Resident Evil: Resurrection

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"Uuuuah... uuuuhnnnnn..." He winced hard as something cold was pressed to his face, and his eyes snapped open. The harsh sound of his breathing was countered by the soft trickles of water rushing in a stream nearby, and he looked around frantically before his gaze fixed onto her.



"Shhh," she breathed. "Calm down, it's only me. You know who I am."



"A-Alice," he rasped, before wincing hard as she wiped at his forehead with the cold cloth. "RAAGH!"



"I know," the woman said, her voice seeming to soothe him, making his need to thrash ease off and calming his nerves, allowing him to deal with the pain a little more. "I know it hurts, but we need to take the wrecked flesh off. Just keep talking to me. Keep saying my name."



"Alice," he obliged, before closing one eye and clenching his fists as the cloth wiped along his cheek. The sickening crackle and wet sounds of crisp outer flesh and dead, rotting inner muscle being peeled from his face became the only noises in the world to him between her dipping the cloth into the stream to rinse it and starting all over again. "Alice!" he bleated while slamming his fist down onto the ground as she pulled off a particularly large chunk of flesh from his jaw.



"Ok," she murmured. "That's enough for now, I understand. Here, this will feel better." She picked up some torn strips of cloth and began to gently bandage his forehead and around his jaw where his face was nothing but raw, open wounds. "Carlos," she said almost gently, while stroking the side of his face that she hadn't touched with the cloth. He had been enduring this for a month now, but it made it no easier.



Her fingertips felt soothing to him even though it burned anywhere he was touched, and he leaned into the caresses, closing his eyes.



A momentary silence and almost peaceful instant passed between them before she inquired, "How bad are the urges?"



His jaw clenched and he said nothing.



"That bad still," Alice said quietly, obvious disappointment in her voice. "It's getting better slowly. Say my name again." It was the only thing he seemed capable of saying still, and he could usually only do it after she'd been saying his name for a while, but it was still a good sign. "I'm going to check your legs. Hold still and keep saying my name Carlos."



Her name rolled out of him as she moved down to his legs which were also bound in shreds of scrap cloth, and Alice carefully unfastened a few of them, looking one of his legs over. Where she had scraped and torn dead or burnt flesh off yesterday, scabbed over and shining layers of fresh, weak skin were now present; if she were to touch them with any kind of pressure she would breach them and cause immense pain, she'd mistakenly learned that the hard way several days ago. Where she had removed flesh two days ago, there was scar tissue... areas from three days ago were barely scarred at all, and even the parts where huge fist-sized hunks of meat had been taken from the muscle were starting to fill in. Relief and hope filled her eyes as she actually felt the corners of her mouth twitch and pull back. What was this feeling? She was... she was smiling, it was a strange sensation now, after so long without any reason to smile. Clear aqua eyes flicked over to Carlos' face as she closed the bandadges back up, and her smile grew a little braver. "Carlos," she urged, "You just have to bear through this for a little while longer. I'll bring you back, I promise." The cool night wind kicked up, and Alice lifted her head, looking around into the darkness of the night, then over to their campfire, before she looked down at Carlos again. "Soon they won't ignore you any more," she said while running her fingers through his hair. "You won't be one of them any longer and I'll have to protect you until you can look after yourself. I'm going to leave this with you." She placed a gun in his left hand, which was far less damaged than the right at the moment. His fingers curled around it. "Use it on them Carlos, not yourself. I don't think I can bring you back another time if the gun is the cause. I'll keep you safe, I promise." Leaning down, Alice placed a very gentle kiss on her fingertips and touched them to his cheek before standing and cocking her rifle. She marched off into the desert without another word, leaving Carlos alone by the campfire as gunshots started to ring out in the black night under a moonless sky.



The static, it came and went, but more and more often all of his channels were focused upon her, the woman that was in every dream and occupied every thought, every waking moment and every one in the worlds that were not reality but nor were they fictional. There were other memories of course, and they were trying to bubble up to the surface of his thoughts, but they became memories of her or images of her overpowered them, drowning them out, making him forget them for now and keeping him fixed on her. He wasn't sure if it was his own doing or if she was doing that to him but all he knew was that the world wasn't composed only of agony and torture when she was speaking to him, touching him or calling out to him inside his head.



Upon her return his anxiousness calmed some, and when she began to load wood onto the fire in heaps, it was the cue he'd learned that they were to sleep soon. The warmth felt nice against his death cold body, and when she stretched out beside him, bundling her jacket under her head for a pillow, he closed his eyes obediently. Even if he didn't actually sleep, she slept better when he was pretending to sleep, and for some reason even though he didn't have the ability for much reasoning or thought at all, he knew this and he did it to try and ensure she got as much rest as possible.



Come morning, it was the usual routine; the fire was put out, she ate, then that metal case came out and she took blood from herself and put it into him. It made him scream and writhe in agony - her blood burned like acid being injected into his very veins - but then as soon as the pain subsided, he felt incredible, and had moments of clarity... flashes of time spent with her in a life he couldn't recall as a whole, though he desperately wanted to. Words, phrases... what struck him the most were the memories of her smiling at him, just for him, while staring at him with those eyes. She packed up their temporary campsite, all into the offroad truck, and then carried him to the passenger side where he was buckled in safely and forced to drink water though what he really wanted and craved was flesh. Sometimes she gave him that, too, but not human flesh, and not raw and bloody. His head rolled to the side and he stared at her as the truck was started and they left the place that had been home for a night, moving along down the road as usual. He stared at her throat in particular. The same way his own body had different stages of healing wounds, her throat had several terrible looking but healing wounds upon it. He knew these were the marks from his own teeth... he had done this to her. No part of him felt regret, he had no higher feelings of that level yet, but he felt a want from her, a desire to make her feel better though small, alongside the eclipsing desire to taste her flesh and tear her apart that was constantly battling with the desire to ensure her safety. Some days he was very sure that one side was winning, some days it was the other, but it seemed more and more often that he wished for her safety over her harm at his hands. His headaches were lessening as well, though they were no less brutal when they came.



"How about some music?" Alice suggested quietly when she saw the way he was staring at her throat. She put a cassette into the deck and the truck filled with the sounds of some loud band, occasionaly peppered by the scream of a creature being run over or the crackle and thump of long deceased corpses under their tread outside. Every once in a while she would look over at him strangely, and it would cause two sensations in him, instantly: a headache of skull splitting proportions, and an ache in his gut like his very innards were twisting with feelings he could not name or describe. Yet, he preferred it when she was looking at him, or speaking to him, over the silence... her voice soothed in equal proportions to the distress it caused. "Carlos," she said aloud. It wasn't even the beginning of a sentence any more between them, it wasn't really anything, though it was his name. If it had to be given a title, it would probably be seen as a soothing mantra. When she said his name, they both felt a little better and more assured. "Carlos."



Alice pressed her foot down harder onto the gas pedal as they sped down the highway, and she used this relatively safe time - she was never entirely safe just yet, Carlos did have relapses now and again - as time to think. Her army of clones were all spread across the country, training in the most basic form - survival. Those that could make it through this next year would be those strong enough to actually take on Umbrella worldwide. If they didn't have what it took to survive alone against them here on homeground, they most certainly wouldn't when that set date they were all to reassemble would come. In these past months she'd come across two of the clones, and they'd each silently recognized each other without a word, just a quick nod of acknowledgement. Alice had her overall mission to attend to next year, but right now... right now, this was her own personal mission, private and unimportant to everyone else on the planet but her, and hopefully eventually Carlos himself. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel tighter and she remembered his death. That hadn't been half as bad as returning to the desert to eliminate the swarm of walking dead they'd left there before it could hurt anybody else, only to see him in the crowd of them, a monster like all the rest, lunging at her, trying to get to her so he could tear her limb from limb. She'd faltered then upon seeing him like that, and in a moment of weakness, she allowed him to bite her. That had been the first time, but it most certainly hadn't been the last. It was then that she'd noticed the change, as her blood gushed into his mouth and he swallowed. He'd paused for a moment, and looked at her, and for just a fraction of a second she had felt Carlos inside that beast and she knew there was a chance to get him back. That was the moment her new personal mission had come about; the others she wiped out in one psychic boom of atomic proportions, leaving only him alive and roaring, and she'd bound him in chains then and dragged him back to her truck.



The going wasn't easy, she had never expected it to be so, but it was putting a toll on every level of her being, mental to physical to spiritual, what was left of it. Hearing his screams and watching him suffer as he was brought back to being only a fraction the man he'd once been and suffered through this half-state made her vomit when she was alone, and made her question if this was right. What if this was as far as Carlos would recover? He seemed to have reached a plateau in the last while, without much change one way or the other. Alice pulled to the side of the road suddenly. She hadn't meant to go down that path of thought, she'd been trying to avoid it because of what it did to her, but there was no going back now; her face pressed against her white knuckles at the wheel and she squeezed her eyes shut while gasping quietly. There were no actual sobs or tears, but it was about as close to crying as she could come any more as she lost more and more of her humanity. What if she was just torturing Carlos for her own sick need to try and alleviate some guilt? That question ate at her day and night.



A hand on her shoulder made her start, and she had a knife out and ready from sheer instinct that had been honed to a fine point over the years, but both parties in the car froze then. Carlos had a hand still gently resting on her shoulder, bandaged and smelling of cooked meat, while Alice had a knife at his jugular, ready to pierce. She put the knife away just as quickly as it had appeared, and reached under the seat, dragging the metal case out and drawing out the familiar weapon. "It's time for another shot," she said in a disconnected voice. Again Alice was surprised as she watched Carlos pull up his own sleeve for it; her hard gaze softened just a little as she watched him with curiosity while drawing her own blood, and when she released it into his body, he didn't shy away or try to resist.



Even in his thrashes of agony he stole quick glances at her, and when it was over and he was left panting with his cheek pressed to the hot passenger window, he croaked, "Alice."



She started the truck back up then, feeling mildly better, and they got back on the road. "Carlos," Alice said while turning the music volume way down, "Do you want me to stop? Do you want me to let you go and let you just be what you've become?" There was no part of her that expected an answer in any shape or form, but when she glanced over at him and saw the hard stare he was giving her, she started. He'd understood that, and while he hadn't spoken a word, his reply was obvious and possibly even angry with her for suggesting such a thing. In all this time she had never felt a moment of such relief as this, not since the beginning of her experiments on him. Some nights she'd worried that she was no better than the shadow of Dr Issacs, experimenting and torturing others for something she needed and wanted personally, but that answer from Carlos had breathed fresh life into her very soul and she let out the breath she realized she'd been holding, a rush of relief washing over her. The surprises didn't stop there, though; she watched as he reached out with clumsy fingers and started to jab at the truck's radio, stabbing at buttons with his fingertip until the tape popped out of the player and he too relaxed. "No music then," she said with a nod. "That's fine." Alice couldn't hide the smile on her face as Carlos looked down at himself and started to fiddle with the straps and buckles of his vest, trying to figure them out.









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