〚 ❣ 〛 “You’re definitely not a Maggie or a Meg, so it’s a deal.” He can’t help but want to reach out for her hand, to touch her arm, something to comfort her, but he’s still wary, both for his life and for her apparent want to not be touched. He thinks he gets it, even if he hasn’t been through what her scars imply she’s been through; she’s been traumatized, hurt beyond reason, can’t even remember everything that’s happened to her. Last time she’d been touched, it was probably in whatever experiments had been done to her.
So he keeps his hands close and listens as she tries to work through her thoughts, and fuck he feels for her. She’d been so angry and dangerous before, and now she’s vulnerable and crying, and he doesn’t know how to help or what to do. Doesn’t know if she even wants his help, or if she’d just as soon kill him for seeing her like this.
“You don’t have to try to remember if you don’t want to,” he says softly, but he knows it isn’t easy to forget, not when it’s something so defining, so painful. It isn’t really the same, but the betrayal by his commander still resonates with him, makes him wonder sometimes who he can trust, if he even really should. “We’ve been fighting Umbrella for a while, so unless there’s another hidden team of bioweapon engineers, I’m guessing they’re the ones responsible.” A fair guess, and he’s only known Margaret for a short time but he already wants to murder Umbrella for her.
It’s her next question that has him leaning back against the glass wall behind him and sighing, eyes shifting up to look at the ceiling of the hotel lobby, and he remembers when Rebecca let him go when she realized he wasn’t a murderer of innocents. Not that he needs that comparison to know what to do, but it’s reminiscent in some ways.
“Yeah,” he says, adjusting his head against the glass so he can look back at her. “It’d be pretty shitty of me to tell you no. You could probably kill me if I did, anyway.” He gives her another small smirk, a quiet laugh; an attempt at humor to show he’s teasing, even if she really could kill him. “So yeah. You want to get outta here, I won’t stop you.”
His words take a minute to sink in. She doesn’t expect him to say yes; she expected some speech about orders, about how whoever he’s working for are the good guys, etcetera, etcetera. So when he says yes, she doesn’t quite know what to do.
“Thanks, Billy,” she says. Her voice is still a little shaky, but evening out. She stands, turns, looks to him one more time to see that he’s stopping her, and then she takes off at a run for the side exit of the lobby. She doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t even go upstairs to gather her belongings. She doesn’t want to risk him changing his mind.
She doesn’t see him again, not for a long time. Time passes, and she changes. She creeps back into humanity, moving through cities larger enough to get lost in. She buys a fake identity, with money she’s looted from lost cities, from a man who doesn’t care if she’s human or not. Discovers she knows how to use a computer, and starts to look for work online. She goes out at night, to clubs where no one can really see her in the dark, when she gets lonely. In the daytime she wears sunglasses and gloves, sometimes a scarf she can pull over her face. Tells people she has a skin condition if they look too close.
She learns about herself. She discovers that she’s more than strong, more than fast, more than indestructible. She can sense things she shouldn’t. The more time she spends with people, the more she realizes that she can feel what they’re feeling. If she concentrates, she can influence it, too. She doesn’t do it much; the power scares her. Most often she uses it to make people feel less curious when they wonder who she is.
She doesn’t look for Umbrella, for outbreaks, or bioterrorists, or BOWs. She’s already had her revenge. But when she hears about outbreaks, she still goes. If someone asked her why, she wouldn’t be able to answer them. But more and more, she finds herself in disaster zones, snapping the necks of zombies and monsters and pulling people out of the wreckage.
When she sees Billy again, two years have passed, and she is a different woman. She recognizes him easily, even though he has a new haircut, and long sleeves covering his tattoos. She sees him first; he’s facing away from her, firing into a group of infected as something with claws creeps up behind him.
“Hey! Tough guy! Behind you!”
