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Yeah...so I wrote this story about a year ago, finally joined this site and decided will why the heck not? So here it is, in all it's horribleness. I would like to apologize to Chris Redfield in advance for making him OOC but in my defense he kind of has to be OOC to want anything to do with the craycray Albert Wesker! Also it is really vague with settings and whatnot because I couldn't get up enough willpower to make anything too detailed. So yay for vagueness and OOC ^0^
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Stained (how deeply)
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I want you to understand something, whoever you are.
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--“You are no god, Wesker.”
--“Ah but Chris, how would you know that? Who are you to judge what a god is and isn’t?”
--“You aren’t. You’re cruel.”
--“Yes I am. But don’t be foolish now—any god is cruel. Just look at your own life. All the friends you’ve lost and all the wounds you’ve received. Has your god given you happiness, in any measure?”
--“A man cannot be a god.”
--“Chris, Chris, Chris. Do you really believe I’m still a man? Or do I have to prove to you once again what I am and always will be?”
--“You’re not a god. I don’t care if you have enhanced everything, that doesn’t make you that powerful. You have a weakness still and I will find it and use it to bring you down.”
--“Oh but dearheart, what if that weakness is something you can’t kill without meeting death yourself?”
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I am a good man. I’ve always tried to do the right thing. My life should have stayed good. But all good things come to an end because they have to.
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“Hell is empty, darling; all the devils are here.” He had said that to him before, mocking and superior above him as he had laid there, choking on his blood and his shame. Another foot to the gut; the shifting of a bone; a groan of agony. Around him the infected are teeming, restless and lost, fingers curled up and faces contorted in expressions between inexpressible rage and irrepressible sadness.
He hears Jill calling his name from far away and he wants to turn in her direction, to make sure that she’s okay, but he knows that if he takes his eyes off of this predator in front of him he is dead. He might already be dead, with the way Wesker’s eyes are glowing like pools of blood inside of his pale face, all sharp and strong bones.
“You are a little fool,” Wesker tells him almost conversationally, moving down to lift him effortlessly off of the ground so that he is dangling like a ragdoll by the neck in Wesker’s inhuman grip.
One small move of his wrist and Wesker could snap his neck. He has every reason to snap his neck; here he is, the hero, however beaten down inside, trying to stop the villain once again. But the hero—this hero at least—knows he never had a chance. None of them do, no heroes, so long as monsters as deadly as Wesker are there to catch them in their jaws.
“You were supposed to just die,” Chris tries to tell him around the grip, words coming out strangled and garbled and dying, a little lamb bleating in the grip of the beast. “Why—“
But Wesker throws him, not bothering to hear anymore, and Chris lands hard against a concrete wall in yet another underground facility, another breeding ground for infamy and viruses and the formation of hell on earth. Jill screams his name, desperate, and there is gunfire. Chris closes his eyes at Jill’s cry of pain, her little yelp before her body hits the ground. She might be dead now, like all the others.
Another person he has lead to the beast and watch be sacrificed.
He stays there against the wall with his eyes closed, feeling his broken ribs shift and stab with each breath he takes. He is waiting for death—both his and the world’s. Soon he has no doubt that there will be the sound of a countdown, the sounds of a virus riddled rocket being sent out into space.
Instead there are footsteps coming towards him, familiar and terrifying and too many other things. Wesker stops next to him, above his prone form, and Chris doesn’t open his eyes; Chris doesn’t move. He is still and he is silent, playing dead in some sense maybe, even though he thinks soon he might really be.
Wesker reaches down and grabs him, hauls his up roughly by his shoulders. Chris almost cries out at the abuse it puts on his ribs but his jaw is wired shut and his back hits the wall. His eyes are still closed and he can feel Wesker’s hands squeezing into the muscles of his shoulders, feel his cat gaze on his face and his breath on his cheek, not rancid like an animal’s like it should be but rather cool, like peppermint.
It isn’t right.
“Giving up already Chris?” Wesker sneers at him, a self-proclaimed god jeering at the weak and defeated. “And here I thought you still wanted to play the hero after all these years! If you’re wondering—which I’m sure you are—I did not kill Miss Valentine; she is merely unconscious. You though…”
This is the part where Chris predictably fights back, roars out an insult. It will end then with a knife in his gut and Wesker laughing in his face. It will end with a knife in his gut anyway though, won’t it? Whether he fights back or not.
And Chris—Chris is tired. Chris is sick. When he found out about the reemergence of the supposedly dead Wesker he had immediately been asked back to the B.S.A.A to take the Tyrant down. He had done it before, they reasoned; why couldn’t he do it again?
But that Chris doesn’t exist anymore, now does he?
Chris keeps his eyes closed and he lets his body go slack. He can feel Wesker studying him, maybe trying to read him. Maybe he has actually caught the virus-riddled man off guard for once, not that it really matters. At least Jill isn’t dead; at least all of this wasn’t in vain.
“What is wrong with you?” Wesker suddenly demands off him, shaking him violently so that his head slams back into the wall, temporarily dazing him. “Where is it Chris? Where’s all the fight and the little righteousness you always used to carry around with you? Did you finally realize how pathetic you really are?”
The words are meant to hurt and they do, in that part of Chris that has slowly become more and more exposed, like paint chipping away and showing decaying walls behind it. Carefully he opens his eyes, sees the all too familiar inhuman ones glaring back at him with hellfire and spite.
“If you are going to kill me, kill me now,” he says, an almost whisper between them. He cannot bear to make his voice any bigger anymore. “You can win then, Wesker; you can destroy all that I’ve fought so hard to save. Because the truth is…”
He can’t say it, he can’t. He can’t tell him how he just doesn’t care anymore; that he looks out at everyday people, the ones he should protect, and feels nothing anymore. He doesn’t say that he doesn’t know how much he will care to see the world in ruins from Wesker’s plans; that the only reason he decided to go on this mission for the B.S.A.A. was to simply see if Wesker really had survived. To see Wesker…
And in seeing Wesker, know that he is securing his own demise.
“The truth is, Christopher?” Wesker growls out, fingers biting into Chris’s bones. “You will tell me.”
“Just end this,” Chris replies. “Why are you prolonging it?” You’ve won, he thinks. But then, you always have won, somehow. “Isn’t this how you knew it would end? With me dead at your feet?”
Wesker sneers at him, lip curling back to reveal glittering perfect white teeth. The devil would be handsome, devastatingly so. “It would be appropriate, wouldn’t it?” Wesker says to him, almost like he is musing. The hands on Chris’s shoulders clamp down until Chris is flinching, muscles be pressed in viciously until it feels like Wesker is touching his very bones. “After all the trouble you’ve caused me, all those plans that haven’t gotten to go into fruition because of your constant meddling…”
“I don’t regret that, at least,” Chris admits, in the face of his very near death seeing no more reason to hold back. “You are doing the wrong thing by working for Umbrella; by doing all the things that you’ve done. I get that you’ve been raised to be what you are and the virus inside of you must make it even more tempting but making everyone bow down to you won’t make you feel any better about what you are.”
Wesker’s eyes narrow into fiery points and his nostrils flair, elegant even in his obvious rage. “That is your opinion then, Christopher, but don’t pretend to know mine or myself. I may have been your Captain once but even then everything I told you was a lie. You know nothing.”
“You still think you know everything, don’t you?” Chris dares to ask him. Immediately there is a hand going from his shoulder to his throat, not pressing down but circling, threatening. But Chris is done with being threatened, especially by this man.
“You are asking for death, aren’t you Chris?” Wesker tells him almost flatly, point blank. His stone face gives nothing away but Chris hears an odd note in that question, filtering in through the unknown accent from the unknown man. “Giving it all up, eh? Why? Because a few fools you’ve known for a few minutes have died under your command? Because Miss Valentine is always hurt by you? Because you realize, finally, how futile your struggle has always been? This world needs a new breed of mankind; a new age needs to be ushered in.”
“And you’re going to be the one to do it,” Chris tells him. “Aren’t you? To satiate that fucking ego of yours—“
“Be careful about what you say now, Chris, or my hand might just snap the bones of your neck,” Wesker warns him and the grip tightens some, a pressure bordering on uncomfortable. Chris looks into Wesker’s demon eyes and leans into it.
“I’m surprised you haven’t done it already,” Chris says quietly, conversationally. “Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? My death at your hands?”
“Your death…” Wesker muses, cocking his head to one side. His expression as always is unreadable and distant, and the fingers against the skin of his neck start to move almost gently, stroking and…caressing…
“My death,” Chris affirms because there is nothing else to say and he shouldn’t understand the way those spider fingers are touching his skin, tracing his jugular like they are. He shouldn’t understand it, and he doesn’t, not really except that—
“Do it. Take your revenge. I’m offering it to you, Wesker.”
Wesker’s lip curls back into a snarl and the stroking fingers stop and dig in painfully until Chris is immediately gasping for breath. “What are you playing at?” Wesker demands of him as Chris’s vision starts to waver and darken at the edges.
The only thing Chris can see clearly now is the paleness of Wesker’s face and the bloodiness of his eyes. “You wish to die to end your suffering but why should I stop your pain, Redfield? Why should I stop it when it makes you hurt so much--!”
Chris can feel Wesker’s breath on his face, burning through his skin like that of a dragon’s. He knows that he is about to pass out; can feel it in the heaviness of his limbs and the increasing fogginess of his mind. He is waiting, almost patiently, for it to come—his death or unconsciousness. It is all in the hands of this self-proclaimed god, the same god who made him this way, the same god who tortured him in ways that he probably doesn’t even know about, for all he thinks that he is a genius.
But just as the darkness starts to close in the pressure on his throat and the unnatural heat of Wesker’s body are gone and he is left chilled and choking for breath, falling to his knees without the support and back to the unforgiving ground.
“This isn’t how this works,” he hears Wesker say through the ringing in his ears as his chest heaves to recover breath. “No, no, this isn’t how this works Christopher.”
He is still recovering when Wesker leaves the room, escaping as quickly as he appeared out of the door of the facility. Chris stays down on the ground even after he has regained his breath, feeling the burning of his throat where Wesker’s hands had sought to rob him of his admittedly miserable existence.
“Chris oh god are you okay?” Jill’s voice asks him and he looks up to see her standing there, blood gushing from a wound on her head. Otherwise she is unharmed. “Oh fuck your neck! Let me get first aid spray—“
“No,” he croaks out, allowing her to pull him up on unsteady feet. “I’m fine.”
“No you’re not,” Jill frowns at him. “Chris you need—“
“I said I’m fine Jill!” Chris shouts as much as his bruised and throbbing throat will allow with a viciousness in his voice that surprises even him. “Just…let it go alright?”
“But Chris—“
Chris turns away from her to look back at the test tubes and the computers where a new virus has been researched, tried and perfected. It should make him sick; once upon a time it would have made him feel physically ill. Now he only feels tired.
“Wesker was going to kill you,” Jill says as they start to make their way back out and after the elusive blonde superhuman. “But he…didn’t. Do you know why?”
“No,” Chris shakes his head slowly. Even to himself he doesn’t know if it is a lie or a truth. “No I don’t.”
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After awhile things get to you. It’s just human nature for there to be a limit on how much a person can take, especially if it’s psychological. Years of fighting can wear even the strongest man down, and I can tell you now that I never did consider myself that strong. Everyone else did though. Maybe that’s why they all died.
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--“Chris have you ever considered why it is you’ve managed to beat Wesker so many times?”
--“Uh not really. Most of the time I think it’s just dumb luck and my…team. I couldn’t have done anything to him on my own.”
--“Give yourself some credit, Chris; you’re the one who knows him the most.”
--“No one knows Albert Wesker, Jill. You know that.”
--“Yes but it’s…you’ve never noticed how he targets you? How he goes after you?”
--“That’s just because usually I’m the one trying to stop him. Where are you getting at with this Jill?”
--“Look just…It’s nothing but don’t let Wesker ever get to you, alright? You might not see it but I know that he has a special interest in you Chris and it makes me worried.”
--“A special interest? I doubt that. Even if he does, all Wesker wants to do is kill me. I’ve ruined his plans once already and I’ll keep doing it until one of us is dead.”
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I had little options left. I had…have…no one left. He should have died or I should have died. It shouldn’t have continued like this but it did and it is…I’m tired, alright? The only times I truly felt alive were when I was fighting and that only happened when I was around him. So it seemed so simple, the equation, even though it was anything but.
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They find Wesker again at the docks of the little island, a familiar scene with a familiar dark ship churning on the seas behind him. Wesker is a dark silhouette of pale skin and black clothes and familiarity when he turns to face them, a cruel and familiar expression on his handsome face.
So so so familiar----
“Ah I see you two are still as persistent as ever,” he sneers at them, spreading his arms out wide in mockery. “Go on then; try to stop me and inevitably fail. I’m glad to see you haven’t completely lost that spirit of yours, Chris.”
Jill draws her gun and starts to attack and Chris…Chris just stands there. Watches Wesker inevitably dodge Jill’s bullets and ineffective punches, watches as he grabs the woman and throws her roughly across the docks behind him and into the water with a splash.
With Jill indisposed at the moment Wesker turns his attention on him, lips curled into the snarl of a beast on a man’s face. “Come now Chris I don’t have all day. Are you just going to stand there are or you going to be of some use?”
Some use? He had been of use for so long now—
Wesker runs at him, a flash of black and pale skin, and Chris does not dodge. He might have closed his eyes then; he might have whispered Wesker’s name. A hard wall of a body hits his and he falls through the air like a doll, all spread limbs and empty face, and hits the ground with no sound.
Wesker’s fists find the skin of his stomach and his arms; his face and his legs. There is a snap of bone and the fire of pain and Chris still doesn’t open his eyes. “Chris,” Wesker says his name through the pain he is inflicting. “Chris.”
Chris expects to die; he doesn’t expect anything else. Death and Wesker have always been synonymous and he doesn’t think that they will stop now, for all the luck he’s had in the past. Hands clad in black leather stop throwing punches and curl into the fabric of his shirt, bloodied and torn, and lift so that his upper body dangles awkwardly above the ground and his shirt is on the verge of ripping.
Wesker is so close that Chris can smell the spice and sweat and blood on him, can smell the sickly sweetness of the virus that has made Albert Wesker into a monster. “Why Chris?” Wesker demands of him, all rough syllables. “I thought you would have more fight?”
“Didn’t I already tell you when you didn’t kill me before?” Chris tells him and his eyes open slowly, bruised and bloodshot. His nose is bleeding and he can taste his blood in his mouth as he looks up into Wesker’s perfect alabaster face, like the face of a statue or, or—
“I’m done fighting. Kill me Wesker and become the supreme being you think you are. Save humanity in the way you think is best. Just…kill me so that I don’t have to see it.”
“It would be a mercy to kill you, then,” Wesker tells him with sharp, sharp eyes. “And we both know I am no merciful man, Christopher.”
“No you aren’t,” Chris shakes his head, feels the way it throbs with his heartbeat. “You are nothing but a killer for all the airs you put on. You are nothing but a…a Wesker and I…I know that I can never win against a Wesker.”
“But you’ve always tried anyway,” Wesker says to him almost gently. “You’ve always tried to at least fight and lately all you want is death from me. It is rather dull of you, Redfield.”
“Yes,” Chris agrees and he smiles and shows his bloody teeth and split lips. “Yes I have grown dull. The best thing to do would be to throw me away.”
“No,” Wesker says with surprising ferocity and behind the dark sunglasses his eyes blaze like the sun and Chris—Chris is on fire. “You think so little of yourself Christopher? After all this time?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Chris whispers and Wesker brings him so close that he can see the little lines in Wesker’s face from afar, not so porcelain and perfect up close; human this close.
“You know nothing of what I want,” Wesker hisses at him like some wild cat. “Nothing. Fight me!”
“No,” Chris tells him flatly. “Go destroy the world. Go become a god. You will find no more resistance from me.”
“You are not Chris,” Wesker shakes him so hard his bones rattle and his head snaps back and for a second he thinks his neck will break. “You are not Chris!”
“I am what you made me,” Chris says quietly, a whisper. “Right Albert?”
And then Wesker kisses him and the world ends then, exploding and reforming between their lips as Chris’s pupils blow wide and Wesker’s eyes glow like blood or lava. Wesker kisses with sharp teeth and a tongue that spears and takes and his hands are claws and it is not romantic and it is not pretty and it is more of a battle than a kiss but yet—
But yet it’s them—
Chris finds in the taste of Wesker’s mouth the taste of his own blood and the sweetness of a virus and a power he has only ever dreamed of. It snakes its way into his bloodstream and attaches to his blood cells and heads towards his heart where it will start to fester, hideous and diseased and Wesker.
There is something terribly beautiful about that.
“Chris,” Wesker whispers his name against his mouth, against the skin of his teeth. On the self-proclaimed god’s lips his name sounds like a prayer. “Chris.”
It sounds like he is the god the way Wesker is saying his name, looking at him—
“Wesker.” What can he do but say it back? He feels like a newborn somehow, a cry of happiness or utter despair caught somewhere in his chest and unable to ever escape. He wants to look away; he doesn’t ever want to look away. Wesker’s warmth seeps into his body and takes away the pain and he—
He isn’t tired anymore.
In the distance Jill is shouting, her voice like the wind and the creaking of bones. Chris looks into Wesker eyes, slitted and animal, and sees his own reflection bleeding back at him. He doesn’t close his eyes anymore and Wesker, his hand coming up to wrap around Chris’s neck—Wesker smiles.
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I never meant for it to end up this way and really I don’t think anyone did. He didn’t kill me. He…he won’t kill me. I can’t kill him. Maybe I never could kill him even when it felt like I could. It is in my bloodstream, this thing that he has given me and I know one day it will take my life or it will save me. Maybe it’s…the same thing though. I don’t know. All I know is that I want to kiss him again and I want him to light me on fire and I want to taste the sweetness of power and death on his lips until there is nothing left of either of us.
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--“You underestimate yourself, Christopher.”
--“No you underestimate me. I know exactly what I’m capable of.”
--“No man knows what he’s fully capable of. Don’t be foolish.”
--“You always all me foolish but I’m the one who’s killed you how many times now?”
--“But I keep coming back. Almost like you’re afraid to really kill me, Redfield because if you do kill me for good…”
--“I’d be happy.”
--“No. You’d be without purpose. You would be without reason. You would be another soldier and nothing else in your life would matter.”
--“Why the hell would I ever think that? You are not so important to me Wesker.”
--“Not yet but I will be, Chris; I promise you that I will be. Even a god will get lonely.”
--“You aren’t a god!”
--“And you aren’t a man so where does that leave us?”
--“Stop talking in riddles.”
--“I’m sorry you don’t understand.”
--“Understand what?”
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I want you to understand, whoever you are, that I choose this. I am weak; I am strong and I…I love Albert Wesker. Save me or kill me, please. Just don’t take me from him. Because if you do…
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“I am alive, aren’t I?”
“Yes Chris.”
Outside the moans of the dead and the dying, the bowed backs of the subjugated. Chris grabs Wesker’s hand and Wesker squeezes it so tight that bones break. But that doesn’t matter anymore because Chris can already feel them healing, snapping into place. Pain is good; Wesker is good.
“Will I always be alive?”
“Of course you will be,” Wesker tells him, a promise in every line of his diseased and deadly and beautiful form. He kisses the knuckles of Chris’s hand. “I’ll make sure of it.”
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"In this world love has no color, yet how deeply my body is stained by yours.
— Izumi Shikibu
Thanks for reading!