Code Name: EVE

A/N: Yay! 8! Thank you! And… I do have plans for Leon, much later, but the story is making itself longer than I expected, so I couldn’t say when it would be…

Krauser stared at the dying fire for a long time after she’d slipped under. When he did sleep, strange images and unsettling colors and sounds plagued his dreams. Fuzzy, dark, humanoid shapes… Thick, oppressive green and swirling, liquid red... A bang and a screech… He never remembered these things. Instead, he woke up discomfited and restless.

The sky was barely pink when she felt him move. She huddled into the blanket. In her head, the color drained, shirtless figure found a low branch and started doing chin ups. It was still too cold for her taste, especially since all that remained of the fire was a smoldering coal or two. How could he stand it out there? Was it the plaga, or did he just not care? She opened her eyes and peered out through the crack in her cocoon. After the chin ups, he pulled himself onto the branch, hung from his knees, and started doing crunches. She wondered if he’d done this every time he’d woken up before her.

It took longer than it used to, working himself into a comfortable state of distraction. There wasn’t any better way to work off the jittery energy, though. At least not out here. No puzzles or reading material. No one to spar with. Well, there was Ashley, but even Krauser knew that would just be too damn unfair. He’d keep it to verbal arguments with her. Heh, come to think of it, no one had put up with his abrasive behavior like her since Kennedy…

Ashley finally sat up and yawned, stretching both arms up high above her head. Then she put her palms on her lower back and arched it. The air wasn’t as cold anymore, and it actually felt good whispering over her bare skin. Her shoulders were still cramped, so she brought her elbows back toward each other. The girl’s eyes were still closed, and she was far from expecting feeling her elbows touch. Her eyes flew open and she brought her arms back in front of her to stare at them. She stretched her legs out in front of her and slowly reached for her toes. Her face touched her knees, but the expected stab of pain in the backs of her legs never came. It was then that she felt the eyes on her. The president’s daughter unfolded to find him, still hanging upside-down, watching her. Even if he was allowed to see her naked now, the lecherous looks still made her self-conscious. She hugged her knees to her chest, grinning sheepishly. “What?”

“You never said you could bend like that.”

She giggled. “I didn’t know…”

Gripping the branch with both hands, he flipped his legs forward. When his shoulders reached the limit of their rotation, he released the branch and landed on his feet. She stood to meet him, clutching the blanket to her chest. “Show me more,” Krauser leered, putting his hands on her hips.

“No…” She shifted her feet, but she was still grinning.

“How about if I show you what I can do?”

“That’s not fair. You’d show me anyway.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you like to show off.” Keeping her tucked under his right arm, he pulled her around to his right side and lifted his left arm out to his other side. Ashley leaned on him willingly enough, but before she could ask what he was doing, she felt him go rigid and start shaking. “Are you o…” she trailed off as his hand melted and split into three claw-like appendages, “…kay….” Skin split to reveal something dark and scaly underneath and release more boney thorns and blades. Thick veins pulsed along the length of the deadly thing, which was longer than his human arm, and even spread past his shoulder and over the left half of his chest. Ashley was speechless for a moment. “Does it hurt?”

“Nah.”

She gingerly touched one of the claws and slowly worked up the nerve to touch the flesh. Or at least, the dark colored plaga… was it skin peaking through? It felt like rough scales. Sort of like what covered what she had come to think of as the caterpillar plagas, but the boney scythes reminded her of the writhing red ones. “Hm,” she smiled sweetly and looked up at him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were compensating.” The girl put an arm around his neck and got up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. Both of his arms closed behind her—the mutated one was already shrinking again—and he chuckled against her neck. She probably should have been scared of the thing, but she knew without having to be told that it had saved her yesterday.

A little jab. Maybe she’d shape up to be a worthy opponent after all. “You thirsty, princess?”

The way he said that still grated on her nerves, but she only smiled and nodded. She resolved to speak with him about it later. At least address it… She thought about it as she secured the blanket over her breasts and followed him back to the river. “So it’s safe…” she half questioned as she watched him dip a bottle in the water.

“Tastes bad, but I’m still fine, and there’s not a lot of choice.”

He wouldn’t try to hurt her on purpose. Shrugging off her concerns to the best of her ability, she knelt beside him and tried a handful. It didn’t taste awful, but she didn’t want to guzzle it, either. After a couple swallows, she looked at him sideways. He was sitting back on his heels, looking around with a thoughtful expression. Ashley’s gaze returned to her lap and she twisted the blanket in her hands. “You know… I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that name you’ve been calling me…”

Jack snorted. “What? Princess? What’s wrong with ‘princess?’”

“It’s the way you say it. You make it all condescending, like you’re talking to a kid or something…”

“So sensitive,” he teased. “It never occurred to you that it might be positive from my perspective?”

“Would it really kill you to use my name?”

He shook his head slowly and reached over to push her hair behind her ear. “I think if you consider it, you’ll realize you like being my little princess.”

Her eyes flicked over him and she sighed through her nose. “Just don’t forget that I do have a name, huh?”

“Fine.” His gaze followed the circling shadows of fish in the deeper water. He’d hauled the three bodies out to the current and released them. They were probably long gone. “How’s your stomach?”

“Okay… I do feel a little ill, but it’s probably just hunger…”

“Hn. Then I suppose there’s not much point in sticking around here. We’ll just have to finish off the jerky for now, but we can watch for edible things as we walk.”

“Edible things like what?” She inquired, getting to her feet along with him. The sun was promising to be intense today. If her shirt was dry, there was a good possibility she’d dunk it in the river before they started off.

“I’ll show you what to look for if I see anything, but…” He considered their surroundings. “Could probably find acorns and dandelions…” A thought made him smirk at her. “Hell, sometimes bugs and worms…”

“That’s disgusting,” Ashley protested. “I’m not eating bugs, or anything like bugs.”

Jack chuckled. “If it came to that or starving to death, I think you’d change your tune pretty quick.” He went to poke around in what remained of the fire pit with a stick. One ember was all he needed, but he’d apparently waited too long. Shit. Straightening up, he went about packing up the bags. They’d have to take longer nights, actually set up a minimal camp, if he was going to take time to start a fire, hunt, and cook. The unexpected detour also meant that the ready made rations from the castle ran out faster than he’d wanted them to. If it wasn’t for the trail it would create, he would have left two or three of the empty glass bottles here…But, hey, if they took real rests at night, he could also take some time to play with dear little Ashley some more…

She watched him scatter and disguise the fire’s corpse as she pulled her shirt down from the branch. Her stomach was still fluttery, but pleasantly so, and she was having trouble suppressing her smile. A full fledged crush returned by the second party. God, she hadn’t felt like this in, like, a year. And it made the following hike so much more pleasant, being on neutral ground. She strode along beside him when the path was wide enough, rather than trailing along behind him the whole day.

The smell of fear had all but evaporated. She was apparently the shy sort, but she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. Along the way, he pointed out plants that were safe or not safe, and explained how to test whether or not an unknown plant might be poisonous. The girl seemed genuinely interested in what he had to say. He showed her how he could spear the fish in the river with a stick he’d sharpened. She tried, too, but she wasn’t nearly as fast as him and she was having trouble compensating for the bending of the light through the water’s surface. It was still fun sitting on the bank and watching her splash around.

He never made her eat bugs, or ate bugs himself. Ashley was relieved, but didn’t comment. He still did things that managed to impress her. For example, rather than light the fire with the flint from the village over and over again, he rinsed out the peanut butter jar and put about two inches of dirt in it. One leaf dropped on some glowing coals sparked a flame that was just big enough to light a candle he’d taken from the castle. He pushed it into the dirt in the bottom of the jar. It was up to her to carry it and make sure it didn’t go out. She did exactly as she was told. Equally impressive was the night he left her with the fire and came back with a rabbit.

Then of course there was the sex. Probably Krauser’s favorite part. Though she still wouldn’t allow him to penetrate her, every stop included a fair amount of kissing, sucking, and stroking. Her hands definitely compensated for what she couldn’t do with her mouth, but he liked to imagine giving the wholesome young woman a crash course in deep-throating. For the time, toying with her flexibility was enough to keep him from acting out these fantasies.

XXX

The rain had begun early in the morning, and continued into the afternoon. Krauser had rushed to erect a shelter, but there wasn’t any time to save the fire. Now they were huddling inside the dug out, cracked open trunk of a rotting tree. He’d stuck the leafier of the branches in the ground at the entrance and draped the sheet over them. The tent-like space it created housed their packs and kept the wind and rain from blowing into their hideout. There were leaks, but nothing awful. And they’d both been drenched anyway. He’d haphazardly lined the hole he’d made with smaller branches, covered the nest with the quilt, and then had stripped to his underwear. Ashley was in her underwear, sitting on him. Her head was resting on his shoulder, and she was tracing the scars on his chest with one finger. Forget the rain outside and the wood pressing against his bare back. This was good. Hell, if he wasn’t careful, there’d probably be some wood pressing against her bare thigh. But then why should he be careful? If such a thing happened, his princess could just stroke it away…

“Where did these come from?” Ashley suddenly asked. They were the ones that had been fresh wounds when he’d taken her from the island. That didn’t narrow down the possibilities of what could have happened to him much, though.

He snapped back into focus and looked at her. “Hn?”

“The scars…” Ever since she’d let her plaga have its way, she’d been trying to learn more about him. At the same time, she didn’t doubt that any subject related to what had set him of that one day was still taboo, no matter what level they reached with each other. So she tried not to push if she ever caught him being evasive. Which happened more frequently than she liked.

He chuckled. “Which ones? The fresher ones are Kennedy and Wong’s doing, but the others all have their own stories.”

That created more questions that it answered, but there was only one that made her really curious. “What about this one?” The girl asked, touching his face.

“You can’t die four times and come out pretty, princess,” he smirked.

“Please tell me?” Ashley asked, gazing up at him with what she hoped was a sad puppy look. The expression seemed to make him smile, but he just shook his head slowly and tweaked her nose. She got the message and let that subject drop. “So… You and Leon got in a fight, huh?”

That was a bit of an understatement, but he kept himself from laughing. “You could put it that way.”

“Why?”

“Saddler ordered me to get rid of him.”

She sat up as much as the small space would allow. “And you were going to?”

“Don’t look at me like that, princess. How many people did you see Kennedy kill, huh?”

“But that was… he was trying to get me home and they were trying to stop him…”

“And he was trying to stop me from reaching my goal.”

“And your goal was to… get the sample to Wesker, and then blow up the island…”

Jack shook his head. “No. I was only helping Wesker because I thought he was going to help me. So I trusted the wrong people. Doesn’t mean I’m bad. Just means I have bad judgment.”

“Then why were you really involved in this?”

“That doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have worked out the way I wanted, anyway.”

Another evasive response. She didn’t bother to beg this time. “Okay… Then can you tell me about the other scars?”

“For the most part, they come from watching movies or those ‘don’t try this at home’ kind of TV shows and getting stupid ideas.”

The president’s daughter immediately thought of the Jackass movie, and she had to ask, “Like what?”

The soldier considered and shrugged. “Car surfing. Jumping off of, over, and sometimes ultimately into different things. Once in a while, some guys I knew started betting pools, but most of the time I did it on my own just to see if I could.”

She just shook her head and cuddled back up against him. “Must be a Y chromosome thing, because I don’t get it.” There was silence then, as they listen to the sound of the rain outside and hoped their packs wouldn’t be too water-logged. Before long, she felt his lips on her neck. There wasn’t enough space to do anything aside from kissing and touching, but she didn’t object. It was two days before they could find enough dry wood for a fire again. Two days during which they subsisted entirely on vegetation.

XXX

One night, Krauser was out stalking a rabbit when he ‘heard’ something oddly shaped. It was too neatly square to be anything natural. He sniffed the air as he moved toward it, picking up the smell of sweat and dust. Huh… There was also a wider opening through the shrubs there than should be normal, and then he knew what it was. He ran his hand over the trail sign and looked both ways along the path. It ran away from the river, but it appeared to be well used. Maybe it would go somewhere. Sniffing the area out one more time to memorize it, he resumed his hunt and returned to tell Ashley the good news. The next morning, they’d fill the remaining bottles with water, work out a story for the other end, and get moving.

A/N: And that part where Krauser says 'four,' I did mean four. It's not a miscount or a typo. It will be clearer later, but I like releasing details slowly.