Partners | By : onionbelt Category: +M through R > Resident Evil Views: 5488 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or any of its characters and make no money with this story. It's just for fun. |
The next day, whole teams of people start arriving in force from all over the world and their base camp turns into the rural Russian version of Mardi Gras. Everyone wants a piece of the Caucasus Facility, empty servers or not, and they've all got a list of good reasons why they should be the first in line. The mess hall turns into the site of a furious argument between small armies of lawyers, cops, scientists, and diplomats, as arbitrated by a few increasingly-frazzled translators. The mercenaries get to stand back and watch it happen, placing bets on which nerd will snap first.
In the middle of all that, somebody takes one look at Chris and says, "Maybe you should go to an actual hospital."
They've been putting that off, but there's nothing left to shoot at the Caucasus and Chris's ibuprofen intake is getting to the point they mention on the side of the bottle as what you're not supposed to exceed. This sounds a lot like common sense and they pack up to leave.
Chris and Jill get a ride into Vladikavkaz, then hop a flight from there to Moscow, and from there to Stockholm, where the weather's marginally better and a lot more people speak English. The doctors there get really upset for a while, Chris learns how to say "suicidal idiot" in Swedish, and they schedule both him and Jill for X-rays and minor surgery. He gets cleaned out, stitched up, and packed with gauze; her "twisted" ankle is a hairline fracture and they put her foot in an inflatable walking cast.
By the time Chris is released from the hospital, Jill's been out for a day and every TV they see is broadcasting a bulletin. The Global Pharmeceutical Consortium is throwing Umbrella under the bus and has opened up their files to the prosecution. The GPC's archives combine with the information from the Caucasus to provide an endless gusher of verifiable atrocities, and what's left of Umbrella's high-priced cadre of lawyers starts to fall apart. After years of being on their back foot, constantly scrambling to prove the unbelievable, the prosecuting attorneys press the attack with a degree of gleeful satisfaction they don't try to hide.
Chris and Jill check into a hotel in Stockholm for the next two weeks and watch the rest of the trial coverage from a double bed, living off of room service and dopey on Vicodin. They don't bother to get dressed most days, throwing on bathrobes when it's necessary, and spend most of their time curled up together under the sheets.
There's a big gulf between what they're doing and what they'd like to be doing. There's four years of sexual tension to resolve and Chris has a hard time keeping his hands off of Jill, but the romance of the situation is often defused by the side effects of the painkillers, Jill's fractured ribs, or his nearly busting a surgical suture. There are a lot of awkward moments and false starts, but they're both determined and resourceful. They manage.
It's as close as either of them has come to a real vacation in a few years and they mock each other for it. Anyone with any sense would have hopped the next flight to Ibiza, but no, they're watching cable news for eighteen hours a day. It's funny because it's sad.
"Yeah, I can't pull myself away from the trial either," Claire says. "I've got a term paper I'm blowing off for this."
"Claire..."
"I think I can probably get an extension, Chris. The professor knows I was in Raccoon City, and this doesn't exactly happen every day."
Jill tips the room service guy and wheels his cart into the room. Chris glances at her, she notices where his eyes are pointed, and Jill looks down to see that her robe is hanging open. She's showing a pale span of skin from collarbone to navel, maybe an inch either way from being indecent, which explains a lot about how the room service guy was acting. She makes a muted "eep" sound and tightens the bathrobe's belt, and Chris breaks into laughter.
"What's so funny?"
"Oh. Jill did something--"
Jill grabs the cordless handset away from him. "Claire? Chris is an idiot. How are you?"
He reaches out for the phone, but she's already halfway across the room.
"What'd he tell you? Really." Jill mock glares at him. "No, we're both fine. He's got about three hundred stitches in him, though--no, of course he wouldn't."
Chris leans back against the headboard and rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
"We could probably tell each other stories all day. What else did he say?" Jill listens for a minute. "Okay. We're..." She covers the mouthpiece with her hand. "Dating? Together? I don't even know how to phrase this."
"Partners."
Jill looks at him for a long moment, her face softening. Finally, she uncovers the mouthpiece. "I'm in love with your brother."
A second passes. She pulls the handset away from her face and stares at it blankly, then hands it back to Chris.
"What'd you say to her?" Chris asks.
"I said 'no shit,'" Claire says. "Anyway, about the trial..."
The final verdict comes in two days later.
Most people watching the trial, Chris included, are expecting some kind of eleventh-hour revelation that'll let Umbrella skate on at least some of the charges. He's been having nightmares about an accidental or deliberate outbreak in the courtroom, the kind of dream that draws a lot of its power from a sick waking conviction that it's actually going to happen, and the closer they come to the verdict the more anxious he is about it. As it turns out, he shouldn't have worried. Umbrella's appeals are denied and the company is now officially closed. Wherever Ozwell Spencer is right now, he's suddenly number one on every most wanted list in the world, and every mercenary they know just heard a sound like a cash register opening. He and Jill stare at the TV for a while, neither quite able to believe they're seeing this, but then both their cell phones light up. They spend the next couple of hours with the TV muted, fielding are-you-watching-this calls from everyone they've ever known: Barry, Carlos, Claire, Leon Kennedy, Jill's old Army buddies, and dozens of the men and women they've been working with for the last four years. On TV, the defense team is briefly caught on camera as they slink out the back door, and the prosecutors are on every channel doing the legal equivalent of an end-zone strut. The calls from friends eventually taper off and are replaced by reporters, asking for statements or interviews concerning the Caucasus facility attack. At that point, Chris turns off his phone, and a second later, so does Jill. He thinks about ordering a couple of glasses of champagne, but the TV right now is showing a shot of the crowd around the courthouse. Hundreds of them are holding poster-sized photographs, showing relatives and friends who died in Raccoon City, either in the outbreak or who went there and disappeared. Some are cheering, others are crying, but a lot are standing there solemnly. Every so often Chris sees a face in one of the photos that he recognizes: a cop from the station, a guy he used to shoot pool with at the Bar Jack. One is at a bad angle, but he's pretty sure it's of a teenage Forest Speyer, held by an old woman with tears running down her cheeks. There's nothing here to celebrate. He reaches out and puts an arm around Jill's shoulders, and she settles back against him. "It's not really over," he says. "I know," Jill says, "but it is for tonight." Chris turns off the TV.While AFF and its agents attempt to remove all illegal works from the site as quickly and thoroughly as possible, there is always the possibility that some submissions may be overlooked or dismissed in error. The AFF system includes a rigorous and complex abuse control system in order to prevent improper use of the AFF service, and we hope that its deployment indicates a good-faith effort to eliminate any illegal material on the site in a fair and unbiased manner. This abuse control system is run in accordance with the strict guidelines specified above.
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