( DIRECTORY . ) ( PROMPTS. ) ( BLOGROLL. )

it's one of those rare nights where jill gets out, experiences something that isn't four walls and unhealthy coping mechanisms. it's been difficult to do exactly that ever since she'd come back from kijuju, and in the months that followed — but chris being chris, had managed to bring her out here.

lights sparkled and danced through the city on the horizon, reminiscent of the tens of thousands of lives that continued on at this exact moment, the clubs still operating and cars making their way through crowded streets, leaving them in the faint shine that barely pierced the darkness. it was far quieter than she was used to, with only the occasional sound of tires screeching past on gravel, and it unsettled her.

muscles tensed as chris moved closer, and relaxed when he spoke. she'd never been able to hide much from him, if at all — scratch that, she could, but he'd eventually call her on it. she turned her thoughts over in her head for several long moments, allowing herself to let out a long exhale when silence returned. it was a nice sentiment, she could suppose, that chris was willing enough to talk, share the burden, as he would say, but there were some things that jill would forever carry alone. this was one of them.

his hand weighed down her shoulder, catching valentine's attention as she turned her head to look at the man sitting next to her. the agent considered shoving it off, or moving away — but ultimately let it stay. keen blue studied his gaze, the concern etched into every crevice of his expression, before they drifted back to the expanse below them.

“ it's over now. ” her voice was the next to cut through the silence, a response to encouragement she didn't entirely believe in. a part of jill had died the second she went down that cliff, someone she'd never recover left underneath weathered stone and the salty spray of the sea. “ i can't keep wasting time thinking about this shit. ”

pep talks and motivational speeches aren't exactly the major's style. jill would know — she's spent years as one of his closest friends and fellow soldiers, and she can clearly remember that his usual methods involve a lot of exercise and training over and over until everyone collapsed.

a gaze drifted over to him as he took a seat beside her, rickety bar chair creaking while the man settled. jill followed her sigh with a roll of her eyes, turning them back to the beer she'd been nursing half the night — she wasn't interested in hearing the same quote regurgitated and spread from a hundred different people if she could help it. always "stop and face your shit", or " tell me everything that makes you tick", or any fucking manner of the same sentiment. this was all her shit to deal with, and she didn't exactly intend on entertaining company along the way.

jill knocked the beer back after a second or two, refusing to make eye contact with him again. instead, she focused on the sign behind the bartender, advertising some sort of concert gig that was about to roll through the area in the next two months — some underground rock group she'd never heard the name of. she wiped her mouth of the bitter alcohol when she was done, keeping a hand on the bottle.

“ no thanks. i'm fine now. ”

jill had held off on coming for months, but the tugging of curiosity had finally got to her and she'd driven hours to see the site of her grave. nothing impressive, just a headstone and soil already becoming reclaimed by growth without hiding a body underneath. the engraved name was weathered now, taken by the elements and beaten by the wind until the sharp edges rounded and small fragments began to crack, years firmly dated underneath.

she can't help but feel like a ghost haunting the living. it's hard not to, when the date of her death stared right at her and she was standing in the midst of an old cemetery, rain pouring down and soaking both hair and clothing alike. strands of dyed brown stick to her skin, arms drawn close to herself as the agent stared at the headstone, ornamented only by a shining quarter balanced precariously at the height of the curve. an old military tradition — she was there, when the woman died, and she hasn't quite returned.

jill doesn't startle when footsteps approach. she doesn't even turn her head — at least, not yet — instead thinking back to the coat in her car and the urge to leave this place. a heavy air weighed down the faint breeze that echoed through this graveyard, the start of dusk light filtering through the horizon stretching across the sky.

there's an unexplainable feeling that enters one's bones when someone's staring down their grave, already sealed with upturned soil and lightly maintained. the etched letters almost seem to taunt her with their claims of certainty, some alternate timeline where it was in fact her body that lay six feet under that concrete tombstone, where she didn't stand in front of it as a spectre with the priest standing only a few feet away. she turned her body only slightly, enough to acknowledge his offer as she kept her arms crossed in a bid to both keep warm and dry — and metaphorically closing off.

“ i'm fine. don't worry about me. ”

what jill needed right now was a drink, not more probing questions into a past long since left behind. the news cycle came and went, effectively erasing the collective memory of the town that was once raccoon city after a few months worth of hollow words and empty sentiments, so it comes to her as a mild surprise that christine chose this as their introductory subject of conversation. valentine wouldn't exactly have decided on the scientist's wording herself — marvel was misleading and applicable only to the side which had created it. she didn't think of it much more than a fucking nightmare to deal with, some living embodiment of death that was so goddamn hard to kill, refusing to stay dead and something that would never leave its pursuit.

that is, until she put a million-volt bullet through its head.

it had been a significant development in bioweaponry at the time, so she supposed that could be granted. even still, it was a twisted corruption of what humanity was, created by people who saw it as nothing as profit and a ways to deal business in lethality, drawing blood money from combat and horrific actions undertaken through clandestine operations. there was no way in hell jill would ever allow something like nemesis to ever fall into anyone's hands ever again — if a simple virus dealt that much damage, mass produced tyrants would do nothing but complete carnage. it was a thought she hoped would never come to pass, but the world at large remained unpredictable, with greed driving the core.

“ i don't need thanks. ” the response comes sharp, leaving no room for argument. an exhale emphasises the last two words, carefully filtering out the exhaustion and time spent constructing her reply. she's still not so sure if christine is trustworthy, with good intention at heart — the idea of a new organization taking on the name of the group that started it all still unnerves her, and there's no real telling if they meant their new purpose, or hid something deeper underneath it all. keen blue flickered towards the scientist for a moment, before darting away and back towards the city sprawled out before the balcony she leaned on. “ i just did what i had to. ”

omg this is so sweet<3 right back at you!!

the calm before the storm is what runs through her veins now, white-hot and burning with violence. it takes everything in her not to lash out immediately — even if she could envision the press of a trigger, bullet sent tearing through the air and cleaving that bastard's black heart in two, she had to keep herself composed. recklessness killed just as quickly as hubris, and it was arrogance that would led to the rightly deserved fall of the man before her.

she will kill him where he stands now, anger simmered and simmered and simmered until it was ready to boil over, the heavy steel in her grip weighed down her hands as she considered when to make that decision. there's blood on both their hands, she has killed and he has killed and gore stains spiralling fingerprints until nothing was left but the dust from whence they came. the only indicator of her internal thoughts came in the slight twitch of her lips.

wesker's own weapon remained level, a stalemate in action. whoever shot first would die, and so would the other — for all albert claims of godhood, he still bled the same as she, and jill was more than happy to prove it. her pulse raced in her ears as she drew a long breath, studying his form with index firmly rested on the trigger.

“ do you have any idea what your fucking ideas would do? ”

a scoff escaped her lips as she brazenly took a single step forward, balancing on her heel while she stopped in place. conviction circled around them both, for different reasons, but it was determination all the same.

“ I'm finishing this. ”