Dawn's first light broke. Neither of them seemed to notice faint light creeping through the curtains. They didn't even know they had a small window through which they could still view the world - inches-thick glass, impossible to break easily. He awoke minute by minute to the feel of her breathing underneath his arm. She hadn't moved much where she had fallen asleep. Her smooth thigh had wedged between his, and he felt each faint twitch as phantom monsters haunted her dreams. He finds his neck hurts a little, but he doesn't mind. Her fingers feel good against his hair, slowly moving.

They wake up slowly at their own pace and stare at each other in the light. It grows brighter; the world feels so slow. They languish in the realm of not-quite-awake-for-coherent-thought. But it's the pain of hunger in their bellies that quicken them to rise.

Jake's stomach makes an unsettling racket. He pulls a face, which he then buried into the pillow. Sherry titters softly. She touches his shoulder as he rolled over gingerly to his back.

"I'm hungry too."

He rubs his face, the pads of his fingers catching on the thin layer of stubble on his cheeks and his chin.

She hangs onto the quiet, the simplicity of a morning waking without the dread of bullets, of monsters hurling down their door to rout them from their slumber. It seems surreal. She's a little frightened, as if they'll wake up a second time - to a horrible, screaming reality.

She feels his hand pluck at the edge of her shirt. "We're okay."

"You had a bad dream."

"It was just a dream. But we're okay. You hear me?"

Even better, she thinks, we can take the time to decide what we want to eat for breakfast instead of taking what we can get.

"What do you want for breakfast, Jake Muller… savior of the world?" Unbelievably she feels the corner of her mouth quirk into a rare smile.

Sighing. "Bacon. Ham. A mountain of eggs. Enough coffee to make me pee for two straight minutes…"

"I want waffles. Piled high with-…with whipped cream and…and strawberries. I want orange juice, and toast with butter and jam, and a gallon of whole milk…"

Jake moans with rapture, imagination firing. "We better get all of those things automatically, or I'm taking hostages until we do."

Sherry laughs nervously - nervous because she knew that, given the right motivation, he would take someone hostage. Even her. Even if it was meant to be ajoke, something taken lightly, it frightens her that she could believe he'd do so easily. Jake Muller, the man who saved the world, still scares her.

Ignoring the weight of apprehension about the day ahead, she rolls to her feet and tugs and fusses over her shirt before padding over to the door. It's almost 10:30 and wherever they were, she hopes they aren't too late for breakfast. A heavy lunch would not sit well with her stomach. After hesitating at the door for awhile, she turns and moves over to the phone. Doubling back made her suddenly hyper aware of sore muscles in her calves, tender spots in her lower back and shoulders.

Jake remains sprawled in bed, stretching out again. "What are you doing?" A half-amused smile transforms into a frown as she bends to the phone.

"I'm thinking if they have room service, I'm taking advantage of it." She frowns as well and Jake thought before nodding; neither of them are ready to face the world and the people in it, but they still needed to get food.

She dials nine, then the pound key, and waits.

"Is there an emergency?" An alert male voice chimes at the other end, all business.

Sherry covers her mouth for a second, quickly stammering, "N-No, this is… Agent Sherry Birkin… I was wondering if I could request some breakfast be brought to us. If that's okay." She's frowning, as if she hated to inconvenience a single soul. Jake perches at the edge of the bed, alert and watching. He gingerly scratches the back of his neck.

There was a silence on the other end that didn't seem promising. Then after awhile, "All right. We'll have something brought up to your room, uh… This is Jake Muller's line…?"

"Yes. I…I just came over to wake him up," she lies, and she feels his gaze smoldering against the side of her face. She's smiling, however - feeling juvenile for such a white lie. "We haven't eaten much in days. Can we please have some bacon and waffles? Anything you have to spare."

She can hear the frown. "Certainly, Agent Birkin. We'll see what we can get together and someone will bring it up right away."

"Score." Jake is jubilant. "We'll be chowin' down in no time."

"Yeah." Sherry's smile fades, distracted by the window. Walks over to it, gently tugged aside the curtain. She looks, trying to imagine the world after yet another bio-terrorist attack. She hadn't begun to know the nightmare that had transpired in one of China's most populated cities. It's hard to believe that the world could even go on, after something like that. So many lives…

She never heard him get up. She didn't even know he was behind her until she feels heat against her back. She would have felt anxious all over again if she hadn't heard him speak softly.

"Still turning," he notes in a wistful, distant manner. "Still going."

Her throat clogs with unbridled difficult emotions. Sherry Birkin nods. Yes, the world is going. For better or for worse, it is turning, and its people still went to work and paid taxes and slept well at night. Babies are being born and people are dying in their beds.

She wonders if last night was the last good night's sleep she would have in awhile.

Jake didn't eat much at first, though his body's natural strength demanded a high caloric intake. He waited until Sherry finally sat down to eat, too - peeling open the tin foil to dig into the breakfast sandwich inside. Sensitive to the smell at first, her stomach rebelled. But need and desire to be full outweighed her reflex to stay away. As much as she wanted to dig in ravenously, she took her time - chewing each and every morsel. Her eyes closed and she sighed again and again, as if it was exhausting and liberating with each and every mouthful. Finally, after a sandwich and a half cup of eggs and three sticks of bacon, she rolled onto her stomach and moaned with full-stomach satisfaction. The orange juice hadn't come upstairs. Nor had the coffee. Those items would have be sought after on their own.

Jake polished off the rest. He left the empty containers on the dresser and felt an unbelievable sleepiness overwhelm him. It seemed to do the same to Sherry. To spite the hours upon hours of sleep they had achieved that night, he found his arms locked around her and her head tucked close to his chest.

The next knock at the door disturbed Jake from a dream, jarring him badly enough he was clawing under his pillow for a gun that wasn't there. The polite knocking continued.

He couldn't remember it all, but it was the kind of bad dream that glued to his emotions, tainting everything. It was darker in the room than before, and that didn't help either. He slipped stiffly from the warmth of the bed and Sherry's body and he stepped over to the door and listened for a moment. The knocking repeated again.

Slowly Jake pulled open the door, greeted by the sight of someone he immediately disliked before the person opened his mouth to speak.

"I'm…ah, looking for Agent Sherry Birkin," said the intrusive visitor. Jake could feel his hackles rise at the sight of a white labcoat, a nametag, and maybe all the best intentions in the world right now. Revulsion that transcended simple recognition. People with labcoats held a particular significance with him.

But a doctor, nurse, or scientest was the last kind of person Jake needed to see.

"Depends on who else is lookin, Mister…Davis." He shifted in the doorframe, blocking his view.

"She's not in her room," Mister Davis said, becoming increasingly bereft of intelligent things to say at quite an alarming rate. "I… I was wondering… Because she was in here before? You've had ample time to recover, so now we just- We need to do a few tests."

His jaw set. "No."

"But—"

"She's a little indisposed right now."

"Jake? What's going on?" Sherry picked her head up slowly, rolling slowly, cobwebbed with sleepiness.

"Miss Birkin, we need to quarantine you immediately—"

Wrong word. "No." Jake stepped out into the hallway - and forced Mister Davis and his good intentions further out of the door. Two soldiers flanked either side of it, and they stepped in almost at once. "No. Fuck off. No doctors, got it?"

"Jake." Sherry was behind him, and he barred her from going past and the men from going through with his arm. Sherry had only just one glance. That clenched jaw, that pulse in his temple and the hardness in his blue-white eyes said it all: he would start a fight here and now. Start and end it.

"Sherry, go back to bed."

"Jake, I have to."

"You don't have to do shit except get back in the room. Nobody has to do anything to you. Do you hear me?"

She didn't know what to feel - embarassed that he was acting this way, touched that he was protecting her, or annoyed that he was interrupting something that should have been very simple and routine.

Maybe even a little scared that he was going to hurt someone.

Maybe to her. To Jake, he had only heard about all the hard parts about being an intense subject of study. Poked. Prodded. Was it almost its own tragedy that she was used to it by now? Why couldn't he understand?

Suddenly the doctor reached forward, deciding that maybe if Jake was distracted, he could simply remove Sherry Birkin from his custody - except that it was never going to happen because in that instant, Mister Davis bit out a sharp cry of surprise when he discovered he was no longer touching the floor - he was hanging from the wall by his throat, gasping like a fish. A clipboard and pen fell to the floor. Several things happened all at once: Sherry threw herself toward Jake, and the two soldiers reached for their sidearms and drew them, and Jake let go, catching Sherry in his arms to hold her.

"Jake, enough!" - because Jake looked as though he might take his foot and forcefully kick Mister Davis down the hall even while the man was still struggling to catch a breath. "It's okay," she told the soldiers. "Really. Stop. Put those down."

He held onto her; when she dared to glance at him, to look directly into his eyes, she was shocked that she almost didn't recognize him as the man she had fallen in love with over the last seven months. He looked like a wild cat that smelled blood in the air - not a muscle budged, but when she gently squeezed his forearm to make him relax, what she felt was like bound cords of high tension wire beneath his skin.

"I go with her," he finally said in a voice without humanity. "Or it won't be my blood." Not my blood that will be collected. Cleaned off of walls. Stuck into carpets which would then be torn up and thrown away.

That was the threat. His love and protection terrified her.

It was a quiet little room. Jake stood beside Sherry, and wherever there was empty space he filled it with a dark, wild frenetic energy. She held his hand, though it was more accurate to say she held him back. He prowled beside her into the tiny little room and had stood beside her - towering a full head and shoulders above most people, he seemed threatening without trying. Especially as he glared at the person who collected sample after sample of her blood. Sherry had already been pale. She was given a chocolate chip cookie and orange juice, and she permitted herself to lean against him.

She couldn't imagine sleeping another wink an hour ago, but that was exactly how she felt now.

And the powerful and comforting strength against her back seemed to absorb her tiredness, and he calmed. She took his hands, hard and terrifying weapons on their own, and put them around her waist. He tilted his head down, playing the waiting game before another (probably different) doctor or came in to see her.

"You all right?"

"I'm never all right." Her eyes lidded, and the day that had begun so nicely began to wind on drearily. However, she tilted her head up slowly. "But you're here… and—" She trailed off, tired dark circles under her eyes showing up more prominently than they had ever before.

She startled him with a sigh. "But I've been through much worse." She squeezed his arm again. This time, it felt less like high-tension wire and more pliant. "I still…want to thank you." She decided it wasn't really fair to mention that he had scared her a little back there. After so much time, he had almost convinced her that he was a good man deep down… only to wrench loose her tenuous grasp of his character completely apart with one mindless and violent act. She was still reeling that something awful had almost happened - another Event to pile on top of the insurmountable Olympus that had become her entire life.

Fall in love with the son of Wesker.

Watch him gun down soldiers in front of her eyes.

Watch him get gunned down in the process.

Return back to counseling and never do work for the government again. No matter what they promised her.

"You're welcome." Then, tersely: "You really think it's fair to let them just… have at you?" His fingers wormed in between hers to make them relax. He rubbed his thumbs into her palms. The pleasure of it surprised her. "Poking you… jabbing you already."

"It does," she answered. "But… I dunno, I…I guess it does make sense. I can tell them all I can that they didn't put some new virus in me, that I'm not infected with anything else… But they still want to test me. Even just to guage my general state of health, to see that I'm all right. They're going to do the same thing to you."

"I don't give a shit what they do to me." His tone dripped acid. "I just wish you'd catch one fucking break-"

"Jake." She stopped him then and there, before he flung himself into a tirade. She squeezed at his hands rhythmically, pressing her face to his shoulder. She felt his whole body swell with a long sigh. "Why are- why did you get so angry?"

A long silence dipped into the uncomfortable zone. She forced herself to look up, so she could gauge how he felt simply by looking. It surprised her to see such a pained expression tugging at his features.

"China." He swallowed. "For days, I swore I could-"

"What is it?"

He squeezed her. Hard. "Screaming. I always woke up. Thinking I could hear you. That bitch would visit me and refused to tell me about you, how you were doing. I had nightmares, and you would keep on just screaming and I couldn't find you."

Sherry leaned against him, and the next thing she heard almost brought her back to tears. He had made a sound like a sob, but it choked him. He shook. He might have been crying. Sherry squirmed onto the examination table and sat him down. She placed her hands on either side of his face and pressed her forehead to his, and felt him melting.

"I'm okay," she whispered, keeping her gaze locked onto him. "I'm okay. You saw. I'm not screaming."

He held her wrists so tight, she felt her bones creaking together.

But she had been screaming. He was sure of it. He had not been dreaming six months in China, and yearning to break free and annihilate the ones who made her feel such needless cruel suffering. He curled his arms around her, and she found herself pressed against every inch of him.

"I'm okay," she whispered weakly, knowing it was perhaps only a comforting lie.

"I hope they don't make us sleep in our own rooms now," Jake grumbled, sighing over a hot cup of coffee and a large burger. "Because I'll seriously slug the guy who says so."

Sherry sat across from him, and the cafeteria felt large and strange with only the handful of people here. She had a lot weighing on her mind. Her small world of Jake had begun to expand again: she was worried about Chris and Piers, who had been instrumental in their escape.

The answer came. A man in uniform entered through the double doors and walked toward them, grim and quiet.

Sherry straightened and Jake sipped his coffee, alert.

"I have some... bad news," the man said. "Chris Redfield has been found, but Piers Nivans... did not return."

"Oh god no."

"Were you at all close?"

"What- No, but... you mean Nivans is dead?" Her first thought went to Chris. He could not have possibly taken it well. Was he all right? Was he hurt?

Jake seemed appropriately stunned as well. Piers was a tough roughneckin' kinda guy - he had to be, to run around with a brick shithouse like Chris.

"Redfield confirmed he had perished in the line of duty. Chris Redfield is being taken to a special field medical hospital for injuries sustained, but he's in stable condition," the man finished. He saluted briefly, then stepped away, and the quiet pair looked at one another.

"Damn."

"Chris must feel..." Sherry lifted her hands. "I don't know."

"I didn't hate 'em," Jake said quietly. "They were doing their job, okay. Like I said-"

"They knew what they were getting into," Sherry intoned, remembering that conversation. She breathed out a sigh. "Nothing we could have done differently."

"Yeah."

But their own mortality loomed too close with that bit of news. Sherry hugged herself and wished they'd hurry up their business and get out of this place.

(Author's note: I had to post this, and even if it ends a little abruptly, at least it's something. Had this kickin' around in my head for awhile. Hope you enjoyed.)