Twelve Steps.

Cover art by siobhanchiffon.

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Another night and another bar, because the last one kicked him out, and the one before that has a tab that keeps growing, and yeah, he could make fast work of the proprietor's leg breaking little brother, but why bother? Why even expend the energy anymore?

And what are you even living for?

For booze and cheap beds? For the company of girls with tracks on their arms and sad eyes who say he looks miserable in their chipped Russian voices, stumbling over their English? He never intended on going home with any of them, but they sat at the edge of the bar and rubbed his shoulders right before closing, and shot nervous glances at their pimps who were sitting a few tables back, silently praying that they would make some money tonight. So when four in the morning hit, he'd find himself walking down the street with a ninety pound wretch of a girl trying to keep him standing up straight, because if he passed out, she wouldn't get paid.

He wanted to cook them eggs in the morning, and make them coffee, and buy them a train ticket to somewhere very far away. But they were always gone when he woke up.

He didn't have any eggs anyway.

So, instead of playing liberator to the assorted whores of Eastern Europe, he would go get drunk again, to make up for his glaring inadequacies.

You can't save those girls, Chris. How could you? You can't save yourself.

So he drank to forget Sofia and Viktoria, Anna and Polina.

He used to drink to forget some other names, but those were long gone. Hazed away in the cloud of cheap vodka. He supposed that was what he wanted.

So it was another bar tonight. The woman at the counter was dirt blonde and stern. She kept shooting him disproving glares. Who the fuck did she think she was, judging him? She sneered every time he asked for a refill. As long as the money kept coming from his pockets, it was none of her business. Everyone's a fucking alcoholic in Russia. He puffed up up a constant cloud of cigarette smoke to keep their interactions as short as he could. The ashtray looked like a burial ground, tiny little bodies stubbed into the dirt.

Why would you think something so morbid? What the fuck is wrong with you?

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" she asked, puckered little face squeezing inward.

"Nope."

He swirls the clear liquor in his glass.

"Another round."

She slams the bottle down on the counter.

The kid next to him, who's been chomping down on a steak all night, turns to him.

"Hard to find a good steak around here. Not like back home."

Chris wrinkles his nose. The hell is this guy? He's too clean cut for a dive like this. He's got a face straight out of the prom court. Clean chestnut colored hair with that little purposeful poof in the front, baby features, and soft unwrinkled eyes. He looks out of place.

The bartender returns to begrudgingly pours a few drops into Chris's glass.

Chris groans. Leave it to him to find the only bartender in all of Europe who hates money, apparently.

"Fill her up."

She crosses her arms.

"You've had enough."

She's never seen Chris at enough, that's certain. If his ass is still in the seat, not halfway over it, he's not at enough.

"Listen sweetheart," Chris begins. He extends an arm out and yanks the bottle from her hand. She gasps at him. "You're here to pour drinks, and look pretty." She doesn't look it, but he might as well soften the blow. "So, how 'bout you shut your mouth?"

He dumps the bottle into his glass, nearly spilling it all over the counter. She snatches the glass out from under his hand and throws the contents in his face.

"How about you get the hell out of my bar?!"

Chris shrugs.

"Nowhere to go."

He grabs the bottle off the counter—it's his payment for the ruined jacket—and gets up. Then he sees the no-necked security. Fantastic.

He yells something at him in Russian. Chris keeps walking. It's not worth the trouble. The man steps in front of him, puts his hand on his chest. Chris sneers. He hates being touched, especially by some thug from a basement bar. Chris pushes him off.

"I said, she asked you to leave."

Isn't that what I'm doing, asshole?

Asshole grabs him by the shoulders. Chris jumps at the sudden contact, and before he knows what he's doing, he's got the man in a headlock, ready to smash the bottle over his head.

Something stops his arm mid swing.

He turns to look. It's the prom king, glaring at him.

"Never thought I'd find Chris Redfield wasting away in a shithole like this."

Chris stumbles back. His lack of balance would be embarrassing if he could make himself care. Apathy is kind at times. He manages to land himself in a chair.

Prom king sits down across from him. There's a scowl etched into his face that seems so harsh as to have been carved there.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Piers. Piers Nivans."

Step Two: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

He's got his head in the toilet again.

"Did you fall in? I don't wanna have to fish you out!"

Piers thinks he's funny. Chris disagrees at times.

There's nothing left in his stomach, so he spits up acidic mucus.

The bathroom in this sad excuse for a hotel is more of a literal shithole than the bar that Piers scooped him out of two days ago. Just picked him up and walked off with him, like some sort of worried sick parent who just located their kid at the lost and found.

"Next time, you need to hold my hand and don't wander off."

Yeah, he can imagine Piers saying it.

Piers knocks on the door.

"What do you want?" Chris yells. His voice echos off the toilet bowl.

"You okay in there, Captain?"

"Fucking peachy, kid."

"You need anything?"

I need a fucking drink.

"Nope."

He spits up another clod of the shit in his stomach and flushes the toilet. He'll swallow the rest if he needs to. He's suffocating in this tiny room.

Chris pops the door open and stumbles out into the main "living area" of the hotel room. Living is an optimistic term for what they do. It's littered with the dirty clothes of five men, a handful of bullets is scattered across one cot. Guns sit in various states of disassembly, ready to be cleaned. The walls are covered in some tan colored peeling wallpaper, exposing ugly soviet-era cinder blocks underneath.

Piers is cleaning his gun. All of his belongings are neatly packed into a singular duffel bag. He's got a little oasis of cleanliness around him.

No one else is there.

"Where's everybody else?" Chris asks.

Piers shrugs.

"Out. Chasing skirts."

"And you?"

Piers looks up at him, as if the answer should be obvious.

"Well, someone had to stay with you."

"So, you're the babysitter?"

Piers doesn't even look up from his gun.

"Yup."

Chris sits down on his own cot. There's a duffel bag there with gear in his size and specifications. How thoughtful of them, to bring him along gear. As if there was no choice in him rejoining them.

"So," Piers begins. "It's been two days."

"Yeah." Chris doesn't know what he's getting at.

"When are you gonna get better?"

Chris snorts.

"You're not a very patient guy, are you?"

Piers shakes his head a little to the side.

"I just want to have a plan, that's all."

"Four or five days. It'll get worst before it gets better."

Chris is sweating bullets down his neck. Piers is wearing a heavy jacket and a scarf.

"You need any medicine or anything?"

"It'll be okay. It's not as bad as the first time anyway."

Piers looks up from his gun, interest piqued.

"The first time?"

"Yeah. I was your age, younger. Got kicked out of the Air Force 'cause of it...started fights."

Piers nods. He listens very intently, Chris notices, when he's paying attention at least. Head resting on one hand, eyes following everything Chris says.

"Ended up in the hospital that time. I was seeing spiders and shit."

"You're going to be okay," Piers says. It's a flat statement, like he's so sure of it.

"I guess I have to be okay. There's no other option for me, is there?"

Piers does his little shrug again.

"I mean, I'm not chaining you here or anything. The door's right there. But, it would be a hell of a shame for you to leave after we looked for you so long. And besides, where are you going to go?"

To a bar.

"Why did you look for me?" Chris asks. It's been bugging him.

"Because, you're the best at what you do," Piers replies, like the answer is obvious.

"Not anymore. Not while I'm like this at least."

Piers drops the gun and adapts a serious tone. His eyes narrow.

"Because we wanted you back, Captain. I wanted you to come back."

Step Three: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

He remembers them now. All of them. How could he forget?

Now that he sees them in his dreams every fucking night.

Faces contorted with pain as the virus courses through their bodies, the hardening of the cocoons, the slick limbs which emerged. The way they screamed.

Every time he closes his eyes, they scream.

Spiders would have been preferable.

He doesn't sleep well; he tosses, he turns, he cries out in embarrassing mewls and moans at times, at which point, Piers shakes him awake.

"You okay, Captain?"

Piers always calls him captain. It's so stiff and proper. There's nothing stiff or proper about Chris sitting up in bed, sweat dripping down his face, gasping for air, his stomach flipping in protest of his very existence. Piers grabs him by the shoulders.

"Steady there. You're fine. You're going to be just fine, okay?"

Piers uses the words, "fine" and "okay," a lot when he talks to Chris. He reaches across to his own mattress and grabs his scarf. Piers wears it all the time. Chris assumes a girlfriend or some similar relation bought it for him.

He wipes Chris's face with it.

"The hell are you doing, Piers?" Chris hisses, trying to stay quiet. He doesn't need to wake up the whole team. He can't help but feel like they hold him in contempt—after all, he's slowing them down.

"Cleaning you off? What's it look like?"

"Uh...why?"

Piers pulls the scarf away from Chris's face and gives him a blank stare.

"Drank up all your brain cells, Captain? You're soaking with sweat."

Chris shakes his head.

"I know that. Why are you using your scarf?"

"Because I didn't want to get the equipment dirty."

"Isn't that scarf like, hell, I dunno. Important to you or something?"

Piers nods, slow and even.

"Well, yeah. But, eh, not as important as you."

Piers has careful hands when he wipes Chris's face. He's gentle but firm, pressing lightly against Chris's nose, the sides of his jaw, over his lips. The way he touches Chris brings to mind girls with names like Sofia and Viktoria. There's something sensual about it, when Piers bites down on his lower lip and rubs in circles with his fingertips. The concentration on his face, eyes narrowing. Chris's breathing is swift and shallow.

"Relax," Piers whispers. "You're going to be just fine."

"How do you know?" Chris asks, his voice sounding for the first time, very small and afraid.

"I'm right here for you, Captain. I'll be sure of it."

"That ain't right kid. A captain is supposed to look out for his soldier's, not the other way around."

"Well, I guess we can just keep it between you and I, okay?"

A ghost of a smile flicks over Piers' lips.

Step Four: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

"We can head out today," Chris announces that morning, as the men in their team are getting themselves sorted out: clamoring in and out of the shower in shifts, unwrapping MRE's, and boiling water for inky powdered coffee.

He waits for Piers to ask if he's going to be okay, in that annoying yet well meaning manner of his. But, Piers just nods.

Chris isn't quite sure how to give orders anymore. It's only been three months, but it feels like a lifetime. His men though—his men—seem to respect him well enough, quite a feat, considering that he's spent the past three days with his head hung in a toilet, or trying to sleep off his misery with the lights out, effectively kicking all of them out of the room. The BSAA has good soldiers though.

Like his men who died. They were all damn good soldiers.

His is the operative word in that sentence. Being a captain means accepting responsibility for your actions. And for the actions you don't take.

It means being the one who knocks on the door to tell the mother, the father, the wife, the girlfriend, the boyfriend, whoever, that their loved one went down in the line of duty.

Being the captain means that when shit gets tough, you face it. You don't put your fucking tail in between your legs and run.

He's no Goddamn captain. These men aren't his men. He has no business telling them what to do.

They're all sitting around the room, bags packed and guns clean, waiting on his word. What can he tell them?

Go home. Run away from me as fast as you can, because I destroy everyone who I'm meant to protect. Don't let me hurt you.

He's faltering. There's four pairs of eyes on him, waiting for an order he doesn't have. Where do they go from here? Off to hunt down Ada Wong? Where can they start?

Piers looks into his eyes and sees the confusion in his eyes. He nods knowingly, and begins to speak.

"If I may suggest, Captain, I believe we should rendezvous with BSAA Europe before making any further decisions."

Chris feels like the wind's been knocked out of him. Of course that's what they should do. He hasn't reported in yet... he can't start a mission without speaking with command. What the hell is he doing?

Did you really fry your brain up that bad?

Piers gives him a quick nod.

"Right, Piers. We'll be returning to the BSAA Europe headquarters in Paris, and awaiting further orders from command. Do we have any contacts in this area we can request a vehicle from?"

He's rusty at this. Like his mouth is creaking trying to speak.

One of the men clarify that they indeed do have a contact in the area, and they can get a van to the border, at the very least. Chris approves this course of action. And so they were off. It's a far cry from the sort of missions he's used to, but getting from point A to point B is at least within his abilities.

And so they're off, on foot, as it would turn out. Chris can only begin to imagine how conspicuous they must look. He hopes there's no one walking around with a grudge against the BSAA. Not they'd be likely to survive long. Chris hangs back, allowing the more eager team members to lead the way. Piers walks next to him, keeping in time with his steps.

"Thanks for that," Chris whispers.

"For what?" Piers is genuinely confused.

"Covering my ass back there."

"It was nothing. You weren't briefed, there's no reason you should have been expected to make a decision."

"By not briefed, you mean, 'drunk off my ass for the past three months,' right?"

"No!" Piers rejects the sentiment almost violently.

"I wasn't accusing you of anything, kid. Relax."

Piers doesn't say anything for a while after that.

They make their way through the city, attracting glances everywhere they go. It's a dusty town, where the ravages of the USSR's regime are still evident. Buildings shelled in World War 2 are still studded with bullet holes. There's an eerie beauty to it all, living in the shadows of a strange and medieval sort of past. Towers and churches, lots of white stone. Chris hasn't seen it very well in the daylight. He's been crawling in the shadows too long.

"I don't remember how to do this leader stuff," Chris admits to Piers.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm shit at this... if I knew how to lead, I wouldn't have ran. People I lead get hurt."

"You're not shit at this, Chris. You're a soldier. This is what you're meant to do. And if you can't believe in yourself, I will."

His faith would be endearing, were it not so misguided.

"Why do you do this for me, Piers?"

Piers chuckles, something bitter.

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?"

Piers makes a low sigh.

"It'll come back to you. Just wait."