Archive of Our Own ^beta

It had been a month since he’d quit.

Chris lit up a cigarette. He’d been trying to quit smoking almost as long as he’d been trying to quit the B.S.A.A.. It was a love-hate relationship. He’d been there from the start – watched it grow away and away from him. Watched it transform into all the things he hated, all the things he’d been running from, all the things he’d dreamed it would never become. And the more he stuck around, the more he changed himself, bit by bit, to be the kind of person who could stomach continuing there.

He looked down into the tacky surface of the bar before him. The man who looked back was unrecognisable. He was someone hard, cold, who forgot about empathy often, who got a job done and the rest be damned. There was a colder man looking back at him than the one he’d ever wanted to become.

“Can’t smoke in here, mate.”

Chris squeezed his eyes between thumb and middle finger when he heard that. He inhaled enough to draw up half the cigarette, then stamped it out on the bar.

So here he was: heavy shoulders hunched forward under a black coat, expanse of chest curled around a glass of whiskey like he was nursing the thing to life. And he’d left it all a bit late. The damage was already done. The Chris he’d been proud of being was no longer here. He’d been twisted and painted and pulled and stretched until now that he’d finally left, now that the mould was no longer there, the release hadn’t brought his own face back. The something in its place was just an aimless, purposeless thing – honed to a point and now with no target.

Everything thing felt small under his hands. He felt he had to traverse the world carefully, or else everything about him would shatter. He felt a brutal, clumsy thing, in amidst fragility. He looked at his large, calloused brown hand next to the winking cut glass of his whiskey tumbler. He looked at the way the amber glowed against its fine edges, and light danced in its patterns, and hit the surface with sparks like fire. There were scars on his knuckles. They were an off white, but redder where newer scars laced over the top. There was dirt under his nails. He wondered where that was from. He’d buried a man the week before last, and scattered soil on the coffin; listened to the hollow thump as it hit the wood far down below. Was the dirt from that? He should really pay more attention when washing.

He’d been hotel hopping though, and the bathrooms were pretty hit and miss when you were choosing budget options. He had a fair sum in pay saved up from over the years. Life or death work paid pretty well. He’d probably have enough to retire on if he hadn’t quietly parted with it over the years to hand to grieving widows and widowers as they tried to rebuild their lives. Still though, he didn’t see much point on splurging on the basics. Why spend extra on a cleaner bathtub and a slightly bigger room? He spent most of his time flitting between bars anyway. A room was just a place to collapse between the bell for last orders and the first rays of dawn.

A steaming cup of coffee was pushed towards him by the bartender.

“Yeah, no thanks,” Chris gravelled out.

“Ain’t me, mate” the bartender said: a young, not-yet-weary-of-the-world Londoner with a Bowie quiff. “Someone thinks you oughta sober up.”

Chris looked suspiciously around the bar. It was opposite his hotel, and not exactly the place one expected others to be watching. People came here to be forgotten, not observed.

There was a couple in a booth snogging over a half-eaten packet of crisps; an old balding man, humming folk tunes to himself under a grimy window with a moustache of Guinness froth; another older man with silvery hair lazing in a corner flicking vaguely through a newspaper with an empty glass of something nearby, and a woman with smoky curls and a short dress at the other end of the bar, eyeing him up.

Chris gave her a longsuffering smile. Some remnant of politeness had him tilt his head in thanks and take a sip of the coffee. Chris paused.

His heart pounded. This coffee tasted like memory.

It was sweet but bitter, fruity and a fraction creamy. He’d adored them like this. He’d adored them like this twenty years ago when he last gave a damn about what was entering his body and whether he liked it or not. He’d been on black espressos and filter coffee ever since. Caffeine was a matter of practicality and nothing more. Someone here knew him.

He stood up abruptly, paranoia flaring in his chest. His stool tumbled over, causing the bartender to exclaim, and all eyes to turn to him. All except one.

Chris’s hard eyes fixed on the man with silvery hair in the corner. His breath caught in his throat. There was a casual grace in the way the man moved – something subtle but supremely confident. There was a faint, slight smirk on those thin lips. The man slowly looked to him, and Chris saw himself reflected in mirror dark glasses.

Chris scrabbled for his gun, before realising he wasn’t carrying – he was a civilian now.

“Calm the hell down, will you?!” the bartender was saying.

“You have to get out!” Chris cried. “Everyone has to get out! Th-that man over there is dangerous!”

He was backing away himself, fear lancing through him. He should never have left the B.S.A.A.; he should have known he had too many enemies to ever be safe quitting.

“Him?” the bartender asked. “He’s a regular! He’s been in here every day for the last couple of weeks, same as you!”

Every day? So Chris was being stalked? Toyed with? Preyed on? That certainly tracked. Chris felt such a blind panic and vulnerability at the thought of his back being turned to this man for hours. Hours and hours each day. He was breathing so hard he couldn’t think straight. He wished he hadn’t drunk so much, he didn’t have proper hold of his reaction times and senses.

“Just cool it, okay?” the bartender said. “I’ll make sure the bloke buys you no more drinks. But you should know he picked up your tab yesterday.”

“Huh?!” Chris turned wildly to the bartender.

Yesterday had fizzled into something of a blur. He remembered getting the bourbon out from behind the bar and forgoing a glass. He remembered a stranger helping him to the hotel steps, and into the elevator, holding him upright as the mirrors shone Chris’s ghosts back at him. He remembered weeping like a babe when he thought he could see the dead he’d failed glaring through the glass at him.

“I didn’t pay up?” Chris asked, terror muted by embarrassment.

“You were pissed,” the bartender said with twist of pity. “You tried to give me a bankcard, but it was an I.D.. Your friend over there said you’d want it back; put it in your pocket for you.”

Chris looked down at himself. He reached into his coat pocket. His fingers closed on plastic. He drew out a card. Piers Nivans’ B.S.A.A. I.D.. He stared down at the confident young features in the photograph, the serious eyes gleaming with determination. Piers would be furious with him if he saw him right now. Chris slumped down on another stool, looking at the card. He sat in silence, just holding it.

After a long moment, he pocketed it. He picked up his whiskey glass and came and sat opposite the man with silvery hair. It spilled about his shoulders like a wizened lion. There was still a severity in his cheekbones, still a charm and languid air to his presence.

“Your hair’s long,” Chris said coldly.

“You don’t like it?”

The timbre of his voice was the same as ever. It hit Chris somewhere deep within, stirring up a concoction of unwelcome emotions.

“Why aren’t you dead?” Chris wasn’t in the mood to play.

The man raised an eyebrow, lip lifting in a slight smirk. He was twirling the stem of his empty wine glass with a gloved hand. He beckoned with two fingers to the bartender, indicating to the glass.

The bartender came over with a longsuffering expression on his face and a bottle of red in his hand.

“Only because you tip well,” he said. He held up the bottle for the man to see. “Same again?” he asked.

The man nodded.

“Shall I bring the coffee over?” the bartender asked Chris.

“No,” Chris said.

“Bring it anyway,” the man said.

“Wesker,” Chris snarled.

The bartender backed off, looking a little stiff and uncertain. Wesker lifted his refilled glass, smiling faintly as he sipped at it.

“Ah… simply dreadful,” he murmured, looking at his wine. “Absolutely nothing of worth in this establishment…”

He turned his gaze deliberately to Chris after. Chris stood suddenly, knocking another chair over.

“Do sit down and stop being dramatic, my dear.”

“We are not doing this,” Chris snarled. “I was done with your games decades ago, and I’m not about to rehash them now!”

“You’re making a scene, and you haven’t even heard about the job opportunity I’m offering you.”

“Job-…” Chris’s voice got louder. “Are you out of your goddamn mind, Wesker?! Don’t bother answering, you’ve been insane for years! You’ve well and truly cracked if you think I’d ever-”

“Did you like your coffee?” Wesker interrupted.

Chris hated how calm and collected he always was. He hated how Wesker always made him feel childish and immature. Even now, after all this time, he could still get under Chris’s skin like that.

“You think I’m going to hear you out because you remembered what coffee I drank twenty years ago?! What coffee I drank before you lied to me, betrayed me, killed my friends, and left me for dead?!”

“Technically, I only killed Marini,” Wesker murmured, “and you and he never really got on all that well.”

“Wesker! Snap out of your delusional mind for one damn moment! You know what- fuck this. I don’t have to deal with this-”

Chris turned and stormed off towards the door.

“Hey! You settlin’ up this time?” the bartender called.

Chris had to ruin his exit by storming all the way back to the bar. He pulled out a wad of cash and dumped it on the bar.

“Keep the change,” he growled.

“Sir…. This doesn’t cover it.”

“Huh?”

Chris leant over the bar, counting out the money.

“Something wrong?” Wesker called lightly from his seat. He hadn’t moved.

“No!” Chris snapped back. He pulled out his bankcard – his actual bankcard this time. “Put the rest on here,” he muttered.

It felt painfully long as Chris waited for the payment to go through. Once it had, he stalked back through the upturned chairs without looking at Wesker, and left.

It was raining outside. A miserable grey curtain had fallen over the world. The pull and rumble of engines mingled with the bleat of horns and the bing of shop doors opening and closing, opening and closing. Chris had no idea where he was walking. His plan had been to leave that bar at closing and stumble back to his hotel, same as he had for the last four weeks. Now he was outside in the fresh, wet, afternoon, with daylight still trying to peer in through dreary clouds. He found himself thinking of that coffee, thinking of the sweet sugary touch blending with the harder sharpness of bitter beans.

Albert Wesker, the world’s foremost bioterrorist, remembered how he took his coffee.

Chris glowered into the pavement. He thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. The man was getting in his head. He always found a way to get in there. He’d haunted Chris’s dreams on the regular long after Chris had thought him dead. He whispered advice to him in the field as a ghost at his ear, and everywhere his shadow lingered close, teasing him as Chris found his reflection looking just a little more like his old mentor each day. Maybe that was why Wesker had thought to approach him for a job. He saw Chris was so much like himself that he believed he’d have no problem working for him now. Chris’s hands curled into fists. He’d fallen so far that Wesker didn’t even view him as an enemy anymore.

And that wasn’t even starting on the rest of the revelations. Wesker was alive. What the hell had he been doing all this time? And how dare he be alive and not even let Chris know! That was disrespectful. Chris had been the one hunting him, the one playing across from him. Wesker never hid from him. He revelled in the rivalry they had. Had he been mocking Chris? Mocking his ability? Saying he’d outgrown him? No longer saw him as a threat?

Chris found himself storming up and down paths in Regent’s Park. He went up flowerbeds and down ponds and up boulevards, and only stopped when a giraffe’s head peered at him from over a bush. The encounter was so bizarre and unexpected that Chris just stopped and looked at the beast. He looked about him to see if anyone else was perplexed to see a giraffe in the middle of London. The animal looked straight back at him, with its large black eyes and lashes longer than a drag queen’s. Chris was transfixed by it, and found himself wondering why it needed those weird antennae on its head. The giraffe bowed its majestic neck, nose whiffling at the ground, then it slowly moved off, oddly graceful legs barely bending as it meandered around the corner of its enclosure.

Chris rubbed the stubble of his chin, finally taken out of his catastrophising nightmare as he watched the animal go. If he really wanted to show Wesker how much he didn’t give a damn about him, he could just go back. He could act like it was all nothing to him. He could get answers to his questions, then call up the B.S.A.A. and hand him over. The man was just sitting there in broad daylight, an internationally wanted criminal. But Wesker would predict he’d go back to him… Wesker always predicted everything…

Chris gave a huff. He stood in the drizzle at the edge of the park, watching to see if the giraffe came back. He liked their small spikey manes… Like strange spotted punks… Really, they looked quite peculiar. No one should have a neck that long… Maybe Wesker had predicted that he’d come to this park. Maybe he’d predicted that he’d stop here when he saw some weird-looking giraffes. Maybe he was right behind him right now.

Chris whirled round on the spot. There was no one there though, just a woman with her buggy sheltered with a transparent waterproof a few yards away, giving him the side-eye and wide berth. Chris sighed again, and looked forward at the empty pen.

He hadn’t killed Wesker.

The thought hadn’t really sunk in until now. What surprised him most, what really drove him to go back to the bar, was the relief he felt at that realisation.

When he got back to the pub, Chris ran his hand through his hair, ruffling off the rain. He hung his long damp overcoat on the back of the chair and sat down heavily in front of Wesker again. He was just where Chris had left him.

“You can order me that coffee,” Chris told him.

“Do you wish it how you had it then, or how you usually take it now?” Wesker asked serenely.

Chris’s eyes snapped up.

“Don’t push it,” he growled, recognising Wesker’s attempt to unnerve him.

Wesker laughed softly. When the bartender came back over, he seemed a little agitated to see Chris again.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he said as he took down their order.

“I shall keep him in line,” Wesker said smoothly. He leaned forward and leant on his hands as they folded under his chin.

Chris glowered at him. He said nothing and folded his arms across his chest, waiting for the bartender to leave.

“You didn’t answer my question earlier,” Chris ground out, once they were alone. “How did you survive?”

“And you did not answer mine,” Wesker replied mildly. Chris tilted his head, in confusion. Wesker gave another thin, but charming smile. “Do you like my hair?”

Chris gave a huff.

“No. Not really. Doesn’t look very you.”

“Doesn’t it?” Wesker inquired, a slight sharpness in his voice that surprised Chris. “I’ve been emancipating myself for quite some time. Now, I am no longer bound by anyone.”

“Not even hair gel.” The remark was received in sardonic silence. “What?” Chris asked, “Umbrella didn’t let you grow your hair long?”

Wesker tutted.

“As literal as ever,” Wesker muttered. “The finer nuances of life have ever eluded you, Chris.”

“Yeah? Well the finer nuances of how not to be an asshole have always eluded you. Remember when you shot Rebecca Chambers, an eighteen-year-old new recruit, and then asked me if I liked your weird science experiment that had just murdered everyone I knew?!”

“Touché,” Wesker murmured. “I admit that empathy has never been a forte of mine.”

“A forte?! Try non-existent!”

“It does do strange things to us, doesn’t it,” Wesker continued, in that soft, recollecting murmur. “When our eyes are set on grander things, the minutiae of insignificant lives becomes so lost… so murky.”

“Don’t you dare try and make this about me,” Chris said, pointing a finger at him.

The coffee arrived then, and the bartender gave Chris an uncertain look. Chris lowered his finger, and ground out a thanks. The coffee did taste good. Why the hell had he stopped drinking it like this?

“Chris, I realise you harbour much quite rational resentment toward me, but I had believed when I watched you drinking away your daylight hours that you might be reflecting on the degree to which you’ve changed.”

Chris stopped and stared at him. So it came to this. Wesker did think he was like him. He thought Chris would be an ally now that he’d become so careless with life, so carefree with his attitude. It was Chris’s deepest fears manifest. He had become Wesker. He had become the man before him, so that even the man himself saw his own reflection when he looked at him. Chris’s fingers trembled on his cup.

“I’ve been watching you for some time…” Wesker said softly. “An incident in which you ‘killed’ a man’s wife before his eyes?”

“Listen,” Chris raised a hand. His voice was terse and tense. “I’m the first to admit that I could have handled that better, but at the time, it was the mission that mattered more than explaining to a civilian why he was in danger.”

“Somewhat like, say, the measures one S.T.A.R.S. captain might have to take to contain a viral outbreak?”

“Oh, fuck off!” Chris snapped. He said it a little louder than he’d meant to, and heard the shifting of discomfort from other clientele in the bar. He lowered his voice marginally. “You’re not getting away with pretending like you were some great saviour to Raccoon. You helped make the damn thing that killed everyone. And why are we even talking about Raccoon? Don’t want to look back on that megalomaniacal blip where you tried to wipe out the whole world with your freak virus?!”

“Oh do shut up, Redfield,” Wesker snipped, and Chris was glad to hear that had irritated the man. “I was not trying to wipe out the whole world. I had humanity’s best interests at heart. I was simply under a lot of pressure and time constraints. Ideally, Uroborus should have had a lot more refinement. I admit to getting a little overzealous with the subject, though you can hardly blame me. You have a habit of bulldozing through laboratories, destroying everything. I didn’t want all that hard work going to waste…”

“And Jill?! Your mind controlling B.S. just to hurt me?! Making her fight me?!”

“I saved her life, you ignorant moron. She’s alive because I saved her. And I gave her back to you, what more do you want?”

“Gave her back to me?! You are seriously delusional! You made my best friend fight me to the death!”

“No one died. Stop being petty.”

“Stop downplaying the most horrific moments of my life then!”

There was silence. Chris picked up his coffee. He was seething and furious. Wesker managed to trivialise the things that had hurt him the most, altered him irrevocably with the pain it had inflicted on him. He wanted to go. He wanted to drink and pretend he’d never seen that Wesker was still alive. But he also didn’t want to give Wesker the satisfaction. He didn’t want him to see the way he’d destroyed Chris’s life, and broken him down to a shell of a human being.

Chris sipped his coffee, gaze black as he studied Wesker. He couldn’t see evidence of the volcano’s burns. The man looked paler, though, and there was an unhealthy sheen to his body. He still had a handsome, regal, haughtiness to him, but Chris also noted the slight impatience in Wesker’s fingers as he tapped idly on the table. There was more happening internally in the man before him than was being let on.

“I’m just here for answers,” Chris said more guardedly. “Don’t try and justify anything to me. I hate you more than you can ever know.”

Wesker replied only with a thin, cold smile.

“How did you survive?” Chris asked again.

“After you shot me with a rocket launcher into an active volcano?”

“Yeah, after I shot you with a rocket launcher into an active volcano.” Chris was not going to let the man guilt him for that regardless of the somewhat complicated feelings it stirred in him.

“Well,” Wesker said, with another of those cold smiles. “The science is hardly compatible with your mental software, Chris. Let us just say that the regenerative aspects of my T-virus strain married rather well with Uroborus.”

“Why’d you look dead on your feet then? Why’s your hair white if it regenerated?”

Wesker’s face twisted into terrible snarl. It was gone in a flash, back to emotionless.

“It was not without its difficulties and complications,” he hissed softly.

“So you’re still all viral then? Still a monster?”

“Still capable of tearing you apart without so much as blinking.” Wesker smiled sharkishly.

Chris’s heart skipped a beat. His pulse picked up, hammering faster.

“Yeah?” he got out nonchalantly. “That why you’ve been stalking me? Following me around learning how I take my coffee so you can get me a brew before you rip my head off?”

“Precisely.” Wesker sipped his wine.

“You don’t scare me, Wesker,” Chris sneered.

“Your heartbeat tells me quite a different story.”

Chris glared at the man. He wished he’d at least gone back to his room to get his gun before he came back here. Why the hell had he gone to voluntarily meet Wesker without even a weapon? It was true his handgun would be useless against him though. Also, he’d had the thing modelled on Wesker’s old Samurai Edge, and it would be extremely embarrassing to pull it on the guy. He’d notice in an instant and give some insufferable smile.

“Why are you here?” Chris asked. “Just come to gloat?”

“Not at all. I told you, I’m here to offer you a job. You always were my best man, and you’ve come on a long way since then.”

“Fuck off,” Chris said again. He hated how defensive it came out though. Compliments from Wesker always did odd things to him, even from opposite sides of the battlefield. Wesker gave another annoying, knowing smile.

“I’m genuinely impressed by the man you’ve become. I could use you.”

“You’ve been using me for twenty-five years, why stop now, right?”

Wesker tilted his head. Chris looked away.

“Is that how you feel?”

“It’s how you tried to make me feel,” Chris growled.

“Well… then let it be known that you have truly been quite the thorn in my side. Whilst I was sometimes able to capitalise on your presence, and dare I say, even enjoy it on occasion, you were certainly a net negative on my machinations.”

“I’m so glad,” Chris ground out, sarcastic.

“When you nearly killed me, I knew I had underestimated you.”

Chris looked up. The smarmy charm had gone from Wesker’s voice. There was an edge there instead that sent the fight or flight back into Chris’s senses. Wesker must have seen that, because he softened his voice for him.

“It was impressive,” he continued. “I had no back-up plan for how that went down. I was once again at the mercy of viruses I had not fully researched. I have great fortune when it comes to my genetic composition and its interaction with mutagens, but even I believed the end had come that day. The thing that swam away from that volcano was not a creature I ever wished to become.” Wesker’s voice had gone softer still, and Chris’s expression, unbeknownst to him, was tracked with concern. “It took a long time to put back together the someone I had been. I never could have done so without the work of my old teacher,” he mused. “The force of will as an active reagent within a genetic process… It seems I am ever doomed to be Dr Marcus’s student.”

“I have no idea who that is,” Chris said flatly.

Wesker sighed.

“The man who could control slugs, Chris.”

“Oh! The guy Rebecca fought?! Him?! You learned stuff from that freak slug guy?!”

Wesker tutted in annoyance.

“He was a great scientist, Chris.”

“Didn’t you kill him or something?”

Wesker waved a hand in annoyance.

“Will you please not interrupt me.”

“You survived because your worms put you together like your teacher’s slugs?”

Wesker looked very annoyed by this summary, and the sight of his irritation made Chris crack a smirk and snicker into his coffee. Wesker’s anger seemed to fade. And he looked at Chris most curiously.

“How I have missed that sound,” he murmured.

Chris was immediately on the defensive, shielding his emotions from view.

“Yeah? You’ve not given me much to laugh about except your state of mind,” he snapped.

Wesker sipped his wine in silence. It wasn’t one of those hunting silences that Chris remembered from his S.T.A.R.S. days, where Wesker would just look at him until Chris was squirming and wondering how he’d disappointed his captain. It wasn’t one of those insufferably arrogant silences either from the countless times they’d stood opposite each other while Wesker gloated, and waited for Chris to catch up and realise his error. It was just a silence.

The afternoon sun came sideways through a patch of stained glass in the pub. It laid diamonds of colour on Wesker’s cheek. Chris could see lines there – weariness and age. Wesker had aged like everything else he did in life – gracefully, but he had aged nonetheless. Some very small part of Chris then, wondered if maybe the man before him was a little different from the one he had faced last time. Those hopes filled his chest like they had time and time again. His face fell and he looked away.

“Your disappointment, of all things, was what I most hated to bear,” Wesker said, very soft. “When you idolised me, it was the drug that no virus has ever competed with.”

“Haven’t done that in a long time,” Chris muttered.

“No,” Wesker agreed. “And yet I sought for it anyway. Dazzling you was so much more intriguing than anything an employer ever put on me.”

“Would have been more dazzled if you tore my heart up less while you did it.” Chris finally matched Wesker’s tone. He was tired, and couldn’t keep up all the irony in amidst his bitterness.

“Oh no, hurting you was essential,” Wesker said with some sharpness. “You spurned my very life’s work, Chris. I have never been rejected before. Do you know how many people in the world truly want me gone? Truly want me dead?”

“A lot.”

“No. Not at all. Barely a handful, yourself and Miss Valentine at the top of a very small list.”

Chris shifted uncomfortably, not meeting Wesker’s eye.

“I am a diamond,” Wesker continued. “I am the greatest diamond ever mined from the dull ore of the human race. I am wanted, Chris Redfield. There isn’t a government on this planet who hasn’t begged for my assistance. My crimes would be forgiven in a heartbeat if I wished it. Plenty have done far worse and been forgiven in return for positions of scientific prestige. I am wanted. I am craved.  But you, Chris Redfield, my prodigy; the police officer who idolised the ground I walked on; the air force dropout I raised from nothing into the confidence he still bears today; the man who spoke my name to give himself confidence when he thought he was alone on a mission; the man who fantasised that I would one day notice his affections and grant him even a snippet of reciprocation. He rejected me. Rejected my most glorious invention. And did so again, and again, and again! No matter what I showed you! No matter how I tore you down or transfigured myself, it was always blinkered, idiot Chris Redfield who couldn’t see my glory!”

Chris was staring at Wesker, white faced, knuckles tight. A sensation was on him like his guts had been ripped out and were now being displayed. His throat was dry and he wasn’t sure he could breathe right now.

“Only you wanted me dead,” Wesker hissed. “Only you. And it was you alone I wished to twist. I wished to hurt! I wished to see my magnificence! Can’t you see Chris?! Can you not see that I am a god among men?!” There was passion and fervour in Wesker’s voice, like there had been on the jet, like there had been as Wesker declared his ambitions to destroy the world Chris knew and loved. Chris’s heart sunk in disappointment.

“And there you go again!” Wesker cried, enraged. He gestured wildly at Chris.  “You dare to be disappointed in me?! The greatest of humanity?!”

Chris looked at him.

“Well… yeah,” he said, still quiet and tired. “I thought you might have changed.”

Wesker tore off his glasses. His eyes were gold and red with piercing cat slit black irises. They blazed with fury at Chris.

“Changed how?!” he insisted. “What is it you expected?!”

“Expected?” It was oddly easy to be calm just now. Maybe it was because Chris had seen so much more, moved on from Wesker and the hold he’d once had over him. He shrugged. “I didn’t expect anything. Certainly not from you. Guess I just hoped maybe you’d changed. You looked more human for a moment.”

“Human!” Wesker scoffed.

“Yeah,” Chris said quietly. “My mistake.”

The pub door opened as someone came in, briefly letting in the sounds of the street and the spattering of rain. It faded away as the door swung shut. A faint chatter became audible again, and the silence between them reigned long enough for Chris to feel an out of place confusion and dread and despair at his situation. What was he doing? What on earth was he doing here?

“You have finished your coffee,” Wesker said at last. He had put his sunglasses back on.

“So I have.”

“Let me purchase you another.”

“Wesker.” The man looked at him. “I’m not staying, you know that, right? I’m turning you in to the B.S.A.A. as soon as I get out of here.”

“The B.S.A.A.,” Wesker repeated, amused. “What are they without Chris Redfield?”

“A lot bigger than last time you encountered them, that’s for sure.”

“Bigger? I mean, why need I be worried about them without Chris Redfield there as their moral compass?”

Chris shifted, uncertain then. Wesker smiled slowly.

“Do you think the B.S.A.A. have never asked me to join them? Do you think they’ve never begged for my assistance in counterbioterrorism? Why, Chris, they even offered to ditch you in their offer to me. More fool them. The only reason I might have considered it was to work with you.”

“You’re lying,” Chris snapped.

Wesker shrugged faintly. Chris swallowed. The B.S.A.A. had long drifted from the path Chris had wanted for it. He’d butted horns with it over and over. Would they really have offered a deal to Wesker though? That would have been a real new low.

“What do you want from me? Are you just here to mock everything I’ve ever tried to fight for?! I’ve known the B.S.A.A. was corrupt for years. I stayed because I believed I could still do some good with them. I know the world isn’t as black and white as I wanted when I was young, but at least I’ve always known where you stood!”

“Have you?”

“Of course. That’s what’s pissed you off all this time, hasn’t it. You’ve never been able to delude poor stupid Chris back into idolising you. You’re some super genius that everyone wants to suck up to, but I still hate your guts.”

“Do you?”

“Fuck off, you’re not getting in my head with that psychologist bullshit.”

“Psychiatrist.”

“Wesker.”

Wesker shrugged again.

“Don’t hear my offer then.”

“I won’t.”

“It would have surprised you.”

“I doubt that.”

Wesker gave another mild look of indifference. Chris didn’t rise to it. Another silence stewed at their table.

“I’m buying you another coffee,” Wesker declared.

“I won’t drink it.”

“Then it shall sit between us, a fine display of how not to brew the beverage.”

“You’re free to leave if you hate the drinks here so much.”

“I cannot. I am magnetically drawn to Chris Redfield, wherever he goes in the world.”

Chris stared at him. Wesker shrugged.

“Oh, bartender?” Wesker called.

“You’re pushing it, pal!”

“Another of those coffees,” Wesker called, “and black for me.”

“Never listen to me when I say no, do you,” Chris grated.

“I make a habit it of it.”

Chris sat back, staring at the man.

“What is it? What is it that you’re so desperate to offer me? Let’s here this proposal that you think will change my mind and stop me from trying to put you in your second grave.”

Wesker looked very pleased and arrogant at that, like he’d won an argument.

“I shall hire you to be at my side. You shall be impressed by my work.”

Chris squinted slightly.

“What’s the job?”

“That’s the job. To be impressed. You will state things you do not believe I can do, and I shall demonstrate my true prowess to you.”

Wesker twirled his empty wineglass. He looked exceedingly pleased with himself. The bartender brought over their coffees. Chris was too bewildered to thank him.

“Let me get this straight, you want me to tell you what stuff would impress me, and then you’ll do it?”

“Correct,” Wesker said drawing his coffee towards him. “I shall finally destroy that stubbornness in you, Chris. You shall have no choice but to idolise me once more.”

Chris couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“So, if I told you to like… cure cancer, you’d go off and do it just to impress me?”

Wesker scoffed.

“I wouldn’t go off anywhere. You are being hired to stay at my side. You shall see my brilliance up close. If manipulating cancerous cells is so much more impressive to you than my genetic engineering work in viral warfare, then so be it.”

Chris was still struggling to understand what was on offer before him right now.

“You’d… give up being a bioterrorist if I asked you to?”

Wesker tutted.

“You still have that simplistic, naïve view of the world, Chris. I am not the villain you make me out to be. I am a man of science, dedicated to my own intellectual superiority. I had a mind to shape the world – advancing humanity genetically and so protecting it from the biochemical warfare that shall inevitably come to pass in its future, but since such a thing was so detestable to you, I am open to hearing what it is that would see you recognise my prowess for what it truly is.”

Chris’s heart was pounding fast again.

“This is another trick. You’re messing with me again.”

“I would not lie about such a thing, Chris,” Wesker said impatiently. “If you would do me the decency of using your brain for a moment, you would see the historical consistency in my explanation and proposal. Drink your coffee. It’s going cold.”

Chris reached for his coffee.

“I just don’t understand why-”

“It’s going cold.”

Chris sipped his coffee.

“I just don’t understand why my opinion matters so much to you.”

“I’ve already gained everything else,” Wesker said, fluttering a hand vaguely. “This alone has eluded me for years.” He looked exceedingly smug as he sat across from Chris. “You’re considering my offer, aren’t you.”

Chris was still stunned. He couldn’t quite believe that Wesker was holding this over him like a win. He was really offering to stop creating bioweapons and offer his services up for whatever good Chris would ask of him, and paying him to do so?!

“I’m… very confused…” Chris admitted. “I think there’s a catch, but I can’t work out what I need to ask to get you to tell me it…”

“You haven’t asked about your own duties, about where you will be required to stay.”

“Right, yeah. Where do I have to stay?”

“I have furnished an apartment for you next to my laboratory, I think it will be to your taste.”

“Am I allowed to leave?”

“You are, though I would request my laboratory not be widely advertised; I am a wanted man, after all.”

“What else am I not asking?”

“Your pay.”

“What will my pay be?”

“Would eighty thousand dollars a year be sufficient to start?”

“E-eighty?!”

“Ninety, then.”

“Th-that’s fine!” Chris said, goggling at Wesker. The man smirked. “And you’ll really be making cures and stuff and not tricking me?”

“You have my word. You may stand in the laboratory and watch me as I work.”

Chris still couldn’t help feel all his anger and confusion was lacking an avenue to fully realise itself. He felt cornered, and like there wasn’t space for him to vent his rage. He was obligated on behalf of humanity to accept Wesker’s offer.

“So I have to come with you or you potentially kill billions?” Chris asked softly.

Something in Wesker’s expression flickered. It looked startlingly like disappointment. There was a long pause. Chris didn’t look at him in it. He just stared at his barely sipped coffee.

“It was not my intention to frame it that way,” Wesker said guardedly.

“But that is the deal.”

Wesker frowned.

“It is not a requirement that you come with me, but I do not know how I could see your reaction to my genius from a distance.”

Chris studied that dilemma in Wesker’s expression. Wesker had such incomprehensible priorities compared to anyone else Chris new. Understanding them and the man before him was part of what had made him such a formidable enemy to Wesker. Chris exhaled, slow and soft.

“Let’s go then,” he said quietly. “Show me your lab.”

Wesker stood immediately, laying down a flurry of banknotes on the table.

“Indeed!” he enthused. “I have a helicopter waiting on the top of your hotel that will take us to my private jet, come along!”

And he swept out of the bar.

Watching Wesker move through the busy streets was such a bizarre sight. There was a lightness in his step, and an ecstasy that Chris had only ever seen before when the man tried to explain his various viral researches to him – usually with a somewhat manic fervour.

“This way!” he said to Chris, as if Chris didn’t know the way to his own hotel. “Check out and then we shall go and pack your things before heading to the roof.”

“Nothing there I need except my gun,” Chris grated.

“Good. Even quicker then.”

When Wesker whirled to take the elevator, his hair shifted around him, a mane free-flowing and silver. Chris could not get used to it at all, but the charming smile Wesker gave him as he held the elevator door, was doing confusing things to Chris’s insides all the same.

“You’re really not going to cut that?” Chris said, tilting his head at the head of hair as the lift took them up.

“Do you wish me to?” Wesker asked.

Chris paused, aware of the strange dynamic of power Wesker had apparently offered him.

“Don’t care either way,” Chris muttered. “’S on your head not mine.”

Wesker merely hummed in answer.

Once they were on the rooftop, freezing air whipped about them, and this only increased when the helicopter’s blades began to whir.

“Come along, Chris!” Wesker called cheerfully.

Chris wondered then if this was all a ploy to kidnap him. Perhaps Wesker would put him in some tank and run experiments on him. Perhaps he’d become like Lisa Trevor, doomed to amble around the wreck of some lab in agony after decades of experimentation.

Chris paused under the whirling chopper blades. Was he really the same trusting and naïve Chris from all those years ago?

Wesker came up to him. He lingered close and hopeful. Chris saw his fingers reach for him, then retract. That indecision surprised Chris. Wesker was a man of many things, but uncertainty in himself and his own plots was never one of them. Chris followed him then, doom still heavy in his chest. He was disappointed in himself, disappointed that he still hadn’t learned, that he still had hope in people to change.

It was hard to talk in the helicopter. Even with headphones and earpieces, sound was roaring all about them. Chris sat in silence opposite Wesker, watching him as he gave directions to his pilot. The grey cityscape beneath them grew smaller as they took off, and Chris couldn’t help but mentally calculate the adjustments the pilot would have to be making to account for the blustery weather.

The runway they landed on was a small, private affair outside a commuter town Chris had never heard of. Wesker was ushering him onto a jet plane, enthusiastically outlining the possible different options Chris could ask of him.

“Cancerous cells are not monolith, and countering the advance of one does not guarantee success in other areas,” he was explaining.

He gestured Chris to a seat. The jet interior was spacious and luxurious, functioning as a suave cocktail lounge.

“Best to take one of the airline seats until we reach altitude,” Wesker added, taking one himself on the opposite side of the plane, so that Chris could sit at a comfortable distance from him. He immediately continued talking about labwork after. “But at any rate, I estimate even accounting for all variations, it oughtn’t to take longer than a couple of years. What would you like after that?” Wesker reached for a tablet and touched it on. “I anticipated that you would be keen to target illnesses that affect the largest number of people in most drastic ways,” he said as he flicked the screen upward. “I have compiled a list that I believed would fit your specifications, though I have tailored this somewhat to my interests. I am a virologist, after all, and prefer to work at the genetic level. I’ve taken the liberty of removing fungal and bacterial diseases from the list, though if one of those truly falls into your desires, I shall see what I can do.”

Wesker offered Chris the tablet.

Chris was just staring at him again. He did take the tablet, eyes glazing as he looked over the list.

“I’ve included common names next to the scientific ones, along with brief descriptions and number of people afflicted.”

“…Thanks,” Chris heard himself murmur.

“Clinical trials will take longer if you wish cures to be widely sold and available, since they must pass through various legal loopholes.”

“No human trials,” Chris said suddenly, jarred out of his daze.

Wesker cocked an eyebrow at him.

“All human medication is eventually trialled on a human, Chris…”

“No illegal trials, no… experimenting on people like… like you’ve done in the past.”

Wesker tutted.

“A hindrance, but not an impossibility. Results will inevitably take longer.”

Chris looked over at him. They’d risen above the clouds, and a bright sun was resting on Wesker, picking out his better qualities.

“Why are you really doing this?” Chris whispered.

A bing sounded overhead followed by the pilot informing them they were now cruising at altitude.

Wesker unbuckled his belt and stretched.

“I have nothing more to add beyond my previous explanations, Chris. If that is not good enough for you, then I know not what else to say.”

Chris stayed seated, with the faux comfort of the seatbelt as his safety.

“Are you going to kill me? Torture me?”

Wesker’s face briefly flashed with an anger and upset. He turned away quickly.

“Believe what you will.”

That apparent offense angered Chris.

“Well, excuse me for asking, after all you’ve done!” Chris exclaimed, rising to his feet.

“I would never hurt you,” Wesker snapped.

“Yeah?! Not what it looked like when you had a gun to my head in Africa!”

“My finger wasn’t even on the trigger,” Wesker sneered.

Chris swallowed. Neither had his own been. Not until he was forced. Not until it was the very end, and he had no other choice. And even then as he aimed the rocket launcher…

“You’re lying,” Chris croaked.

“Please,” Wesker drawled. “You’ve always known I hold back around you, don’t pretend otherwise.”

“That’s not true!” But deep down. It was. Chris did know. He knew Wesker always gave him special treatment, obsessed over his presence, their encounters, over the drama of this perpetual dance. Chris’s teeth set together and his brow came down dark. A gathering, roaring thing was rearing inside him, determined not to let this man strike at his core again. “When will you just leave me the hell alone?!” he snarled. “I made one mistake in admiring you when I was young and what?! Now I have to suffer forever for it?!”

“Yes,” Wesker hissed, advancing on him. “You will suffer for it for an eternity.”

Chris’s eyes burned with fuming intensity. He squared up before Wesker. His shoulders were far broader than they’d been last time, his chest strong, his hands harder, built to hurt. And his insides had walls this time; great walls that Chris had laid brick by brick so that no more Weskers could dive within and upend his foundations.

“So you hate me because I loved you,” Chris said, cold and faintly mocking.

Wesker crowded into his space, still domineering despite all that bulk Chris had put on to try and keep up with him. He could still look down his nose at Chris, still rise with arrogant pride and startling, imperious beauty, casting his long shadow over him. Wesker’s words came equally cold and biting.

“I hate you because you stopped.”

Chris stared at him. Fury coursed through him. He yanked off Wesker’s glasses so that he could meet the living flames of his eyes with his own. He gripped the front of Wesker’s coat, baring his teeth and all his anger. He wanted to hurt the man, make him feel some of the pain he’d made him feel for decades. Chris crashed his lips to Wesker’s, fierce and violent. Wesker reciprocated with a need that Chris felt boiling the air around them. They grasped one another, strong enough to bruise, and Chris fought Wesker’s tongue with his own. The heat of his mouth felt everywhere, tongues hot as they wrestled, rearing as spitting snakes.

“You were wasted at the B.S.A.A.,” Wesker snarled, pressing his chest to Chris’s, hands on his arms, his back, his waist, his hips.

“You were wasted at Umbrella, at Tricell, at everywhere. You could have been ten times the man you were at any time.” Chris’s fingers were trembling in Wesker’s lapels. He was so angry, so frustrated, so confused, so glad.

“I intend to be,” Wesker growled. “For you.”

“It’s too late. It’s all too fucking late.” Chris kissed Wesker in between each word, pressing his lips to him hard, over and over. One of his hands skated up to curve around Wesker’s cheek, and hovered there, fragile and gentle.

“Because you’re so busy with your time,” Wesker sneered. “I’ve drawn you away from your happy retired life, married to a bottle and guilt.” His thumb brushed Chris’s cheek tenderly, and his lips followed, soft and muted as they littered faint kisses to his skin. Chris’s eyelids fluttered, and his breath drew in shaky and small.

“You’ve already ruined everything,” Chris croaked. “Everyone’s already gone. I’m already broken.”

“Broken,” Wesker laughed coldly. “Don’t make me laugh. You’re undefeatable, unstoppable. You rise to every challenge. You weather every grief. And you still stick to your cursed ideals. You cannot be broken, Chris Redfield, goodness knows I’ve tried.”

His skin was hot and Chris could see now its faint burns, and the veins running along the back of his hands, aflurry with a lifetime of experiments, not all of them desired.

“I thought you came because you won. Because you finally made me into you,” Chris whispered, nosing close to Wesker’s neck.

“Then you’re an idiot,” Wesker hissed. “It is I who have changed, not you. Swallowing my grand ideals just to be content with innovation. Reflecting on losing all but missing you the most. Wake up and use that inferior brain of yours.”

“You look different, but you smell the same. You smell like my Wesker.”

“I’m no more that captain than you are that pointman. And I won’t be fitted into that cage. I won’t be anyone’s prisoner. Not even yours.”

“Don’t want a prisoner. Just want you to give a damn.”

Wesker caught Chris’s face, and held him gently between his palms.

“I do not think I can do that. Which is why I need you at my side. I cannot promise a conscience, but I can promise commitment. Tell me what you will idolise, what you will worship. I want to be him, the man you believed I was all those years ago. I want to make him look like a shadow. I want to see the wonder in your eyes again.”

“I don’t know if I’ve got any wonder left,” Chris whispered.

“Then let me awaken it. I shall find it, I shall reignite you. I want my Chris back. The one with hope. The one who thought too big for me back then.”

“I never loved anyone since.”

“I know.”

“I’m so angry. I’m so angry and tired, Wesker.”

“Albert. Say Albert.”

“I don’t know if I can ever forgive you, Albert.”

Wesker brushed his thumb over his skin like he was something fragile, something breakable. He treated him like cut crystal that caught all the light.

“I shall never ask for it,” Wesker murmured. “To be near you is enough, to catch glimpses of myself through your eyes… That is the wealth I seek. I want to shine, but only for you.”

“You’ve done so much,” Chris choked. “You’ve done so much. You’re everywhere with me. I carry you around everywhere – in the field, in the bar, in my dreams…”

“And I awaken each morning with the sight of my protégé aiming a rocket down at me, his disappointment the last thing I see before the world goes dark. Where else shall we go, Chris? Who else can understand? The injuries are too deep, the world too rent apart, and you and I the needle and thread sewing one another back together. I never said there wouldn’t be pain.”

“Everyone thinks I’m cold and old and bitter,” Chris whispered.

“Fools,” Wesker growled lowly. “No creature on earth is so resilient, so insistent on seeing the good in humanity.”

Chris bowed his face into Wesker’s shoulder, and like Atlas giving up the globe, he sunk into him, sunk into Wesker’s darkness.

“It’s just been so much.” The words came brokenly from him. “It’s just been so much. It hurts every time I lose someone. It hurts every single time. I never got used to it like you said I would. And building that hurt up and up and up… I think I’m a monster. I think I’ve become something monstrous…”

Wesker’s hand skated through Chris’s hair, idling there, stroking there.

“My Chris would not say so. He would tell you that you have done the best you can to stay true to yourself. It is this that fascinates me. You are such an enigma, such an outlier. I have strength never seen before in human skin, but it is you who is irreplicable. I want to understand you. I want see what you see. I want to dedicate myself to the study of the greatest mystery of all: Chris Redfield. Stay at my side. Never leave me.”

“Can’t leave you even when you’re dead. You’re everywhere,” Chris whispered. “Hear you when I do something foolish or reckless. Hear you when I don’t want to go on. Hear when I do something well. Talk to you sometimes. Talked to you when I lost my team. Talked to you when I lost my lieutenant. Sometimes used to talk to you just plan out a strategy…”

“And now you shall do so in person. You shall have me whenever you need. I am very sick of being parted from the most interesting thing in my life. I am tired of sitting in monochrome waiting for your light.”

“I’m no light. So fucking dark in my life. Couldn’t even find the exit.”

Wesker gripped him hard. His eyes blazed as flames, lighting the pale, ill skin of his cheeks with the glow of life.

“I want you,” he said savagely. His lip twitched and Chris could see inarticulate emotion swarming Wesker’s face – Wesker who was always so collected and blank. He gripped Chris tighter, enough to hurt. “I want you,” he said more forcefully, urgently. And there was wildness there now, and something else: a fear. Maybe even a terror.

Even though Wesker’s grip hurt, Chris reached just slowly, just gently. He touched his fingertips to his cheeks.

“Okay,” he said, very soft. “Got nothing else going on.”

“Stay with me,” Wesker ground out. He still sounded stiff and furious.

“Okay.”

“Be mine.”

“Okay.”

“Adore me.”

“Okay.”

Wesker released him. He cupped a hand to the back of Chris’s neck and brushed his thumb very lightly over Chris’s lips.

“Love me?”

Chris looked up into the fiery turmoil of those virus ridden eyes. He saw the man in there waiting for him – the one he’d been trying to reach for long, torturous years. The one who’d spat when cornered about how he needed no one. The one who’d howled in rage that Chris didn’t understand him. The one who’d screamed Chris’s name as he died.

“Okay.”