Title: Aftermath
Fandom: Resident Evil (gameverse, not movies)
Rating: PG+
Length: 587
Content notes: Mild language, and gore. And lots of angst. Chris/Jill.
Author notes: Post RE1, Jill, Chris and Rebecca dealing with the events of the Mansion Incident. For fan_flashworks, challenge #17, "win or lose".
Summary: "They had entered a house of mysteries, and the dead came back to life."


Jill and Chris, clean from the war, dumb struck in the parking lot the monday after, marvelling that lifestill goes on. Rebecca in the hall, shaking over coffee, still wearing her clothes from the weekend, Billy's dog tags sticking to her neck. The night we nearly died thinks Jill as they walk into Raccoon City PD headquarters, soldiers in a secret war. They pass Barry, who adverts his eyes at thelast moment. Damn it Barry Jill remembers saying that night, damn you to hell. She hasn't yet processed his base betrayal (hasn't processed any of it, clinging to Chris in the black of night,afraid to sleep), she's in that stage of being incredibly pissed that she hadn't seen it coming.

None of them had. She blinks, and Chris is with Rebecca in the hall; she's crying like a frightened child (hell, they'd all cried like that), Chris has his arms around her and is trying to calm her, but no good, thinks Jill, not now. They've all taken scars from that night, even the eighteen year old girl.

Especially the eighteen year old girl. Jill knows they all need more than a weekend off, to process, to heal. Rebecca needs therapy, drugs, her mother, and a few weeks of r&r; the assurance that monsters don't roam the world. Jill needs closure, she needs to fight.

Jill at Rebecca's side, and the girl clutches her hand; their eyes meet. "Don't send me home, don't make me go there alone," she rasps into Chris's shirt. Her eyes are wild, traumatised. Jill wonders if she'll ever get over this (how can any of them?); if she'll ever carry on with S.T.A.Rs after this. Jill takes off Rebecca's blood-soaked jacket with 'medic' in proud letters (a flash, the day Becky graduated, so proud, so young, all of them grinning together, even Wesker), but how can she continue to save lives, knowing all she knows?

Damn it, she's just a kid, thinks Jill. She sees Claire, the same age as Rebecca, the same bright spectrum of youth and innocence. Claire doesn't yet believe in monsters, and Jill knows Chris will do all he can to keep it that way. But Rebecca? Damn it, Barry.

They take her home. She has a tiny apartment in downtown Raccoon City, one room and a little bathroom, and they sit on the sofa while she showers. They hear her crying, and listen in silence. This is how it is for them now: crying in the dark and facing monsters alone. Jill takes Chris's hand, and wonders where Wesker is now, if he's seeing what they see when they close their eyes.

They had entered a house of mysteries, and the dead came back to life. Jill still has bites on her neck, her legs, patched up at Becky's inexpert hands. The virus still ticks through her body, like a B-movie subcutaneous infection burning when she walks, and the serum makes her head foggy; on occasions she forgets where she is. She and Chris haven't spent a moment apart, but she knows he's itching for a fight, for action, to shoot the hell out of something, anything.

Jill knows what it comes down to is us or them, rough and ready, just a gun and teeth and blood between them and a monster. Jill is ready for battle, for life or death, to throw it all away to make Wesker pay.