he had been desperately missing. Ever since that first morning he had looked into the mirror in the bathroom and realised he barely recognised himself, he knew he hadn’t been dreaming it.

But who, and why did they have so many sketches? Who had been watching him, and what did they want from him? Some kind of insane stalker?

Chris knew he wasn’t bad looking, but this was a stretch beyond mere attraction. These were almost anatomical, intricate studies of his skin and form in a sexless observation. He felt a shiver down to his bones, and quickly shut the pad, sickened by the sense those sketches might climb out and possess what they so desperately wanted to be.

For a moment he sat in silence, fingers shaking on the desk in front of him as a million thoughts dragged through his head, each as implausible as the last. It was beyond strange, it was beyond natural. Evidence of an aging that he had not yet mentally experienced.

The silence of the laboratory hummed in his ears, and all of a sudden the crushing weight of all the Earth that must’ve been above him now seemed to press downwards.

Before him the monitor screen blinked the word ‘TRICELL’. Chris pulled the keyboard forward, feeling his heart almost crawling up his throat to his tongue as he pulled the computer out of standby to open desktop. Clearly whoever owned this device had not bothered to set a password, perhaps presuming nobody would have known to go down here in the first place. The tunnel had been exceptionally well hidden.

He passed the mouse cursor over several files on the desktop. One particular folder piqued his interest. It was that word again, ‘Uroboros’, spelled differently to how it had been in that book earlier on. The folder contained numerous ‘update reports’, he scrolled through a few, gathering very little information from his brief glance over other than it to be some kind of biological experiment. The thought of the chair in the other room complete with metal implements made him shudder.

Near the bottom of the listing, was a file named ‘Kijuju Incident’. It was very different to the others, and as he opened it the document was headed by the same logo as the one on the pin, ‘BSAA’. ‘Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance’, he read, mouthing out the words silently as if feeling for a moment some kind of distant recognition.

He began to read, in detailed concentration this time.

***

A light rain was falling as night set in, and Wesker walked Alex in silence through the grounds one last time, coats wrapped tight around themselves against the chill and wet.

They had spent all day arguing. Alex had determined him a deadline to complete his observations of the resurrected Chris Redfield before he had to return to the work he had so neglected for five years now. And Wesker knew all too well that if he refused to comply, Alex would have no guilt in disposing of Chris herself, no matter what Wesker might do in retaliation. She might’ve vaguely comprehended Wesker’s attachment to the younger man, but duty as always, came before love.

“He’s late,” Alex said grimly as she stopped them at the main gate that led down toward the helipad. It was of twisted iron, sharpened to a spearpoint along the top, whilst the bars were worked into intricate iron flowers and vines. Rusting and slick in the downpour. It was a pointless edition. Nothing was on this island to possibly even consider attacking the castle, and even so, what good did old metal do against real wrath?

“I can’t imagine you will be missed,” Wesker said coolly, “I imagine they’ve had quite a vacation without you hovering over your little minions, threatening to flay them for any minor infraction.”

“Perhaps,” she sniffed, “but unlike you, Albert, I take some pride in my work. What good is making people love you when you have little interest in preserving their meaningless existences. You know so yourself, did you not send that little STARS unit of yours all straight to the grave, the first moment it was convenient?”

Albert Wesker stared down the overgrown path to the helipad, void of any method off the island. The tall, old trees hung over the path, choking out the sky and rustling in secrets and darkness.

The thought of STARS always brought a bitter taste to his mouth. Not of guilt per say, he had never grown fondness for any of them truly. It had all been an act, a farce to manipulate them into his bidding. And for the greater purposes it had worked… it had been his own self-confidence that had led him to his first ‘death’.

STARS represented his first true failure. A kick in the gut, to remind him he was not as in control as he thought he had been. To have such pathetic and purposeless men like Chris Redfield to laugh at his achievements equivalent to God, in building a lifeform with his own two hands, it had cut his pride quick to the bone and brought out in him a seething rage he had never known in his entire calculated life.

Chris Redfield still clearly remained an icon of his waning control. How he had been unable to prevent him from destroying the Spencer Mansion, unable to prevent him from getting under his feet during their brief spat with the Ashfords, unable to even keep him out of his mind in the long intervals between their confrontations. The consistent fury, daydreams of each and every way he would strip the man of his pride and his skin and his blood. Drain him and pain him until Chris knew the depth of his hatred, and begged, begged for a death Wesker would not grant him.

And then he had killed him, in the fault of Chris Redfield, he had lost his control once more and ruined every plan he had set into place. One brief spire of anger and the passion that had built up inside of him regarding this man, and he had slaughtered him in an instant. Rebuilding him marked the turning point, establishing his control over the man. No longer would Chris be able to die, or live, or fight him. And the thought simultaneously disturbed him as much as it pleased him. Less so now that Chris was not the same man any longer.

STARS only stood to represent Albert Wesker’s underestimation of the power of human potential and hope, and even that he had not been able to fully destroy. Chris Redfield would no doubt always crawl out of the wreckage unscathed and full of sick heroism. Perhaps it had been why he had strung out the need to kill him for so very long. Unwilling to let go of that glimpse of something he had never had reason to believe in as a child with no hope and no aspirations other than the uniform already laid out for him to step in to.

“STARS had to die, it had always been their purpose,” Wesker said slowly. “What good at heroes in the wake of Armageddon. And now they lie beneath the rubble in the Arklay Mountains, just ash and bone, waiting for a Judgement Day that will never come. There is no paradise, no heaven, no hell. What good is fighting for life, those fools were all on their pathway to death the moment they took up the notion of heroics. Stupidity and heroism often go hand-in-hand.” He shook his head and felt his lips twist into a frown of disgust. “That is their punishment for putting their faith in anybody other than themselves. The entire human race must die for my cause, and the stupid few who still believe in any prospect of ‘love’ will be the first to gladly march to their dooms.”

Alex Wesker pursed her lips into a tight little red-painted smile. Her blond hair was wet, sticking to her scalp although she didn’t not seem to care for it. She was observing the man who represented her brother, somewhere between bemusement and contempt.

“Now I agree with that. How selfish it is to be anything. To strive for anything. My work, our work… we seek a future and rebirth, whilst heroes fight to maintain the past and the dead. And yet, I cannot help but think you have inadvertently fallen into the latter category, Albert. You are no hero, but you have become insufferably chained by the history you share with one. And I cannot help but wonder if some of his heroics may have rubbed off on you.”

Wesker shot the woman a glower. “I have not abandoned my ambitions. And I am no hero. He is as chained to me as I to him. I mean to enact my vengeance, not reminisce or seek a hope or change.”

“Ah Albert, what else is vengeance except the past keeping you in bondage? You believe you are owed that man’s life tenfold, but a human should only have one. Is one death not enough for you, Albert? Perhaps you are more selfish than I ever thought possible.”

“I am owed his every living breath, and every dying rattle,” Wesker hissed, fully turning to face his sister now, “I will have him killed one-hundred times before I am satisfied, before I will put him to his undeserved rest. He forfeit his life the night he let himself die by my hand well before his time was due – and I will not allow him the gratification of believing he bested me. That he conquered me by allowing me a victory I did not want.”

Alex raised her pointed eyebrow, the amusement now gone from her face. Contempt, maybe even pity remained. “You know better than I how that man’s brain functions. Do you really believe him capable of formulating such a revenge plan, a man so full of pride he couldn’t fathom dying without having succeeded first?” She took a step closer to Wesker, daring. “You are far more obsessed with him than he ever was with you, Albert. You are a shell of who you once were, consumed by the memory of a man who you claimed to despise.”

Wesker hesitated, then grit his teeth. “You know nothing of what you talk of,” he growled, also taking a step closer. He was a good head taller than his sister, but she did not back away, looking up at him still with such an infuriating expression. One that made Wesker feel weak and pathetic, one that told him she saw right through every façade he had ever put on.

“Then tell me, Albert,” she said softly, “why is it your anger died with that boy? What remains after the soul is torn? You felt owed his life, his love, his suffering. And you wasted it all in a fit of your own stupidity. You deserve to regret, or repent. You do not deserve to play god with a man who never was your true enemy. Chris Redfield was no real threat, you…” she sighed, “are just weak.”

Albert Wesker reached for his gun but Alex pulled hers first, cold muzzle pressed to under his jaw, a sure suicide-shot. His face twitched in spite, cut by her observations, desperate not to allow himself time to consider how true they might be.

“How long until you lose your temper again?” She whispered, voice almost fading into the patter of the rain on the mud-slicked ground, “and I return to find you half the halved man you already are? There is so little left of you Albert. I do believe your continued love-fantasy with this man shall be your end.”

“Pull your damn trigger,” he growled, “you know that I will not die so easy, Alex. But only then I briefly cannot stop you from your destruction of the man.”

“Maybe so,” Alex smiled coldly, “but I do not like to play this game too easy, it is dull. If I have to kill you, I will put that man of yours in a cell with your dead body, and force him to witness your own resurrection. And then we shall see if that huge heart of his is still prepared to play lovebirds.”

Wesker bit the tip of his tongue to prevent himself from cursing the woman to hell and back.

“You must be the one to do it,” she continued airily, “it will only end once you allow it to. I will not intervene until you have proven yourself to be entirely incapable. I cannot pick up your pieces forever, Albert. But you always were such a disappointment, it is no wonder Spencer put his true faith in me.”

A duck back and a sharp jab to attempt to knock the gun from Alex’ hand, but he missed, and she fired a warning bullet that clipped his cheek and cracked open the night with the sharp ringing fire. He took a step back, clasping his cheek, as Alex aimed her gun again, no longer smiling.

“You’ve been weening yourself off your serum for too long, brother, you grow weaker, older,” she danced the aim of her gun, as if deciding what next to shoot of the man stood still in the rain before her, still seething with anger, “perhaps a bullet to that half-beating heart of yours really will be your end. Perhaps you had better get on and do it yourself.”

Wesker said nothing, braced for the next bullet with grim stoicism. He would not let Alex believe him to be afraid of physical injury, not when he himself had only begun to accept his own mortality. He dared her to try it, to let him rest without aspirations that were no longer his own driving him to the same insanity that put Spencer in that dungeon cell almost eight years ago now.

The sound of somebody running through the mud turned both of their attentions, and Chris Redfield sped out from the darkness and threw himself between the gun and Wesker, breathless and drenched to the bone.

“The hell’s going on here?” He asked fiercely, staring at the blonde woman with seething distrust. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare point that thing at the Captain.”

Albert Wesker had to blink back his own surprise at the vision of Chris Redfield protecting his life with such venomous intensity. He could see the heavy rise and fall of the man’s shoulders, mud flecked up his trousers from the speed of which he had sprinted at the sound of the gunshot. Like a dog with his hackles raised, all bared teeth and wide rabid eyes.

He reached out, and laid a gloved hand on the man’s shoulder.

Chris spun, suddenly looking afraid as he glanced up at Wesker’s face. But quickly rearranged it into concern at the sight of his bloody cheek.

“Captain-“

“Calm down, Redfield,” he assured him, “only a little gunplay.”

“But… she just shot you-!” He swung back to face Alex, who had now lowered her gun and reholstered it under her coat. “I’d sooner die than hurt my sister.” He spat, “How could you?”

“Quite easily, I can assure you,” Alex answered concisely.

The whirr of the approaching helicopter was finally audible above the rain and the trees, and the conversation was cut short by the bright lights of the descending vehicle on the helipad down the path.

Alex picked up her case, and gave a nod to Chris. “Do keep an eye on him for me, don’t let him die of sepsis before I can finish the job.” And she turned, walking through the iron gate with confidence in tow, leaving Chris speechless and evidently shaking in fury. And probably from the cold, too.

“Come, Chris, let’s return to the house,” Wesker said tiredly, dabbing at the cut on his cheek that healed far too slowly for his liking. “It would be a shame for you to catch your death from this godforsaken rain.”

Chris turned and gave him such a complicated expression that Wesker was momentarily stunned for thought. And then the younger man grabbed him by the hand, and began to drag him, forcing him to almost run to keep up. Through the cemetery, past the crypt, between the foliage-choked gravestones. Between the hedgerows, and finally through the gate into the secret rose garden.

They were both breathless by the time they reached the old guardhouse ruins, and for the first time Wesker felt the creeping pain of over-exertion come over him, and he almost fell down to his knees if it hadn’t been for Chris’ quick hands. Catching him mid-fall in the firm sturdiness of his embrace. He looked up at that younger face, wet with the dripping of his hair and the contorted muscles of a man withholding anguish, and suddenly felt afraid again.

“Wesker, are you alright?” He asked in such a panicked voice it grated, the rain dripping from his wild hair onto Wesker’s bloody face.

“I’m fine, Chris, I’m fine.” He tried to stand, to push the man away, but Chris shoved him back into the alcove surrounded by that wreath of bloody roses, and kissed him. The taste of fresh rainwater, the metal tang of his own blood. It was fierce, passionate, Chris seeking answers to a question he hadn’t asked. And Wesker pushed him back with a gasp for air. “Chris- what’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry,” Chris whispered angrily – at himself – “I’m sorry, but please just let me do this,” it was a plea. And he leaned in again to kiss Wesker once more, with the wobbling of his brow almost an insinuation of incoming tears.

The stench of the roses almost overpowered Chris’ natural musk, and Wesker found himself unable to resist again as he sought out Chris from the sickness of Spencer’s memory. He wrapped his hands about the younger man, pulled his body tight to himself and parted his lips to deepen the want. All those words Alex had spoken, of his weakness and his loss of aspiration, and how right she had been. For now in Chris’ arms, he could not bear to consider bringing again pain to such a man, it frightened him, and it told him things were going too far.

He couldn’t let it get out of control. Not again. He’d played along until it was dangerous. Lost sight of his purpose, of what Chris represented.

“Chris-“ he murmured against the man’s trembling lips.

“Don’t call me that, say my name properly,” Chris returned, sounding cracked and hoarse. It seemed he had truly been shaken up by witnessing his and Alex’ spat, and it seemed Wesker had underestimated just how much the poor, pathetic soldier had truly fallen in love with him.

A sigh, soft, melancholic. “Christopher…” he murmured, “calm down, Christopher, I’m not going anywhere.” He slipped his hands up to hold Chris’ shoulder blades, feeling just how much the man shook.

Chris shut his eyes tight, and fell down to his knees in the mud, clasping at Wesker’s coat with his hands almost together in prayer. Head bent to hide his expression, he pushed his forehead to the older man’s sternum. “Even if this is all a dream, I don’t want it to end yet.”

“What… do you mean by that, Chris?”

Those blazing eyes, that expression of anguished ardour, the man soaked to the bone and on his knees in his heroic absolution of love. “Just once, let me make love to you just once more,” he croaked, lips still a little stained from the run-off of Wesker’s blood.

Wesker put his hand on Chris’ head, stroking back the damp strands that stuck to his forehead. “This is no dream,” he said, heavy of heart, wondering if Chris too could sense that this charade could carry on for little longer, “Don’t kneel for me, Christopher, god knows I hardly deserve that kind of respect, even from you.” He had said it in a kind of jest, but he sounded only tired and grey.

Chris raised himself a little, and put his forehead to Wesker’s chest, still grasping his coat as if afraid Wesker might slip out from between his fingers. “I don’t wanna think about anything else tonight, Wesker, I just wanna fill my head with you.” His words were tumbling into the rain, soft and sad, and he brought himself back to his full height and put his face to Wesker’s neck, kissing over the small mark he had made not so long before in this alcove. “I don’t need you to love me back, Wesker, not really. Whatever we are… it doesn’t matter. Just one more night with you, that’s all I want.”

Shocked by Chris’ sorrowful confession, Wesker exhaled and tilted his head back. He cradled the man to his body, offering him what little heat he had left to share. “Whatever we are…” he murmured, at as much of a loss as Chris was regarding their status. He licked his lips, and tasted his own mortality sweet and metal on his tongue. “Don’t say those things, Christopher,” he said as kindly as he could manage, knowing all too well that if Chris cracked now it would make things even harder for them both. “Come, let’s go warm ourselves indoors and away from these infernal roses.” He pressed an uncertain kiss to Chris’ head, and caught the scent of his man’s hair, and felt that queasy nostalgic pain slice through him. “My bed…” he murmured, gently, “and my body, they’re yours tonight, Christopher."

"Thank you," Chris’ deep and aching voice rolled through his brain, “thank you.”

It was dark in Wesker’s room as their naked bodies entwined, skin still damp after shucking their wet clothes. Wesker touched it, the grafting of his own body with Chris’, matrimony and consummation in methods far more intimate, more violent than physical passion. Chris had been upon him from the moment they stepped across the threshold, and kissed him now still, holding the man beneath him as he stripped him and touched him, and his own stiff manhood brushed against Wesker’s stomach.

Chris said nothing as he kissed his way down Wesker’s body, spreading his legs and licking the man’s penis to a sufficient stiffness to take it into his mouth.

And Wesker lay staring up at the ceiling, hands beside his head as he submitted to Chris’ erotic hunger, feeling again like Christ upon the Cross as he allowed the man to take what he was owed, prepared to suffer for every sin Chris would commit in doing so.

That warm mouth, anxious to please him, stifled moans and chokes as he took him as deep as he could into his throat, wet hair brushing against Wesker’s stomach as he buried his face into the older man’s pubic hair. Seeking his humanity out, grasping for every sense that Wesker’s body could provide that this was not a dream.

When Chris lifted his legs and applied a lubricated finger to Wesker’s hole, the older man only stiffened and did not resist, exhaling shakily as the digit entered him and curled inside him. He was horribly aware of how fast his own heart beat, terrified he was allowing himself to be taken, and yet grateful that if it was anybody to have done this, it was Chris. Gentle, kind Chris, with more love than sense, and more sense than cruelty.

Chris continued to suck him as he opened him, with his thick, work-hardened fingers almost leathery smooth, spreading him and stroking him inside. It felt alien, invasive, and Wesker had to grit his teeth and refrain from the peculiar noises attempting to rise from his throat. He had made his decision and he would stand by it. It was a small kindness to allow Chris this, after everything he had done, and everything he would do.

“Wesker,” the man murmured as he lifted his head, arranging his body against Wesker’s. The older man’s legs at his hips, a firm and gentle hand on his hip, the feeling of the hot, wet tip of his penis pressing up against his entrance, but not entering quite yet. Chris draped himself down over his body, kissing bruises into Wesker’s pale throat, to his lips, and biting at them gently. “Push me away, tell me to give it all up, to wake up,” he spoke into Wesker’s mouth, full of obscene frustrated sadness. It seemed deeper than just worry at Wesker’s life, he seemed to be preoccupied with some other miserable thought.

Wesker touched Chris’ face – that beautiful face he had built – and offered him a vague, bitter smile. “Who are you to give me demands, Christopher?”

The younger man laughed softly, despite himself, and melted into another kiss from Wesker.

“It’s yours,” Wesker said quietly, brushing the wet hair from Chris’ lovely, lovely eyes. Full of sunlight even in the dead of the night. “I’ve made you wait a lifetime already, Christopher. take it.”

He almost cried out in pain as Chris entered him, and dug fingernails into the man’s back until he bled. Chris didn’t say a word, face creased in concentration as he held Wesker’s hips and sheathed himself inside his pale body. He settled as deep as he could push before Wesker made a small sound of hurt, resisting all his instincts to push the big man off of him. Chris was still shaking a little, from the chill and the restraint. Clearly excited by how hard he was inside of Wesker’s body, burning hot like nothing Wesker had ever felt before.

“I love you, Wesker, I love you,” Chris whispered, smothering Wesker in his sweet words as he began to gently move his hips. Small circles, testing how far he could pull out before Wesker would grunt in quiet pain and scratch the skin of his back open.

Wesker couldn’t try and reply even if he wanted to, as Chris suddenly smacked his hips forward and forced from his throat a small cry of pain. The burning stretch, the internal battle not to let himself go again, terrified he might wake up in his bed with the shreds of Chris once more. Not that it was so much of a threat now, since he had stopped taking his serum to the correct dose. He was weaker – he’d made himself so – upon facing Chris’ mortality after believing him to be as immortal as himself, and realising only then that death was the only release from his bondage.

Jealousy, at the ease of his passing, a determination that should Chris dare to leave him again, he would soon follow in his footsteps and drag him back from the gates of heaven himself. He clung tighter to the man, panting and uttering a small groan of ashamed strange pleasure at the stretch and the fill of the man’s long strokes. In and out, careful not to rip him but hard enough to force his sounds and sweat and dampness to his eyes.

It hurt. It hurt so much. And he would accept it, just this once.

“Are you alright, Wesker?” Chris murmured, although he didn’t stop his thrusts, deep and thorough, as if gratified by the little whimpers he was forcing from a man who had only ever been so strong.

You little brat, Wesker thought bitterly, you damn bastard. But all he could say in his rough and weakened voice was; “you’re a damn liar, Christopher. You told me it’d feel good.”

Chris laughed in his gentle deepness, and Wesker smiled despite it all, letting his head fall back onto the pillow as he let a small moan filter through his teeth as Chris’ cock ground into something that sent sparks of wondrous intensity through his limbs and across his skin like electricity.

“I don’t ever lie to you, Captain,” Chris teased, hoisting Wesker’s hips into a better position to reach that same sweet spot over and over, panting now as he clearly began to reach his own due climax. “Fuck…” he growled, pulling out and leaning back, cock stiff and wet in the cool air.

“What is it, Chris?” Wesker asked, mildly annoyed now his pleasure had been retracted after first attaining it.

“I’m gonna cum if I keep seeing your face like that,” Chris explained, looking thoroughly embarrassed as he gripped Wesker’s thighs tightly in his hands, “I don’t want it to end this quickly.”

Wesker sighed, hardly believing what he was about to do to soothe his poor, poor soldier. He turned himself onto his front, and laid his head down on his forearms as he presented his ass to the man. “Better, Christopher?”

Chris’ hot, heavy, muscular frame draped itself over his back, and he felt the man’s lips between his shoulder blades.

“God…” he whispered, “you are unbelievable Captain, every time I don’t think you could get any sexier…”

“Shut it, and put it back in,” Wesker almost snapped, anxious now to return to that unknown pleasure. He couldn’t stifle his moan as Chris’ cock split him open again, thick and burning and promising him the pain he deserved and the pleasure he stole. He bit into his own hand, grunting softly as Chris’ hips began to slap against his ass, tight, careful thrusts that sent ripples of intense pleasure through him alongside the burning of the stretch and the beating of his gut. The soft slap of skin on skin, Chris’ heavy breaths and deep and gorgeous moans into his ear, it was horrific, humiliating, and Wesker wouldn’t stop it now even for Uroboros.

“Oh-!” Wesker cried out as Chris snapped his hips sharply, feeling tears spring to his eyes. And Chris turned his head, a messy, moaning half-kiss as his other calloused hand slipped beneath Wesker’s barely held-up body and began to stroke his cock, which had been drooling precum onto the sheets without his apparent knowledge.

“W-wait, Chris…” he grunted, trying to lift himself and move away from the younger man, but Chris wouldn’t let him. He pushed Wesker down, holding him to the bed as he thrust quicker, working Wesker’s cock so good the older man squirmed and swore and felt his mind bleeding of all its sensibilities. "No it's too much-" he begged, suddenly scared and feeling the panic rising inside of himself as he realised he couldn’t escape without so much as killing the man, but even then, was he even strong enough now to try and push Chris off of him? The man was taking him so hard now he could feel the bed creak with each slap of his hips, the gruff breaths and growls.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Chris was whispering into his ear, “I’m sorry, Wesker.”

But he clearly wasn’t, and Wesker choked on his own strangled sob as he suddenly came. It tore through him violently, spilling out between Chris’ safe fingers as he stroked him through it. He was gasping for air, hot tears spilling out as he felt that crashing terror all around him of losing control. In the same way it had been as a child, spiralling beyond his own two hands. At the mercy of some faceless stranger who would soon come to reprimand him for his embarrassing display with a sharp palm to his cheek.

Chris turned Wesker back over before entering him once more, leaning down and bringing with him his comforting musk and warmth, and Wesker wrapped his arms around Chris as the younger man licked the tears from his face. A silent assurance, followed by a soft and chaste kiss to his bitten-bloody lips as Chris rolled his hips in deep, satisfying circles, moaning in his luscious depth. And Wesker snapped back into the present.

The comfort of Chris Redfield, the pleasant knowledge that his childhood was far, far away now. Here in this dark, quiet chamber with only the soft rain beyond the glass, he was safe beneath that body he had built in his own queer desperation to abate the loneliness that had pervaded his every hour since his cursed conception.

"You’re a brat, Christopher,” he murmured, once his heart was back under control. He stroked Chris’ hair, feeling the scar with a little soft sigh, and moaned quietly as Chris continued to fuck him with his own shakiness as he breached his orgasm. “I must’ve forgotten.”

“I can’t help it, Captain, I’m sorry.”

Wesker pulled the man down again by the back of his head, and bit his lower lip hard. Chris whimpered, and came, a bloom of heat flowering in Wesker’s gut as the younger man shivered and flushed in his euphoric crescendo.

Unlike last time, Wesker was not filled with that sense of guilt as he lay beneath that heavy frame. But almost a contentment. He had never designed for Chris to want him sexually, he had never designed for himself to allow it to occur to his body. And yet half a century of abstinence seemed worth it all for that brief happiness he could grasp to, as false as it might be, with Chris’ lips on his and his semen seeded in his body. Arousal was not the right word, it was beyond words of human desire.

“I love you, Wesker,” Chris said again, slow and soft as he put his face to Wesker’s neck and drank in the scent of his sweat, again mouthing lovebites wherever he could reach. “I love you.”

“I know, Christopher, I know.” He said it wearily, exhausted and satisfied. And he lay back and let his eyelids fall shut, for the first time allowing his every limb to relax, as he focused on the lips on his skin, and rough hands at his hips, and that burning heat inside him still. Unwilling to let it out, not just yet.

Wesker could feel the light of the candle glowing beyond his eyelids, and he reached out blindly in the bed and felt only the warm sheets where Chris had been holding him when they first fell asleep entwined like ivy on an ruin.

Chris.

He opened his eyes, and squinted as they adjusted. The soft shuffling sound of papers from his desk, and from the haven of his bed he could just about see Chris’ profile. Shirtless, latticed in his scars and scratches, looking through Spencer’s notes on the mould, on cadou, on resurrection. At Wesker’s own notes of his work, anatomical sketches, scribblings of his own insane theories.

A greying sense fell over him like a thick fog, and Wesker knew then that Chris had somehow found out. It explained his actions earlier, down in the rose garden. His apologies, his desperation. And somehow Wesker felt glad. As if responsibility had been alleviated. His lovely, foolish, heroic Christopher, so in love he would pretend to not know, stringing himself along as he always had done. Desperate for love as much as Wesker had been too.

The past few days had been a dream. A long, strange, beautiful dream. But Wesker had not been stupid enough to think it could last. One more sleep, a few more precious hours of believing that he had found some small shred of peace in Chris Redfield’s stubborn love that only sent him to his own grave far too young. Albert Wesker knew he was the selfish god, and whilst once he had revelled in that fact, now he knew just how foolish he had been to think he had any right over a man’s choice to die.

In the golden candlelight, he watched as Chris reached up and touched the scar on the back of his skull. A glittering tear dripped down his handsome nose.

Chapter Text

Chris Redfield stepped one foot at a time into the large marble tub, sinking up to his neck in steaming, violet-perfumed water. He lay, gazing up as the steam wound patterns into the cool bathroom air quite like the plaster designs of the tall, elegant ceiling.

After waking alone, he had drunk the scent and remnant heat of his Captain from the sheets they had shared – coupled upon mere hours before.

It had been all he had ever wanted, once, to bury himself in the man so shamelessly. Without his Captain’s contempt, without his pity, without his rejection. Now, though, his memories slipped slowly back into focus, as if he’d lit a torch in the steeping white fog that throttled his ability to recall. Faint, shadowy dancers of his past. Snatches of voice, of face, and the crushing ache of emotion that he could not yet put to scenario.

All night long he had been plagued by gravesoil bearing down upon him – organic mulch. And worms, squirming under his skin and eating away at his organs and sinew. Until when he had awoken to the black morning thunder and whipping pelt upon the windowpanes, he had been sure he’d look beneath the duvet to see his own white, clean bones. But they had been only dreams for now.

A strange apathy had come over him in light of his revelation down in the crypt-lab. Anger, sorrow, love, hate… they each seemed so timid. Nothing of what they spoke to, promised, seemed quite to fill the distinct wrenching ache in his chest. Or the hollowness he felt in attempting to reorder his thoughts.

For nothing of it mattered any longer. And it hadn’t for five years, of which he had slept on by halfway between paradise and Earth. Knowing nothing of business here amongst the living. Free at last of human pain and betrayal, free from duty that defied the whispers of his heart. Perhaps he ought to scorn the one who had placed him in his Purgatory.

And yet when he closed his eyes, and pictured the misery on that man’s face as he made love to him in the early hours of the eve, he had realised all the punishment he could provide in the world would not hurt the man more than his own self-flagellation.

Some part of him had known, ever since he woke up three nights prior. With a phantasmic calling, and a desire to find and reclaim what was once his. Mistaken duty for desire. An innocent love, a heated violent passion, a grim acceptance of his fate.

Chris ran his wet, perfumed fingers through his steam-dampened hair, and exhaled a heavy and heartfelt sigh.

So much of him yearned to pretend otherwise – to crawl back between inviting sheets, and lie naked for his lover to return and love him and want him and have him until Heaven was theirs to imprison. But duty and the calling from the Western Shore beckoned him from that sliver of euphoria that ought to have never existed. Sand ran thin now between his fingers – as time was no friend to lovers.

Cleansing away the sweat of passion from his skin, he rose from the water and walked barefoot and dripping to the sink. With the back of his hand he wiped the steam from the elegant mirror, decorated in a frame of sculpted cherubs and grapevines, and looked at the face that was not yet his.

Skin pink from the water, a rough stubble growing rather than the wispy hairs he’d barely managed at twenty-five. He looked into his own eyes for a while, the water dripping down his drying skin to pool on the floor at his feet – not caring about the mess.

Who was this man in the mirror? And why had Albert Wesker, his beloved Captain, done such a thing to him? In that moment he felt a sick twist of pity for the face, for eyes shadowed by a betrayal he was yet to know of, and the tightening of his heart so painful it may have been an admission of guilt.

Chris lifted a hand to his chest, feeling the pounding of the aching organ with a grimace, and that was when he noticed it.

A black patch of skin at his elbow. About an inch across. As though the skin had been painted in grey-green ink like a bruise along one of the thin white scars. But when he touched it and felt the soft give of the flesh, and the faint scent of organic rot reached his nose, he realised the truth. Even as a young man, he had known death. Known its scent, its colour. And he was not afraid now to see it on himself.  

Calmly he dressed himself, shaved, and styled his hair. He left his gun on the desk in Wesker’s bedroom, sat atop the resurrection notes, and sketches of his own skull cracked open for the insertion of brainmatter.

It was all already over, and soon he would sleep again. But for now he had to finish what he had been brought back to do, and find out the truth before he could be entirely free.

The day was dark, the storm howled and battered the windows and the old stone walls, and yet Chris Redfield walked with a peace in his veins down the gloomy corridors. And this time, Death walked with him.

***

Albert Wesker walked along the covered walkway toward the other side of the castle. The gale tore at his hair and his coat, and the rain lashed at him and soaked him through to the bone. Below the walkway the gardens were torn asunder, branches and hedges strewn across the flattened grasses, flowers torn from the solid March soil, and in the distance the old guardhouse seemed to waver in the darkness. Taunting its fall. Folly that it already was.

Inside the heavy oak door, the wind’s cries were muffled, unable to crawl through the tight gaps in heavy stone and left rattling the windows in rage.

The other side of the castle had not been opened in a very, very long time. Footsteps echoed up through the high ceilings as he walked down the half-furnished hall; motheaten banners of an old Spencer family emblem lynched upon the walls, unlit torches set up between them. There was no electricity on this side – hence why he had remained only in the other side up until now.

All the ornaments lay beneath inches of thick dust and cobwebs. Furniture greyer than he remembered. Paintings crooked and filmy with dust so that it was impossible to make out the faces or landscapes. Down the spiralling stairwell, built to favour the left-handed, so as to prevent intruders who came up the stairs from being able to draw a weapon easily against the defenders, and down into the secondary entrance hall.

The large door was barred shut from the inside, and impenetrable from the outside after the stone entrance had collapsed some years ago. And now a gap in the wall allowed rain to splash inside and wet the unkempt stone tiles. It was cold in here, and his breath fogged as he crossed to the ornate panelled door, and stepped inside the old ballroom.

Two storeys, a ceiling fashioned in gold lief reliefs of seraphs and Dionysian myth, only faintly visible in the perpetuating gloom. Once upon a time it had been custom to entertain the clients and compatriots of the Spencer family in this ballroom. The height of its glory, in the early days of Umbrella, when the Ashfords and James Marcus would spend long weekends at this estate, drawing up plans and plots with the then younger and charming Spencer. Smoking as they sat around one of the many tables now rotten beyond repair, laughing over martinis as the guests danced and laughed on the floor with little idea of what their sponsorship was truly funding.

Albert Wesker now stood in the centre of the ballroom and tossed aside his wet leather coat. It was still in here, and the scent of old wood and wine filled his mind and brought to his tongue a sudden thirst for anything to take the edge off. But the bar had been bone dry for decades now. The only thing left in this entire building was the rain water that seeped through the ceiling, and splashed in dark corners.

As a younger man, before the turn of the century, he had visited this estate before it had begun to collapse in on itself. Back before he knew the truth – the entire truth – and still believed Spencer to be akin to his mentor. All the lies he spun, and promises left broken. Of how important Albert Wesker had been, how close he viewed the young man as a son despite them only meeting briefly on his previous visits to the training facility.

He had been thirty-five the last time he had visited this ballroom. One of the final parties Spencer had ever thrown, nearly a decade after he had been sent by his master to assassinate James Marcus. Back when William was still alive, and he had been able to pretend for one evening he was just another dandy in his evening suit, talking with his soon-to-die closest friend about a future that would never come. And taking Alex for a dance at Spencer’s drunken encouragement. ‘A new era for Umbrella’, he had stated, to show unity in the face of dissolution.

Back when the ballroom shone gold. Now only the ghosts of the gaudily dressed women waltzing with their white-gloved partners wisped like smoke in the air, to music too far away for the mortal ear to capture.

Albert Wesker was fifty-four now, and a past of spun gold had tarnished and rusted, to reveal it was only fool’s gold after all.

The old gramophone was still standing up at the stage, and he wiped the dust from the record still sat on the spindle. Prokofiev’s 1995 ballet ‘Cinderella’, one of Spencer’s favourites.

It squeaked and wept a little before it settled into the needle and began to scratchily play. A swell of gorgeous strings and brass, classic and romantic, everything Spencer had not been. It filled the ballroom with the lovely melody, and Wesker sat himself on the edge of the stage and let his tired eyes fall shut. All his anxieties quietly washed away in the music, although his heart remained heavy even in this refuge from the storm.

The rise and fall, rise and fall of Act One, and when he opened his eyes by the time of No.29, ‘Cinderella’s Arrival at the Ball’, he could see them all. Dancing, smiling. Himself, Alex, William, Annette; a motley assembly of young people all doomed by Spencer’s great and impossible plans. Half of them were dead now, sleeping peacefully under the ruins of Raccoon City half a world away. And the remaining two fared little better. It had been a very, very long time since he’d seen Alex smile the way he could see her now.

Overwhelmed by his sickness to join them, with their names already on his lips, he sprung from the stage, desperate to climb into his memories and redo it all. Save them all from their own hubris, leave the world he had broken far behind. And yet when he stepped forward, the memories faded and only the shadows remained in their place. Dancing, dancing, waltzing to No.30’s, ‘Grand Waltz’, as the rain dripped from holes in the ceiling.

The great door creaked open, and Wesker felt his heart jump into his throat.

“Alex?” He called, hoarse and afraid.

Chris Redfield slipped into the ballroom, soaked through from the rain in his fern-green STARS uniform that always complimented his lovely eyes so well. He looked at Wesker, then up into the gloom above them at the marvellous golden ceiling.

“I heard music,” he said simply, “should’ve told me you were havin’ a party, Wesker.” The shadows seemed to flicker and tumble away as Chris walked into the room, a beam of light through the darkness of Wesker’s memories.

Wesker observed him, heart unsteady in his chest. He had been awake for hours, trying to configure what his actions ought to be that morning now that it seemed Chris knew at least a little.

It felt strange to see this Chris in a place of such private memories. Seeing the man precious to him for wholly other intents walk with the ghosts of his past life, although he never knew the Birkins. He wondered what William would think to find out that Wesker – after all his determination and withdrawal from the romantic sphere – had chained himself on accident to a younger man. Would he laugh at his failure? Or encourage him, reflecting on his own relationship with Annette who he had loved beyond all others, and a daughter he claimed he would destroy the world to protect.

“What’s the matter?” Chris asked, a forced smile on his lips as he approached the man, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Yes… there’s quite a few of them in here,” Wesker murmured. He had not expected Chris to come to him with his smiles and his quips. Hiding himself away in the ballroom, if only to evade the fear he was afraid to see in eyes he had come to find love shone within. Part of him had hoped Chris might not be able to find him in here – and yet it seemed the man could not be stopped by locked doors or ruins, as though no matter where Wesker went, Chris the loyal and unquenchable would chase at his heel.

He watched Chris walk slowly around the ballroom, running his fingertips over the dusty tables still in their white tablecloths, looking up at the reliefs and paintings of classical scenes with eyes that understood none of them beyond their face of beauty. Chris was nothing like William, or Alex. He saw things for what they were, no fuss for nuance or suggestion. It was what made him so difficult to understand – he supposed – he was predictable, and yet nothing he said or did ever made much sense to Wesker’s private inclinations.

“How are you feeling?” Chris asked, feigning evenness in his tone.

“A little sore,” Wesker returned thinly, “I suppose it was deserved. And yourself, Christopher?”

“Good,” Chris said, then turning to face Wesker with a vague smile, “great, actually. It’s like I’ve slept for a long time, and now I’m awake again. And suddenly it all makes sense.”

“Perhaps I should’ve put on Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ for you.”

Chris shrugged, walking back to stand at Wesker’s side and look at the gramophone still crackling out the sweeping music. “What’s playing now?”

“No.36, ‘The Duet of the Prince and Cinderella’,” Wesker said quietly, amazed that he still somehow remembered the title for each piece, even though it had been such a very long time since he heard it last. It was a softer piece, gentle strings and slow waltzing pace. And before he could stop himself, he held out his black-gloved hand to Chris. “Care for a dance, Christopher?”

“Since when were you a romantic?” Chris laughed, and took Wesker’s hand as they drew in close and began to slowly turn to the music. Chris’ feet clumsy as Wesker smoothly led them in a circle around the ballroom floor in time to the waltz.

Muscle memories of nights spent wooing women on Spencer’s behalf, older women with lots of money to sponsor their cause. And of the hours he and Alex would spend before a ball practising so as not to make fools of themselves.

Chris Redfield needed no such wooing. For now he was looking up at Wesker with a gentle misery, lips a little downturned, and his grip on Wesker’s hand and waist firm as if afraid to let him go. And Wesker didn’t want to. For when he did, at the end of this song, it would mark the end of the dream for good. He could feel that burning in his eyes again, and uncomfortable knots twisting in his gut as he realised he must do it today. No longer could this stolen time be dragged along. It was cruel, even by his own standards, to allow Christopher to continue to lie to himself in some small grasp for happiness.

“Wesker,” Chris said, calm and low, “I’m dead, aren’t I.”

“Yes,” Wesker replied gravely, still leading Chris in their dance, “five long years.”

“And you killed me?”

Wesker’s face twitched, but he kept himself under some semblance of control. “Yes,” grave again, “I did.”

“Why?”

A heavy sigh, and Wesker drank in the anguish in his pseudo-lover’s eyes, feeding the knots in his stomach and paining him with recollections of his failures once again. “You do not remember it, Christopher, but it is not the first time I had attempted to do so. The fifteen years I have known you have brought us to the brink on numerous occasions. You the hero, of course, in each instance. And I, determined to make you an example of those who dared to oppose me.”

He frowned. No, that wasn’t quite true.

“Or rather… I hated you. For what you stood to represent. For how you – who could rival me, and excite me – still determined to be my enemy rather than join a more noble cause.” He laughed coldly at that. “Noble… you always were right about me, Chris, how wrong I was. How I wasted my life on dreams that brought only reckless destruction to satiate a fury I had tempered since I was a child.”

There was pity again in Chris Redfield’s eyes. That pity that had gotten him killed last time. And yet Wesker felt no more of his anger, only the welling tide of bitter guilt like acid in his throat.

“And you killed me… like you had planned to do,” Chris shook his head a little, half in confusion, “so why am I here, Wesker?”

“I… suppose I never wanted you dead,” Wesker said flatly, “I honestly did not believe you could die, Chris. You who fought against me for so long, an extension of my own mind and body, the opposition to me in such a way we fit to create a whole. I forgot in that minute that you were only a man, and not my immortal equal. And when you spoke your truths I tore you apart in an anger I always thought I’d learned to control.”

Chris’ face was contorted in some mild agony now, as if remembering slowly the details of his own demise. “Why…” he murmured, “why did you bring me back?”

“Because I am yet to complete my vengeance,” Wesker hissed, suddenly clutching Chris much tighter to him, “you who has brought me only grief and spite, you who chose to die, who allowed me to kill you knowing it would ruin me-“ his lips twitched into a snarl now, suddenly alight with that strange potent energy, “only I lay claim to when you live and die, Chris, you had no right to make that decision for me.”

“Sounds more like you just got lonely without me,” Chris said firmly, sternly, “that was never your decision to make, and I had no true say in it. You killed me Wesker, and you damn well meant to. You have no fucking right to have missed me, or feel angry that I left you, when you did this to yourself.” He looked disgusted now, “you should’ve just let me stay dead, rather than humiliating me by letting me fall in love with you all over again. If this is your vengeance, I guess it damn well worked.”

Wesker stopped their movement, and growled out his next furious words; “I made you immortal, Chris. I made you to stand on the shoulders of gods alongside me, to finally be my equal. To know what it means to suffer how I have suffered.”

Chris threw Wesker off from him, and took a step away from the man now shaking in his turmoil. “You make yourself suffer, and you’re a coward for it,” he said bitterly, “too afraid to face your own consequences, too afraid to accept you truly are alone. And you’re cruel, Wesker, crueller than I realised. How long did you know I loved you, and still determined to play me along and hurt me when you’d grown bored of my stupid crush?”

The older man in black said nothing, the shadows in the corners of his visions snaking out their tendrils along the wooden floors, swarming around Chris’ feet as the younger man took another hesitant step away from him.

"It really was just a dream to think you would ever accept me,” Chris’ voice shook slightly now, a glint in his eyes reflective of his heartache. He ripped off his STARS jacket and threw it down on the floor in front of Wesker. “If you want your damn vengeance so bad, come and get it,” he spat, “and this time, when you kill me, don’t you dare try to bring me back.”

And with that declaration, he turned on his heel and ran from the ballroom. Wesker did not hesitate, he was quick on his feet – but slower now, his powers drained with the lack of serum – and he could barely keep within vision of Chris as he gave chase down the ancient halls and corridors, and up the winding steps that left him breathless.

“CHRIS!” He cried, shrill with fear he might turn a corner and see his Christopher was gone for good, “DON’T YOU DARE LEAVE ME AGAIN!”

Bursting out onto the walkway, he cursed as the salt-rain off the sea stung his eyes, fighting his way through the lashing heavenly flood to the other door into the castle. Out of the rain again he wiped his face dry, and sprinted down the corridor that led back to the main hall, following the wet bootprints on the carpet and the trail of open doors. He half flung himself over the railings of the main hall mezzanine, scouring the hall down below and catching the flash of green as Chris ducked out from a column, caught sight of Wesker, swore and doubled back towards another door.

Wesker launched himself off from the second tier, landing and stumbling, gritting his teeth as the fall which should’ve broken his ankles only lightly cracked the bone – enough for him to heal in a split second.

“CHRIS!” He snarled, throwing open the doors to the dining hall and flying across the room as Chris vaulted the table and threw him a look of absolute terror. It infuriated him – how dare this man look at him with such emotion, after all he had said and done. Wesker pulled his gun and fired, the bullet clipping the doorhandle to the next room and having Chris reel back without being able to pull it. “Don’t you run from me,” Wesker spat, holding up his smoking gun, “after all I did for you, Chris, don’t you dare turn your back on me!”

“Cool it, bastard!” Chris yelled back, unarmed with a rabid look in his bright eyes. “You don’t scare me, Wesker, not anymore. I’m already fuckin’ dead, what else are you gonna possibly do to me?”

Wesker’s lips curled back into a twisted grin, advancing around the table with his hand outstretched to the man he had forbidden death to. “You’re not dead,” he hissed, “you’re not dead, and I won’t let you die again.”

Chris made a sound of disgust, before suddenly kicking one of the old wooden chairs into the path and shouldering his way through the door and onwards into the castle.

Throwing the chair aside, Wesker sprinted after him again, panting raggedly as he flew up the stairs now even hotter on Chris’ heel. And in the next long, dark corridor, he could see Chris up ahead. And he could see the tendrils of the shadows wrapping themselves around his legs and feet and slowing him, consuming him into the black mass of his rapidly fading memories.

“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” He screamed, throwing aside the gun and dashing forward to tear the shadows from Chris’ body, “HE’S MINE, HE’S MINE, YOU CANNOT TAKE HIM AGAIN!”

Chris had stumbled and fallen, the swarming tendrils worming into his skin like maggots as he lay still and didn’t fight it. Wesker tore them out, away, scratching at Chris in his trembling fear that they would consume him and leave him with nothing else. But the shadows kept coming, swarming, and he realised they were creeping up his arms now and pouring into the pores of his skin. He reeled back, screaming bloody murder as he tried to claw the black worms from his flesh.

And in that split second, Chris had scrambled back up and forwards into the library. Wesker ambled after him, gasping for air. But the sudden crack of white lightning lit up the room, colouring everything in the greens and blues of the remaining stained glass, and Wesker came to a halt to realise there were no worms in his skin. And the shadows had retreated entirely, leaving Chris collapsed and deadly still in the centre of the room.

In a flash he was at his side, turning the young man’s body over with his heart thundering sickeningly in his chest.

“No, no-“ he was moaning, shaking as the thunder rumbled the old stone around them, shuddering dust from the crystal chandelier up above their heads. He touched Chris’ face, pale, still, suddenly feeling that panic rising once more. “Chris,” he begged, lifting the man and holding him tight to him, breathing in anxiously that scent of musk and warmth, “Chris, please don’t leave me again, please don’t, I can’t do it again. I can’t stand it again.” His pleas were weak and wispy, all his strength sapped from the hallucinations and the horror. But he could feel Chris’ shallow breaths on his neck, and squeezed him tighter, eyes shut tight as the burning returned to them. “I won’t let you die again, I will not allow it.”

“It’s too late,” Chris murmured, voice low and tired, “even if I wanted to stay, Wesker, I’ve run out of time.”

Wesker drew back, staring intensely at the man. Another flash of lightning, and Chris’ face looked greyer and corpselike, the way he had looked on that night when he had first returned to the realm of the living.

“They won’t have you,” Wesker repeated, voice strangled and hoarse, withdrawing his hands from Chris, suddenly afraid to touch him. “They can’t take you.”

Chris gave him that pitying look again, and sighed heavily. Carefully, he lifted up his right arm, and turned it over. Another flash of lightning, and Wesker moaned in quiet distress as he caught sight of the decay crawling its way up most of Chris’ forearm now. He hadn’t noticed it with his jacket on earlier, but it was clear now it was spreading fast.

He reached out with his gloved hands, and held Chris’ arm gingerly, drawing his thumb slowly down the blackening skin. Then his expression tightened, and he looked at Chris with an odd sense of fiery determination. “I’ll find a way to stop this, Christopher.” His grip tightened, and Chris winced in pain. “The prototype mould… I must’ve missed something…” he was muttering, “it shouldn’t’ve spread in a living person like this, none of the others I saw…”

“Wesker,” Chris laid his other hand on top of Wesker’s hand and gave him a little shake of his head. “Haven’t you done enough to punish me? Fuck… you’re a cruel bastard, y’know that. Isn’t killing me once enough?” The younger man’s eyes closed shut, and he turned away, expression tense in the way that meant Chris was trying to hide his true emotions.

Albert Wesker was unable to find his words as he realised that Chris did not understand any of it. Would not even try to. And he himself had no vocabulary at hand to describe the harrowing sense of dread he felt at realising Chris was still half-way between the boundary. He had never fully returned, and his body yearned to rot away and free the spirit he had drawn back in his unholy demands.

He felt like a little boy again, clutching his wounds – the punishment for his humanity – walking through those empty halls of the facility knowing he was alone. And always would be. None of them had ever cared for him, loved him; a commodity, a tool. His pain was meaningless, his tears, his anger, all a waste of his potential. And here Chris Redfield was, maybe the only man stupid enough to ever extend the grail of human kindness to him, realising his mistake at the reality of Wesker’s inhumane selfishness.

“I promise you, Christopher, I will not let you die again,” he whispered, as firm as he could manage, “I’ll stop the decay, even if it kills me. Just please… don’t leave me alone again.” His voice cracked as he said the last few words, and he looked away, ashamed and embittered.

Chris said nothing, and sat very still for a long minute. And then wound his fingers with Wesker’s and pulled off his glove, to hold his hand properly. Both their palms still damp with sweat and rain.

“What happened to you, Wesker,” the younger man said sadly, “you’re definitely not the same guy I remember. You’re a real goddamn mess.”

“It’s all your fault,” Wesker murmured, looking at their entwined fingers with miserable regret etched into his features, “it always was your fault, Christopher. For everything.”

In the clammy gloom of the library, Chris squeezed Wesker’s hand. An acknowledgement of his regret, and in silent admission there could be no more forgiveness.

***

Chris was sitting on the windowsill of the large bay window when Wesker arrived in that late afternoon. Head pressed to the wet glass, watching the dark fog roll over the sea and coastline, staring out across the hidden stretch of the ocean as if hoping to glance a glint of light from a passing ship.

But there were no such trade routes out this far – Spencer had made certain of that – no ships or planes, no distant lighthouses to cut through the thick fog that’d easily dash a man to shreds upon the jagged rocks that lay at the castle’s feet.

Wesker set down the tray on the desk – some food he had prepared in the hopes of lifting Chris’ spirits. But the man didn't even look at him as he set it down, staring out the window and cradling his arm with an almost blank expression on his pale face. He was so white now the scars seem to splice him like shattered china, and the longer Wesker looked the more he was afraid Chris might split apart at the seams before his very eyes. Reduced again to those fragments of man, now too rotten to be resewn.

“Chris, you haven’t eaten all day,” he said cautiously, standing by the desk as if too nervous to approach the man, “come and eat, you’ll feel better for it.”

Chris didn’t turn his head. “I remembered some more when you were gone,” he said quietly, voice barely audible above the spatter of rain, “STARS… all my friends, they’re all dead now, aren’t they. Except for whatever the hell you did with Jill’s body, is she… the same as me?”

“No,” Wesker said stiffly, “she is… something else.”

“I remembered dying,” he said, sounding a little confused, “and what came next.”

Wesker stood deathly still, clinging onto each word as they came. “You do?” He asked, feeling sick at the very thought. Did he even want to know? Albert Wesker had never believed himself capable of dying – not with the t-virus strong in his veins – but then again, he had once never believed Chris capable of dying either. He walked slowly to the bed, and sat at the foot with his hands folded on his lap. “What… was it like?”

The young man was silent again for a little while, shivering slightly from the cold of the wind blowing through the cracks in the old glass panes. “It was… it was like falling into a dream,” he said calmly, “I guess it’s why I thought I was still dreaming when you brought me back. It didn’t hurt, I was just suddenly… there.”

“Where?” Wesker asked, a coarse whisper.

Chris turned his head a little and gave Wesker a little frown. “A hillside. A big hillside, and I was standing at the top with the grass up to my knees. There was no wind, no sound. Just the night sky above me stretching away forever, and these weird stars in constellations I’ve never seen before. White and burning and moving, and I remember standing there and realising I’d never seen anything so beautiful before.”

The young man swallowed thickly.

“I walked down the hillside, because at the very bottom of the long slope was a river. The water was so black it sorta… blended into the sky. And there was a boat waiting for me. But I knew I couldn’t get on.”

“Why not?”

“I somehow knew…” Chris hesitated, “I knew I wasn’t all dead. And I couldn’t move on until every piece of me was there. Incomplete… like I’d left something behind.”

Wesker rose to his feet again, and paced slowly around the room, and stopped by the long mirror beside the door. He stared at himself, and in the background he could see Chris was watching him with his brown eyes full of defeat and mortal exhaustion. Wesker unbuttoned his shirt slowly, the top few, and drew the white fabric slowly down his left shoulder. Beneath that exposed skin his heart was slowly beating.

“You took something of mine, didn’t you,” Chris said, accusing but not angry.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Wesker whispered, “it was… too damaged for me to fix it. But I couldn’t throw it out, no piece of you Christopher was thrown aside. And this… it was too precious, too precious to discard.”

“You… sly bastard,” Chris laughed, unhumorously, “I should’ve known that you would’ve stolen my heart for yourself. You always were too afraid to just ask for these things.” His hand moved to his own chest, “so what, you gave me yours in return?”

“Yes,” the older man turned, hand still over Chris’ heart beating and only half-healed in his chest. The younger man’s organ had not reacted well to the t-virus infected blood being pumped into it, and it had tried to reject multiple times after Wesker had implanted it in himself in a dangerous and agonising ritual five years prior. He had lessened his serum to barely anything, determined not to let the most precious fragment of Chris waste away inside of himself. “My body can heal anything, or could, back then. At the time… it seemed the most logical step.”

“For five years I walked that hillside,” Chris said softly, “five fucking years, all because you felt you had some right over my body. You know that means I can’t die until you’re dead too, Wesker. Damn it…” he rubbed his mouth and turned back to stare out the window; “damn you.”

“Are you going to try and kill me, Chris?” Wesker asked, melancholic in his half a shirt, hair unstyled after the rain, loose and white and grey hanging around his face. “You can try all you like, I have too, but it seems it is impossible.” His words were grey.

It was a confession of a sin he had never once exposed to any other living soul. Not that Alex would’ve cared much for his suicide attempts, she would’ve only thought him weak, pathetic. And he supposed he was. For all his attempts to follow Chris where he could not go, all those long nights knelt beside his exquisite corpse, anguished and green with envy that he could not know such a peace.

Chris swung his legs down from the windowsill, and he walked across the room to lean against the desk, arms crossed as he now faced Wesker. The blackened arm seemingly even worse than earlier.

“I won’t kill you, I don’t want to. I never really did, even back in Kijuju,” he admitted, “death would always have been too easy a punishment for you, Wesker. After everything you did, you should’ve been tried, made to serve years in prison. Anything but the easy way out. I guess some part of me still hoped you might agree to those terms if I was adamant enough. Still clinging to that hope you were still that Captain I looked up to back in STARS. Level headed, reasonable, someone I was once able to put all my trust in. And you kept it, you kept my trust, gave me reason to fuckin’ love you, and then you threw it all away and never looked back.” He shrugged; “serves me for being an idiot, I guess.”

Wesker sighed. “I did look back. I always have looked back. I did what I did because I had a duty, but I promise you, Christopher, I always looked back.” He bit his tongue until he tasted blood at the sight of Chris’ cold, unsympathetic gaze. “I had no idea you were in love with me, that I will not lie about. I thought… it might’ve been a side effect of our transplant, when you awoke with words of affection on your lips.”

“And you took it, and you didn’t ever stop to think if you should. I just don’t understand why you did, Wesker, you always hated me. Was it all part of some fuckin’ power-play that you slept with me and let me believe just for a little while that you actually cared for me, too?” His voice was thick with hurt, wavering and deep. “Did it feel good, playing me like a little fuckin’ lovesick puppet, taking and taking until you got scared you were in too deep?”

“Chris-“ he reached out on instinct, but Chris shuddered away from his touch.

“Don’t touch me,” he said bluntly, “don’t you dare fucking touch me. You really are fucked up, Wesker, if you think I want you touching me after using me for years to fulfil your sick little fantasy. Thinking that in any capacity I might still love and forgive you, even after all the shit you’ve done. You’re a monster, don’t fuckin’ forget it.”

Wesker moved in quickly then, his hand ghosting the back of Chris’ head as he almost pushed their bodies together. He let his lips hover by Chris’ ear, and he could feel the man stiffen even without laying a finger on him. Wesker knew all too well that Chris was lying – he always knew he was, the way his voice got oddly stiff, his flickering eyes afraid Wesker might see right through him. And he had. And it ached him to know that even after it all, for what he had done to this poor, poor man, Chris was unable to stop those emotions – stop hoping that everything could still work out.

“I never wanted it to end up this way,” Wesker whispered angrily, more to himself than Chris, “for all the things I have lied to you about, and done to hurt you, none of what transpired in the past few days was any of it. I had no plans for what occurred, and I regret it enough to sicken myself. My proud, strong Christopher…” his fingers finally brushed the back of the man’s head, his soft hair, “never, never, did I wish to humiliate you for your honesty. It is…” the words got choked up his throat, and he had to almost spit them out; “it is the very thing I always admired the most in you.”

A firm hand on his chest pushed him away. Chris’ expression was stone. “Then why, Wesker?”

One hundred thousand voices fought inside his skull in that moment. Reasons, excuses, lies. None of them right, the only right answer being the very thing he could not say. And Albert Wesker turned quick on his heel and to the door before he said anything else stupid. “Eat, Christopher,” his voice in its strained attempt at normalcy, “I’ll take you down to the lab later, and I shall make sure the decay does not spread any further.”

He was out of the door, slamming it shut before he even had to witness what look might be on his young companion’s face after such a coward’s exit. Wesker walked quickly away from the bedrooms, pulling his shirt back up and trying to ignore the thundering in his chest from a heart that was pleading for him to return to that gloomy chamber and reunite with its true owner.

None of this was meant to happen this way. None of this had been even a brief consideration in his plans. It had been a grievous error to allow himself to fall victim to Chris’ charms and innocent adoration, and he cursed himself for his weakness. For five long years of wishing to just be loved and missed culminated in this specimen. To be wanted, and seen. More than his work, more than a product produced for one purpose. From when he had been at Chris’ funeral, and seen his family and friends weep for him and the jealousy that had crushed him. If he died, would there be anybody to mourn him? He doubted it very much. And yes indeed he was selfish, but just for once in his life he had briefly known what it felt like.

And perhaps he had been lying to himself all this time, and indeed he had fallen greatly in love with Chris a very, very long time ago. But how was a man to know, if he had never known it before? How was he to know the depth of his strange affection, until it had been that very passion which had destroyed the only thing he had ever come to love?

Albert Wesker threw open the main doors of the entrance hall and stood on the porch to catch his breath. The wind tore through his hair and thin clothes, and in an instant he was soaked again.

He was angry. Angry that it had taken so long for him to realise these emotions, angry it had not come sooner, and now Chris would leave him again and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Perhaps he shouldn’t intervene at all. He couldn’t stand the way Chris had looked at him up in that bedroom – pity, betrayal, dislike. It had hurt him more than all the violence which had ever been inflicted upon him in his past.

In the safety of the rain, his eyes burned and dripped, and there was nobody there to punish him for it. God was dead, he had been dead since 2006. And still Wesker felt his oppressive eye, and knew it was too late now to ever be free of it.

***

Two days passed. Long agonising hours as the storm raged on, never abating. Down in the lab where the electricity was still running on the backup generator Wesker tried every trick and idea he could think of, drawing out what little he knew from Spencer’s notes and his own observations, to try and keep the spread of the mould under control.

Ointments, restitching, even regrafting some of his own skin (which he had to cut off quite painfully in front of Chris), but it would not take, refusing to phase into Chris’ body the way it had before.

“Wesker- maybe it’s time to give up,” Chris had said on multiple occasions.

“No,” Wesker would spit every single time, preparing another shot, extracting another sample, doing anything and all that he could to undo what had already begun.

“You really do never learn, do you?” Chris had asked on the fortieth hour of Wesker’s sleepless attempt, “always messing around with stuff you don’t know how to control, dragging everyone else into your shit because you’re too proud to just admit when you were wrong. Or when you can’t do something.” He sighed, as Wesker ignored him and continued to spread a new salve over the moulding flesh that was now spreading up to his chest. “What idiot put all these ideas in your head, Wesker? You’re not stupid, you’re smarter than I’ll ever be. Ever was. So why’re you so obsessed with pretending you’re some kinda god?”

“It’s not about playing pretend,” Wesker said stiffly, removing the latex glove smeared with black, and putting on a new one before starting to smear more of the anti-fungal cream over Chris’ skin. As of yet, it was the only thing that seemed to slow down the initial spread on the surface. He had no idea what was going on underneath, the state of Chris’ veins and organs. Blacker than black, the shadows finally inside him, eating away like graveworms. “Control,” he said simply, tiredly, “no longer waiting to be dragged along. I have been a prisoner all my life, Christopher.” He finished up his work, and leaned back to look at the shirtless man sat on the operation chair. “I guess I was a fool for thinking I had finally broken free.”

Chris looked at his arm, black and faintly smelling like organic rot. It would get worse, but down here in the deathly cold of the lab the smell was slow coming. “Well, doesn’t matter now,” Chris said, evenly, “but you dying of exhaustion isn’t going to fix much of anything. I think we should go back to the castle now, Wesker. We’ve been down here for far too long, and I want to see the sun again before I die.”

“Don’t say that,” Wesker snapped, “I don’t have time to rest, anyway, with the rate of the mould spreading-“

Chris reached out, and Wesker jumped as he felt the man’s not rotting hand cup his face. It was warm, smooth, and he looked up into Chris’ eyes properly for the first time in days. The younger man looked almost at peace, a little concerned. Greying, but faintly smiling despite it all.

“How can you smile, Christopher, and tell me not to bother,” he whispered, “does it please you to do this to me?”

A shrug. “Guess I just realised I was wrong before. You’re still the same guy, just… more honest. Guess that’s what you get for stealing my heart. Now c’mon, bastard, you look dead on your feet and I want a goddamn bath.”

Up in the ornate bathroom that sat between their two bedrooms, Wesker helped Chris ease himself into the hot water of the large tub, and sat on the edge as he carefully helped to cleanse the man’s body. Chris had grown weaker, or perhaps unwilling to move his limbs so much, and he lay looking up at the man as he let him wash him with a medical precision.

Steam dampened hair, and seeped into the fabric of Wesker’s shirt. And that scent of violets like the fountain of youth permeated the humid air with its sickly perfume.

“Get in with me.”

“What?” Wesker snapped, focusing very hard as he gently dabbed at Chris’ blackened skin.

“It’s not like my skin’s coming off,” Chris pointed out, “and anyway, you’ve handled the mould long enough now, you’d already be infected if it was working like that.” He gave Wesker a wry, tired smile, “c’mon, Captain,” and with that, he grabbed Wesker by the arm. He may not have been strong, but losing his balance, it was all too easy for the older man to fall back with an almighty splash into the water, submerging and surfacing with a splutter.

“Chris-“

“Stop whining, you needed a bath like two days ago,” Chris laughed, suddenly oddly cheerful with his old mentor and enemy strewn across his lap, clothes wet and stuck to his skin. He pushed Wesker’s wet hair from his face, and breathed out gently. “Anyway, I was thinkin’… you never got baptised, right?”

“Of course not,” he said irritably, trying to lift himself up – but Chris’ hand on his arm stopped him in place.

Chris nodded, thoughtfully. “So even if you die, there’s no guarantee we’ll end up in the same place. For all I know, I might end up in hell if you take my heart there with you. So… let me baptise you, Wesker. Right now, just in case.”

Wesker frowned. “Chris, I am not religious, and I don’t believe it works that way.”

“Who’s to say?”

The older man’s eyes glanced down at the silver pendants strung from the younger man’s neck. His dogtags, and that cross. That damn cross he was sure he had swallowed, and yet could not bring himself to ask about. Afraid again that Chris might hate him even more for his attempts to consume his faith.

“It’ll be quick,” Chris promised, “it won’t hurt. I’ll just say what was said to me when they did it, and all you have to do is say ‘yes’.”

Wesker could not believe that he was about to accept such a strange ritual to take place. Or that Chris was quite serious. The burning in his brown eyes, like rotting Autumn, and the faint firm frown on his face as he awaited Wesker’s permission. Again he looked at the cross from Chris’ neck, and wondered in that moment if it was any coincidence such a faith had been dragged to him over and over.

“Alright.” He said uncertainly, “alright, but don’t drag it out.”

Chris gave him a nod, and began. “Lord, hear our prayer, and give Albert Wesker the new life of baptism… set him free from the original sin, and his sins which followed, and I anoint him in the name of Jesus Christ our saviour, may he strengthen you with his power…” his words were quiet, mumbled as he dug through distant memories to find them. He picked up the small bottle of violet-scented oil which had perfumed the water, and dabbed a little onto his thumb, before smearing a cross onto Wesker’s forehead.

Wesker watched him, feeling heavy and light at the same time, the oil on his damp skin a strange sensation. Chris was trying to save him, in the only way he thought he could.

“Father, you created man in your own likeness: cleanse him from sin in a new birth to innocence in this sacred water…” he offered the steam-flush and mystified older man a faint smile; “do you, Albert Wesker, reject Satan and all his works.”

A brief hesitancy. “Yes.”

“Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?”

“Yes,” firmer, this time.

“Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, and Jesus Chris his only son?”

Wesker’s lips crept into a smirk before he could help himself. It was all a ridiculous game, he had always known it so. But then the seriousness still on Chris’ face had his cynical humour dim, and he gave a soft sigh. “Yes, if you must hear it so.”

“And do you believe in the forgiveness of sin, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?”

Wesker nodded slowly. He had seen them all, now. “I do.” And I wish I never had.

“Wesker-… Albert,” Chris said, softly, “are you willing to be baptised in my faith?”

Those soulful eyes, the ones which had never deserved to turn white with death before his due time. And still here he was, with his forgiveness undeserved, and his love and care in realms of which Wesker had always sneered at.

“I am,” he whispered, suddenly afraid.

“Then I baptise you, Albert Wesker, in the name of the Father.” Chris put his hand on Wesker’s head, and pushed him down into the water once. A full submersion, and a resurface.

“And of the son,” a second submersion into that hot water, made holy by the presence of Chris Redfield the dying.

A saint in his own right. A martyr, once.

“And of the Holy Spirit.”

The final submersion, and when Wesker surfaced again he opened his eyes and felt as though some great weight had been lifted from his body. Above his eyes, the steam swirled in its odd patterns.

“Amen,” Chris whispered, and then; “thank you.” He put his face into the crux of Wesker’s neck, and the older man could only hold Chris to him, and touch the rotting skin with tentative horror as he let the man cry into his shoulder. How cruel it was, that Chris could be so equipped and kind to save him, when Wesker was failing him. And all he could do was hold him, and hold him, and know that all his efforts, all his life, had been in vain.

Wesker put Chris to bed, and left him asleep and clean beneath the emerald green sheets of his bed. A candle burned on the desk, so when he awoke, he would not be afraid, and to keep the consuming shadows at bay.

And then he walked through those dark and long corridors with Chris’ heart light and throbbing in his chest until he came to the arch into the chapel.

He fell then to his knees before the altar, as the moonlight broke through the storm and glinted like liquid silver down through the stained glass onto his face – reborn, sinless. Hands clasped.

As he bitterly wept, all alone in that cold ribbed vault. The womb of his greatest sin. For the only time in his fifty-four years on Earth, Albert Wesker whispered a prayer, and begged for a God he did not believe in to save the only man he had ever truly loved.

Chapter Text

“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” – Frankenstein, M.Shelley.

In his dream he was walking through the castle in the night. It crumbled under fingertips as he stretched out to touch the bleeding stone, and in his ears rang the toll of the clock in the hall and the beating of a half-heart in his bloody chest.

His hands were still soaked in the blood of his most recent crime, from peeling open his torso and cracking ribs, to slice out the organ that kept oxygen in his blood. And for a minute in which he had switched them – placing into his empty receptacle the dead meat – he had almost tasted sweet death. And before his body could attempt to begin reproducing himself a newer heart, it was forced to take the strange organ instead.

For a long black night he had rolled in agony, choking on his own blood as the organ determined to push itself from his body. But he had stayed stubborn, forcing it back down his throat with his own hand until it finally unhappily settled inside its ribbed prison, and was choked by winding muscle to keep it in its place.

Crimson had dried almost black from his fingertips to his elbows, and crusted the white of his shirt and swathes of his unkempt blond hair.

He walked down those stairs, feeling a dead man, still rasping for air until he had burst from the main doors and stood out in the morning sun. Cold March clear. Pale gold that tipped the frosted grasses and brought with it no warmth or scent of the long-gone summer, but the ice and mulch as Winter melted from the barren trees.

It kissed his face with the cool breeze, and toyed with the fluttering of his shirt now sizes far too big for his skinnier frame. It had been months now since he’d properly stepped outside. Properly felt the urge to live. For he had done it, and now hope seemed to burst from the horizon above the grey-blue sea. The same colour as his eyes, once.

Feet bare, lips chapped, he walked like the stumbling resurrected through the Spencer cemetery. Between the once white stone crypts and marble graves, twigs scratching at the soles of his feet and that early Spring mud oozing between his toes. Through the gardens, ornate once and now overgrown to unrecognisable hedgerows and weed-choked flowerbeds. Birds were nesting in the ornamental trees, and chirruped to him as he walked beneath.

With bloody fingers he tore away the ivy that had overgrown the hidden gate, and pulled the iron twisted handle until it clicked and permitted him entry into Spencer’s hidden garden. Here the grasses were high and unkempt, spattered in the first colours of Spring in flushes of soft whites and pinks and yellows, and the ivy crept up the last remaining walls of the guardhouse and threatened to drag it down to the ground atop him. Birds were nesting on it, in the little stone windows, and two pretty black crows hopped along it as they observed the intruder.

And all around him the roses bloomed in blood blood red.

Early, too early. No doubt some poor botanist had been paid to engineer them to burst out in time for Spencer’s delight with the end of Winter. Their stench sweet and heady even in the cool air would only worsen as the Summer drew nearer. They had made him sick before. He had worn them in his lapel at those balls so long ago. Offered them to his sister in some false sense of grace. The symbol of his oppression.

“You should’ve died with him,” he said, to nobody in particular, voice rough and dry from weeks since his last call to Alex. “I am the god of this place, now.” Although he did not believe it.

He tore them down. Fistfuls of them. Thorns pricking his palms and wrists and soaking his own blood into the petals as he threw them to the floor and stamped them into the grasses and the mud, a madness alive inside his eyes that had not been there before. “I am the god!” He cried, not believing, spurred by his bitter victory. Ripping and ripping Spencer’s beautiful roses until he stood in a graveyard of red panting and weeping and clutching his bleeding palms to his chest. They would not heal, not as instantly as they had before, and in some beautiful way it felt so very freeing to know it.

Chris Redfield had died and in some sick way, completed his ultimate goal. Restoring Albert Wesker’s humanity with the goodness within his heart. And though he was still the slave to the t-virus Spencer had ordered him to accept so many decades prior, it would weaken without its serum, without its perfect heart. And with any luck he would cease to be Spencer’s puppet any longer.

The pain, the itch, it had him sobbing like a child. How strange to think one could miss such a sensation, and yearn to feel a sweet ache of mortality.

A pale gold March sun smiled upon him, his blood dripping down to feed the Earth.

Chris Redfield awoke with that strange sense of relief still beating in his chest.

It had not been the first time he had dreamed inside of Wesker’s memories, over the past few days they had grown stronger and clearer, snapshots of his miserable self-pity and mourning.

He sat up slow, feeling the way his organs almost seemed liquid inside of his skin now. The black had spread across most of his torso and down one of his legs, creeping up his neck and masking one half of his face. When he put his tongue to the inside of his cheek he could taste the rot, and feel the paper-thin flesh stretched between the bones. Blind in one eye. Now in the mirror he could only see one half of his beauty remaining, whilst his other half was only a corpse.

Whilst he was in no pain, he felt sluggish and cold. Weaker, tender, but he had almost welcomed the sensation now. Chris Redfield had had five years to come to terms with the fact he was dead, and being so cruelly wrenched back to the land of the living had only come to bring him the anguish he thought he had left behind. He was exhausted and he could feel the calling deep within himself to let his body take to the dirt and be released. So close, so close, but it seemed he had some anchor still weighing him down to this plain.

Wesker had fallen asleep over the end of the bed. He had sat in a chair as he scribbled up new plans and notes for any ideas that might abate Chris’ condition, and passed out sprawled over the legs of his old nemesis. He had hardly slept for the last few nights; grey-ringed eyes and loose unstyled hair. His clothes were crumpled and stained, streaked with a little black from where he’d touched Chris.

Chris reached out and touched the man’s hair. Gentle strokes to push it away from his sleeping face, looking his age at last. He finally looked at peace, brow uncrumpled and lips a little parted. It was strange to think the last memory he had of the man before his reawakening was being beaten and killed by him, and Chris only had to wonder just what those long five years had put the damned man through.

Guilt, isolation, terror as he finally combatted his own mortality.

Of course, it was no excuse. And Chris knew he should feel angry, but it was hard to when he looked now upon a man who seemed so pathetic and desperate in his attempts to keep him alive. Any initial fury he had felt had slipped away, and now all he could feel was that harrowing numbness for the man.

He had loved him. By god he had loved him once upon a time, back when he was young and stupid. And in some ways he was almost grateful to have been given a few stolen days to experience what it felt like to truly feel that love. But it was all just far too late, now. He would die, and Wesker would be left again with those emotions – forced to accept that just for once he had been wrong, and selfish, and stupid.

But again in considering these, he felt no relish or satisfaction. Just pity. Pity that such a man who had never known love, had taken it for granted and lost it over and over. And now when he had finally come to be honest by the heart that was not his beating in his chest, he would taste what it truly meant to be heartbroken.

“Wesker,” he called out, “you’ll hurt your back sleeping like that, old man.”

A soft groan of tiredness, and the red eyes flickered open. The older man lifted himself, scowling as he felt the ache in his spine and neck. And then he was alert again, standing and taking hold of Chris’ unmarred arm to check and see if the mould had spread to his left side yet.

The smell of rot was quite distinct now, earthy and green, not like the rotting of meat.

“Earth to earth,” Chris said quietly.

“What?” Wesker snapped.

“Nothing.” Chris shivered as Wesker thumbed lightly over the scar down the centre of his palm, face all twisted in horrified concentration. He turned to look out the window. “It’s sunny out,” he said, lamely.

“And?”

“Let’s go for a walk. Down the beach, for a change. Maybe something cool washed up from the storm.”

“We don’t have time for that, Chris-“

“Albert,” Chris cut his sentence short. “I want to walk on the beach.” Imploring brown eyes, the kind he knew Wesker had weakened to. The younger man put his hand lightly on top of Wesker’s, thumbing the beautiful ivory metacarpals, so slender and sculpted compared to his own – the hands of a military man.

For all those years he had felt the pull of love to Wesker, how was it now he realised how beautiful and delicate he was? Brittle and hollow and light, like a bird. Perhaps it was age that changed him, and fear. No longer the monster that had once consumed him whole.

“C’mon, the fresh air will be good for you,” Chris urged him gently, “you’re going mad indoors, and it’s really starting to bum me out.” As Wesker continued to frown, he added; “I could always go alone?”

“No.” Firm, concerned. “No, Christopher I will not allow that.” A deep sigh. “Very well, but we’ll make it quick.”

The beach was gravel and hurt to walk on. Each step shooting pain and tiny cuts, and yet Chris felt it with pleasure. Breathing in the briny fresh air, and staring out to the horizon still a little pink and gold as the pale disc of sun rose into the air. Gulls sailed overhead, looking for something dead to pick at, but that morning the shoreline was clear of wreckage and rot.

Wind whipped about his hair as he turned to look up at Wesker – who was standing some way away up on the causeway as if afraid to get near the sea. And then he turned back to face it, hitched up his trousers and stepped his toes into the frothy surf. It lapped about his toes and ankles, dragging him in with the gravel invitingly into the icy cold grey. A step or two, and he was in half-way up his calves before he heard the rapid crunch of gravel and turned again to see Wesker walking down the beach toward him.

“Chris, I do not know if that is wise-“

“It’s alright,” Chris said firmly, “look, I’m not disintegrating, and I won’t go in any deeper.”

Wesker’s shoulders sagged, and he rubbed his jaw in clear anxiety. “There’s bacteria, we don’t need any more complications.”

“It doesn’t matter now, Wesker, c’mon stop kidding yourself.” Chris offered the older man a tired smile, before turning back to look up at the glorious sun as he stood within the frothy waves. Salty and silky on his skin. “I’m ready for it. And nothing you can do will change that.”

The ocean sighed and sucked at the gravel shore. On the horizon there was nothing. They may as well have been the only ones left in the world.

“I guess it was ninety ninety-seven,” his words were soft, thoughtful, “and just us two went on a call to investigate a body that had washed up on the shore of a lake just a little ways out of town. I think it was a guy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, turned out he had terminal cancer and decided to save his family the money.” His eyes closed. He tasted salt on his lips. “And on the drive home I remember you seeming pretty confused why anybody would rather do that than just take the medical debt on. I couldn’t explain to you then why I didn’t blame him.”

Wesker said nothing.

“It affected me pretty hard, and I ended up taking a few days off after that case because I felt so guilty for being ungrateful with my lot. If it was Claire who had done that… I would never have forgiven her, but I feel like maybe I would’ve done the same thing. And when I came back to work you called me into your office and told me I didn’t have to do any field work until I felt fit again, and you told me you were sorry for saying something insensitive, told me I had done such a good job so far, and that I’d been so brave, but needed to have some time to grieve, too.”

Chris turned his head, almost able to see Wesker out of the corner of his eye.

“I think in that moment I really fell hard for you. I guess I always had liked you, your looks and your smarts and how special I felt when you’d smile at me and nobody else. But I realised then you could see right through me, even after everything I had done to hide it. And I was glad that it was you. Because I knew you would never try to make me feel ashamed for it.”

“Chris…-“

“Were you reciting lines you’d written back then? I find it hard to imagine you’d say that from a place of genuine concern, when you had always planned for my death before we had even met in person.”

“Why…” Wesker sounded strained, “why are you bringing this up? It has been a very long time. Back then… I did what I had to do to survive, the same as anybody else.”

Chris laughed a little at that and kicked at the surface of the sea to watch the diamonds scatter out across the rolling water. “I carried your words with me all these years, y’know. The one time I really thought you were being entirely genuine, why I hesitated to kill you, hoping that the Albert Wesker I had seen that inconsequential day in his office was the real thing beneath the black leather and glasses. Was it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

The younger man turned at last to fully face his companion, a bitter smile on his salt-cracking lips. “In some stupid way I still see that man in you. And I feel an idiot for it, but I’m grateful.”

Wesker’s eyes widened. “For what?”

“For bringing me home, to my heart. For loving me, even if it was too late. For loving me enough you would kill yourself in the process of giving me life again, even if your purposes were entirely selfish.” Chris sighed heavily and waded out from the sea to walk painfully up the gravel to the waiting man. Carefully, he reached up and began to unbutton Wesker’s shirt. Lapels flapping in the wind. And he put his blackened palm to the position of his heart, and felt the rhythmic thud. “Thanks for keeping it safe all this time. I’m glad… well… that it’s still been kind to you, even though I’m gone.”

Wesker stared at him for a very long while as the sea never ceased its duty, until at last he shut his eyes and finally cracked a defeated smile. “How is it you are weak and foolish, and still reign your prideless victory over me every single time?" His words were slow, steeped in dust and the colour grey, “I truly never could win when it came to face you, Christopher. Perhaps I should’ve taken my own advice, all that time ago.”

Chris hummed his quiet agreement. “It wasn’t ever meant to be. You and I. Not in this life, anyway.”

Through the golden eyelashes, he could see that glimmer of wet red as the older man blinked back the forming dew. “Ah, this wind…” he muttered, wiping his face on his filthy sleeve, “we ought to get back inside, Christopher. I still have time to think of something.”

“I don’t want that,” Chris said sternly. “Look at me, Wesker-“ he held up his arms, and turned to let the man see the degradation of half of his face in the morning sun, “I don’t want to spend my last couple of days locked away in some lab. We’ve still got a few stolen hours yet in us, so why don’t we say to hell with the fucking fate and morals and devour each other where god can’t fuckin’ reach us.” He grinned at the man, “that is, if you’ll have me as half a corpse.”

Wesker gave him a searching look, as if trying to peer through the façade Chris had put up to hide his own conflict in the prospect of his death, but couldn’t break through this time. It must’ve been harder to do so without his confidence and logic. Instead, he was offering an expression of; I’ll have you dead or alive, even if I have to crawl to your faith’s heaven to reach you.

He wouldn’t wait for the stubborn bastard to make his excuses.

Chris grabbed the man by the lapels of his shirt and drew him down into a chaste and briny kiss.

“Distract me,” he implored in his warm, sunlit voice, “make me think of anything else, Wesker. I don’t want to embarrass myself and start crying again.”

“Christopher,” the man said back, scratchy and sore, and he let his hands snake around the younger man to pull him in close, fingers touching the scar on the back of Chris’ skull with tender regret. “Very well.” His voice was hoarse, eyes tight shut as he fought off his own choked up sorrows. “If that is what you wish, I will not deny you your peace any longer.”

***

Chris Redfield’s mouth was hot as he kissed him. Hot and wet and inviting, a soft moan on his tongue as Wesker entered him again. Entwined in one another’s bodies under the green canopy as the last of the sun licked their naked skin gold. Fingers wrapped into his blond hair, those legs hooked around his hips, pulling him in deeper, deeper.

He could smell Chris’ sweat, his rot, his musk. Feel him damp and dewy under his desperate fingertips gliding up that body he had sewn together piece by blood-wrenching piece. Shifting, breathing heavily as he was filled again by Wesker’s manhood. All softened groans and satisfied sighs.

They had been at it like this for three days now as Chris’ condition spread. He was tired now, weak, but determined to soak in the pleasure for the very last time. Begged for it. Cried when Wesker had tried to deny him, fearing it would only hurt him more. And it wasn’t as if Wesker even wanted to stop – but it was hard trying not to be selfish when the hourglass had nearly emptied.

The kiss was deep and hungry, Chris holding his head steady as he bit and sucked until Wesker’s lips bled and dripped into the younger man’s blackened throat.

“Oh-!” Chris groaned, turning his head aside as Wesker’s hips snapped tight to his body, in as deep as he could physically manage. His lips a painting of red and black, eyes both almost white and blind, and yet he still retained his handsomeness and warmth, still patches unrotted, glowing with arousal and gold. “Oh… fuck…” he breathed, fingers screwing and tugging lightly at Wesker’s blond locks as the older man waited for his permission to move. He was a mess in the bedsheets, irresistible and insatiable. “Wait, wait…” Chris keened quietly, begging.

“I won’t move until you’re ready, Christopher,” Wesker murmured. He settled his hips flush to Chris’ body, one hand keeping one of Chris’ legs held up high, knowing the position that would grind into the younger man’s pleasurable zones the best now – the other thumbing the blood from Chris’ trembling lips before dipping down again and placing his lips to his forehead.

“I just wanna feel it… remember it…” delirious. His hips rolled a little, groaning low in his throat as the tip of Wesker’s cock ground into something good deep, deep inside. “Okay… okay…”

Wesker was pushing his own limits of self control here too, and when Chris murmured the go-ahead, it was all he could do not to shunt his hips like an excitable virgin. He supposed mentally he had barely graduated, still not quite certain exactly what he was doing or why he felt so compelled by it. If it hadn’t been for Chris’ body latching to his, seeking his protection and his heat and his life, pleading for Wesker to show him, just show him he cared in words left unspoken. It was easier for the both of them this way. He who had never spared a second thought to sexual interest, engaging in it in the vain hopes the only act he could not lie his way through might give Chris the peace and closure he had always sought.

“Mmh…” Chris dragged Wesker’s head down for another deep kiss. Each rotation of his hips earned another pleasurable roll in Chris’ throat, made him cling a little tighter, get a little softer inside. He fucked him slow, deep, cyclical, working Chris up until he was panting and drowning in their kiss enough he had to tilt his head backwards and gaze with his milky eyes up at the canopy above. That deep, emerald night colour. Soothing like rolling endless nightwash hills.

And Wesker couldn’t stop his lips. Kissing the man’s stubble, along the sharp of his jaw and trembling throat, teeth grazing his collarbones, nose pressed into his neck seeking every pheromone the dying boy had to give him. All too soon it would be stolen from him again. All too soon the dream would end, and Albert Wesker would be all alone in this barren expanse of bed, with only the ghosts of that body beneath him wanting him and weeping for him.

“Lemme get on top,” Chris mumbled, drunk on the pleasure, his fingers dancing along Wesker’s broad shoulders torn to shreds by fingernails from their previous, more violent session. By now the anger at the loss had worn itself out, they were both tired, determined, but tired. “I wanna fuck myself on it.”

“Are you sure, Chris?” Wesker asked, lips still pressed to Chris’ neck as he spoke, “do you have the strength?”

“Yeah,” he sounded almost offended. So much like he had when he was twenty-three and still somehow a stubborn brat. At one point Wesker might’ve laughed, might’ve mocked him, but hearing that tone now only served to slap him again with what could have been.

It wasn’t as though he was stupid enough to pretend everything could’ve ended up different. Their fates had been written a long, long time before either of them knew of the name ‘STARS’. But still it ached. It hurt. It hurt so bad.

Gently, Wesker lifted Chris up onto his hips as they swapped position – now lying with his back propped up by the soft silky pillows. Firm, slender hands on Chris’ sultry little waist. For a moment Chris swayed, seeming as if he might fall. His shirt was still unbuttoned as it hung limply from his shoulders, his fingers stroking up Wesker’s chest, up to rest on his shoulders. And when he let his head tilt back to give a pathetic, involuntary moan, Wesker had to curse quietly with the twitch of his cock inside.

“Is this what you wanted?” Wesker asked softly, letting Chris adjust.

“No.” Chris was serious, soft, unfocused and hazy as he shifted his hips and felt the weight of Wesker still thick and hard inside of him. “No… not like this…”

“What do you want me to do, Christopher? Anything. Everything. It’s yours.”

“Not what I meant, prick,” a lazy grin, and Chris lifted himself slowly before dropping again, a shock of a gasp shuddering through him. “Why…” he asked, anguished and lame as his grin faded, “why is this the only way this could’ve happened?”

“You said it yourself, Christopher. It wasn’t ever supposed to happen.” His voice was bitter and hoarse, hands guiding Chris’ careful movements, ensuring he wouldn’t fall.

Chris touched his face, thumb gliding under Wesker’s eye as he watched his usually pale skin flush with emotion. “I didn’t mean it,” he said quietly, “not like that. Why did it take you so damn long to realise it? Why did it take briefly undoing my death for the truth to come to you?” He shook his head, “you’re a genius, Albert, about all the wrong fuckin’ things.”

“I know,” his voice was barely a whisper. “I’m sorry. Chris… I lo-”

But Chris slapped his fingers against Wesker’s lips to stop him talking. “Don’t say it, I don’t want to hear it,” he warned him, “and you’d better be, bastard,” but his words weren’t angry and hurt this time. Chris looked deeply saddened by the miserable creasing of the old man’s face, his fingertips caressing the grooves and lines that had printed in the emotional tolling years of his absence. “I really… must be stupid,” he murmured, hitching a little as his hips continued to roll, “loving you really is the worst mistake I ever made. So why is it I feel so happy right now?”

Wesker could feel the hot tears spilling from his eyes as he gazed up at the man who may as well have been a divine punishment, and felt a soft and weak sob rise in his chest as Chris smiled at him.

“You’re so fucking selfish,” he whispered, “making me comfort you,” he wiped Wesker’s tears with the pad of his thumb, and set it to the centre of his tongue. Tasting the salt of his wounds, savouring the pain. Chris’ eyes fell shut, and he sighed deeply as he began to move his hips a little faster. The tensing of his thighs, wasting what energy he had left on soaking out every last inch of Wesker’s humanity through his flesh. Head falling back, breathing sharper and his sounds of pleasure deeper and surer, a hand on his chest as if to check that Wesker’s heart was pounding as much as his should be.

Wesker wished he could see that face in ecstasy, but no matter how much he blinked the tears kept coming and his mouth stayed dry and empty of apology or confession long awaited. Blurry, beautiful, the man using him. He tensed and grunted, gripping Chris’ waist as he met his orgasm. Although it hardly seemed to matter, because he was crying so hard he couldn’t hardly breathe.

“Selfish,” Chris whispered, tilting Wesker’s head back and kissing him once again as he finished dutifully onto Wesker’s stomach with a soft moan of appreciation, and sank down onto the softening member inside of himself. Not wanting to lose its heat, forget its shape, or lose a single drop of its seed. And when he pulled his lips away, he wrapped his arms around Wesker’s body and held himself close as he let the older man cry silently onto his skin.

The long shadows of the failing afternoon stretched across the room. And Chris turned his head on Wesker’s shoulder to peer out the window with his weak eyes. Surely he could not see much than the dying glint of the sun above the strangely quiet sea. And still he smiled.

“Fuck, man. I forgot how beautiful being alive is.”

“Do you want me to take you to the window?” Wesker asked in his raw and hollow voice, stroking a palm up the ridges of Chris’ beautiful spine, eyes stinging, face wet and sore.

“No. I’m fine right here. Can we lie down?”

Laying down wrapped up in one another, Wesker knew this was the last time.

“How are you feeling, Christopher?”

“Tired,” Chris mumbled, eyes shut, body flush and warm against Wesker, “good.”

“Good.” Wesker stroked his hair, felt the dampness, felt those warm fluttering breaths on his neck. “Rest now, Christopher. You’ve been so brave, so strong. You’re safe here,” his embrace tightened a little, “you can sleep, and nothing will hurt you anymore.”

“I know,” a soft chuckle, weary and warm, “thank you, Albert. For everything. For hating me, and for loving me.”

“I’m scared,” Wesker whispered, wavering a little, “to die.”

“So am I,” Chris’ hand sought his, and their fingers entwined, squeezing gently. “But remember I’ll be waiting for you. For another thousand years or more, I’ll be waiting. And when you come, we’ll get on that boat together and face it together - whatever comes next.”

Wesker held him, and Chris did not cry.

The sun had set a long time ago.

Wesker lay in the twilight of that night with his eyes closed and arms wrapped around the younger man. He had been still for a long while now, and Wesker knew that meant the brain was dead, and Chris was gone. There had been no pain at the end, no tears, just a quiet embrace and a miserable acceptance that he was letting Chris go for good this time.

He held the corpse a little tighter, seeking the familiar scent of warm sunny musk beneath the rot, but looking at his mould-blackened face and white eyes turned his stomach. He wrapped him in their bedsheets like a shroud, and gathered his limp body up into his arms to cradle him close, feeling the ache in his chest.

Chris’ heart calling out for the rest of him, crying it had been left behind again.

When he walked with Chris in his arms from the bedroom, it was as if the castle was quiet and empty for the very first time. The shadows and ghosts that had haunted him all these years were long gone, leaving just the dusty thick air and earthly gloom. No voices, no footsteps. As if they had all been drawn to Chris, eager for his secret of immortality, and dispersed just as soon as they realised it was all only the inhumane desperation of a madman.

Slow went the procession of one man. Down and out the main doors into the quiet night. Still, with a bright moon burning white-hot overhead and licking the damp earth silver. He took his man through the cemetery – though he would not bury him here, not amongst those who did not deserve him. And carried him tight and precious until the rose garden.

They had bloomed again, as they had year after year, even after he had massacred them. It seemed fitting to bury Chris somewhere so beautiful, somewhere he had finally come to terms with the fact he was in tentative love, somewhere Spencer in the form of the roses had watched him find some sliver of happiness despite the man’s every attempt to stop it before.

He set Chris to rest in the guardhouse alcove where they had once hidden from the rain to steal kisses, and wandered the grounds to the old gardener’s shed to select a good, sharp shovel. And in the rose garden he dug.

Hours, hours, they bled by like the sores on his hands and the blisters that popped open his skin. But the pain was corroborated by his determination – to give Chris that resting place, to make sure he would never be disturbed again. No matter how much it hurt, or the breaths got stuck in his throat and he had to gag back the sensation of choking on his own selfish regrets, he kept to digging. And when at last it was deep enough, he hoisted himself out and wiped some of the wet soil from his face. The moon was overhead now, and in the alcove the shrouded body slumped tiredly up against the stone wall. Shifting slightly in the night wind.

There was no coffin. Even if he had had time to have one made, he knew it was not necessary. Chris had said; ‘earth to earth’, back by the sea those days ago. A final wish.

Gingerly he picked up the sleeping man, and held him close. Eyes tight shut, as if trying to hear that his heart might still be beating. And then he lowered him into the grave and lifted the shroud from his face.

“Oh… Chris…” he muttered, gravelly and upset at the sight. The skin had tightened and peeled back already, showing his teeth in a gruesome grin. And those white dead-fish eyes glowed in the moonlight. With shaking fingers he dragged Chris’ eyelids down and allowed him the image of sleep. “I’m sorry, Christopher,” he whispered, the tears already dripping down his nose as he knelt on his body in the grave, soil all around him threatening to swallow him down. “I should’ve realised my mistake back before everything went wrong. It should be me lying dead down here, not you.” His words were soft and thick, throat feeling claggy with unwanted emotions as he wiped the wetness from his cheeks.

After recovering Chris’ face in the sheet, he stood brusquely and climbed out from the grave, not caring that he was covered in the black gravesoil. The first shovel of soil over the white sheet, and the second and the third, until he was weeping as he dug. Loud, choking retching sobs as with blurry eyes he watched the white disappear beneath the black, Chris consumed by the world the way it had always meant to be.

He ached all over by the time he’d placed the soil and threw aside the shovel. His hands were bleeding with popped blisters and shucked skin, and he fell down onto his knees, then to his chest, draping his exhausted body down on the fresh tilled soil. Down below was the only man that had ever mattered. At peace at last.

A light rain had begun not long ago. It peppered his skin and hair and wet his clothes as the clouds smothered the moon and left him alone in the blackness of the night. A soft wind in the trees, the calling of the owls, the swaying of the branches of the huge old trees. Down with his face pressed to the soft earth the smell of the roses was replaced with the damp of soil, and his soul ached as his eyes drained into the ground.

How much he wished he was asleep under there with him.

The thought of the worms burrowing into him, eating him until only polished bones remained had that bile rising back up his throat. It stung him. But he lay still, unable to remove himself from his bed of grief. In a year’s time this patch would sprout with grass and wildflowers and steep in the sun and sleep under the snow.

And it would mean nothing, because Chris was not here anymore. And he would mean nothing, because Chris was not here anymore.

‘I’ll be waiting for you, Wesker. Even if it takes a hundred-thousand years more. I’ll wait. I always have been.’

The crippling agony in his chest had him whimper, and he clutched at his chest from the violent spasms. And he curled up like an injured child, waiting for death to come claim him too under the soft kissing rain.

***

Alex Wesker knew something was amiss the minute she stepped from the helicopter.

“Stick around, I have a feeling I will not be long,” she told the pilot, before putting up the hood of her white coat and walking up the tree-sheltered pathway to the castle.

The rain had slushed up the mud again, and the front door had been left flung wide open, with muddy bootprints leading inside. Inside it was dark and cold. No lights had been lit, and an eerie stillness had fallen through the hallways that had always crept with some kind of presence. It was a stillness she had remembered even as a younger woman, as though the very building had died years before Spencer ever did.

She found him in the chapel. Kneeling at the altar. Streaked with soil and soaked to the bone, looking as though he’d just pulled himself up from his grave.

“Albert,” she said cautiously, putting a hand on the back row of pews, surprised to see such an act of devotion from the man.

Albert Wesker lifted his head, and turned it slowly to look at her. Eyes rimmed with human red, flecks of his old grey breaking through the dying strain of the t-virus still trying to pump through his blood. He looked wild, distraught. And as he scrambled to his feet she couldn’t help but see him as a boy again – guilty and afraid.

Her eyes flickered to the empty altar, to Albert’s downturned lips flinching in his weak attempts to hold back the tide. “He’s gone, isn’t he,” she concluded.

“Yes.” A hollow, even response.

Alex Wesker knew this was the best possible outcome for her fool of a brother. So why was it she did not feel satisfied knowing the thorn that had pricked him for so many arduous years had been plucked at long last? The man stood before her was no longer the bioterrorist who had whipped up frenzied plans of Genesis and Revelations, not that same man who had rivalled her in cold apathy to human suffering, and revelled in cruel ploys and self-serving appetite. This man was a mess, so human it turned her stomach. Weak and old and useless.

“This is the way it must be,” she said carefully, catching sight of the tiny syringe full and waiting on the altar. “You have had your fun, had your conclusion. It is now time to return to your work. You’ve forgotten yourself in this damned castle, filled your head with ghosts and pointless feelings.” She could see his expression stiffen, and she took a measured step in closer. “I have a helicopter prepared. A few days back in reality and all of this will seem like a silly dream. Truly, Albert, you should feel glad it is now nearly all over.”

Albert Wesker realised where Alex was looking, but wasn’t quick enough to block her as she lunged and grabbed the syringe up from the altar and darted back with it in her fingers.

“Give it back!” He snapped, eyes suddenly alight with uncommon rage as he flew across the room at her.

“Oh Albert, did you really think I’d let you shirk your responsibilities so easily?” She said shrewdly, “come now, you know all too well a lethal dose of this won’t be enough whilst the t-virus is still alive within you.”

Albert’s lip curled, and he tore open his filthy shirt, to show the black protruding organ trying to phase through his flesh. Black veins spread from it out across his body. It beat sluggishly, visibly. “The t-virus is dying within me,” he whispered forcibly, “Christopher’s heart has kindly seen to that.”

Alex looked at the vile thing, and wrinkled her nose as comprehension took hold. “Oh, Albert. Even for you that is vile.”

“Nothing-“ he snapped, “nothing is ‘vile’ about that man.” He lunged forward again, trying to snatch the syringe from Alex’ hand. But he was slow, and she was quick, side stepping and watching as he crumpled down into one of the pews with a moan of aching bone. “Every piece,” he continued, weakly, “is precious. I couldn’t bare… to throw it away.”

And Alex had to take a double take as the man who had never so much as smiled without nefarious purpose broke down into wracking sobs and clawed at the red-raw skin of his face, curling up like an injured child on the pew.

“You truly wish to die,” she said, astounded. “You realise there will be nothing when you do. You will not think, or be, or know. After all you did to change that… you cannot mean to say that is what you want now.”

“None of that matters now,” he sounded so old and frail now she felt a sudden terror of her own mortality. “The answer… it had come and gone, and I had been too stupid then to pursue it then. Please… Alex… I can’t make the same mistake again,” he wept, holding out his hand in plea, “let me follow him. I am nothing more here now.”

The woman pursed her red lips and observed the wreck with cold dismay. And the trembling, soil streaked outstretched hand, begging for his death.

“If this is some final defilement of Spencer’s will… I must say it is quite tasteless,” she murmured. “There are other ways to anger his memory, to break free of the path he set you down.”

“No… it’s too late.” Albert shut his eyes, and put his head in his hands, the silver cross strung around his throat held to his cracked lips. “I don’t want it anymore. I just want… to find some peace. I’m sorry… to burden you with all my mistakes. But my work is finished here. It has been for a very, very long time.”

Alex Wesker said nothing for a very long while. Rain pattered on the stained glass. Until at last; “you always were a sloppy worker,” she said coolly, “I’ve had to clean up enough of your messes to have expected this. I suppose that is what a sibling is for.”

Albert lifted his head, grey eyes tired and filmy. Cross still pressed to his lips.

“And what of the woman in the dungeon?” She asked.

“Return her to her rightful place,” he said, firmly, “she has no further use to you, nor I.”

Alex Wesker pressed her lips again, as if preparing to say something else. But then changed her mind, and held out the syringe to the ailing man. “How angry the bastard would’ve been” she said with almost a smile, “that his great plan was foiled by something so pathetic as love in the end.”

“I would say I imagine him rolling in his grave right now,” Wesker said roughly, taking the syringe delicately, “but I tossed his body down in one of the cells years ago. That man deserved no peace, in the end.”

“Neither do you,” Alex chuckled, and then sighed as she watched the creases relax on Wesker’s grey face, in his fingers the delicate little prick that would put him to his endless sleep. “I won’t lie and say I will miss you, Albert. Perhaps I am glad to be finally rid of you. Still… must you? All for the sake of that man?”

“He has consumed me whole. I am his. It is only right that I come when I am called.” He gingerly, almost lovingly fingered the outline of his blackening, moulding, rejecting heart.

A smile, to the lithe blonde in her white blemishless coat. And she felt something inside of her shift in acknowledgement, maybe even respect, to the man who had chosen to defy his immortality to chase after the one thing Spencer could never have controlled. Almost jealous, she turned and walked down the pews to the chapel door, unwilling to let Albert observe the difficult expression stiffening the muscles of her face.

She halted, briefly, in the arch. Slender hand to cold, chiselled stone. “Goodbye, Albert.” There was no reply.

Alex slammed the heavy door shut on the dead.

***

A child was crying alone in the dark.

Above him burned silently great white stars, and the endless black of the inbetween place. He tottered unsteadily, weeping as his little fingers pushed aside the tall, still grasses, not knowing where to go. No mother to cry for.

He was alone. He always had been. The child hunched down, holding himself as he shook and whimpered in fear, the deadly silence of the hillside almost as frightening as what lay beyond.

“Albert!” He could hear his name being called, echoing in a deep and familiar voice the colour of the blazing morning sun. The swishing of legs running through the grass. “Albert!” A halt, and the looming figure of a man appeared. The man crouched, but little Albert didn’t look up. He was afraid of the faceless men with their latex hands and white coats. They were here to hurt him again for his tears.

“Albert,” that voice called again, softer, and a warm hand was placed upon his shoulder.

Albert Wesker looked up – the half-grey of a man in his fifties – face wet, shaking.

Chris Redfield smiled at him in his pitying, noble way, so handsome and strong in the limitless twilight. No unnatural scars marred his skin, and his eyes burned with a heat unlike the unnatural stars above. “I’ve been waiting so long,” he murmured, holding out his other hand – an open palmed invite; “I was starting to think you’d never come, even though I called for you all those times.”

“I tried, I tried,” Albert sobbed, a boy despite his age, and put his ivory hand in Chris’ firm golden one. He was raised to his feet, and followed on silent feet through the swishing of the grasses. Down the hillside, long and steep, to the black river and the waiting boat. “I’m sorry, Christopher, I was scared," he bitterly wept, "I was so scared of being alone.”

“You’re not alone, you never were.” Chris threw him a grin back – one that shone as though the years since 1998 hadn’t even mattered. He still looked the unbroken man he was always supposed to be: a hero, a martyr, a problem, once. “I’ve been looking over you, Albert. All these years. You really think I’d abandon you?”

“Why?” He asked, weak and warbling. “After everything I did to you.”

“Because,” Chris said, bringing them to a stop at the rivers edge, “somebody had to. Now c’mon, don’t cry Al.” He gently wiped at Wesker’s cheeks with the sleeve of his fern-green jacket, rough and worn. “C’mon,” he pulled Wesker gently toward the boat, and Wesker took a step before halting and looking frightened again.

“No-“ he begged in a quiet moan, “I can’t, I’m afraid.”

Albert could hear very quietly the soft strings and pipes of a classical number. It spilled like the wind, soothing and cooling to his panic.

Chris turned his head, and looked up at the burning white stars that watched them. “What is that?”

“Holst,” Wesker whispered, “The Planets: Venus the Bringer of Peace.” He knew it so very well. His Venus always had been a little too boisterous for such a gentle piece, but with his hand trembling in that firm squeeze, he knew after all it had been a perfect choice. Chris gazing up with all the light and glory reflected in his eyes, a smile on his lips as he caught sight of Wesker staring.

“Here,” he pulled them in close, bodies flush, and held Wesker as he began to slowly spin them to the strings. And as he did so, Albert Wesker breathed in his scent, and felt that soothing calm wash over him like the regenerative baptism that was his first and only love. “I’ve waited this long,” Chris said quietly, “and now you’re here, I feel so complete. I can wait, for eternity, until you’re ready.”

Albert Wesker embraced his man, and felt the fear drain from the skin where he touched him. Until he felt light, and strange. Out of the corner of his eye the boat bobbed on the black water, inviting and depthless.

“What’s waiting for us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the same thing all over again, maybe something new. Maybe a happier end. You said it yourself a long time ago, something about our fates being forever intertwined. No matter how many times we do this routine I don’t think this’ll be last. And maybe next time it’ll be your turn to wait.”

The older man’s fingers slipped up to the back of Chris’ neck, and felt no scar. Was this the real Chris? Or a dream? Perhaps there never had been a Chris. Everything seemed to fade to black in his mind as they spun to the music, and all he knew was that embrace he had always so desperately needed. Suffering so long behind him now, anguish and terror dispersed.

“It seems no matter what I do, I am destined to follow you, Christopher.” He looked at the man, and didn’t cry anymore. “I am ready. Take me.”

Christopher again took him by the hand, and they embarked upon the little wooden boat. And on they sailed.

On, on, on. To the Western shore.

Until they were soon borne away into the waves, and lost in silence and distance from the fear they had left behind.

Fin.