All good things come to an end.

[resident_alice]

Things were going well for Alice, all things considered. She had a home - albeit one with a leaky roof - some friends, or at least people who didn't want to kill her on sight, and a life. It was an unusual feeling, not having to run all the time, being able to stay in one place without fear of being hunted down by Umbrella or the undead. She hadn't

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[waydowndark]

Beth stares.

She's sitting on her bike, halfway down the rocky hill and she's staring at Alice. She's staring at Alice, who reminds her of Becca, and Alice is holding a body, and all that Beth can see is Becca, and Becca died in the dark on her own.

Beth isn't aware, not really, of dropping her bike and skidding down the slope, half on her arse, half on her palms and heels.

Oh, Jesus.

"Alice? Alice, love?"

[resident_alice]

Alice clutched the body tight to her chest, protectively, and she looked up through tear-blurred eyes, not sure who she expected to see. Umbrella soldiers or scientists, maybe, because it could only be them who'd put her here, who'd put the body here.

"Stay back!" she said roughly, her voice grating on the sobs still in her throat. She swallowed them back, holding tight to the dead woman in her arms. She was still warm, and the blood soaking into her shirt from her wounds was hot and sticky and familiar. Alice remembered dying much like this, once, only to wake up in an Umbrella lab for the second time. For the last time.

Not again. She wouldn't let Umbrella get her hands on her this time. On them.

[waydowndark]

Beth stops, standing with her hands hanging loosely at her sides, scuffed knees and elbows from riding her bike.

"Sweetheart, it's alright. It's me. Beth. I'm not gonna hurt you."

[resident_alice]

"Beth?" Alice repeated. Her mouth felt numb and she could taste blood. It was hers, but not hers...

"God, Beth, they killed me," she said, and she loosened her grip on the body a little, so that the head lolled back and the bright blue eyes stared, unseeing, at the sky. "They killed me and then they made another and they killed me again, and they kept killing me..." She still didn't know why. Didn't want to know why. Wanted it to stop. Didn't want it to be here, to start all over again...

[waydowndark]

Beth closes her eyes for a second, and takes a deep breath and then she opens her eyes and looks up at the blue, blue sky, and takes another, and then she feels ready to take a step towards Alice, and another, until she's at her side.

"This shit happens here, sweetheart. It's their idea of...a cosmic joke. It's not going to start again. It's not."

She has to believe that. She has to believe it for her and Sarah.

[resident_alice]

"Yeah, it is." Alice felt an odd calm knowing what was coming. It was just a matter of when. But..."It already has."

She was covered in blood. It was on her hands, her shirt, her pants, smeared on her neck. But she didn't want to let go of the body. She didn't want to let it out of her sight, because who knew what could happen then, what sick experiment Umbrella was doing? She thought of the super undead and shuddered. That was probably next.

"I thought we were safe," she muttered, looking down at the body, her body, brushing hair from her face with bloodied fingers.

[waydowndark]

Beth remembers Halloween. She remembers Sarah, and she remembers it, and she remembers falling. She remembers all that, but she also remembers that Sarah traced it all away.

Unconciously, she reaches out and brushes Alice's hair back, away from all the blood.

"Nowhere's safe," she whispers.

[resident_alice]

"No, it isn't," Alice whispered, and she shook her head. It was all so crazy, so unbelievable, and to think she'd actually thought for one second that everything might be okay...

Alice threw her head back and started to laugh, a hysterical, end-of-the-world type of laugh. Months ago she wouldn't have lost it like this, but months ago she hadn't been on a tropical island paradise with no T-virus, no Umbrella, and no clones. Well...now she had one out of the three.

[waydowndark]

Beth feels her stomach lurch. If she didn't see Becca when she looked at Alice, this would be easier. She fucking loved Becca, but not well enough, and Becca died somewhere under the earth.

There's a tone of voice that teachers have, and, right now, it's all that Beth has. She reaches out, her fingers curling against the side of Alice's neck, her arm stretched over the body.

"Alice."

[resident_alice]

"What?" She snapped out of it fast, so fast she was glaring at Beth in an instant, her eyes bright with tears and something else. Anger. Not just anger, fury. Few people had seen Alice look like that and lived to tell the tale.

"What, huh? Are you gonna tell me everything's gonna be okay? You gonna tell me this is just some kind of joke? Like the crossbow, a present? Gonna tell me it won't happen again like it did before, because it's already happening, if it wasn't already happening she wouldn't be here, I wouldn't..." She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm down. But she couldn't. Her heart was thundering in her chest, as if in direct contrast to the identical one lying so close at hand, dead and cold, no longer pumping blood through the veins of the body lying in her arms.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asked, not precisely talking to Beth or anyone else.

[waydowndark]

Beth had seen terrifying things. Beth had seen worse things that Alice, and she didn't flinch. She didn't flinch because of the tears, because that much, at least, made Alice human, and if Beth wasn't scared of Sarah now, then she wasn't scared of Alice either.

She stays.

"I got a camera. I got a camera that showed my friends being eaten. I got a camera that showed me the things that happened in those fucking caves. I'm not going to tell you that everything's going to be okay. We're too broken for everything to fucking be okay, okay? We're too fucking broken for that, but we got our second chance and we have to do our fucking best with it, otherwise, what's the fucking point?"

She looks down, at the body in her arms.

"You bury her, or you burn her. You do whatever it takes."

[resident_alice]

Alice looked up at Beth, her eyes frighteningly blank, mirroring the eyes of the girl lying dead in her arms.

"I really thought..." she began, past tears, past anger, past anything. "I thought everything was gonna be okay." She sounded resigned more than anything else.

But she hadn't given up. Not yet. Giving up would be lying down next to her own body and shooting herself in the head, and her gun was lying forgotten in the grass next to her. She wasn't about to pick it up.

[waydowndark]

"We're not done, yet," says Beth, fierce, and shaking her head, tears starting in her own eyes. "We're not done. We're here for a reason, love. All of us. One day, we're gonna figure it out, but, until then, we have to muddle through. All of us. Together."

Her thumb moves against the side of Alice's neck.

[resident_alice]

"Are we?" she whispered, and she reached out and slid the dead woman's eyelids down over her blank, staring eyes. She felt there was some sort of accusation in her gaze and she couldn't stand looking at it any more. Because it was her fault she was dead, her fault she existed in the first place...

How many had suffered like this? She hadn't been able to count all the bodies in the ditch. All the pieces.

"I never wanted this."

[waydowndark]

Beth doesn't know what she can do, except sit there, her thumb moving in little, soothing gestures against Alice's skin.

"What can I do?"

[resident_alice]

"Do? Nothing. It's my body," said Alice dully. "I'll...I'll figure something out." The IPD would ask her questions if they found out, the doctors would want to do an autopsy. Alice didn't want that. She knew what had happened, what had killed her, and she just wanted it to be over. But she had a feeling that it was all just beginning. Again.