Birth of a New World

Fear had teeth against the trembling need between them.

Rebecca had shown up at his place after the mansion. He'd felt her then. He'd wanted Jill. He always wanted Jill. He wanted Jill now, when he felt hopeless and hapless and lost. He wanted Jill every fucking minute of every fucking day. He knew it would easier, sweeter, softer, and better to choose Rebecca.

He'd felt Rebecca in that moment and knew, in a world where he'd never known Jill Valentine, he'd have come to love an urchin with big blue eyes. What did it matter? What did it change? It was done.

Jill was all he could feel anymore.

His other hand came down. He cupped both cheeks of her ass and kneaded her and he rubbed himself along her crevice. She made a little sound.

He rasped, low and gruff, "Sore there too?"

And her hands came back to slide over his. Damn her. She held his hands against her ass and let him rub like some filthy pervert against her. "Yeah. Sore there too." And now her voice was breathy as hers was.

His forehead dropped against her shoulder. He was filthy. He was. In mind and body and soul. He didn't want to touch her too much. He didn't want to soil her. He didn't want to spill his shit all over her and hurt her.

What?

His mind asked again…what does that even mean?

It meant if he kept touching her, he'd fuck her stupid. He'd throw her against the wall and fuck her while she gasped and came. And he'd ruin her. He'd snuff out that fire to find the answers that peppered them both like bullets and left bleeding need behind.

Or worse? He'd spill some of his hopeless on her. He'd steal her edge of determination with his own cloud of regret. He was mired in it. Lost in it. Regret. It lived in him now like some kind of demon that had possessed his body and attached to his soul. He didn't want to spill it on her and let it get her to.

He started to draw back and she gripped his wrists. She shook her head. Her hand shifted and pulled his off her right cheek. She slid it over her ass and wrapped it around the needy length of him.

For the third time since he'd come in the door, he thought, Christ…don't. And she linked their fingers together while she used his hand to milk him.

And then she slid her other hand down her belly and touched herself.

And he stopped worrying about any of it. For the first time in months, he didn't think about the horror, the hopelessness, the hunt. He didn't think about surviving or fighting or loss. He didn't picture revenge or grief or loss or leaving behind his whole life to find the answers.

He just thought about her.

And release.

His free hand turned her toward him. It pushed on her collarbone to put her against the wall. And he let go. He let go to lay his palm beside her head there and leaned forward. She released her hold on him. And his hand kept rolling over his aching dick. She kept a hand on herself, slipping those piano playing fingers of hers through her slick folds to stroke herself.

They didn't touch each. They touched themselves WATCHING each other.

His eyes fluttered, thrilling her. She rolled her lips in and bit at them, enthralling him. His eyes watched her breasts heave, watched her belly clench. He whispered, "Does it hurt?"

And she looked down at the steely girth of him and wanted him so badly that it did. "Yeah. It hurts."

"Yeah it does. Jesus Christ, Jill." He dropped his forehead against hers, breathing choppy now.

She lifted her face up and brushed her mouth over his. She rubbed their noses together, his was filthy and crusty with old blood. She whispered, "It's cheese and rice, Redfield. Get it right."

And now he laughed, so breathy, so desperate.

Jill looked at all the slick pre-come that spilled dewy and needy from his heady shaft. "Does it hurt?"

His balls went tight and painful listening to her ask. He let her rub her lips over his again and ached. So, the answer there was simple. "Like hell."

Jill gasped out a shaky laugh herself. Her free hand lifted and grabbed the side of his face. "Chris?"

The question was high and quivering.

"Yeah?"

"I'm gonna come. I'm just…I'm gonna come."

He watched her do it. He watched her. He let go of his body and slid his hand over hers to share it with her. He wanted to thrust his fingers into her and FEEL it with her. But he just…didn't. He felt her juices drip down their joined fingers and wanted to turn her against the wall and fuck her through it.

But he didn't.

He wanted to kiss her and he didn't do that either.

Jill gasped, thighs quaking, and his hand slid back over his body to keep on stroking. He watched her stomach clench, watched her come down the other side shaking. And then her eyes dropped to watch him stroke himself.

She thumbed the soft skin beside his ear, "Tell me when."

The hand stroking him grabbed hers and wrapped it with his over his dick. She made a little mewl of want for him. They stroked him together now, panting. He put his mouth against hers and whispered, "Now."

And he angled himself at her springy little mound and spit sticky little strands of hungry need all over her. Her fingers slipped over the head of his spurting cock to feel it. His balls were so tight it actually HURT him to come on her. He hadn't gotten his rocks off in so long it felt like a hundred years.

He decorated her dark little patch like he was painting it white. Maybe he'd write his name in its like a brand. He pinned her against the wall, just a little, as he grunted and finished and he murmured, against her mouth, "I want to fuck you."

Jesus.

She held his face. "….I know. Me too. Me too….get in the shower. But…just…" And she guided his hand to her sticky little mound. Christ, he thought again, DON'T. And she slid his fingers over his release there and slid them down, to smear it over her slick, wet slit.

They both shivered.

She was a fucking SIREN. She was going to call his soul from him. But he wasn't thinking of anything now but her. So she was also brilliant.

She said again, even as she linked their fingers and played in that come he'd left behind, smearing it over her eager little pussy. "You should get in the shower."

"….fucking shit." He brushed his mouth over hers and pulled back, panting. Jill shuddered, watching him. Chris cupped her left breast, just once, and stole her breath with it. And then he let go and he got in the shower.

Sometimes he was dumb. Sometimes he was wise. Sometimes he was just an animal. He didn't fuck her. And that meant he was also capable of growing as a person. Which was progress.

The boiling water washed over his filthy body and brought a sigh from his mouth. And he wished she was in there with him.

Jill moved to the sink to rinse off. Part of her wanted to keep him on her body. It was dirty and raw and amazing. They weren't dead. They were still here. And they were still them.

The nature of their friendship would always be raw like this.

She wanted to get in the shower and mount him and hold his broken body down on the floor of it while the water ran pink with blood and fuck him. It was visceral. It hurt to picture it. It hurt to imagine how it would, just in those brief moments, wash away the horror behind their eyes.

Would she picture the Nemesis as he rose above her? As his hands slid around her throat to hold her and her body came apart in his arms…would she picture the pain of infection as he filled her up, gasping, bowing…burning? The only way to heal, sometimes, was by forcing what hurt you into your body so hard, so deep, that the pain eventually became numb.

She wanted to climb into the shower and hurt them both until they couldn't feel it anymore. Until there was only her, only him, and the sound of their fucking to punctuate the dark that boiled and rolled around their bodies with impudent torture. She wanted to jerk back the curtain and throw his wounded body against the wall and fuck the pain out of both of them.

She didn't.

She sat on the toilet…and she started talking.

Chris stood in the boiling water, listening to her. She talked about surviving and fighting. She talked about being trapped in that city while it burned. She talked about the Nemesis and its mutations, its vendetta, its purpose. And then she told him about the infection.

He pulled back the curtain on the shower and he was clean as the water beat down on his face. He wasn't filthy anymore. He looked like a drowned rat. "….it got you."

"…yeah."

They held eyes. Finally his hand snaked out and caught her wrist. He pulled her, towel and all, into the shower with him. She made a little sound as the hot water spilled around her.

He didn't try to fuck her. He pressed her into the wall and…held her.

Her hands came up, trembling, and held his face. He pressed their foreheads together and breathed. She whispered now, "I'm ok. I promise."

And there was that laugh again from him. It was so painful to hear. There was no humor in it. "That makes one of us then. Don't die on me, Jill Valentine. I don't think I could take it."

The big squish. She believed him. Hadn't she said something similar at mansion? Her hand skimmed down his chest and she saw it…without the blood in the way…she saw the ugly scabbing mark in his shoulder. Her eyes lifted to his face as her hand slid over it and held. His echoed hers, touching the wound left on her by the Nemesis. The shiver of their mirrored wounds wasn't lost on either of them.

She whispered, "Wesker?"

"No. Let me tell you about the Ashford family. You need to know about Alexia."

And they stood in the shower together now…and talked monsters.

They ended up living in that tiny house together. The quest was difficult when you were staying under the wire and not getting any one else involved in your scheming. But they managed, in the beginning, to steer clear of using too many noticeable resources.

By an unspoken agreement, they stopped dancing dangerously with each other. The sex went on the back burner, they were too focused on finding Wesker and finishing Umbrella. They didn't even think about the other naked and writhing and crying out...mostly. Sometimes.

Well, at least not as often as they had before.

Chris had dogged determination that was admirable. He was good at research. He knew how to use libraries, how to make phone calls to get answers, how to play act well enough to elicit information from giggly little girls that worked in offices. Jill was a trooper about long trips to locations that had rumors of outbreaks.

Most of the time, their leads were dead ends. They'd arrive in to find actual wolves, they'd arrive to find out the "cannibals" were nothing more than scared kids making up stories when their parents caught them alone in the woods at night, they'd occasionally find just enough to keep them at it. A hint of something nefarious that reminded them why they were still chasing.

Umbrella shuddered under the weight of Raccoon City while they doggedly took up the charge to destroy bioterror.

As the years passed, it got easier to fall into friendship with each other. They were always pushing each other. They rarely laughed anymore. There was no time for laughter when you were chasing ghosts and fighting alone.

They would hear whispers of Wesker when Chris would bend the right ear and tickle the right interest. But Wesker was smoke. He was mirrors. He was just...not there. And they had to remember he was a genius. He was brilliant. They'd never find him without help. And help was something they didn't want too risk asking for too much of.

In the beginning, the dreams were awful.

She would awake screaming to find herself alone in her tiny bed and soaked in sweat. Jill would cry a little, at first, as she processed the horror of what had happened to them. She'd hold her pillow and scream into it in the early hours before dawn would take the nightmares away. It got easier to go back to sleep after awhile. Alone or not, it was her life now.

Chris didn't wrestle with the nightmares the same way. He'd awaken, shaking, the images of it all burnt behind his eyes like a horror movie that never ended. He'd rise and move out into the night to fight them. He'd train it away. He'd push it away. He'd bury it down deep and pretend.

It was a cottage filled with venegance. And there was no room there for fear.

One night he stood at the window to see her out there doing the same. She tumbled, she struck, she spun. He watched her mouth move as she spoke to no one, as she yelled her pain to the demons that flittered like shadows beyond their sanctuary. His fingers brushed the glass like he'd touch her, like he'd take her pain and heal her.

But he didn't touch her. And he didn't take her pain.

He stepped out into the night air and shared it with her.

They hit each other. They struck without guards, without stopping. She came at him full force, not pulling her punches, not holding back. He blocked, parried, and took it when she landed a blow that burst his mouth with blood.

She didn't apologize and he didn't ask her to. He caught her next thrown arm and threw her to the ground instead. She looked up at him in the early gray light and he said, "Get up. Go again."

Where was her best friend? He was lost inside the shell of the man who knew nothing but revenge. Where was she? She was lost inside the shell of a woman who knew nothing but the same.

She sprang off the ground and tackled him. He taught her how. When she hit him and failed, he threw her to the ground again. "Get UP. Go AGAIN."

She did. And knocked him on his ass that time.

Jill helped him learn to move quickly, smoothly. He was big and awkward and determined. When he swung, she pummeled under him sharp and fast. When he kicked, she rolled and drove her fist into his groin.

He went onto his back, clutching himself.

She stood over him without sympathy and said, "Get up, Redfield. Keep fighting. Go again."

And the love in him for her was nearly insane. He put his hand up to her and she jerked him to his feet.

They chased down more leads. They found enough to keep them hoping. The facility in France that Claire had raided was empty now. They combed through the ashes to find any clues that might have been left there.

Chris kept everything. He made charts. He lined the walls with ribbon and ties and pictures. How did one connect, how did it linger, how did it link. Chris shadowed each lead and and each line with an enviable prowess that kept him up long into the night.

She watched him in the kitchen one night from the hallway. He was shirtless, he was scarred, he was big and damp from a shower. He kept running his finger from the picture of Claire to the picture of him and back again. He missed his sister like an ache in his soul.

She wanted to hold him.

She went back to bed.

He cut off all his hair one day when it got too long and shaggy. He buzzed it down to a fine dark sheen and grew a beard. She paused as he emerged out of the house to train with her. They said cutting your hair was a cry for help.

She let hers grow out.

He got the Latin word for truth tattooed above the scar left on him by Alexia Ashford. VERITAS. It was his mantra.

Jill echoed it and had the Latin word for justice tattoed above the one left by the Nemesis. AEQUITAS.

She moved passed him as he worked one night and wrote HONESTAS across the face of the picture of Wesker and smeared blood on his face. As if the man would EVER know about honor. As if they'd find it in his blood.

Chris watched her as she turned her eyes to him. He nodded and he rose. They looked together at the picture...and for the first time in the three years since they'd started searching, Chris put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

She lifted her hand and held on.

He knicked his finger and smeared his blood over the symbol of Umbrella that sat, ugly and taunting, at the top of their pyramid of research on the wall. He echoed the feeling behind what she'd done. Her fingers linked with his on her shoulder.

And it bonded them again to keep on pushing.

He'd drawn a symbol on a paper that lay on the table. It was a picture of the world turned green with life again. It was the world made safe again.

It was the moment the BSAA began to form, like a shivering dream, between them.