I do not own Resident Evil in any way. Resident Evil and all its characters belong to Capcom, I just like to play with them from time to time and make no money whatsoever.
I will let you down I will make you hurt.
I wear this crown of thorns upon my liar's chair. Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair.
Beneath the stains of time the feelings disappear you are someone else.
I am still right here.
Johnny Cash- Hurt
For someone who wasn't vain Claire Redfield spent an increasingly large amount of time starring at her reflection in a mirror. Whenever she passed one Claire would arch her neck and tilt her head from side to side making that her skin was still whole and intact and free from the wounds of the infected dead. With each blink of an eye the nightmares began afresh and in every moment of quiet solitude Claire would get the unnerving feeling that despite all evidence to the contrary she wasn't quite alone. That in the shadows of her home something lurked in the darkness waiting for her to let down her guard down causing her to jump at every unexpected sound like it was a cannon blast.
A few days ago Claire had cut her hand and she had torn the apartment apart to find her first aid kit and iodine to sterilise and seal the wound. It was irrational Claire knew that now; weeks after escaping the icy wilderness of Antarctica and after the death of Raccoon City that she still felt terror at the thought of infection. If she had been infected she would have long ago started displaying the symptoms but that didn't stop the fear. Claire would rub her skin raw in the shower with carbolic soap in order to purify her skin and the fear of infection would wash away for a few hours.
Chris had called in one of his old friends in the Air Force who now worked as a consultant in the VA centre in New York and had him check over his sister; a Dr Mick Davis. They had sat in Claire's small living room after Claire had awkwardly let him into her home, her guard already up and wary of this doctor despite him being one of Chris's old USAF buddies. Davis had asked a lot of questions and Claire had been sure that she had met him in the past but it was hazy. A lot of things from her past life seemed hazy these days, each day it seemed like more and more of Claire's life was being overwritten by Umbrella.
Over cold coffee they had talked about how she was sleeping, eating, how Claire's mood was. How she felt like she was losing control since getting back to the States, how she felt haunted and terrified of the dark and silence. How she lived in terror of becoming infected with one of Umbrella's viruses, that Claire thought she was going mad as more and more her fears started to consume her.
Davis supped at his coffee despite it having long ago lost its heat, his pad and pen in the other hand and he asked her about flashbacks. Everything now came in disorienting flashbacks that made Claire's head ache for hours in the aftermath. First it was the nightmares she had had as a child dwelling on how her parents had died. The feeling of fear and being vulnerable and reliant on others and the fear that she would lose Chris too. The walking dead roaming the earth in desperation for living flesh to feast upon, the rapist police chief Brian Irons cowering in his dungeon lying in wait for his victims. Little Sherry Birkin clinging to Claire for dear life as they faced down the macabre creations of the little girl's parents and the rest of Umbrella's deranged scientists. The escape from a secret underground lab and the remains of the dead Raccoon city aflame and then flying to Paris, the torturers paradise Rockfort prison then yet more dying.
It was textbook post traumatic stress syndrome Rebecca had told Chris while they had thought Claire was asleep on pills in Chris's bed back in London. And in the present Dr Davis agreed with the STARS medic's diagnosis. Claire had listened in on the doctor's conversation over the phone with Chris who still remained in the UK. Flashbacks and bad dreams were par for the course with any form of serious trauma Davis had reassured. That it would take time for Chris's little sister to recover from what she had witnessed, but in the meantime he was going to prescribe some antidepressants and sedatives to allow Claire to rest. Davis had went on to ask if there was anyone close who could look out for Claire while Chris was out the country.
Claire knew the outcome of that conversation, there was no-one left aside from her and Chris. They had been alone for years. The two Redfield children had been military brats, always moving with their parents to a new town every year or so with their father who was an officer in the USAF. They had been living in Germany near the Ramstien Air Force Base when their parents had died in a car accident on base. The same helplessness Claire had felt as a child had returned with her return to the United States except this time there was no Chris to look out for her this time.
Staring at the dregs remaining in her coffee cup Claire eavesdropped on the conversation taking place in the corridor that lead from her living room to the door. "Your sister needs some support right now Chris. She needs you here." There was a moment of silence before Davis spoke again. "I understand Chris but if you can haul ass back here I would think it wise. Claire is a vulnerable young woman who needs you here with her until this passes." Another pause. "Well until you get back I will do my best to keep an eye out and check up on her. But I am no substitute for you. You are her brother. With you here she will make a quicker recovery."
But would she Claire thought numbly as she came out the shower in her pokey bathroom pausing in front of the mirror as she wiped off the condensation to look at her reflection. Davis had left hours ago and it was now late. Every morning and night Claire looked into the same chipped small mirror with trepidation as if she half expected to see her body begin to decay and putrefy like all the others she had seen in Raccoon. Claire knew it was paranoid and unlikely but it didn't stop the fear or the worry that perhaps she had come back wrong from Antarctica. With each day that past by Claire felt like a little more of her old self was dying away.
The college student who loved motorbikes, cheeseburgers and hot chocolate on cold days was fading. Lost in the shell that she was becoming. The hopes Claire had had for her life had been lost to the madness that surrounded Umbrella like a noxious cloud. It had left Claire a shadow of her former self and although everyone tried to act like it was just temporary Claire knew they were lying. There were those flashes at the corner of her eye, the faint blur of someone always just moving out her line of vision, whenever she tried to look directly at them. The flashes that Claire had known better than to tell Dr Davis about or she was sure he would have had her committed. The scents that appeared from nowhere to remind Claire of death, the smell of the dead, the blood on every surface. It was all overpowering.
Heading to the bedroom with the towel wrapped around her still damp torso Claire passed by her old college books stacked in an old bookcase, the sight made her remember her old Classics professor. As Claire brushed her fingers over the spines of her old texts she wondered how he would describe her current situation. Would it be seen as the death of innocence and the growth into adulthood? Or simply the grim realisation that that unlike many a parents late night reassurances there were indeed creatures that went bump in the night? Or as Claire was more inclined to think she was just fraying at the edges and was desperately trying to find things that would explain her increasingly irrational behaviour to herself.
Claire had met crazy people before. Irons had been crazy. The Ashfords had been crazy. Now Claire worried that she was going crazy, she had read up on what PTSD could do to a person and it wasn't pretty. It had been too much to think she might have been able to come out of all this relatively unscathed she thought as she turned off the lights of the apartment, leaving everything shrouded in darkness save for the dull glow of the street light near the window.
Claire's bedroom was barely lit by the small bedside lamp and Claire sat on the bed to finish drying her hair as the rain started to hammer against the window outside. The room that had once been a motorbike shrine was now covered in a collage of Umbrella Inc related newspaper clippings, and photos that plastered the walls and towering piles of news recordings that lay next to Claire's new field of study. Every night she read textbooks on viruses and studied medical texts, taking what she had learned from the two virus outbreaks and building her knowledge. Claire wanted to know how Umbrella's creations worked, she needed to know, after Antarctica Claire wanted to know what the virus did to a host as it worked its will over the body.
Claire lay down in her bed turning off her light and waited for her sleeping pills to kick in, the heady cocktail of medication starting to dull her senses. Pulling out her ponytail Claire turned under covers and watched the light glimmering off the window pane from the cars outside, feeling her heart-rate begin to slow and her vision darkening Claire closed her eyes and sighed deeply allowing her head to rest into the pillow. With that moment of relaxation Claire's nose caught the scent of gunpowder and blood and with a start she forced her drugged eyes to open to catch a fleeting reflection on the rain spattered window of a dead man. The boy Steve Burnside whose ghost now visited her at each of Claire's weakest moments. With that Claire slumped back into her bed and felt her vision begin to blur. As Claire faded off into sleep the indistinct face of Steve loomed over her as the tears started to spill down the side of her face with one last shuddering gasp. As Claire finally gave up consciousness she could hear her hallucination whisper.
"Sorry Claire, but you can't shut me out that easily."
Not much dialogue in this one but I felt I had to set the scene for the rest of the story. Claire's train of thought is confused to say the least. For a full synopsis check out my profile.
