Nightmare Revisted 8
Title: Nightmare Revisted
Fandom: Resident Evil
Genre: Horror, Romance, Action
Pairings: Wesker/Claire (main), Chris/Jill
Rating: M
Warnings: Sexual situations, blood, guts and gore, and a little bit of high school level biology.
Summary: Claire never thought that the poison from Antarctica would come back to haunt her. She never realized what it and its antidote were slowly doing to her body. Now she finds herself in the hands of a man she considers the devil himself wondering if she can ever be normal again.
Claire opened her eyes and groaned. Everything was sore. Hell, she was willing to bet that if she could pinpoint her finger nails in the mass of soreness they would be sore too. She closed her eyes against the harsh light from the overhead fluorescents and just laid there for second trying to figure out what she had done to warrant this kind of protest from her body. A memory came to surface, hazy like she was drunk on something at the time, but she could not remember drinking since the night before in Phoenix. She bolted upright seconds later as the content of the memory took shape.
A hand in her hair turning her head to expose her throat, that unique full feeling that only having a man in the most intimate of ways brought her, flesh under her fingers. Harsh breathing filled her ears as she felt herself reaching that distant peak.
And she shoved the memory back down. Holy shit. Her mind kept looping those two words over and over, and at some point she had starting shaking. What the hell had happened? The last thing she could remember without that haze was showering after having a close encounter with Wesker. Maybe this was all a dream? Maybe she had passed out after her shower, she had been feverish, and this was some kind of demented fever dream? She looked down at her body then, one trembling hand running over her unblemished skin. That was until her hand came to the juncture of shoulder and neck.
She was riding that rush of climax, barely aware of what was going on around her when she felt him come-his teeth sinking into the flesh of her neck marking her and she felt another orgasm force itself along fried nerve endings.
She ripped her hand off her neck like she had burnt herself. Her breathing went erratic at the physical proof of her dream. Her first thought was that she felt dirty, like she would never be clean again. What had she done? She stood from the cot her hands flying as she tied the thin sheet around herself. It didn’t matter that no one would be able to see her as she made her way through the hallways and back to the bathroom where she could try to get clean again, she felt like there were thousands of eyes on her and they were all judging her. Even if she wasn’t sure what had happened. She made her way through the hallways looking more like a harried animal than a woman.
Wesker watched as she made her way through the hallways on the monitors in the control room. He had woken up in a state that was hardly better, mostly due to the fact that his mind had not tried to block the memories out. He had thrown HUNK out of the room the second he had walked in, barely even noticed the shut-down of his rational mind in the smell of apples. He’d come to a few hours later, naked and spent with her curled into his side. It had been…Interesting. There had been no desire to move from the position at all. Just a sense of it being right and perfect. It left him utterly and completely confused. In all his sexual conquests, he had never had that particular joy before. The formula had been sex and then getting the woman out of his bed as fast as possible. No post-coital cuddling and definitely no sleeping in her presence. The loss of consciousness was a sign of weakness that he could never afford to display. He expected to be enraged at the fact that he had fallen asleep in her presence regardless of the circumstances. Instead, he had just been mildly confused at the lack of rage and the fact that he had the sudden urge to brush her hair out of her face.
Wesker leaned back in his chair as his eyes flicked to another monitor. It displayed a view of the men’s bathroom on this floor and its current occupant. The man known as HUNK paced up and down the space between the urinals and the stalls. The Red Queen had managed to keep him from leaving the lab as soon as the pheromone had worked its way out of his system. The rage the sight of man inspired had little to do with Birkin at the moment and more to do with his own mistake. Granted, the circumstances that had involved him and Claire getting into bed where not those he would normally condone, she was his now. A print out sitting in the printer shelf it had come out of proved it along with just why her body had reacted the way it had. He was, in an uncharacteristic moment of charity, giving her a chance to put herself together before he delivered the news.
He leaned back in the chair, a grimace on his face. He knew there was more to it than a moment of charity. He still hadn’t decided what he was going to do. Logic screamed at him to kill them both. They would be nothing more than liabilities, pawns that his enemies could attempt to use against him. The resources that would be required to assure their safety were not acceptable spendatures under any circumstances. He knew he should’ve walked down there and killed her the second he had gotten the results back. But he had been unable to do it, to raise a hand against her with such intent. When had that started? And why had he not noticed it? Tolerating her presence he could excuse as nothing more than one getting used to a constant pest. But the inability to be rid of her when circumstances practically demanded it? That he could not excuse. He refused to change his plans, his designs. He had spent years setting things into motion. Which left him back at the beginning with no answers and no rational explanations.
Claire felt better the second that she was clothed again, though her choice in clothing was not her normal style. Every inch of her she could cover she had. The anxiety and disgust were still present as she had been confronted with more evidence of just what she had done while unconscious. But something else had come with each piece of confirmation: anger. She had been unconscious, completely unaware of what was going on. Wesker had no such excuse. And what about the man she remembered from that odd dream? The brunette had been in such a hurry that she had not bothered to check the other bed in the infirmary. Pulling her hair up in a ponytail, she narrowed her eyes. She was not going to hide herself under a rock because of this. She was Claire Redfield. She had faced down hordes of the undead, taken on multi-international companies, and brought low crazy scientists and corrupt governments. Albert Wesker was hardly the scariest thing she had ever faced, and he deserved her wrath for this. She was going to go downstairs and beat Wesker within an inch of his life.
Wesker watched as numbers representing chemical reactions and their results scrolled by on the monitor in the autopsy room. He may have been out for hours because of what had happened, but the good news was that a majority of what he needed to do in order to concoct the serum for Claire were things that the Red Queen could do without him there. He was already in possession of the first testable sample of the suppressant. The theory he was working with was some way for her to cheat the test that they had developed for infection. She was lucky that her appearance had not changed as dramatically as his had. Unless angered or forced to make use of the attributes that the virus had given her, she looked just like she had before infection.
There was a soft ding to let him know that the computer was done calculating things and a panel slid back to reveal a vial of light yellow liquid. He picked it up and swirled it, watching as it stuck to the sides slightly from its thickness. He pulled the sterile film off a new syringe before plunging it through the rubber top made for that purpose. He noted how hard it was to extract the serum and wondered if he was going to have to dilute it before giving it to Claire in order to lessen injection sight pain. He frowned before jabbing the syringe forcibly into the corpse of the solider from the day before. He should not be concerned with whether or not the injection would be painful. He was doing this purely because he needed to know if he could not to try to make it so she could go back to her life from before.
His eyes narrowed behind mirror tint as he tossed the disposable needle into the biohazard box for that purpose. There was a swish as the airtight door opened and the scent of cinnamon and sugar assaulted him. Thankfully, the scent of apples was gone. He had a feeling he would never look at them the same again. The tyrant barely had time to put the delicate vial of the potential suppressant on the counter before he was dodging her fist. He used his momentum to move away from both the body on the slab and the counter, watching her the entire time. Her eyes were almost pure silver from the rage. While this was not the reaction he had hoped she would have, this was one he had planned for. He couldn’t harm her for fear of upsetting the very delicate balance her body was maintaining in order to keep everything stable, but it was clear that she had every intent of harming him, putting him at a handicap.
“Dear heart,” he began blocking a kick aimed for his head. He had to make her see reason before she harmed herself or him for that matter.
“Don’t ‘dear heart’ me,” Claire snarled as she watched him move around like an eel. She was angry when she had walked in, figuring she would wail on him until she felt better knowing that he could take it, but the anger was rising to rage as he managed to stay just out of reach. “You pervert! I have no idea what the hell you did, but taking advantage of me in that way is a low that I never thought you would stoop to.” The sad part was she meant that. For whatever twisted reason, she had felt almost safe with him and had since the whole thing began. Being violated like this hurt in a way she couldn’t explain and for the first time she had a feeling she knew just what Chris had gone through all those years ago at the Spencer Mansion. The thought was enough to make pause in her onslaught. Wesker slid into the opening, using her pause to grab her left arm and twist it behind her.
“I assure you that I had no intention of ending up in bed with you, Miss Redfield,” his voice cut through her thoughts and she winced as she began to struggle. “You need to stop before you hurt yourself,” Wesker ground out. Claire twisted her head so she could glare up at him.
“I’ll just heal,” she spat. “At least this virus is good for that. Fucked up everything else, but at least I get the satisfaction of knowing I can go toe-to-toe with you and win.” The brunette kicked out as she spoke the last, a sickening pop being heard as her shoulder popped out of place and her foot connected with his kneecap. He released her and let out a little huff of pain as he landed on the wrenched knee. Claire backed away from him, lifting her good hand to her shoulder which felt like it had been ripped clean away. They locked eyes as he used the wall to help him stay upright as his knee refused to take his weight.
“I would hardly call this winning,” the blond pointed out flatly. She narrowed her eyes at him before baring her teeth.
“It’s not losing either,” Claire told him just as coldly. They stood there looking at each other for a moment that seemed to stretch out forever. It was like those moments before, the ones were they stood on the brink of either violence or something else, though this time Claire had a feeling that the something else might be an actual option. He broke the eye contact first, reaching down to snap his dislocated knee back into place. She watched him warily as he approached her, looking up at him when he stopped in front of her. He gave no warning as he reached out and put her shoulder back in place in one of those speed blurring movements. The brunette let out a whimper of pain and he stiffened. His mind went back to the last time he had heard a similar sound from her. His entire being flooded with need, but without the scent of the apples, the pheromone short-circuiting his common sense, it was nothing more than a pale echo. It was something he could control and dismiss like the distraction it was.
“Wesker?” her voice cut through his train of thought. His grip was beginning to get painful and she could feel her heart rate picking up at the look in his eyes even if they were far away. She had seen that look, had it directed at her. Her blood sang with the memory, the sight of his eyes when he looked at her in the throes of passion-that perfect loss of control in a man so very controlled. She felt heat flood her body, the same heat he always seemed to inspire when he was this close. He let go of her, stepping back and to the left, and the memory shattered. She could almost hear the shards impacting on the sterile tile of the floor around them. She inhaled like a diver coming up for air.
“You’re pregnant,” the blonde said, the words tumbling out of his mouth to fill the tense silence and give them a direction other than the one they were currently on. Her head turned so fast she thought for a moment she had given herself whiplash, so that she could try to make eye contact with him.
“What?” her voice came out as a squeak and she had to swallow before she could continue. “How?” The last question got a lift of his eyebrow.
“Seeing how you acted yesterday,” Wesker said leaning against the counter to allow his healing knee to properly knit, “I would hardly think that I need to explain the mechanics of how.” Claire felt herself flush in a combination of embarrassment and indignation. That was not what she meant.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she was hardly going to let his attitude stand in the way of her getting answers especially about something like this. “I thought that the virus would’ve made that impossible.” She blinked as another thought occurred to her as well. While she had never had to deal with the stress of needing to know whether or not she was pregnant, she had friends who had. The most accurate tests she knew of needed at least three days before they gave definite results. “Not only that, but how would you even know? It’s been less than twenty-four hours!” The blond wondered at the ability of Redfield’s to give him headaches. No one else was as fast or efficient at it.
“Dear heart,” Wesker ignored the little growl she let out at the pet name. She would get over it. “Your body has a very delicate chemical balance to begin with in order to keep the acidity of your blood from destroying you from the inside out. I took blood after waking up in order to try to figure out exactly what happened on a micro level, and noticed that levels of certain other hormones were elevated. Your levels of estrogen and the presence of Beta Human Chorionic Gonadotropin are consistent with someone about a week to two weeks along. It seems that the virus has accelerated things.” He was hardly going to tell her that this was likely a measure taken by the virus to ensure that the baby spent as small amount of time in the hostile environment that was her body.
Claire gaped like a fish for a few seconds as she digested what he was saying. One hand went to her stomach. There was a life in there. A new life that was part her. The idea sent a flood of warmth through her, even if acknowledging that it was part her also meant she had to acknowledge it was part Wesker as well. She raised eyes she hadn’t realized she had lowered to look at him.
“You’re awfully quiet, Claire,” Wesker said wondering just what was going through her mind. “If the news is that distressing, there are other options.” Options he was hoping she would take. He had no interest in children and with the enemies the two of them had it would likely be best anyway. They were hardly in love or anything so sentimental that they might even contemplate such a thing. Claire’s hand tightened into a fist as she put it back down at her side.
“Are you suggesting what I think you are?” her voice was low and her eyes flashed silver in the harsh fluorescents. The tyrant folded his arms as his knee had finished healing and he no longer needed the support.
“It would be for the best,” he wondered vaguely why he was even bothering to give her a choice. He could just as easily not told her anything at all and drugged her. She would never have known the possibility of a child existed. Logically it made more sense than the route he had gone. So why was he doing this? Perhaps, a voice wormed its way into his head like poisonous smoke, you want to hear that she’ll keep it. On some demented level, maybe he wanted to know that she didn’t hate him so much that her first thought would be termination of the pregnancy.
“You cannot be seriously contemplating keeping it. We’re both carriers of the T-virus. The chances of the pregnancy making it to term are slim at best. Assuming it does, there is no telling how normal the child will be. Chances are good that rather than get a little boy or girl you would end up with some mutated creature that would kill you as soon as it got out of the womb. Even if it came out looking normal, it would still carry the virus in its blood. It would never be normal. That doesn’t even touch on what your friends and family would think or the number of enemies we have,” for a second Wesker was unsure who he was convincing. Logically, all his arguments stood up, but Claire had never been a creature of logic. If she was, she would’ve died a long time ago.
“It’s still a life,” she said one arm crossing protectively over her stomach. “All lives are precious. Not that you would understand that.” She walked towards him as she spoke, one hand reaching up for the ever present sunglasses. “You were never given that chance,” she knew her virus was in overdrive, desperate for some way to protect the life inside her and it was reaching out to him. Glimpses, flashes that were more emotions than anything coherent assaulted her. Her viral connection to him was not as strong because of the differences in their variations. “You were never allowed to be a child, to know the love of a mother’s arms, to be normal.” Her fingers closed around the frames of his glasses before his hand reached up and gripped her wrist. The pressure was such that she knew she would have a nasty bruise before it healed up.
“Stay out of my mind,” Wesker hissed practically throwing her to the side, all care for the child or her lost in his rage at the idea of what she could’ve found in there. His mind had always been the one thing that remained his own. Claire barely had a chance to start pushing herself up off the floor before he had one hand around her throat pinning her to the floor. Claire could feel panic set in as her air supply was shut off and all she could think about was the baby. Was he going to kill her? Had she finally reached the point that she was expendable? Would the poor thing’s life be over before it even began? Would he knock her out, kill the baby and then bring her back? He seemed cruel enough with what he was suggesting to do such a thing. The edges of her vision had started to go dark before he eased up enough for her to get some air in.
“Do that again, dear heart, and as fascinating a subject as you have been, I will kill you. Do I make myself clear?” She nodded frantically. He let go and stood up, ignoring her coughing fit. He desperately wanted to kill something, yet the very thing he wanted to kill was untouchable that way. The knowledge that even given provocation he couldn’t kill her fed into his rage and he knew that if he did not do something about it soon it was going to become more of a liability than it already was. He turned his back to her, the need to look away before he gave the thought away greater than the risk that she would take advantage of the fact.
“Since you’re so in to experiments,” Claire ground out, her voice rough from the abuse to her windpipe as she pushed herself up, “how about I propose one?” Wesker stopped walking away from her, the only sign that he had heard anything. “You’re so bound and determined to eliminate anything that has the possibility to harm you, you can’t see the merit of letting this child live. This child is as much you as it is me. Haven’t you ever wondered how you ended up the way you did? If you were born this cold or if it was something learned? Why not let it live and see? I can give it everything you never had.” He looked over his shoulder at her, the shades sliding down his nose so that she saw the flame he had for eyes.
“You have no idea what you are talking about, dear heart,” his voice was cold and she couldn’t suppress the shiver as it travelled down her spine. The voice, the look he was giving her, it was like she was back in Antarctica all over again. It was like he had shoved the small part of him that was still human, the part she was realizing that he brought out when she was around, back into whatever box he normally hid it in. Looking at him in that second, her heart broke for him. It seemed that, while it wasn’t love, over the time she had spent with him she come to care for him-not the ruthless tyrant who saw the world as his plaything, but the man who bled, who cooked pasta in the kitchen upstairs, and put her to bed without waking her. She broke eye contact first.
“Wesker, please,” she looked at the floor, unaware of the tears that ran down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure what she was pleading for now. The child, yes, but there were other things in there. She didn’t want him to look at her like that. She wanted to fix him, to take away everything that made him into the cold killing machine looking at her. I am who I am, Claire, his words echoed through her mind and she would give anything in that second to change just who he was-to make him into the man he could’ve been if Umbrella never existed.
He looked at her, lying almost broken on the floor of the autopsy room nearly spent from her emotional upheavals. His hands formed fists at the scene. Looking at her all he could feel, all he allowed himself to feel, was anger. He was angry at this woman. Who was she to come into his life and make him feel anything other than anger at the world and joy in the death of others? Who was she to plead with him over the life of something that might not even be human? Who was she to demand his affection in such a way? Not that he felt any such thing. Not that he cared about the fact she was likely stressing herself out too much and would likely abort naturally. Actually, he should be encouraging her to do so. So, then why was he just standing there looking at her? He tore his eyes from her form and he began walking again, ignoring the wailing sob that tore out of her throat. Or at least he tried.
“If it becomes a choice between you and the fetus, you are more valuable,” Wesker said with a growl before walking out of the room. Claire stared after him in shock, one hand coming up to wipe her nose. Part of her was convinced that she had misheard him, but the greater part knew that wasn’t so. Warmth exploded in her chest as she looked down at her stomach. She was going to be a mommy. A small smile lit her face even as she thought about everything that was stacked against her. It had been a dream for her since childhood to be a mother. This may not have been the way she had envisioned it, but she was no less thankful for the chance.
“Thank you,” she whispered softly as she closed her eyes to gather her strength to go back upstairs and get something to eat. She was eating for two now.
Fandom: Resident Evil
Genre: Horror, Romance, Action
Pairings: Wesker/Claire (main), Chris/Jill
Rating: M
Warnings: Sexual situations, blood, guts and gore, and a little bit of high school level biology.
Summary: Claire never thought that the poison from Antarctica would come back to haunt her. She never realized what it and its antidote were slowly doing to her body. Now she finds herself in the hands of a man she considers the devil himself wondering if she can ever be normal again.
Claire opened her eyes and groaned. Everything was sore. Hell, she was willing to bet that if she could pinpoint her finger nails in the mass of soreness they would be sore too. She closed her eyes against the harsh light from the overhead fluorescents and just laid there for second trying to figure out what she had done to warrant this kind of protest from her body. A memory came to surface, hazy like she was drunk on something at the time, but she could not remember drinking since the night before in Phoenix. She bolted upright seconds later as the content of the memory took shape.
A hand in her hair turning her head to expose her throat, that unique full feeling that only having a man in the most intimate of ways brought her, flesh under her fingers. Harsh breathing filled her ears as she felt herself reaching that distant peak.
And she shoved the memory back down. Holy shit. Her mind kept looping those two words over and over, and at some point she had starting shaking. What the hell had happened? The last thing she could remember without that haze was showering after having a close encounter with Wesker. Maybe this was all a dream? Maybe she had passed out after her shower, she had been feverish, and this was some kind of demented fever dream? She looked down at her body then, one trembling hand running over her unblemished skin. That was until her hand came to the juncture of shoulder and neck.
She was riding that rush of climax, barely aware of what was going on around her when she felt him come-his teeth sinking into the flesh of her neck marking her and she felt another orgasm force itself along fried nerve endings.
She ripped her hand off her neck like she had burnt herself. Her breathing went erratic at the physical proof of her dream. Her first thought was that she felt dirty, like she would never be clean again. What had she done? She stood from the cot her hands flying as she tied the thin sheet around herself. It didn’t matter that no one would be able to see her as she made her way through the hallways and back to the bathroom where she could try to get clean again, she felt like there were thousands of eyes on her and they were all judging her. Even if she wasn’t sure what had happened. She made her way through the hallways looking more like a harried animal than a woman.
Wesker watched as she made her way through the hallways on the monitors in the control room. He had woken up in a state that was hardly better, mostly due to the fact that his mind had not tried to block the memories out. He had thrown HUNK out of the room the second he had walked in, barely even noticed the shut-down of his rational mind in the smell of apples. He’d come to a few hours later, naked and spent with her curled into his side. It had been…Interesting. There had been no desire to move from the position at all. Just a sense of it being right and perfect. It left him utterly and completely confused. In all his sexual conquests, he had never had that particular joy before. The formula had been sex and then getting the woman out of his bed as fast as possible. No post-coital cuddling and definitely no sleeping in her presence. The loss of consciousness was a sign of weakness that he could never afford to display. He expected to be enraged at the fact that he had fallen asleep in her presence regardless of the circumstances. Instead, he had just been mildly confused at the lack of rage and the fact that he had the sudden urge to brush her hair out of her face.
Wesker leaned back in his chair as his eyes flicked to another monitor. It displayed a view of the men’s bathroom on this floor and its current occupant. The man known as HUNK paced up and down the space between the urinals and the stalls. The Red Queen had managed to keep him from leaving the lab as soon as the pheromone had worked its way out of his system. The rage the sight of man inspired had little to do with Birkin at the moment and more to do with his own mistake. Granted, the circumstances that had involved him and Claire getting into bed where not those he would normally condone, she was his now. A print out sitting in the printer shelf it had come out of proved it along with just why her body had reacted the way it had. He was, in an uncharacteristic moment of charity, giving her a chance to put herself together before he delivered the news.
He leaned back in the chair, a grimace on his face. He knew there was more to it than a moment of charity. He still hadn’t decided what he was going to do. Logic screamed at him to kill them both. They would be nothing more than liabilities, pawns that his enemies could attempt to use against him. The resources that would be required to assure their safety were not acceptable spendatures under any circumstances. He knew he should’ve walked down there and killed her the second he had gotten the results back. But he had been unable to do it, to raise a hand against her with such intent. When had that started? And why had he not noticed it? Tolerating her presence he could excuse as nothing more than one getting used to a constant pest. But the inability to be rid of her when circumstances practically demanded it? That he could not excuse. He refused to change his plans, his designs. He had spent years setting things into motion. Which left him back at the beginning with no answers and no rational explanations.
Claire felt better the second that she was clothed again, though her choice in clothing was not her normal style. Every inch of her she could cover she had. The anxiety and disgust were still present as she had been confronted with more evidence of just what she had done while unconscious. But something else had come with each piece of confirmation: anger. She had been unconscious, completely unaware of what was going on. Wesker had no such excuse. And what about the man she remembered from that odd dream? The brunette had been in such a hurry that she had not bothered to check the other bed in the infirmary. Pulling her hair up in a ponytail, she narrowed her eyes. She was not going to hide herself under a rock because of this. She was Claire Redfield. She had faced down hordes of the undead, taken on multi-international companies, and brought low crazy scientists and corrupt governments. Albert Wesker was hardly the scariest thing she had ever faced, and he deserved her wrath for this. She was going to go downstairs and beat Wesker within an inch of his life.
Wesker watched as numbers representing chemical reactions and their results scrolled by on the monitor in the autopsy room. He may have been out for hours because of what had happened, but the good news was that a majority of what he needed to do in order to concoct the serum for Claire were things that the Red Queen could do without him there. He was already in possession of the first testable sample of the suppressant. The theory he was working with was some way for her to cheat the test that they had developed for infection. She was lucky that her appearance had not changed as dramatically as his had. Unless angered or forced to make use of the attributes that the virus had given her, she looked just like she had before infection.
There was a soft ding to let him know that the computer was done calculating things and a panel slid back to reveal a vial of light yellow liquid. He picked it up and swirled it, watching as it stuck to the sides slightly from its thickness. He pulled the sterile film off a new syringe before plunging it through the rubber top made for that purpose. He noted how hard it was to extract the serum and wondered if he was going to have to dilute it before giving it to Claire in order to lessen injection sight pain. He frowned before jabbing the syringe forcibly into the corpse of the solider from the day before. He should not be concerned with whether or not the injection would be painful. He was doing this purely because he needed to know if he could not to try to make it so she could go back to her life from before.
His eyes narrowed behind mirror tint as he tossed the disposable needle into the biohazard box for that purpose. There was a swish as the airtight door opened and the scent of cinnamon and sugar assaulted him. Thankfully, the scent of apples was gone. He had a feeling he would never look at them the same again. The tyrant barely had time to put the delicate vial of the potential suppressant on the counter before he was dodging her fist. He used his momentum to move away from both the body on the slab and the counter, watching her the entire time. Her eyes were almost pure silver from the rage. While this was not the reaction he had hoped she would have, this was one he had planned for. He couldn’t harm her for fear of upsetting the very delicate balance her body was maintaining in order to keep everything stable, but it was clear that she had every intent of harming him, putting him at a handicap.
“Dear heart,” he began blocking a kick aimed for his head. He had to make her see reason before she harmed herself or him for that matter.
“Don’t ‘dear heart’ me,” Claire snarled as she watched him move around like an eel. She was angry when she had walked in, figuring she would wail on him until she felt better knowing that he could take it, but the anger was rising to rage as he managed to stay just out of reach. “You pervert! I have no idea what the hell you did, but taking advantage of me in that way is a low that I never thought you would stoop to.” The sad part was she meant that. For whatever twisted reason, she had felt almost safe with him and had since the whole thing began. Being violated like this hurt in a way she couldn’t explain and for the first time she had a feeling she knew just what Chris had gone through all those years ago at the Spencer Mansion. The thought was enough to make pause in her onslaught. Wesker slid into the opening, using her pause to grab her left arm and twist it behind her.
“I assure you that I had no intention of ending up in bed with you, Miss Redfield,” his voice cut through her thoughts and she winced as she began to struggle. “You need to stop before you hurt yourself,” Wesker ground out. Claire twisted her head so she could glare up at him.
“I’ll just heal,” she spat. “At least this virus is good for that. Fucked up everything else, but at least I get the satisfaction of knowing I can go toe-to-toe with you and win.” The brunette kicked out as she spoke the last, a sickening pop being heard as her shoulder popped out of place and her foot connected with his kneecap. He released her and let out a little huff of pain as he landed on the wrenched knee. Claire backed away from him, lifting her good hand to her shoulder which felt like it had been ripped clean away. They locked eyes as he used the wall to help him stay upright as his knee refused to take his weight.
“I would hardly call this winning,” the blond pointed out flatly. She narrowed her eyes at him before baring her teeth.
“It’s not losing either,” Claire told him just as coldly. They stood there looking at each other for a moment that seemed to stretch out forever. It was like those moments before, the ones were they stood on the brink of either violence or something else, though this time Claire had a feeling that the something else might be an actual option. He broke the eye contact first, reaching down to snap his dislocated knee back into place. She watched him warily as he approached her, looking up at him when he stopped in front of her. He gave no warning as he reached out and put her shoulder back in place in one of those speed blurring movements. The brunette let out a whimper of pain and he stiffened. His mind went back to the last time he had heard a similar sound from her. His entire being flooded with need, but without the scent of the apples, the pheromone short-circuiting his common sense, it was nothing more than a pale echo. It was something he could control and dismiss like the distraction it was.
“Wesker?” her voice cut through his train of thought. His grip was beginning to get painful and she could feel her heart rate picking up at the look in his eyes even if they were far away. She had seen that look, had it directed at her. Her blood sang with the memory, the sight of his eyes when he looked at her in the throes of passion-that perfect loss of control in a man so very controlled. She felt heat flood her body, the same heat he always seemed to inspire when he was this close. He let go of her, stepping back and to the left, and the memory shattered. She could almost hear the shards impacting on the sterile tile of the floor around them. She inhaled like a diver coming up for air.
“You’re pregnant,” the blonde said, the words tumbling out of his mouth to fill the tense silence and give them a direction other than the one they were currently on. Her head turned so fast she thought for a moment she had given herself whiplash, so that she could try to make eye contact with him.
“What?” her voice came out as a squeak and she had to swallow before she could continue. “How?” The last question got a lift of his eyebrow.
“Seeing how you acted yesterday,” Wesker said leaning against the counter to allow his healing knee to properly knit, “I would hardly think that I need to explain the mechanics of how.” Claire felt herself flush in a combination of embarrassment and indignation. That was not what she meant.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she was hardly going to let his attitude stand in the way of her getting answers especially about something like this. “I thought that the virus would’ve made that impossible.” She blinked as another thought occurred to her as well. While she had never had to deal with the stress of needing to know whether or not she was pregnant, she had friends who had. The most accurate tests she knew of needed at least three days before they gave definite results. “Not only that, but how would you even know? It’s been less than twenty-four hours!” The blond wondered at the ability of Redfield’s to give him headaches. No one else was as fast or efficient at it.
“Dear heart,” Wesker ignored the little growl she let out at the pet name. She would get over it. “Your body has a very delicate chemical balance to begin with in order to keep the acidity of your blood from destroying you from the inside out. I took blood after waking up in order to try to figure out exactly what happened on a micro level, and noticed that levels of certain other hormones were elevated. Your levels of estrogen and the presence of Beta Human Chorionic Gonadotropin are consistent with someone about a week to two weeks along. It seems that the virus has accelerated things.” He was hardly going to tell her that this was likely a measure taken by the virus to ensure that the baby spent as small amount of time in the hostile environment that was her body.
Claire gaped like a fish for a few seconds as she digested what he was saying. One hand went to her stomach. There was a life in there. A new life that was part her. The idea sent a flood of warmth through her, even if acknowledging that it was part her also meant she had to acknowledge it was part Wesker as well. She raised eyes she hadn’t realized she had lowered to look at him.
“You’re awfully quiet, Claire,” Wesker said wondering just what was going through her mind. “If the news is that distressing, there are other options.” Options he was hoping she would take. He had no interest in children and with the enemies the two of them had it would likely be best anyway. They were hardly in love or anything so sentimental that they might even contemplate such a thing. Claire’s hand tightened into a fist as she put it back down at her side.
“Are you suggesting what I think you are?” her voice was low and her eyes flashed silver in the harsh fluorescents. The tyrant folded his arms as his knee had finished healing and he no longer needed the support.
“It would be for the best,” he wondered vaguely why he was even bothering to give her a choice. He could just as easily not told her anything at all and drugged her. She would never have known the possibility of a child existed. Logically it made more sense than the route he had gone. So why was he doing this? Perhaps, a voice wormed its way into his head like poisonous smoke, you want to hear that she’ll keep it. On some demented level, maybe he wanted to know that she didn’t hate him so much that her first thought would be termination of the pregnancy.
“You cannot be seriously contemplating keeping it. We’re both carriers of the T-virus. The chances of the pregnancy making it to term are slim at best. Assuming it does, there is no telling how normal the child will be. Chances are good that rather than get a little boy or girl you would end up with some mutated creature that would kill you as soon as it got out of the womb. Even if it came out looking normal, it would still carry the virus in its blood. It would never be normal. That doesn’t even touch on what your friends and family would think or the number of enemies we have,” for a second Wesker was unsure who he was convincing. Logically, all his arguments stood up, but Claire had never been a creature of logic. If she was, she would’ve died a long time ago.
“It’s still a life,” she said one arm crossing protectively over her stomach. “All lives are precious. Not that you would understand that.” She walked towards him as she spoke, one hand reaching up for the ever present sunglasses. “You were never given that chance,” she knew her virus was in overdrive, desperate for some way to protect the life inside her and it was reaching out to him. Glimpses, flashes that were more emotions than anything coherent assaulted her. Her viral connection to him was not as strong because of the differences in their variations. “You were never allowed to be a child, to know the love of a mother’s arms, to be normal.” Her fingers closed around the frames of his glasses before his hand reached up and gripped her wrist. The pressure was such that she knew she would have a nasty bruise before it healed up.
“Stay out of my mind,” Wesker hissed practically throwing her to the side, all care for the child or her lost in his rage at the idea of what she could’ve found in there. His mind had always been the one thing that remained his own. Claire barely had a chance to start pushing herself up off the floor before he had one hand around her throat pinning her to the floor. Claire could feel panic set in as her air supply was shut off and all she could think about was the baby. Was he going to kill her? Had she finally reached the point that she was expendable? Would the poor thing’s life be over before it even began? Would he knock her out, kill the baby and then bring her back? He seemed cruel enough with what he was suggesting to do such a thing. The edges of her vision had started to go dark before he eased up enough for her to get some air in.
“Do that again, dear heart, and as fascinating a subject as you have been, I will kill you. Do I make myself clear?” She nodded frantically. He let go and stood up, ignoring her coughing fit. He desperately wanted to kill something, yet the very thing he wanted to kill was untouchable that way. The knowledge that even given provocation he couldn’t kill her fed into his rage and he knew that if he did not do something about it soon it was going to become more of a liability than it already was. He turned his back to her, the need to look away before he gave the thought away greater than the risk that she would take advantage of the fact.
“Since you’re so in to experiments,” Claire ground out, her voice rough from the abuse to her windpipe as she pushed herself up, “how about I propose one?” Wesker stopped walking away from her, the only sign that he had heard anything. “You’re so bound and determined to eliminate anything that has the possibility to harm you, you can’t see the merit of letting this child live. This child is as much you as it is me. Haven’t you ever wondered how you ended up the way you did? If you were born this cold or if it was something learned? Why not let it live and see? I can give it everything you never had.” He looked over his shoulder at her, the shades sliding down his nose so that she saw the flame he had for eyes.
“You have no idea what you are talking about, dear heart,” his voice was cold and she couldn’t suppress the shiver as it travelled down her spine. The voice, the look he was giving her, it was like she was back in Antarctica all over again. It was like he had shoved the small part of him that was still human, the part she was realizing that he brought out when she was around, back into whatever box he normally hid it in. Looking at him in that second, her heart broke for him. It seemed that, while it wasn’t love, over the time she had spent with him she come to care for him-not the ruthless tyrant who saw the world as his plaything, but the man who bled, who cooked pasta in the kitchen upstairs, and put her to bed without waking her. She broke eye contact first.
“Wesker, please,” she looked at the floor, unaware of the tears that ran down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure what she was pleading for now. The child, yes, but there were other things in there. She didn’t want him to look at her like that. She wanted to fix him, to take away everything that made him into the cold killing machine looking at her. I am who I am, Claire, his words echoed through her mind and she would give anything in that second to change just who he was-to make him into the man he could’ve been if Umbrella never existed.
He looked at her, lying almost broken on the floor of the autopsy room nearly spent from her emotional upheavals. His hands formed fists at the scene. Looking at her all he could feel, all he allowed himself to feel, was anger. He was angry at this woman. Who was she to come into his life and make him feel anything other than anger at the world and joy in the death of others? Who was she to plead with him over the life of something that might not even be human? Who was she to demand his affection in such a way? Not that he felt any such thing. Not that he cared about the fact she was likely stressing herself out too much and would likely abort naturally. Actually, he should be encouraging her to do so. So, then why was he just standing there looking at her? He tore his eyes from her form and he began walking again, ignoring the wailing sob that tore out of her throat. Or at least he tried.
“If it becomes a choice between you and the fetus, you are more valuable,” Wesker said with a growl before walking out of the room. Claire stared after him in shock, one hand coming up to wipe her nose. Part of her was convinced that she had misheard him, but the greater part knew that wasn’t so. Warmth exploded in her chest as she looked down at her stomach. She was going to be a mommy. A small smile lit her face even as she thought about everything that was stacked against her. It had been a dream for her since childhood to be a mother. This may not have been the way she had envisioned it, but she was no less thankful for the chance.
“Thank you,” she whispered softly as she closed her eyes to gather her strength to go back upstairs and get something to eat. She was eating for two now.