Chapter Text
The lab notes could not be right. Could they?
No. The dates… The dates could have been fudged. Right?
The photos. Timestamped. Those could be faked. Couldn’t they?
But why would they. There was no need to.
Chris could not believe what he was seeing and reading. They had been learning small bits here and there for months. Years.
Rumors. He hoped.
And then.
They finally found that it was all true. The lab notes identify who it is right away.
But Chris didn’t need those notes to tell him who it was. Deep in his heart, he knew.
There was no mistaking it. The photos. Videos. Audio.
Of what… who they had discovered.
It was all here.
Nice and neat in a tight, compact package on the other side of the glass.
Albert Wesker was alive.
Pulled from the burning lava.
Lava that should have killed him.
But it didn’t. Cocooned by the remnants of his greatest work, burned away to nothing.
It was absolutely unfathomable.
Yet, there was no denying what his eyes were registering.
Chris was wrought with fury. He had put the thoughts of Albert Wesker aside years ago. Decades.
And yet…
Wesker had barely aged from the crash. Scarred but intact. All limbs surprisingly present.
But what he was seeing was not the man he remembered.
This man was afraid.
A shadow of himself.
Broken.
Treated so obviously as the inhuman thing he had so proudly declared himself as in their confrontation in Antarctica.
Used as the perfect specimen. Over. And over. And over.
There was no obligation for the scientists here to treat Albert Wesker any different from a macaque or a rabbit or a rat.
Because Albert Wesker didn’t exist. At least, not anymore. Albert Wesker died in 1998. According to the official record.
The Company was free and clear to do as they pleased.
The Company responsible was quite popular. Very successful marketing drugs, virals, and therapeutics for dozens of diseases. Ironic that they were listed as one of the top ethical companies in the industry to work for.
Now Chris knew better as he observed the thing… person… responsible for the Company’s obvious success.
Wesker couldn’t see him on the other side of the glass of his cell. He looked so very different yet so very much the same. Smaller, less muscular. Longer hair. But unmistakably, Albert Wesker.
After several minutes of observation, Chris shuffled his feet. Uncomfortable with the vision splayed across the platform, which might be considered a bed, curled halfway into a fetal ball.
It was obvious he was recovering from a recent ‘study.’ Very recent. Pink staining the stark white clothes and sloppy sutures stretched over pale skin. Bruising along arms and wrists and ankles where needles had likely been implanted for an unknown amount of time, likely immobilized by cuffs.
Several more minutes passed. Chris could not delay this any further. Despite the obvious sense of karma at the view, he couldn’t leave him here. However, this could not continue. There were too many unanswered questions.
.....
Chris stepped into the room that had been Albert Wesker’s home for who knows how long. It was minimal—a prison.
The figure barely moved at the sound of his entry. Still, once he caught sight of Chris’s figure, understanding this was not another retrieval, he jerked upwards only to freeze, an unintelligible sound caught in his throat that could have been Chris’s name, and he shuffled his body to the far corner of the platform, pressing himself against the wall.
For some reason, the motion caused Chris’s anger to surge, and he brought his rifle up, fixing it on the sweat-covered forehead, “You should be dead! What the fuck are you?! A clone?!”
Several moments of silence followed, filled with harsh gasps and blubbering nonsense. Finally, familiar eyes found Chris’s face and locked onto him silently, only to waver away upon slight recognition, anguish awash the pale features, “I don’t…”
Chris stepped forward, causing Wesker to jerk towards the opposite end of the room, clumsily stumbling off the platform to crouch further against the wall. The fear and disbelief were obvious in the cowering figure. Chris stepped forward, closing the empty space between them, “Answer me, you fuck?! What are you! How is this possible?!”
Chris’s hands shook as he kept the crouched figure in his sight. The small red dot flickered across Wesker’s forehead.
Chris didn’t notice the tears eclipsing over his own cheeks as his eyes scanned every inch of this… monster’s… form, crouched on the ground in oversized clothes.
Chris dropped the muzzle slightly, observing the shell of a once confident and devious man. A man he once admired and looked up to. Had… “Why now…”
Slightly turning towards the menacing figure that he knew would give him the reprieve he so desperately desired. Wesker pleaded, “Please…”
Chris’s voice rose, “Is this where you’ve been?!”
Wesker leaned back towards the wall, hugging himself, hiding his face into his knees, “Kill…mmm.”
Chris could barely hear him, Wesker’s voice strained and ragged, “What did you just say?!”
Again, quiet but clearer this time, “Please… kill…”
The man before him rocked against the wall, body trembling, eyes wide as he was unable to contain the output of his emotions. Familiar eyes shot up, tears and snot and drool slid down Wesker’s quivering chin, dampening the material of his pink-tinged scrubs, “Kill… me…”
Chris did hear him that time, and he grit his teeth in unrestrained fury as he stared down at the hunkered rocking form.
Time passed slowly, and the words turned into a mantra.
“Please…please… kill me… please… kill me… just… I can’t… no more… no more… please… I can’t…”
Chris’s anger flared, and he brought the muzzle that he had let sway from its target back towards the blond’s forehead… and stopped. His finger on the trigger, and he stared down at the physical manifestation of everything that had wronged him, turned his life sideways and upside down.
He wished he had never heard of Raccoon City or STARS. Or Albert Wesker.
Pale eyes flashed red in what Chris could only place as irritated impatience and in a surprising display of agility, a hand shot upward grasping for the muzzle of the rifle, but Chris quickly caught the wrist and squeezed as tightly as he could, causing the body to collapse downward and a loud cry of pain to escape, pale blue visible once more.
After several wet-sounding breaths, “C... Chris… Please… end this… Please! I’m… I’m sorry…”
Chris’s grip on the wrist was bruising, and the pain of the extent of his hold evident on Wesker’s pitiful face in the deep furrow of his brows and clenched teeth and the barely audible keening between sputtered words.
Their gazes remained locked, and suddenly, Chris flung the arm away, causing it to be brought back to be protected by Wesker’s other arm as he crumpled in on himself.
Chris’s voice was steady, “No.”
Wesker froze, minus the unrestrained trembling coursing through his body from God knows what they had been doing to him. More ugly black sutures and thick scarring could be seen just under the collar of the thin material and along his arms.
The blond’s mouth quivered, silently repeating Chris’s denial for salvation from his own personal hell.
Chris didn’t care. At least, that is what he told himself, as anger blinded him. He had no pity for the cowering figure who stared up at him in anguished disbelief.
Chris spoke, unwavering, “You don’t deserve a quick, nor a quiet death. Not after everything you’ve done.”
Pale eyes dropped, shocked, but the words did register as he blindly raced his eyes across the stained floor before him.
And Chris watched. Not in satisfaction as the trembling turned into violent quaking as more tears bubbled forth, and those familiar pale eyes dragged back up to meet his own, and then the sobs came in full comprehension of what Chris had just denied him.
Chris Redfield. The one person Wesker could always count on to do the right thing, outright denying what he hoped to be his last request. His salvation.
Existence was a burden. Not for lack of trying to end it. He just wasn’t strong enough to do it himself. Never strong enough.
Chris quickly wiped tears from his own face as soldiers came from behind him to grab at Wesker’s arms and wrenched them behind his back. Wesker didn’t resist, but his attention remained on Chris’s stoic visage.
Indifferent. Hardened.
It’s how Chris has been able to survive all these years. The loss, the pain, the suffering, and he endured.
And now Wesker would endure too.
Chris was going to make sure of it.
Despite finding Wesker after all this time, no satisfaction came as he watched the blond sob harder as he was dragged away, barely able to hold himself up on atrophied muscles.