Chapter Text
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” – Frankenstein; Shelley, M.
And there he had slept the dark months by, his Prometheus.
Naked as he were born upon the altar, beneath the stained glass and an empty wall space where the icon of Christ once resided. Candlelight upon his cold, still skin made it seem as if inside the still shell of flesh a heart may still beat.
A martyr, a hero, a problem, once.
Rain thrashed against the glass, bitter salt spat up from the frothing sea from the cliff on which the near-on castle was poised. The storm had been raging for several nights now as Albert Wesker came to the climax of his most difficult, and private project as of yet. With the electricity having been cut off due to the ongoing storm, and the castle cold enough to draw fog from breath, it had been a difficult feat. Although, it had slowed down the unfortunate side-effect of decomposition.
With deft fingers he had sewn shut the gaping slit sliced from the nape of the neck up through the hairline into the middle of the head. Eyes sore, but driven by that plain, sick excitement, it was not enough to slow him down. And at last, he cut the thread, and stepped back and around to admire his finished patchwork of a man laid out upon the altar, hands resting upon his taut and hollow stomach.
He put his gloved fingers to caress the hollow of the man’s cold cheek, a thumb to gently lift the eyelid to see the white-gauzy dead-fish-eye underneath. Candlelight caressed the ridges of his muscle, cast soft shadows upon skin that once glowed with the radiance of the sun. Tiny stitches patched together pieces of flesh, some grafted from other sources (himself), but it had been the utmost importance to him to ensure the final product was as close to the original as anything more.
Albert Wesker leaned down, face drawn up close to the apparent sleeping sepulchre of Chris Redfield.
It was as if he had merely closed his eyes and laid down a minute or two ago, rather than having died almost five years prior. And oh, what a long five years it had been. Keeping his Chris in stasis, ‘on ice’, Alex had always said with her vague kind of cool amusement.
Any scent of the man was gone, replaced by antiseptic and latex, faint blood although he had not bled since he had been originally fragmented. An anatomical model.
With a careful flick of his fingers, he brushed some of the lovely brown hair off from Chris’ face – it was odd unstyled, but Wesker had never been able to replicate it quite as Chris had used to do it. But the face was correct to the nearest millimetre. It had been Wesker’s greatest toil, besides rebuilding the shreds of brain into something that could think for itself, but he had to congratulate himself. It was as if Chris had not met an untimely death after all – and had instead laid down to sleep. Peaceful, beautiful.
Chris Redfield was as handsome as the day he had died. Handsome enough to warrant his second death. And his third, and fourth. So long as the brain and body was not damaged beyond his capabilities, his best man was now as close to immortal as Wesker himself.
His fingertips touched the thin white line around the base of Chris’ neck where he had carefully reattached the head to the stem, and down to the thin silver chain from which his necklaces hung. The only two things he had recovered from the original corpse – the clothes were quite beyond ruin. And yet he had never given them much thought beyond the fact they were Chris’.
His dogtags, and a little silver cross weighed light upon his chest.
During all the time Wesker had known Chris, even playing ‘friends’ back in the late nineties, he had never realised the foolish man had tried to believe in a god. Perhaps it had been after the betrayal, with the hopelessness and darkness that fell in the advent of bioterrorism, Chris Redfield had nobody else to beg for help from other than some dead omniscience that did not ever return his prayers.
It did not matter now, for indeed a god had come, and that god was the only one who truly held the power over Chris’ cursed life or death.
Looping the chain of the cross around two fingers he snapped it clean from the neck, and lifted it into the air above the corpse. The silver object glinted quite beautifully in the candlelight, a blasphemous insult.
“Oh, Chris,” Wesker murmured into the still, cold air of the chapel, “even in death you continue to prove why you and I were never truly rivals. After all, it would suggest that we had been equals at some point.” A slight curve of his lip, and Wesker let his eyes fall down upon the sleeping soldier, perhaps watching for something. A sign. A twitch. “I doubt you’ll be needing this anymore,” he whispered, “why would you, when your true god stands here before you now in the flesh?”
Tilting back his head, and closing his eyes, Albert Wesker parted his lips, and allowed the cold silver object to slide down into his throat. For a moment he stood, feeling the cold of Chris’ devotion and sanctity drop down into his stomach, and heeded the champing spitting roar of the ocean down below the chapel glass.
From the blackness behind him, a soft whisper. A name, maybe. And Wesker spun with a hand on his hip where he’d kept Redfield’s gun for all these years and faced only the few rows of empty pews, and the tightly shut chapel door. Two pillars stood holding up the tall, elegant ceiling – and for a moment he might’ve sworn a shape slipped behind one out of the faint candlelight. Something that had called to him.
A wry smile at his own fears, he let his hand drop from the gun, still scanning the black. It was the estate, crawling into his brain and infecting him with the very same madness Spencer had acquired. Disembodied voices and shadows, but ghosts were not real, he knew that all too well. Hallucinations of the mind – tired and sickened by the proximity to death – a sure sign he must sleep soon.
A soft ‘thud’, and the blonde’s red-hued eyes snapped back toward the altar.
One of Chris’ hands had slipped from his stomach and now lay at his side. The gentle rise and fall of his chest too, and Wesker fell almost to his knees, ear pressed to his dead man’s chest in an effort to hear that rhythmic tick that confirmed his place over mankind.
Wesker rose and took a step back, suddenly feeling that thunderous anticipation of hot adrenaline burning through him in a way he had not felt in far too long. Combing back his loose hair into something akin to his usual practical style, he could hardly stop the cold smile of a cruel victory take hold.
He had done it. Become the master of death. And subsequent enthraller of his oldest nemesis.
Vengeance was not enough from a single death. He would ensure Chris Redfield knew precisely the toll for his crimes, how long he had waited to see that nauseatingly heroic visage contorted in agony once more. See the light of hope dashed from those lovely warm eyes.
The wind died down, and all of a sudden a terrible stillness fell upon the chapel.
And there they were. Chris Redfield peeled open his eyes and gazed up at the painted ceiling with something akin to euphoria and abject terror. Wesker watched, hardly breathing for bloodlust as Chris sat deadbolt upright, gasping for air as his body yearned for the oxygen it had not known in several years.
“Chris.” A gentle, rolling pleasured call. Laced in all manner of poisonous wonder and satisfaction.
Chris turned his head to Wesker, the white already fading from his eyes although he still seemed to be a little blind, squinting in the dim light of the candles to the man all in black borne from between the dust-choked wood-rotten pews.
“Chris,” he called again into the velvet darkness, voice echoing in the emptiness of the holy ceiling, now the only sound but the soft patter of quietened rain on coloured panes. Albert Wesker extended out his hand to the man, “come to me.”
As if still in a dream, Chris swung each leg from the altar, and set bare, uncertain feet down onto the ice-cold floor panels. Unsteady like a newborn foal, he walked, and fell into Albert Wesker’s waiting arms.
“Wesker?” He whispered, voice hoarse and rough as though his throat was dry with dust.
That heat, the weight of his body, Wesker let his arms slip around the reanimation. Chris leaned in, face pressed into the crux of Wesker’s neck and shoulder, shaking and still taking deep shuddering breaths. Wesker was shaking himself, having not expected Chris to fall into a natural embrace, whilst revelling in the fact he had done it.
His right hand slid up Chris’ spine, and felt the careful sewn slit that would leave a beautiful white scar upon the back of Christopher’s skull, and a deviant smile of sincere pleasure overcame him before he might help himself.
“Welcome home, Christopher.”
***
Chris still kept that grey pallor as Wesker led him through the carpeted hallways of the castle, saying nothing and stumbling every now and then on the way to one of the many unused bedrooms. And once he had the man dressed in a spare t-shirt and jeans (slightly too small for his bulk), he had allowed him to sit on the edge of the bed. He looked quite ill, dark circles around his eyes, scratching at the thin scars latticed over his body from where his reanimation had rapidly begun to heal them already. Thread melting into his flesh.
The few candles Wesker had lit did little to fix his corpse-like physiology. But Wesker had anticipated something like this – a rebirth would be no easy thing to comprehend for a man as simple as Chris Redfield. But his interest in studying the effect a little further meant that he would have to wait up on his vengeance just a little longer. Until he had ensured everything had come back right.
Wesker leaned back against the marble carved fireplace, empty grate, wind whistling softly from within. Arms crossed, he observed Chris as the younger man flickered his eyes nervously about, then back to Wesker as if ashamed of what he wanted to ask.
“What is this place, Wesker?” The words came slow and gravelly. “What’s going on?”
It would’ve been easier to explain to Chris the process of his reanimation, than the entire history of Albert Wesker’s interesting upbringing.
But Wesker indulged his best man, the least he could do. “We are at my late… father’s old estate.” Calling Spencer his father was a lie and a vile concept, but there was no reason to bore Chris with the details now.
“Estate?” Chris repeated, looking surprised. “I didn’t know you were rich, Cap.”
“Well, I suppose-…” Wesker frowned, “’Cap?’”
Chris gave a nervous little laugh, one Wesker had not heard in far longer than five years and scratched his neck lightly. “Sorry, Captain.”
The blond blinked behind the safety of his shades, and inhaled deep through his nose. “Chris, what do you last remember? Before I… found you?”
“I… I don’t know…” Chris’s expression melted into one of vague confusion, “it’s like… there’s fog in my head. I can’t really… make anything out…” his brow furrowed deeply and he wrung his wrists anxiously, “nothing. There is nothing.”
“And yet… you remember who I am?”
Chris nodded slowly, clearly stiff still as his limbs warmed back up to being alive. “Of course, I know you.”
Wesker pressed his lips together and made himself a mental note to record this fascinating detail. That his subject had lost all fragments of his previous memory aside for those of his former boss. Admittedly Wesker had grafted some of his own flesh into Chris’ new body, perhaps the DNA retained some form of memory, something that had not been previously studied. Hence why Chris still could connect dots.
“What year is it, Chris?”
“Nineteen ninety… eight?”
A strange plummeting sensation hit Wesker’s stomach, and he felt the blood drain from his face as realisation set in. The Chris Redfield sat before him was still the handsome, built thirty-five-year-old he had prematurely killed five years ago in Kijuju, and yet the mind puppeteering the feat of scientific artistry was somehow stunted at the twenty-five-year-old STARS agent who had not existed in well over fifteen years.
“Chris…” Wesker said, methodical and calm despite the desperate whirring of his mind, “Valentine, Chambers, Alomar. Do any of these names mean anything to you?”
Chris seemed to stop himself, digging through foggy haze in some effort to seek out these words being presented to him. “No… no I don’t think so. Why, are we lookin’ for them?”
Wesker exhaled deeply, and strode to the window. Outside beyond the heavy crimson curtain was only black. No moon, no stars. Not even the sea could be seen. The entire world might’ve faded out of reality in that shadowy dreamscape. He put a hand to the glass, trying to slow the chaotic tumble of his own brain as he tried to reason with why this had been the outcome. And whether this would affect the original motives of his plan.
In the reflection he watched as Chris eyed him curiously, trying to fix his hair with shaky hands. “Temporary amnesia,” he concluded, “perhaps you were injured, or suffered some kind of shock.” He almost could laugh at saying such a thing. “Don’t be alarmed, Redfield, these things tend to sort themselves out with enough time.”
“Oh,” Chris’ expression melted into relief, “thank god. I guess I woke up feeling pretty sore.”
“Perhaps a little muscle memory will be quite enough to fix you,” Wesker said cooly, turning on his heel and approaching the man sat on the bed, and looked down on him. He grazed the backs of his fingers under Chris’ eye, and the younger stared up at him confused and unable to move. “You and I have had quite the physical history,” his fingers dragged down Chris’ cheek, brushing over the wiry stubble at his jaw, “I daresay you’ll remember this sensation.”
He clamped his leather-gloved hand tight around Chris’ throat, light at first, and applied a little pressure. As he had done on Rockfort Island all those years ago, back when Chris was still that roughneck youth full of valour and a happier determination.
"W-what do you mean?” Chris stammered, growing slightly red in the candlelight as he tried to push Wesker’s hand away, “you mean like in sparring?”
Wesker didn’t reply, squeezing tighter and feeling Chris gasp raggedly, trying harder to push him away. Those lovely eyes staring up at him with shock and a blank. He could very easily kill his man here and now, fulfil that sweet sensation he had craved after the first kill had been over all too soon.
And yet Albert Wesker knew it would not truly satisfy him to kill this Chris. One who could not repent or beg for mercy knowing what crimes he had committed. This Chris, struggling for air and unable to push him away as a strained tear dripped from his eye was that foolish boy he had once trained into a man. It would not do, not at all.
He released Chris and stood over him cold and daunting as the man caught his breath and held his throat, an angry look glinting in his eye. That flicker of pride that set Wesker’s blood to fire. His Chris was indeed still in there, but perhaps it would take some time to coax him back out.
Patience – hadn’t he shown enough already in the past five years? What was five more, if it allowed him to bring his greatest obstacle to his knees in his might at last?
“The hell was that for?” Chris snapped as he rubbed his neck, “if that was some kind of joke, it wasn’t fuckin’ funny, Wesker.”
Wesker clenched his fist, and resisted the urge bubbling up inside of himself to laugh bitterly at the semi-failure of his plan. Of course, he had succeeded where even god (should he exist) could not, and yet he had still managed to shoot himself in the foot. It was Chris Redfield, the entity of that man always somehow sticking his obnoxiously heroic military boot into his plans. Even the most meticulous. It was as though his blundering foolish meat-headedness couldn’t help but want even subconsciously to ruin Wesker’s fun, even after being dead for so very long.
And seeing him now, alive and angry, wet-eyed and flushed, spilled back on a bed with a t-shirt riding halfway up his abdomen. It was as if every horrid human dream Wesker had endured since Chris’ original passing had manifested itself before him now. A second chance, perhaps, to finally ensure his plans finally succeeded.
“My apologies,” he said smoothly, quite clearly not apologetic in the least, “I got a little carried away with myself.”
“Damn right you did.” Chris grumbled, still rubbing his throat. “You gonna tell me why I’m actually here in the first place, Captain? Maybe that’ll jog my memory more than you tryin’ to choke the life outta me."
“Perhaps so,” Wesker knew very well he could not tell Chris the full truth if he wished to study his condition in a willing manner. He would fabricate something, and hope that his subordinates general dimness would prevent him from questioning the fluff as it stuffed his ears. “But first, perhaps we should go have something for dinner. I imagine you must be hungry, Christopher?”
Chris’ anger faded almost immediately at the thought of something to fill his violently hollow stomach. “Starving.”
Wesker couldn’t even try to hide the thin smile this time. At the very least, young Chris was a predictable man. A little more swayed by vices before he grew up to become a genuine threat. Although Wesker had hungered for that man who could look him in the eye with both fear and fury, and fight to his dying breath for a cause that did not matter, he couldn’t deny that he was intrigued by this younger model.
It had been a very long time since he’d met Chris at twenty-three, bright-eyed and full of spunk. A truly disgusting artefact of a heroic age long passed. It would be something to crush him again into that jaded hunk of a man he had come to utterly despise in later years.
“An easy fix,” Wesker assured him, “and then I’ll brief you on just why we’re here at the home of the late Oswald E. Spencer.”
***
Wesker looked down the long, dark wood table to his recently resurrected with a distinct sense of not quite knowing what to do.
It was very uncommon for him to ever reach this conclusion. It was certainly still the same Chris who had cleared his plate without complaint, and now sat back gazing up awestruck at the elaborate plasterwork and paintings strewn about the dining room. Although Wesker had admittedly neglected the place whilst he had taken up brief residency, there was still some of its faded glory clung in the drapes and meticulously detailed wallpaper.
Nobody had dusted a single thing since Wesker had seen to Spencer’s demise in 2006, and yet Chris didn’t seem to recall at all that fateful night they had crossed paths once again, and Wesker had stolen from him his dearest companion. The man seated down with his back to the fireplace didn’t even spark to the name of ‘Valentine’. It was very odd, and not at all what he had anticipated.
He had wanted Chris to get angry, shameful. To wrench between the anguish of his death, and the suffering of Jill, and his overspilling hatred. That determination and unbeatable nature Wesker had sorely missed since his departure. It had gotten ever so boring without a suitable boy-scout to stick a thorn in his side every now and then. There were very few people left in the world who thought they had an emotional connection to Wesker, it had been what had made his once-best-man quite so special.
“I suppose you’re wondering why we’re here, Redfield?” Wesker broke the thick, dusty silence, and watched as Chris’ candlelit face turned back to him. Wesker would do his best to replicate his STARS Captain persona from all that time ago, but admittedly, he was a little rusty.
“Yeah. You said it was your dad’s right?” Chris nodded, pushing his empty plate forward and leaning on the table with his forearms, “the whole place looks like it’s been deserted for months. Years, maybe. Are we here on investigation?”
“Yes, something like that.” Wesker cleared his throat, and gestured to the painting above the mantlepiece, the oil painting of a slightly younger Spencer, back when he had just become a core founder of the Umbrella Corporation alongside Marcus and the Ashfords. “My father died under some… mysterious circumstances, and I was offered reason to believe there may be some clues left behind in this mansion. It was going to be purely personal business; however you were so eager to offer your assistance I couldn’t bear to turn you down.”
Chris observed the painting thoughtfully, apparently entirely buying the premise of his reason for being there. “Man… I’m sorry to hear that Captain,” Chris said gravely, throwing a sympathetic look down the table, “I know what it’s like to lose a parent, even if you are old enough to deal with it better, I can’t reckon it gets much easier.”
Wesker – who had never actually known or cared to investigate his own ‘real’ parents – offered Chris a thin smile. His younger companion really did wear his heart too openly on his sleeve, that had always been his great weakness. He took a slow sip of water as he watched Chris stand and look up at the painting again, a deep frown on his face. Was his brain finally starting to work things out? A face he had already seen before, dead by Wesker’s hand?
The patter of the rain tapped lightly on the dark windows; a darkness eager to crawl inside.
“How about your mom?”
“Dead too, a long time ago now.” The lie came quite naturally. He had been telling people variations of this story for his entire life post the Umbrella Training Facility. Wesker had never felt any kind of longing for parents, and never recalled any memory of what they might’ve been. Not even a faint song or the sense of being cradled in a mother’s arms, in his childhood all he knew were those white walls, and the smell of antiseptic.
Chris was silent as he turned around again, observing Wesker with a little squint. “Well,” he said, conclusively, “she must’ve been pretty beautiful, ‘cause no offence, Cap, but you don’t look much like your dad.”
Ah. How he had almost missed the foolish quips the little man could produce when he wasn’t frightened for his life.
"You would enjoy my sister then, it is she who took most of that beauty” the older man chuckled.
Wider eyes, somehow. “You have a sister?”
“Pick your jaw up from the floor, Redfield. I’m afraid I may need to remind you we are here to investigate the death of my father.” His monotone, cautionary voice was enough for Chris to flush with embarrassment and nod gruffly.
“Right. How’d he die?”
“Apparent suicide. Although I have reason to believe there was foul play at hand,” Wesker mused, getting up from his chair and readjusting his shades, “it seems he was involved in some secret plots, although I am not certain of the specific details. There may be letters or the likes strewn about this castle, but it is far too large for me to tear through on my own. Which is why you will be such a great help to me, Chris.”
Chris Redfield visibly swelled his chest in pride, and flashed his signature boyish grin, one that still suited even his maturer, stubbled face. “You can count on me, Cap.”
“Good man.” Wesker glanced at the grandfather clock, it was very nearly gone midnight, and he was admittedly even feeling tired. It had been a long few weeks, and particularly a long day. All his anticipation, all his excitement, and the odd nostalgic wonder had left him in dire need of a good long sleep. Besides, he would need to call Alex to update her on the progress of his little project. It would do some good to gloat after all of her scepticism.
“I’ll show you to your room first, Chris, and we’ll get started tomorrow morning.”
Upon depositing and locking Chris away in the aptly named ‘King Arthur’ suite with a heavy bronze key (Spencer always had his inane romanticism for myths), a deep crimson decorated bedroom several doors down from his own ‘Guinevere’ emerald suite, Wesker had closed his bedroom door and locked it. And listened.
Silence in the hallway. It did not seem that Chris was making any attempt to leave as of yet, perhaps frightened by the deep shadowy corridors sans moonlight, with the kind of darkness that ate away at your skin should you linger a second too long. It was true, even Wesker felt uneasy residing in such a place. Particularly fully knowing what lay beneath the castle in the dungeons – and what evil Spencer had brought into his own home.
Between him and Chris was the shared bathroom – a door leading in from both sides. With any luck however the younger would lay down and rest, and not cause any more nuisance than his amnesia had already.
Studying the man would be the logical following step. He rifled through the notes laid out upon his desk, all the scribbled illustrations and footnotes, Spencer’s research in Romania before his own birth. The old man had abandoned it all in the wake of Umbrella, and the promise of success via a virus rather than something as ancient as the mould. A fool he was. And how difficult attaining a sample of the mould had been – although he had met some quite interesting individuals in doing so.
But none of them had successfully managed what he had. None of them had mastered death, nor harnessed the mould to such a potential. Engineering it to suit the needs of one man – perhaps vengeance was the key element after all.
And yet Spencer’s research had been left unfinished, with Wesker left as always to fill in the gaps. And nothing but pure trial and error had brought him to Chris’ resurrection. He had no data, nothing to compare his scenario with. Therefore studying Chris would be only sensible – if only to develop a more complex theory to apply to his next necromantic scheme.
Perhaps then it could also sit alongside the unutilised Uroboros in a warehouse somewhere up in the Arctic Circle until Chris was alive to see the extent of Wesker’s destructive ability. And to truly test and see whether Chris could survive to live (and die) in his new age of creation. It would be no fun dispatching such a plan until all the players were back in place, Wesker was a showman as much as he was a scientist, after all.
A long, heavy sigh left his lungs, and he flung himself down into his desk chair, resting his head in his hands after removing his shades.
He was tired, so damn tired. Perhaps meeting the young Chris once again had finally allowed him to realise his age, and the slowing of his t-virus’ potency. For over a decade it had resisted the signs of aging, but as of the past few weeks, it had finally begun to allow little flickers of his true age leak through - a grey hair, a wrinkle around his eyes. That dull ache in his back from how he hunched at his desk for a little too long. Something William had always used to complain about, back before his untimely death via his beloved g-virus.
Shaking away his exhaustion, he lit the lamp and reached for his phone. Although the castle’s electrics were still out, he had enough signal to dial in the number and wait, phone ringing as the rain began to patter heavier on the window once more.
“Hello?” A concise, female voice answered.
“Alex,” Wesker said, quietly, “my apologies for calling so late.”
“No matter, Albert. I’m still at work,” she said clearly. “Your project, its completion was today, yes? I do hope you’ll return to the laboratory sooner rather than later, it’s been quite a drag without your expertise. None of these fools know a thing about synthesisation.”
Wesker couldn’t help but silently laugh to himself at the haughty uptightness of his pseudo-sister. They were of course, not related by blood. But both being victims of Project W, and the final surviving children, it had been hard not to find kinship. “It will not be long now,” a promise, and subsequent hesitation before; “although I have hit a snag.”
Alex sounded slyly amused as she asked; “a night of disappointments for you as well, I hope?”
“Not all the way. It worked,” he said calmly, “and Redfield is currently breathing and dreaming only two doors down from my own as we speak.”
There was a long pause, and Wesker could only imagine the pale woman as she fought off her irritation. Alex had never approved of his little side project – deeming it a waste of time.
“What’s the snag?” She asked, sternly. “I don’t recall you having much luck before in building and raising the dead for your own means, Albert. Please do not tell me you are calling me to report another hole through your stomach.”
“Not quite.” Wesker leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply once again, looking up at the dusty chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, glinting in the flickering candlelight, and swaying softly in the breeze from the poorly sealed old windows. The same that fluttered the curtains as if somebody stood playing behind them in the dark. “It seems he has lost the majority of his memory. Only brief snatches of 1998, and of me.”
“And how exactly is this a problem?” Her voice dripped in venomous ice, as if disbelieving of Wesker’s tenacity to interrupt her work for this. “Give him a grand speech and dispose of him, I thought they were your speciality.”
“It’s a problem as that Chris Redfield within this house with me, is the wrong one. Too young, not one who could possibly comprehend the purpose of his reconception.”
“Sever the brain and start again, you must’ve forgotten something. Not that I believe it matters… just kill the man and move on, it’s been far too long for you to continue your obsession in this way, Albert.”
“I will not kill him,” Wesker said coldly, “not immediately.”
Time was fickle, and cruel. Moreso than any one man might be. And yet even that he had mastered in his replication of Chris Redfield. Turned back time to before the fateful night in the Arklay Mountains, when Chris was still that loyal, cheeky hound who had bitten his heel as much as stuck by them. And now he had found himself at that crossroads once again – with a choice. Kill Chris, and bury him as he should’ve been before. Or…
“And so what now?” Alex sighed, “you mean to keep the man as a pet?”
“I shall study him, I believe Spencer may have indeed been on the verge of a breakthrough,” Wesker mused, drumming his fingertips on the desktop, “and what I saw in Romania… well, I think this might be something worth observing, Alex. And equally as viable an option as Uroboros.”
“Ever confident, you truly do never change brother.” He could hear Alex shuffling something about on her own desk, and the quiet mutterings of what he assumed was another person entering the room. “I shall come down this weekend,” she announced, “and meet the project. Whilst I know it to be a waste of your time and efforts, I am admittedly intrigued.”
“Hmmh”
“Don’t sound so pleased, if your man turns out to be as much of a waste as I anticipate, I will not hesitate to put him down myself so you might get back to work.”
“That is not your pleasure to do. Chris Redfield is mine and mine alone,” Wesker warned her, “only I have that right to kill him now, after all I did to return him to life.”
A scornful laugh. “You have no divine right. You are only a man.”
“Try to lay a finger upon him, and then we shall truly see.”
Alex gave another short, sharp laugh. “Well now I am intrigued. Just what could this soldier have that has gotten you so defensive, Albert?”
That earlier image of Chris Redfield, flush and afraid, the skin of his abdomen exposed to candlelight as he fell back upon the bed, the ghost of Wesker’s hand still around his throat. Wesker frowned to himself and tried to slow the sudden sensation of excitement that flickered through him at the vision. Perhaps it had been too long, and he was too tired, and the madness was taking its toll.
“Aren’t all of us protective of our things?” Albert Wesker said shrewdly, “but you are very welcome to come to observe. Perhaps in your infinite wisdom, you might offer me some real council rather than mockery.” Wesker ran his fingers through his hair, catching a glimpse of himself in the tall mirror beside the door. It was not a point of discussion that he no longer looked thirty-eight. “ And may I remind you, none of my plans yet have directly failed-”
“They have however stunted, or led to lesser outcomes,” Alex finished smugly, “but no matter, it is late and I can hear you’re in a foul mood, when do you propose on returning to your true work, brother?”
Wesker was about to reply when he heard a muffled noise from beyond the bedroom door, and shut off the call without warning. He held himself dead still, listening to the piercing silence of the castle all around him and the quiet groan of old brick. And the stifled, carpeted footsteps approaching his door. He had not heard Chris’ room rattle open – how could it? The man was locked inside via the key that sat on his desk.
The man reached for the desk drawer and silently retrieved his pistol and slipped back on his glasses. He was still, enough to phase through the slashing rain. He could hear it in the hallway outside his room – soft, rhythmic thudding of foot on carpet. Something he had heard before many a time since his instatement in the damned castle, always only to find the hallway dark and void of intruder.
Something had been stalking him ever since he’d come back to this place. Something that lurked just out of sight, ate away at his sanity, and whispered his name in the night.
On his feet, light and quick, the man crossed to the door and peered through the keyhole. But there was nothing, only that seeping, choking blackness. And that sound of foot on carpet, coming nearer and nearer.
That crawling, seeping tendrilled dark.
Wesker quietly clicked the lock, and turned the handle before throwing the door open.
“Jesus!” Chris’ white face in the darkness spun around to face him, brandishing a heavy bronze candlestick in his hand. “Fuck me..” he gave a little laugh and lowered his weapon, “you scared me, Cap.”
“And where do you think you’re going, wandering about in the dark at night, Christopher?” Wesker asked, the tension leaking from his bones as he crossed his arms disapprovingly. “I want you well and rested for work tomorrow.” But… he could’ve sworn he locked that door. He’d have to check in the morning – no doubt he would’ve heard if Chris had bashed his way through.
“Sorry, I know,” Chris shrugged, “but I could’ve sworn I heard something-“
“And ran off to investigate?” Wesker finished, “it’s an old house, Chris, it’ll make noises. Now please, return to your room and get some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep, I’m not tired.” Chris peered past Wesker to the piles of books and papers on his desk, “looks like you’re not, either. Want some help?”
Obstinate boy.
“It is nothing of interest to you,” Wesker assured him, raising an eyebrow. It was very odd to hear Chris offer him help.
“Or at least let me bunk in your room tonight, then,” Chris grinned sheepishly, “this house is giving me the creeps, I might be able to sleep if we’re bunked up. It’ll be just like that time we had to sleep over at the RPD-…”
Wesker could not remember that at all. Whether it had been a good experience or (more likely) ultimately frustrating. “And where do you propose on ‘bunking’, Christopher?”
“It’s a big bed,” a vague shrug, “I’ve shared with plenty of friends before, no big deal. You stick to your side, and I’ll have mine.”
A deep sigh, one that accepted Chris would only be a pain if not kept under close surveillance. He had forgotten how much of his STARS career had been babysitting a bunch of young adults with little higher education beyond boot camp and streetwits. He supposed it would stop Chris from wandering off and finding something he shouldn’t be seeing. That which lay beneath the house. At least, not until Wesker was ready.
“Fine,” he murmured, standing aside and allowing the marksman to trundle inside. He peered out into the black corridor once more, but there was nothing but the dust in the air and the faint smell of mouldering carpet. Although he clicked the lock again, just to be safe.
“Our rooms are pretty similar,” Chris commented, sitting on the edge of the bed in pyjamas he’d rifled out of the closet, “what’re you up to?”. He watched Wesker as the older man crossed to the desk and began to clear up his notes into neat little folders.
“Lay down, Chris, don’t make me beg you.”
“I told you, I’m not tired,” Chris muttered, “I feel like I’ve been asleep for days, I’m ready to get back to work.”
“Hmph.” Wesker hummed to himself in sly amusement, the poor man had no idea, “I however, am exhausted. And if you wish to stay here in this room, you will very well do as I say. Understood, Redfield?”
“Yes, sir.” A grumble.
Wesker waited for Chris to select his side of the bed (facing the curtained window), before retreating to the bathroom to change and clean up before bed. When he returned, Chris was laying down under the duvet, asleep, he hoped.
Snuffing the candle, Wesker climbed into the cold bed and lay facing the bed canopy above. He set his glasses on the bedside table, and felt the ache of strain soothed in the darkness. Strange as it was, to have his rival in his bed, he felt oddly at peace in the quiet dark. Rain, the distant whisper of the sea, the ticking of the clock down in the main hall (it somehow permeated every inch of the castle). The steady breaths of the living Chris Redfield within his fingertips reach.
Things had not quite gone to plan, and yet, Wesker was not entirely dissatisfied. Had he not been an absolute egotist and cruel gamemaster things would have emerged quite differently that evening. But here he was, and how odd that sense of calm was.
He turned his head, and through the dark could just make out the shape of Chris upon the pillow. Unmoving, facing away. Wesker turned on his side, and rather wished Chris was facing him instead. He had spent ever so long reconstructing that face, and now even with its spider-web scars, he couldn’t have been more satisfied.
An ‘art project’ Alex had called it once. And perhaps she had been quite right.
It was the utmost of importance that the face that he killed again was the very same. His Chris. And when he did so, he would not touch the handsome item again. Sewing together a body was simple enough – but the face and brain were too precious, if too much was lost, it would mean the end of his plaything for good.
In the dark, he reached out his ungloved hand, and lightly stroked the white scar on the back of Chris’ neck. Tracing it up into his thicket of brunette hair, short and soft, a slight curliness to it. Beneath it was that beautiful brain he had worked his blood and sweat in to. Tears too, if he had ever had any to shed.
Perhaps when he was bored of playing resurrection, he would preserve only the head. Although it would be a shame to lose such an interesting body, too.
He could hear Chris’ breathing hitch as he let his fingertips drag through the locks and retreated his hand.
“Sleep, Christopher.” He whispered into the dark, turning over and finally letting his own heavy eyes fall shut.
In his restless dreams he dreamt of that stone cold body on the slab, hollow of soul and life, dry of blood and spit. The world all around was silent and black, and only the altar in the pale candlelight stood out from the endless night-sea. Strange stars hung up above, and no sound filled the air. Not his own heart, not his own breath, not the rain or wind or water. As if everything was gone.
Albert Wesker was afraid. Sweating, shaking, fearing what lay before him. It dripped down his forehead and neck, and the shadowy tendrils that slowly entwined his legs and torso dragged him in closer despite his voiceless pleas, scratching at his own eyes to try and blind himself, hot blood dripping down his cheeks as he tried desperately not to see the face of what awaited him in that silent temple.
And yet he could not blind himself, and was forced to look upon the face of his creation. On this side, the sleeping marble of Chris Redfield – and yet that nauseous pit in his stomach and the instinct crying out inside his brain told him this was not the man he had wanted to bring back. He hung, limp by shadow, drawn in closer and closer, until the stench of rotting meat and necrotization stung his eyes and made him choke. And standing now looking down, he could see that the other side of Chris was rotted almost to complete decomposition. Ribs, teeth, visible and strung with greying flesh. Blackened lips, and that same fish-eye white gauze to his loose eyeball.
Chris… he wanted to moan in anguish. Fall to his knees at the knowledge that his plan had failed. But in the silence he could do nothing but be drawn in closer, closer, face almost touching Chris’ as the darkness seeped into his brain and down his throat, and the whispers of a voice from beyond the veil poured into his mind.
An inch between them, and Chris’ preserved eye snapped open to reveal a black void inside, and the half-corpse grinned in spite as it grasped Wesker with its skeletal claw, clutching him by the throat. All the whispers were growing to a roaring crescendo like the crashing of the stormy ocean, Chris opened his mouth, and out poured black tentacles that wrapped themselves around Wesker’s face, and brought with it the taste of death.
A horrible cry – like the death rattle of a furious demon. It split the darkness, tore through Wesker’s eardrums and brain. He could not see for the black worms burrowing into his flesh and eyesockets, the skeletal claw piercing his neck, and the moving lips of the dead man as it continued to whisper terrible things.
“…I’m coming back,” the dead man whispered into the fragmentation of his soul, “and this time, I will leave whole.” Wesker felt the peeled back decomposed lips grin against his own. “Wesker…”
He sat up sweating and trembling, gasping for air as he touched his unpierced throat. The bedroom was still dark and cold, although the bed was warm, and the rain still pattered on the window panes. The pale, nervous face of Chris was peering at him from the other side of the bed, and Wesker almost threw himself back in shock – before remembering it all.
“Nightmare?” Chris whispered, in his deep, warm voice. Nothing like the rattle of promised doom. Here he was alive and full of blood and light, not that creeping dark. Kind, brown eyes like the promise of a warm autumn.
The younger man sat up a little as Wesker wiped the sweat from his brow, and Wesker could almost still feel the ghost of those dead lips upon his. Something he had never once lusted for when the man had been alive before. And there they were, poised and soft in the comfort of his bed, an offering of sanctity from the terror and the sickness. “Wesker,” Chris called out, trying to refocus his dazed Captain, “do you want me to go grab you some water or something? You look awful.”
Chris began to slip from the bed before Wesker had a chance to respond, and the older man grabbed him harshly by the arm.
“No,” he hissed, “don’t you dare step foot from this room until sunrise.”
The younger man made a pained face; “Wesker- you’re hurting me-”
Wesker blinked, and let go as quickly as he had grabbed him. Watching Chris rub his sore arm and give him a stare of distinct suspicion. The older man sighed, and rubbed his sore eyes. “Sorry, Christopher. I don’t know what’s come over me.” Apologising to the man. How certain Wesker had been that he would never have to do so again.
The bed lowered as Chris sat back down, and shuffled up a little bit closer.
“You look exhausted,” he nodded, “my little sister used to get nightmares all the time when we were kids, and she’d wake me up and crawl in to sleep in my bed. She used to say my hugs kept all the nightmares away,” he grinned sheepishly, “if you want, I can hold you until you drop back to sleep, Captain?”
Albert Wesker could think of nothing less appealing than such a man clinging to him in that moment as he lay back down, facing away from Chris, still feeling distinctly nauseous and as if the dark all around slithered with disembodied limbs.
“What do you think you are doing?” Wesker sighed, as Chris shuffled up behind him and snaked his large, solid arms around Wesker’s waist, “did I say ‘yes’ to your foolish suggestion, Redfield?”
“Nope,” Chris pulled the unhappy older man in close to his chest, holding him secure and tight in his warmth, soft breaths tickling through Wesker’s hair. “You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one, Cap.”
Too tired to fight, too sick to argue, Wesker grit his teeth and tried not to think too hard about the bizarre scenario he had found himself wound into. This man who had been a still corpse only several hours prior now held him as if it were only natural. This man made of a combination of their sewn flesh. In the stillness, he could hear the beating of Chris’ heart. Feel it, even, thudding against his spine.
Had Chris always been so touchy? Wesker certainly couldn’t remember the younger ever forcing the skinship before – in fact he had revelled in later years how Chris shuddered at any brush of their skin. He couldn’t quite comprehend why the reincarnation had somehow come to find Wesker touchable. Again, his conclusions rolled around to the concept of Chris’ immaculate conception via his flesh and hand, but it was distracting trying to think with the creature wrapped around him and starting to snore quietly.
For a minute or so, he tried to wriggle free, but gave up upon concluding his heart just was not in this fight. He would deal with Chris for his cheekiness in the morning, but for now, the welcoming call of sleep rang out again. And he followed down its winding path into the darkness, this time with an armour upon his breast.
The great clock in the hall rang out for eight o’clock when Wesker’s weary eyes flickered open again.
Through the thin gap in the heavy green curtains, the foggy, greyish light streamed into the chamber and lit up the awful paintings adorning the dark wood-panelled walls. Gulls screeched, and their shadows flitted against the opposite wall.
Chris Redfield’s arms were still tight around him, and the younger man was still apparently dozing judging by the soft snores and sighs. It was warm, and Wesker could feel his exhaustion reign on despite several hours of undisturbed sleep, eyelids heavy and the strange sense of comfort. Wrapped up in that pair of firm, god-defined muscles that he had once thought was lost for good.
Albert Wesker had never had such an experience. Love had never had the time for him, nor he for it. Never had he had his head turned, nor felt the urge to seek it out. Never dreamt of being held, or touched, and in fact wore his gloves in the distinct disgust he felt for touching others. And yet he felt no panic – only quiet, sombre warmth. Perhaps he had known Chris long enough he knew the man meant him no harm in this state, perhaps he hadn’t realised just how much he had needed it.
He shifted a little – and that was when he felt it.
Embarrassing as it was, Chris was indeed only human. And if anything this stood to prove the experiment an absolute success. But it was hot and hard and pressed up against his thigh in a most demeaning and uncomfortable way.
“You little bastard,” Wesker muttered to himself. He should’ve known better than to allow his enemy to get so comfortable around him, and he most certainly did not want to get involved any deeper than things were already progressing. He tried in vain to break free from his prison without disturbing the sleeping man, but Chris held onto him tight. And with no other option, he was forced to wrench himself out.
Chris moaned sleepily and rolled onto his back as Wesker rolled out from underneath the warmth of the bedsheets and out into the cool air. The young man was staring blearily up at the ceiling, hair a scruffy mess. Had they still been in STARS Wesker might’ve told the soldier to clean himself up and look presentable. But he supposed there was little need for that now.
Not waiting for the younger to get up and realise his embarrassing situation, Wesker went about finding himself an outfit for the day from the closet. Something practical, in black or deep ocean blue. He was aware of the stare burning into the back of his head as he began to shrug off his sleeping shirt, and turned to give Chris an accusatory stare.
“Something the matter, Redfield?”
The younger man was awake now, lying on his side in a somewhat provocative position, a wry sleepy grin etched on his face. “No, no. Keep going, don’t mind me.” He certainly looked his age now in this grey, unkind light. All shadowy eyes and stubble, the distinct face of a man who had seen many battles in his short life on Earth, and still somehow lived to tell the tale. It was hard, however, to see the scars. And Wesker had for the moment an eerie sense that he was caught in a time that never existed.
He turned, shirtless and arms crossed, to face the man disapprovingly.
“You seem awfully relaxed,” he commented coldly, “forgotten you’re on the clock, Redfield?”
Chris shrugged. “Closest thing I’m getting to a vacation this year.” Then, he squinted, and a little frown tilted the corners of his lips. “Come here a sec, Wesker-“
Wesker frowned too, but sensing Chris was still too oblivious to attempt anything foolish, he stepped over to the side of the bed, and watched as Chris sat up slowly, bedsheets falling away and allowing him to see the younger man was still proudly hard – and still seemingly unrealising of it. How much of a distraction Wesker must be.
He stood still as cold marble as Chris reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, leaning up and in somewhat.
“Your eyes…” Chris said, curiously, “did you hurt them? I could’ve sworn…”
Wesker spun away, clasping a hand over his face as he realised his blundering error. “Ah- no,” he said quickly, “it’s nothing, Redfield.” In the timeslip, he had quite forgotten he still had the vivid red rings from the t-virus still flourishing in his blood. “My glasses-“
“I’ve got ‘em,” Chris assured him, “come back here Cap.” And as Wesker continued to hesitate, he sighed and added; “I won’t ask any questions.”
Without lowering his hand, Wesker turned back to Chris.
“I can’t put them on with your hand in the way, Captain.”
“You are cheeky. Just give them to me, Redfield.”
Chris laughed softly, “you don’t have to call me that outside work, Wesker, you know my name.” He pushed Wesker’s hand aside and Wesker could feel the soft breaths fluttering on his eyelids and lips as he waited, expectantly.
Wesker fought back the urge to decimate the boy into a little red smudge on the ceiling, and gave an almighty sigh of dismay. “Chris, I would like it if you returned to me my glasses.”
The shades were slid onto his face, carefully and precisely, and Wesker opened his eyes in time to be pulled back down onto the bed by the immense strength of the younger and rolled underneath him. Had Chris always been so strong? No matter how he tried, he couldn’t push the weight of muscle and brawn off of him.
“Christopher,” a warning note, back flush to the warm cotton sheets.
Chris was grinning triumphantly, face slightly pink as he looked down onto Wesker. “I was happy, y’know, that you let me tag along with you here,” he was remembering a false memory, another thing to note in his research, “I always wondered if you… y’know… too.”
Wesker stared up at Chris through the safety of his glasses. “I don’t believe I know what you’re hinting at, Christopher.” There was a sudden sense of doom pitting his stomach wide open.
“Well, it’s not like it’s a big secret between us, right?” Chris was certainly dusted magenta now, and he swallowed nervously before continuing, eyes aglow with wonder and stars.
“There is a time for play and a time for work. Let me get up right this minute, Redfield.”
“I don’t wanna play coy the whole time we’re here, Wesker, and if you don’t want it you can tell me to go back home and we’ll forget about it.” Burning eyes that showed the fire of his burning heart; “Let me kiss you,” a demand, hopeful and sincere.
Albert Wesker blanked for a moment and didn’t realise his lips had parted in slight shock until he snapped them shut again. What the hell had he done to make his reincarnate believe they had some previous entanglement? It was certainly not something he had counted on, those gentle, hopeful eyes behind the shadow of age. It was too much for so early in the day. Too much for a man who had never been asked that of anybody.
He put a palm to Chris’ chest, trying to keep him at bay. “Chris,” he began carefully, “you’re here to assist me, not make dewy eyes at. I’m sorry if you thought…” he trailed off, feeling the thunder of Chris Redfield’s reconstructed heart beating its way out of his wolfishly hairy chest. He shook his head in vague wonder. “Since when were you so shameless?”
He had asked half in exasperation, half in pity. For he truly couldn’t understand it, after everything he had done to make this stupid man suffer.
“Says the guy who invites me to his house and cuddles with me all night, and then tells me he doesn’t want me.” Chris looked a little hurt, but as he began to pull away, Wesker yanked him back in again.
Chris had nowhere else to go, and Wesker was now curious. Curious to see just what kinds of thoughts and memories Chris thought they shared, what emotions might’ve seeped beneath the skin of the warrior who had always faced him with such bold disgust. Whether victory might taste all the sweeter if he built up a new rapport, only to reveal the truth at sweet crescendo again – a la 1998.
“Don’t play around with me, Wesker. I’m not a kid, I can handle rejection.” Stubborn, bratty, foolish.
“I do… want you to stay,” Wesker said slowly, “I am interested in the workings of your heart, Chris. And yet, I don’t quite understand it. What it is that you want from me.”
“I can explain it all,” his Chris promised, that starry look taking hold once more, and the lacing scars of his flesh clear to him now. Wesker brushed a fingertip along the thin line down the centre of the younger man’s lips, as if still in a dream, and didn’t shy away as Chris lowered his head and pressed his scarred lips to Wesker’s own.
For a second he lay there, stone still and unsure of what to do. Chris Redfield was upon him, kissing him soft and slow and wanting in the grey light of that morning. Fifteen years. Of comradery, enmity, burning hate and fear. The man he had dreamed of for the past five years, of torturing him to insanity and taking his all before disposing of him over and over in all the sadistic ways he might’ve pleased. And here he was, allowing him liberties of his virgin lips.
Wesker didn’t know when he’d begun to kiss back, snaking his long ivory fingers into the tousle of that darker hair, still catching that scent of antiseptic behind the musk. Chris moaned satisfactorily, warm and golden even in that morning’s gloom, and Wesker felt himself starting to slip.
He pushed the younger up again, frightened by the tightening of his own chest.
“I think you’ve made yourself perfectly clear, Christopher.” He touched the thin scar around Chris’ throat, where he had reattached the offending, beautiful head, and admired the glow upon the visage of his creature. He truly had done a marvellous job. “Go get yourself dressed, we have a lot of work to do. And you…” he let his eyes drift down, to the distinct bulge in his subordinates pants, “have some working of your own to complete before then, I see.”
Chris glanced down, and gasped in horror as he threw himself back off of Wesker, clutching his dick through his clothes as he scrambled off of the bed. “Fuck, sorry-“ he apologised, now a lovely shade of puce, “seriously Cap, I didn’t mean-“
Wesker sat up, and gave Chris a slightly forced smile. “Only natural, Christopher, Go take a cold shower, or perhaps you need to express your feelings a little more at eight o’clock in the morning?”
“No sir,” Chris muttered, stumbling into the bathroom and locking the door behind him.
Wesker sighed heavily through his nose. And lay back down again for just a moment, breathing in the pheromones and musk Chris had left behind.
Things had turned out quite strange after all. Alex would know what to do, she always did. But he still had a day or two until she might arrive, and until then he had to deal with investigating just who this man was.
Heart heavy and dull, he wrenched himself from the haven of his bed and drew back the heavy emerald curtains to peer down through the glass misty with condensation. With the back of his hand he wiped clear a section and peered out at the grey, foggy beach crawling away from the castle far down below, at the gulls pecking some great dead fish upon the shore.
Perhaps he would put Chris’ memory to the true test first and show him just who waited down in the cold dark of the dungeon for a hero who may never now come to her. Not at least, with any intention of saving her. If Chris could not recall Jill Valentine, then he was truly lost, and perhaps, entirely and unequivocally Albert Wesker’s – although he was not sure if he wanted this or felt sickened to the darkest sinful depths of his rotting soul.
Master of death he might’ve become, but the cost of such a crime might just prove to be somewhat beyond his means. Beneath the leather and the shades, he was (unfortunately, as Alex promptly put), still only a man.
And the dream of godhood that Spencer had always craved, was dead long, long before their time.