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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[mythofcain]

Jason isn't sure of what he sees at first, and then, in a moment of startling clarity, he is.

He isn't sure what disturbs him more - the Alice lookalike she's holding, or Alice herself, someone similar to Jason himself in more ways than one, brought to...well, to this.

"Alice," he says, stopping a few feet away, and even though he's not sure he's been hard, Jason doesn't repeat himself.

[resident_alice]

It wasn't just a lookalike, and that was the problem.

The body was still warm, the life and the blood still leaking away slowly, soaking into Alice's hands and clothes, but she didn't care. It was her life, her blood, after all.

She scarcely noticed the voice calling her name, and when she did, she looked up, her vision blurry from crying, breathing through her mouth to keep from smelling the sickly-sweet scent of blood. It took her a second to recognize the man, a second to realize he wasn't Umbrella, but even when she did she didn't relax, didn't relinquish her hold on the body.

"David?"

[mythofcain]

"Yeah," Jason replies, and he takes a few slow steps toward her. "It's me."

Comfort is still something so far from Bourne that it's still just a word to Jason, even after two years with Marie. (And sometimes, he thinks any progress he's made just collapsed after Marie died.)

Still, Jason approaches Alice with some measure of calm, and crouches in front of her and the...body.

[resident_alice]

"I just...found her," she whispered, following his gaze, staring into her own blank, dead eyes. "I found her here, dead, like the others. That's what they did to me. One of the things. They made copies and they killed them, killed me, over and over..." She gulped back a sob, but couldn't stop the tears from slipping down her cheeks, so she ignored them. Ignored them and held the - her - body, tight.

"I don't know why this is happening." Again.

She'd been close, before, to finding out why, and then she had ended up here without answers. Now she had even more questions...and a dead body. Her dead body.

[mythofcain]

Jason's mouth tightens when Alice keeps talking, and while he can't quite account for his own humanity, there are still some things that grate at him, that bruise his newly refound conscience more than others.

"Nobody does," he answers, and the words feel about as hollow as they sound. Jason knows what to say to the daughter of his first assignment. He doesn't know what to say to someone who's seen clones of themself die over and over.

Reaching out hesitantly, he puts a hand on Alice's arm. "You're getting blood all over you."

[resident_alice]

"It doesn't matter," Alice said faintly, shaking her head. "It's my blood." Flashes, now, of memory - the helicopter getting hit by the blast wave, the spinning, the metal bar heading towards Angie and passing through her instead. The next thing she knew, she'd woken up in an Umbrella lab. Again.

But this was different. This Alice may have woken up in a lab, too, but it was a different sort. She'd never even gotten out.

She wondered if she'd remembered her name.

Alice noticed something out of the corner of her eye - a gleam of gold. She lifted the corpse's hand to examine it: a wedding ring. Sucking in a sobbing breath, Alice slid the ring from her clone's finger and onto hers, still slick with blood, and shuddered.