Zeno x femaleReader
Chapter 8: Red String
Masterlist
There had been a time in her life when she believed everything happened for a reason. That life followed some invisible red string of fate, guiding you exactly where you were meant to be, at exactly the right time.
Then she met Wesker.
And suddenly it felt less like fate and more like his string had been cut too short, while she stood there trying to give him pieces of her own.
Now she stood here again. In front of his grave, or at least what she used as one. A fixed point for everything she still carried inside her. Somewhere to place the grief that never really left.
“I am struggling,” she said quietly, pacing in front of the worn, weathered stone. “I promised you I would find you in the next life. And I still mean that. I always will. But I am struggling to figure out if… maybe Zeno is part of that.”
She exhaled sharply and tilted her head back, her eyes lifting to the sky.
It was too blue, too clear.
The air was warm, soft against her skin in a way that felt almost insulting. It should not be this beautiful outside while she was standing here trying to piece together something inside her that had been broken years ago.
“It’s infuriating,” she went on, her voice tightening slightly. “I don’t want him to be a replacement for you. You could never be replaced. Not by anyone.”
She let out a quiet, frustrated breath, her shoulders tensing.
“But he isn’t you,” she admitted. “He’s softer. Less refined. More human in ways you would have hated to be.”
A small pause.
“And I really like that about him.”
A low groan slipped from her as she dropped her head forward, pressing her chin briefly to her chest.
“I like him. And that’s dangerous,” she muttered. “Because I don’t want to hurt him. And I don’t want to get hurt either, especially when he doesn’t even understand what’s happening.”
The thought lingered, something she would have to ask him later. Carefully. If she even found the right words.
“I know they’re watching us,” she continued after a moment, her tone shifting again. “Of course they are. They’re terrified after everything that happened with you... of what he might become.”
A humorless laugh slipped out as she shook her head.
“It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? The impact I have. All because I fell in love with the most dangerous bioterrorist the world has ever seen. And hopefully ever will see. You don’t need competition in that.”
That one actually made her smile, just a little, and the wind picked up around her, tugging at her hair like it was reacting to her joke.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to him,” she said more firmly. “Not more than already has. I don’t even know the full extent of what they did to him. They made sure I never got access to his file.”
Her gaze settled on the gravestone again, as if she expected some kind of answer.
“But I do like him.”
Silence.
“You could at least send me a sign or something, Albert,” she added, her voice softening again. “A message from Hell. Just a little confirmation that I’m not completely losing my mind here. Or that this is an even worse idea than the time I threatened to hide all of Krauser’s protein shakes because he annoyed me.”
That memory pulled a quiet laugh from her.
“I am losing it, aren’t I?”
The gravestone remained still, unresponsive.
The wind quieted and or a moment, the entire cemetery seemed to fall into a strange, heavy silence.
She let out a slow breath.
“You were never a man of many words,” she murmured. “Maybe I’ll just take the silence as your blessing.”
Her gaze softened as she looked at the stone.
The grief was still there. It always would be. But it had shifted, just enough to make space for something new. Something she had never expected to feel again.
Different but not unwelcome.
She stayed a few minutes longer, letting her thoughts settle, before finally turning to head back to her car.
Then she stopped.
Her eyes caught something on the ground near the driver’s side, and her brows drew together as she crouched down.
“…So Hell does let you send messages,” she murmured under her breath.
A red string lay there.
Two ends, tied together in a firm knot, turning it into one continuous piece.
Carefully, she picked it up, half expecting the knot to come undone the moment she touched it.
It didn’t.
It held.
She let out a quiet breath and slipped it into her pocket before getting into the car.
Her mind felt clearer. More certain.
More steady in what she wanted, and what she believed was the right thing to do.
----
“We are being watched.”
Zeno’s voice broke the quiet as he stood in the middle of her quarters, his gaze moving curiously over everything around him. It was his first time in someone else’s space, and it showed. He looked unsure, like he didn’t quite know what he was supposed to do with himself.
“I know,” she replied easily. “But I also know that if they don’t like what we’re doing, I’ll be the one they deal with. You’ll be fine either way.”
She shrugged lightly.
“They invested millions, maybe billions, into you. Not into me. So you’re worth more.”
When she turned toward him, one of his eyebrows was raised slightly.
“You don’t fear death.”
“Of course not,” she said without hesitation. “Death is inevitable. I’m honestly surprised I’ve made it this far. So I might as well make the best of it now.”
The lie came easily.
She knew if someone had asked her that same question the day before, she would have laughed in their face and told them she was just waiting to die.
Funny, what a visit to a grave and a piece of red string could change.
“I have a question,” she said after a moment. “And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, Zeno.”
He didn’t respond.
He just looked at her, waiting.
Not granting permission. Just expecting the question.
She paused briefly, taking note of it before continuing.
“They never let you outside. They never gave you a choice. But... did anyone ever tell you that you were doing well? Or hold you? Or make sure you understood that you matter beyond just being a clone and-”
“No.”
He cut her off.
Firm. Immediate. Certain.
Her gaze snapped up to meet his, and for a moment neither of them moved, the weight of that single word settling heavily between them.
“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly, her voice faltering despite her effort to stay composed.
It wasn’t hard to imagine. She had seen it before. The patterns, the conditioning, what it did to someone when they were raised only to become something greater than themselves.
But with Zeno, it felt even worse.
He had never been given space to fail. Never been given anything except expectations he was meant to exceed. Expectations built on the remains of someone else.
Her apology made him frown slightly before his expression smoothed out again. He looked like he wanted to dismiss it.
He knew it wasn’t her fault.
She hadn’t even known he existed a few weeks ago.
A part of him wondered, sometimes, what she would have done if she had known. If she had seen what they were planning.
If she would have stopped it.
Irrelevant.
“You don’t have to apologize for something that was never in your control,” he said, choosing his words carefully.
“It’s not about control,” she replied softly. “It’s about the fact that you deserved something different. Everyone deserves at least a hug every now and then.”
She didn’t realize the weight of what she had said until she looked back up at him.
His expression had changed.
The mask wasn’t perfect. Not like Wesker’s had been.
Something slipped through.
Something raw.
Something hurt.
“Oh, Zeno...” she started gently.
What he said next made something inside her twist painfully.
“The only time someone hugged me,” he said, his voice flat in a way that made it worse, “was when they were holding me still to inject something into me.”
Her hands clenched at her sides without her noticing. Her jaw tightened as she bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep herself from reacting the way she wanted to.
He had never experienced anything good from touch.
Nothing.
Every instinct he had was wired to expect pain.
“May I hug you?” she asked after a moment.
She gave him a choice.
A real one.
He felt the difference immediately.
And it stirred something in him that a few weeks ago he would have dismissed as weakness. Something inconvenient.
Now it felt... different.
Not unpleasant.
“Y… yes,” he answered, the slight break in his voice surprising even himself.
His body tensed instantly, bracing.
Waiting for the familiar.
Pain.
Dizziness.
The sharp, splitting headache that usually followed.
But none of it came.
Instead, she stepped closer and gently wrapped her arms around him.
Not to restrain him.
Just to hold him.
Warm.
Careful.
Safe.
It took him a few seconds to process it. To place it somewhere in his mind, to understand what this was supposed to be.
And then, slowly, hesitantly, he lifted his arms and returned the gesture.
Awkward at first.
She felt small like this, like he could easily hurt her if he wasn’t careful.
And he knew he could but she wasn’t afraid.
She stood there, holding him simply because she wanted to.
Gradually, the tension in his body eased.
His breathing steadied.
Not controlled.
Just calm.
This wasn’t about control.
It was something else entirely.
Something new.
And he liked it.
They stayed like that for a while.
Neither of them rushing to move away.
On the counter nearby, the red string lay where she had placed it earlier.
The knot still holding.
And for the first time since his creation, Zeno felt something that came close to safety.
Chapter 7: Inevitibility
Masterlist
I apologise in advance. There has been a lot going on IRL and I am coping hard.
This Chapter purely has Wesker in it. So enjoy.
She knew they were being watched.
The time she had spent with Wesker had taught her exactly how the system worked. Who was valuable until a certain point. Who would be discarded the second they stepped outside the lines drawn for them.
And she knew she was deviating again, from everything expected of her.
She had not been brought back to The Connections after his death as some kind of reconciliation. There had been no desire to make amends, no sudden kindness. Someone had simply made sure she would not be alone afterward.
Somehow, that made it worse.
There were days, and more often nights, when she wished for solitude. No low hum of the facility. No endless drone of ventilation systems pushing cold recycled air through steel corridors. Just her, her thoughts, and the grief that never fully loosened its grip.
The day she saw the footage of him dying, something inside her broke.
Not loudly.
There was no screaming. No desperate pleading for someone to turn back time and change what had happened. He had made sure she was far away from Tricell’s reach, far from Excella, far from Africa itself.
Before his death, they had called.
A secret phoneline, impossible to trace.
The moment they hung up, she had known.
It had settled inside her like something ancient and inevitable, a dark certainty creeping through her veins. No matter what she did, no matter how badly she wanted to, she would never be able to stop what was coming.
And then she had watched him die.
Watched Chris Redfield win.
She held no grudge against Chris. She had sworn to herself she never would.
Albert Wesker had been, by every definition, the enemy. He had killed thousands, made millions suffer, and had planned to reshape the entire world into something built solely in his image.
That truth did not make losing him hurt any less.
“How honest would you like this phone call to be tonight?” she had asked, leaning against the doorframe with the phone pressed to her ear.
There had been a pause before he answered.
For him, that hesitation alone was enough of an answer.
“I think very honest seems fitting.”
She had moved to the small living area of the safehouse and lowered herself onto the couch, exhaling slowly as though trying to steady something unraveling inside her.
“I’ve been thinking,” she began, her voice careful. “About why you’re trying to change the world.”
A quiet huff of amusement came through the line.
“Are you psychoanalyzing me?”
“No,” she said softly. “I’m understanding you in ways no one ever cared enough to.”
That made him fall silent.
A full minute passed.
And somehow, that silence hurt more than if he had laughed.
“I don’t think you’re trying to destroy the world because you hate humanity,” she continued. “I think you’re trying to create one where you finally feel like you belong. After everything Spencer did. Everything Umbrella made you into. Everything they told you.”
She paused, gripping the phone tighter.
“I think this world has spent your entire life telling you that you do not belong in it.”
He did not interrupt.
“I think you want a world where you can just exist. Where you can feel human without constantly having to prove yourself. Without always needing to be seven steps ahead of everyone else.”
Her voice softened further.
“You’re tired, Albert. And it’s okay to be tired.”
One thing she had learned quickly was that he rarely showed emotion.
Arrogance, yes, though she never counted that as emotion.
But honesty? Vulnerability?
Those things were buried so deeply inside him that even he seemed afraid to touch them.
“Do you think that-”
He stopped.
Too close.
Too dangerous.
She could hear the battle in the silence that followed. The years of conditioning, of control, of everything forced into him refusing to let the question fully form.
“Albert,” she whispered. “Ask it. Please.”
Her voice was too gentle for a man like him.
And he knew it.
He knew he did not deserve someone who looked at him with adoration not because of his power, or his wealth, or the fear he inspired, but because she had somehow seen the man hidden beneath all the locked doors and still chosen to stay.
On the monitor before him, Chris and Sheva’s locations continued to update.
Getting closer.
“Do you think,” he finally asked, his voice quieter than she had ever heard it, “that in another life, we would find each other again?”
Not if this life had gone differently.
Not if he had met her sooner.
Not if there had been another path.
In another life.
Her eyes closed.
He never asked questions like this.
He never entertained the idea of his own death.
And yet here he was.
“I think,” she said carefully, her voice trembling despite her efforts to steady it, “that I would find you in any life. I found you in this one. I’ll find you in the next.”
The implication settled heavily between them.
Neither spoke for a long moment.
Two full minutes passed in silence, neither of them rushing to fill it.
Then his voice changed.
The softness vanished, tucked away behind the cold precision she knew so well.
“I need to go. Chris and Sheva are almost here. There are still things I need to take care of.”
“Okay.”
Her throat tightened around the word.
“Do you think... you could call me after?”
The rawness in her voice was impossible to hide.
And they both knew.
This was the last time they would ever hear each other’s voices.
“Dearheart.”
He ignored her question.
That was answer enough.
Outside, Chris and Sheva were dealing with what remained of Excella. Nothing was unfolding according to plan. Everything he had spent years building was slipping through his fingers.
“Yes, Albert?”
He stared at the monitors.
At the cameras tracking his enemies.
And for one brief moment, every emotion he had spent a lifetime suppressing fought to surface.
But he was too far gone.
There was no undoing what he had done.
No path backward.
No redemption waiting for him.
There was only this ending.
“I love you.”
His voice broke on the words.
And on the other end of the line, he could hear her breath hitch.
Could almost feel her heart breaking.
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
“I love you too, Albert,” she whispered, tears already falling. “In this life, and the next, and every one after that.”
He closed his eyes.
She knew.
Of course she knew.
“Goodbye.”
The word was barely audible.
“Goodbye, Albert.”
The line went dead.
In the darkness of the safehouse, she slumped forward, elbows on her knees, the phone still clutched tightly in her trembling hands.
The tears came hot and relentless.
It felt as though her insides were burning, hollowed out by the crushing weight of helplessness.
There was nothing she could do.
There never had been.
The outcome had always been inevitable.
He had to die.
She understood that.
She only wished they had been given more time.
“In the next one,” she whispered into the empty dark, her voice raw and shaking, “I’ll find you again. And I’ll make sure you never have to suffer like this.”
Her words dissolved into the silence.
And somewhere, on the shores of Africa, Albert Wesker was fighting.
Summary: Wesker never really knew the exact day of his birth. So, you just kinda picked one and threw a party!
Fluff, with angsty undertones
Pretty please go easy on me, ya boy is trying to get back into the swing of writing.
Wesker felt like he was forgetting something. Which, was a fucking problem because Wesker never forgot anything. At all. Ever. That wasn’t an exaggeration. He still remembered that bitch Mason Carter from the boys home that thought it would be funny to try and trip him in the mess hall, then had the audacity to tattle on Wesker when he retaliated by throwing his tray at Carter's head.
So then what was Wesker forgetting? Was it nothing? No, it couldn’t be nothing. If it was, it wouldn’t be bugging him so much. He got the samples sent out, made sure Ada got the debrief on her next mission for him, responded to the connections offer with a counter offer, what the hell was he-
Oh.
His eyes finally glanced down at the tiny calendar on his computer. It was August 25th. His birthday. Well, kinda his birthday. He didn’t actually know the specific date of his birth, just the year- 1960. The actual date and month was never deemed important by the boy's home he was raised in, and when he finally did get his hands on his birth certificate- it just said the year. It was hardly a birth certificate, having the bare minimum information that Spencer decided was necessary to document. He shouldn’t have been shocked. Birthdays were frivolous, after all.
No. It was you who decided his birthday was August 25th. It was still one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for him.
He still remembered walking into the R.P.D expecting just another day at the office. An expectation that was quickly squashed when he noticed how many officers were looking at him, while trying very very hard not to look like they were stealing glances. He went straight to Marvin, him being one of the more tolerable officers in the R.P.D, and giving him a reason to procrastinate going to the S.T.A.R.S office, where there was no doubt some catastrophe waiting for him.
“Lieutenant Branagh,” Wesker said, hiding the smirk that came with watching Branagh stiffen with nerves, giving Wesker his full attention.
“Captain Wesker?” Marvin asked.
“What should I expect when I walk into the S.T.A.R.S office today?”
Marvin’s eyes darted around the room, looking to focus on anything other than Wesker's face. “I’m not sure what you mean sir. I’m assuming your regular S.T.A.R.S related duties?"
Wesker snorted out a humorless laugh. “Bold of you to be both snarky and a bad liar in the same breath Branagh, I’m impressed.”
Marvin looked confused, trying to catch the eyes of any of his coworkers for rescue. Of course this is the one time they were actually doing their jobs. “Thank you, sir?” He asked more than said.
Wesker nodded, “You’re quite welcome. Now, the truth, Lieutenant. I haven’t got all day.”
It was then Chris came around the corner, as if he was an angel answering Marvin's prayers. “Captain!” Chris said, rushing over to Wesker, “There you are! I almost thought you were actually late.” Chirs laughed.
Wesker gave Marvin one final, ‘this isn’t over’ look, then turned to Chris. “Have I ever once been late, Redfield?”
“No, that's why I assumed you died.”
That- took Wesker off guard. “You assumed I died?”
Chris nodded as if it was perfectly normal to assume your boss died because they were five minutes late for work. “Yeah, obviously,” Chirs, what? “Anyway, I need you in the office. We have a…situation.”
“A situation?” Wesker asked, hoping for more context.
Chris nodded, “Yeah, there’s a package on your desk and we’re all arguing over what’s inside of it.”
“That’s hardly a situation, Redfield.”
“Tell that to Forest. He keeps saying he’s going to open it, and he doesn’t care that it’s a felony.”
Wesker let out a deep sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. The members of S.T.A.R.S were the best of the best, that wasn’t up for debate. But Wesker often wondered if they were also just giant middle schoolers pretending to be special forces agents, and doing a really fantastic job of it. “Alright, let's go.”
The walk was quiet, but not awkward. It was something Wesker always appreciated about Chris- that he saw the value in comfortable silence. It was a trait you actually shared with him. As they reached the office, Chris hesitated with his hand on the door. He turned back to Wesker. “Hey, your duty weapon has the safety on, right?”
That question instantly put Wesker on high alert. “Why?” he asked, his tone leaving no room for shenanigans.
And yet, the shenanigans continued. “Just curious.” As Wesker opened his mouth to argue with his point man, Chris opened the door and rushed into the notably dark room.
Wesker followed without hesitation. “Redfield, what are yo-”
He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. It didn’t matter in the end anyway really, because Wesker instantly found out why Chris asked.
The lights snapped on, and every single member of S.T.A.R.S jumped out from their hiding place yelling “SURPRISE!!” And to Chris’s credit, he knew his captain. Wesker's first instinct in fact was to put his hand on his gun.
Until he saw you, all puppy dog eyes and smiles, and proudly presenting a homemade cake. “Happy birthday Captain!” You grinned.
Regrettably, Wesker felt a warmth in his chest seeing you, but thankfully confusion was the prevailing emotion he felt- so he didn’t have to think about the fuzzies for too long. “I think I’m missing something.” He said as he took the cake from your hands, going and setting it on his desk. The S.T.A.R.S office was decked out for a birthday party, full of balloons and streamers. He found the “You Were Born!” banner particularly amusing. Your handiwork, judging by the hand writing.
“We’re throwing you a party!” Chris said, batting a balloon back and forth with Kenneth.
“A birthday party!” Kenneth so helpfully clarified.
Wesker knew he had been too lenient with them, letting them celebrate their birthdays and holidays. He made a note to not do it again. “Yes, I see that,” He said, looking around, “I’m wondering why?”
You stepped up. “Well, everyone else gets a birthday party,” you explained, “it felt unfair to leave you out.” Reluctantly, he deleted his ‘no parties’ mental note.
“Did you ever think maybe I wanted to be “left out,” as you put it?”
You ignored him, “But you refused to tell us when your birthday actually is. So, we just picked a day! As long as it happens at the same point in the year, it’s all the same right?” You said as you walked over to the snack table, grabbing a soda and bringing it to him.
Wesker looked down at the can to avoid your eyes. “Hmm,” He muttered, thoughts running faster than he could process them, “And why today?”
You playfully elbowed him, giving him a grin, “Because I wanted you to be at the start of Virgo season, but we were doing training when it actually started.”
Wesker blew a puff of air from his nose, finally opening the can. “Very well then.” As he spoke the words, the others cheered, happy to have permission to fuck around all day. You grinned, pulling him back over to the cake.
Jill was putting candles on it, five to be exact. She looked up at Wesker and smiled. “I wasn’t sure exactly how old you were, but I figured you were at least five,” she shrugged. You ushered Wesker to his seat as Jill lit the candles and the other S.T.A.R.S. members filed into or around the entry of his relatively small office.
You pushed the cake closer to him. “I figured we’d just get the worst part of birthday’s out of the way first.” You smirked with a wink.
Wesker was confused about what the hell you were talking about, until you and the rest of the group started singing. “Happy birthday to y-”
“No! no, we’re not doing that.” Wesker said over the choir,
“Oh come on!” you said, “Don’t be like that.”
He shook his head. “I will allow the party, but I can not be expected to endure Richard’s singing.”
“Hey.” Richard whined.
Rebecca put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but nodded her head in agreement with Wesker. “I kinda see where he’s coming from…Sorry Richard.”
“It’s fine. I’ve heard it before.”
“Okay fine,” you relented, “But, at least make a wish?” Wesker hesitated, so you pushed further. “Please? For me?”
He sighed and leaned forward, quickly blowing out the candles as everyone cheered him on. You smiled and hugged him, which in a rare act of affection he returned. Even if it was only with one arm. “So whatcha wish for?” You whispered to him as Jill cut the cake and the party started to commence.
Wesker gave you a sly smile. “Sadly, I can’t tell you my dear, or else it won’t come true.” It was really just a cover for the fact that he didn’t wish for anything, because why would he, but apparently it was an effective cover, because you gave him a playful pat on the shoulder before joining the others.
The party was one of the few purely positive memories Wesker had. Chris played a few songs on his guitar, including a rather decent cover of The Man Who Sold the Word- Wesker's favorite song. Jill set up essentially an arm wrestling tournament just so she could humble those stupid enough to take her up on the challenge. Rebecca, as sweet as she was, made sure everyone ate and even brought some leftover cake to the more tolerable cops on the force.
For the most part though, it was just the team being together. A bonding experience, with them laughing together, and teasing each other, and relaxing together. Like a family. Wesker didn’t like thinking about it now, or then, but that was probably the closest he ever got to being a part of a family. A family he would later single handedly bring to its grave. He probably should have felt worse about that than he did.
Looking back, he liked to think he felt the same then as he did now- indifferent. But late at night, when he was left with nothing but his own thoughts, the grip of guilt he felt back then was almost enough to make him feel a twinge of it today. And if he was being viscerally honest with himself, he’d quietly acknowledge the fact he missed you.
“Well?” You asked all those years ago, looking up with eyes that he still saw in his dreams.
“Well what?” He asked. Wesker had retreated to his office, never having really been one for crowds. For the most part, the other S.T.A.R.S members respected his space and continued with their festivities. You on the other hand went to find him the moment he vanished. He wished that bugged him more. He wished he liked your attention less.
You snapped him out of his spiral. “Well, what do you think of the party?” You asked.
“I think it’s a waste of time.” Albert shrugged, choosing his truths carefully.
You shrugged, going and sitting on his desk. If it was anyone else, Wesker would have deemed them rude and snapped at them to get down. But, it wasn't anyone else was it? “And yet you still let it happen,” you hummed, “and why is that?”
Wesker thought for a moment, trying to choose his words carefully. “You clearly put a lot of effort into this. It would have been bad for morale if I shut it down.” Was the half-truth he ended up settling on.
“Right.” Your tone made it clear you didn’t believe him. “Sooo…”
“So?”
“Just when exactly is your birthday captain?”
“Today.” He said without much thought.
You laughed and shook your head. “No, for real. When is your actual birthday?”
“It’s today.” Albert reiterated. You were right, in the end it didn’t really matter what day he was born on. And the look on your face at that moment was well worth the white lie.
Your mouth was basically on his desk. “No way!” You gasped, “I guessed right?!”
A ghost of a smile graced Albert's lips. “I was shocked too. For a moment, I thought you must have somehow stolen my birth certificate.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I don’t kid my dear.” He said with a gentle shake of his head. Did you actually guess his birthday right? Hell if he knew- but probably not. That being said, you were the only person who had ever cared enough to give him one. So accurate or not, he was going to keep it. If for no other reason, than to remember that at one point in his life, he had someone who cared enough to celebrate him.
You laughed, staring at him in disbelief. “Holy shit, really?! That's so funny, oh my god, I gotta tell the others!” You announced as you hopped off his desk.
He didn’t like that idea for some reason. “Be my guest dear,” He said, leaning back in his desk chair, “But I’ll deny it. No one will ever believe you.”
Your laughter almost instantly turned into a pout. “What?! Why!” You demanded.
Albert simply shrugged. “Its more fun for me this way honestly.”
You scoffed, jumping back into his desk. “You’re a dick.” you accused.
“If you say so, but I must disagree. I think I’m perfectly lovely.”
“Yeah right,” You snorted with a shake of your head. “Well, the least you could do is give me a sucker for my troubles.” You playfully pouted.
Wesker rolled his eyes, regretting that he ever told you he kept sweets in his desk. Even so, he pulled the drawer open, only to stop when his eyes caught a glimpse of colorful paper. His eyes shot to you, your poorly hidden smile confirming what he suspected. “What is this?” He asked.
“I believe that is a desk sir.” You nodded, very proud of your answer.
Albert rolled his eyes, grabbing the small box and holding it in front of you as evidence. “It’s a bit small to be a desk, in my experience.” He said flatly.
“Oh wow, that’s crazy, who put that there?” You asked, not even attempting to be sneaky. “You should open it, it looks important.”
Albert sighed as if it was a giant inconvenience to hide the fact he was actually really curious to know what his first ever birthday gift was going to be. He carefully undid the wrapping, much to your dismay, and revealed the box for a zippo.
“Open it!” You prompted. Normally that would have made him put the box right back in his desk, but lucky for you he was curious.
Opening it revealed a custom made Zippo, brushed chrome and engraved with the S.T.A.R.S crest. He flipped it to the back, only to find more engraving, small cursive text along the bottom of the lighter.
“S.T.A.R.S Never Die”
No one would be able to tell by his face, but something about the phrase hit Albert with a tidal wave of dread. One Wesker quickly shook off.
You dropped a bit. “Oh no. It’s too cheesey, isn’t it? Or morbid? Ugh, Chris said it was a stupid thing to put-”
“Not at all.” Wesker cut you off, “I actually find it…charming. Comforting in a way.”
“Really? You like it?” You asked.
“I do.” Albert confirmed, flicking open the lighter to make sure it had fuel in it. Pleased to find that it in fact did, he gave you a rare warm smile. “Care to join me for a cigarette break?” he asked.
You grinned as you jumped down from his desk. “And here I was starting to think you’d never ask.” The two of you walked out to the smoking area of the RPD, and as you did you bumped your shoulder playfully into his.
“Happy birthday Captain.”
🚬🚬🚬
Wesker leaned back in his office chair, as if leaning back away from the memory. That was all so long ago, and yet even now Wesker found himself living with your ghost. Which, was fucking ridiculous, considering you were still alive and therefore there was no ghost to live with. You just absolutely despised him now. Not that he could really blame you for that.
He sighed as he sat up and reached into his pocket, pulling out a pack of red 100s and a zippo, engraved with the S.T.A.R.S crest. He lit his cigarette, leaning back once again as he took a long, deep drag. He let the nicotine do its magic to his nervous system as he looked up at the tile ceiling. “Happy birthday. Asshole.” He muttered to himself, as he finally went back to his computer to continue his work.
Not the dream.
Not the memory.
Not the way it still lingers beneath his skin like something that doesn’t belong and yet refuses to leave.
He buries it the way he has been taught.
Filed away. Contained.
Irrelevant, unless it serves a greater purpose.
The following day unfolds exactly as it should.
The same sterile hallways. The same recycled air filtering endlessly through the vents. The low, constant hum of machinery threading through every corridor like a second heartbeat. Voices remain distant, controlled. Footsteps echo, but never linger.
Everything is in its place.
Everything as it should be.
And yet there is a subtle dissonance now.
Something just slightly off rhythm.
Like a system running perfectly on the outside… but no longer feeling right beneath the surface.
He notices it in the pauses.
In the moments where his thoughts take a fraction too long to settle. In the way his attention drifts. Not outward, not aimlessly, but inward.
Toward something he cannot quite isolate.
“You’re quieter than usual.”
Her voice reaches him before her presence does.
Another deviation.
He looks up immediately.
A little too quickly.
If she notices, she doesn’t say anything.
“I am within normal parameters.”
The response comes without hesitation. Clean. Precise. Practiced.
She watches him for a moment.
Not like the others do. Not searching for flaws, not measuring his response against expectation.
She looks at him like there is something there worth noticing beyond that.
“We really need to work on your vocabulary.”
He blinks.
Just once.
And for a brief, unfamiliar moment he doesn’t have a response.
She notices.
A quiet chuckle slips from her, soft and unforced.
“Come on,” she says, already turning slightly. “Follow me.”
There is hesitation.
Brief. Barely there.
But real.
He should ask where they are going.
He should question it.
He should refuse.
Instead, he follows.
His attention drifts. Not to their surroundings, not to potential surveillance points or inefficiencies but to her.
The way a loose strand of hair falls forward before she tucks it back behind her ear. The slight tension in her shoulders, like she has already made a decision and is fully aware it will have consequences. The way her eyes catch the cold overhead light and still manage to reflect something warmer.
They move through the corridors in silence.
He notes the direction automatically.
Less populated sectors. Fewer cameras. Areas that serve no immediate function in his daily routine.
“This path is not efficient,” he states after a while.
“I know.”
No justification.
No attempt to correct it.
He watches her for a second longer than necessary.
Then follows anyway.
They stop in front of a door he has never registered before.
Or perhaps was never meant to register.
It blends into the wall, unmarked and unremarkable. Easy to overlook unless you know it’s there.
She hesitates just briefly.
Then pushes it open.
The change is immediate.
Cold air rushes past them, sharp and unfiltered.
It carries something unfamiliar.
Something raw.
Zeno steps forward slowly.
He doesn’t notice the way his hand brushes briefly against her side; light, almost instinctive, like he is anchoring himself without realizing it.
The space opens.
No walls.
No ceiling.
Above him, the sky stretches endlessly.
Heavy, layered in shifting gray.
For a moment he forgets how to breathe.
Something touches his skin.
Light.
Cold.
Again.
Zeno lifts his hand slightly, watching as droplets land against his skin, gather, and slide down before falling away.
There is no pattern.
No uniformity.
Nothing regulating the way they fall.
“That’s...”
The word falters.
Catches somewhere between thought and voice.
She steps up beside him.
Close, but not touching and smiles.
“Rain.”
The word is simple.
It shouldn’t matter.
And yet something in him reacts to it in a way he doesn’t understand.
He tilts his head upward.
The sky feels too vast. Too open. Too uncontained for anything he has ever learned about it.
The droplets keep falling.
Catching in his hair. On his skin. Against his lips.
Then the wind follows.
It moves around him, tugging at his clothes, pressing against him without intention or adjustment.
It does not react.
It does not correct itself.
It simply exists.
“…It’s inefficient.”
His voice is quieter than he has ever heard it.
Less certain.
“Yes,” she says softly. “It is.”
They stand next to each other, both looking up.
The rain falls steadily around them, soft but persistent.
“You don’t have to understand it,” she says after a moment. “Or try to make sense of it. It just… exists. Rain, wind, snow. The weather doesn’t need a reason.”
A small pause.
Then, quieter she adds.
“But you deserve to be able to see it.”
Something in him tightens at that.
Deserve.
He doesn’t deserve anything.
He was not made for that.
He was created for something greater. More precise. More controlled.
Better than what came before.
Not this.
Not standing on a rooftop, in the rain, next to her.
Her fingers against his sleeve.
The memory presses in before he can stop it.
Zeno exhales slowly, forcing his focus back to the present. To the cold air, the steady rhythm of the rain, the pressure of the wind against him.
Anything but that.
They remain there in silence.
And for once he does not try to categorize what he is feeling.
----
Somewhere deeper within the facility, the silence is different.
Controlled.
Observed.
Shadows move the way they always do.
Unseen. Unquestioned.
“Is she compromising him?”
A pause.
Measured.
“Yes.”
“Should she be eliminated?”
Another pause.
Slightly longer this time.
One of them tilts his head, gaze fixed on the monitor in front of him.
Two figures stand on the rooftop.
Still.
Unaware.
Rain distorts the image, but not enough.
“No. Not yet.”
A quiet shift in tone.
“Perhaps she can be used.”
The other figure adjusts slightly.
“And if she becomes a problem?”
A beat.
Cold.
Certain.
“Then she will be removed.”
A brief pause.
“We don’t need another incident.”
The words settle heavily in the room.
“Understood.”
The shadows remain.
Watching.
Always watching.
Because she was never a variable anyone accounted for.
Not then.
Not now.
And yet she does exactly what she did before.
She stands beside someone who was never meant to be understood.
you’re getting ask if you used AI btw bc you had the “not yet” in your last chapter of the fix which is like a very AI writing thing. I’m not saying is AI, just letting you know!
Really enjoying the fic so far 💕
Ahhhh I see! Glad you enjoy the Fic though.
But yeah, no use of AI. English is not my main language but I definitely don't use AI.
Thank you for letting me know though! I will learn from it for the future chapters to avoid to sound like an AI. 🥺
With all due respect, do you use A.I to write your fics?
Nope. Not at all. I absolutely refuse to use any form of AI in any way possible. Art, writing, etc etc should have not been given access to AI. The Soul comes from a human. I am just quite autistic.
Not whole days, not clean stretches of time; just pieces. Moments stolen between shifts. Conversations that begin with clinical observation and end somewhere softer, somewhere neither of them fully understands.
They do not seek each other out openly.
That would be noticed.
Instead, it becomes a pattern.
He appears in the observation labs when she is already there. Or she finds herself assigned to sectors she never used to work in, only to realize, minutes later, that he is somewhere nearby. Neither of them acknowledges the pattern out loud.
But it exists.
And it grows.
At first, their conversations remain structured.
He asks questions.
Precise. Focused. Sometimes strangely specific.
“How do you determine trust in a non-quantifiable environment?”
“What differentiates familiarity from attachment?”
“Is emotional stability dependent on external presence or internal regulation?”
She answers as best as she can.
Sometimes clinically.
Sometimes honestly.
Sometimes she just says, “I don’t know,” and he accepts that in a way that surprises her every time.
Over time, the space between their words changes.
It becomes less about data.
More about presence.
He begins to stand closer.
Not close enough to touch.
Never that.
But the careful distance he maintained at first begins to shrink in small, almost imperceptible increments.
And she notices.
Of course she does.
She notices the way he watches her hands when she works, as if memorizing the motion.
The way his gaze lingers not on her face, but slightly to the side of it, like he is trying not to look too directly.
The way he pauses sometimes before speaking. Not because he doesn’t know what to say, but because he is deciding whether to say it at all.
He is learning restraint.
Not from programming.
From experience.
From her.
And that realization unsettles her more than anything else.
Because it means this, whatever this is, is no longer just residual memory.
It is becoming something new.
----
The day everything changes does not feel different at first.
The facility hums the same way it always does. Sterile. Controlled. Predictable.
She is halfway through a routine systems check when the alert comes through.
Level three clearance required.
Restricted lab access.
Subject: Zeno.
Her stomach drops before she even finishes reading.
She moves immediately.
The corridors feel longer than usual, the distance stretching in ways that don’t make sense. Her steps are quick, controlled, but her pulse is already too fast, her mind already racing ahead to possibilities she does not want to consider.
Testing.
They said he would be tested.
She knew that.
Clinical. Controlled. Necessary.
But theory has always been easier than reality.
When she reaches the lab, the doors are already sealed.
Two guards stand outside.
They move to block her.
“Restricted-”
“I have clearance,” she cuts in sharply, already pulling up her credentials.
There is a brief pause.
A check.
Then the doors slide open.
The moment she steps inside, something feels wrong.
Not visibly.
The lab looks the same. White, sterile, filled with equipment that hums softly in the background.
But the air..
The air feels tighter.
Charged.
Like something irreversible has already happened.
He is in the center of the room.
Seated.
Restrained.
Her breath catches.
Not violently restrained. Not struggling. The bindings are clinical; precautionary rather than punitive.
But they are still restraints.
And she hates them instantly.
His head is slightly lowered, shoulders tense in a way she has never seen before.
Around him, technicians move with quiet efficiency, recording data, monitoring vitals, speaking in low voices that try to sound calm and fail.
One of them turns as she approaches.
“The procedure is complete,” they say.
Procedure.
The word makes her stomach twist.
“What did you do?” she asks, her voice already colder than she intends.
“Mutated T-strain integration,” the technician replies. “Phase one.”
Her eyes snap back to him.
“Why wasn’t I informed?”
There is a pause.
Then, carefully, “The decision came from above.”
Of course it did.
The Connections.
Always watching. Always deciding. Always pushing further than anyone should.
The restraints disengage with a soft mechanical click.
For a moment, he doesn’t move.
Then slowly, deliberately, he lifts his head.
And her breath stops.
It’s subtle at first.
A shift in the skin along the left side of his face.
Dark.
Vein-like.
But not veins.
Something else.
Something growing.
It spreads from just beneath his eye, branching outward in thin, jagged lines that look almost like cracks in porcelain but alive. The same pattern trails down along his jaw, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt, curling along the side of his neck like something invasive, something that does not belong.
Her chest tightens painfully.
“No…”
The word barely escapes her.
His eyes find hers.
Still gold.
Still clear.
But there is something else there now.
Something sharper.
Something… strained.
“It is within acceptable parameters,” he says.
His voice is steady.
Too steady.
She steps closer, ignoring the technicians, ignoring everything except the sight of that unnatural marking spreading across skin that should have remained untouched.
“They did this to you,” she whispers.
“It was anticipated.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
Her hand lifts before she can stop herself.
For a split second she hesitates.
Then her fingers hover just beside the mark on his face.
Not touching.
Close enough to feel the faint heat radiating from his skin.
“It’s spreading,” she says quietly.
“Yes.”
“Does it hurt?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
The answer is simple.
Unadorned.
And it hits harder than anything else.
Her throat tightens.
“They didn’t even tell you, did they?” she asks softly.
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t need to.
Something sharp and angry rises in her chest.
Not at him.
At them.
At the people who see him as nothing more than a project. A result. A thing to be tested and pushed and altered without consent.
“You’re not a weapon,” she says, more to herself than to him.
He studies her face carefully.
“That is debatable.”
“No,” she says, firmer now. “It’s not.”
Silence falls between them again.
The technicians have stepped back slightly, giving them space, though she can feel their eyes watching, analyzing, recording.
She doesn’t care.
Her gaze softens as she looks at him again.
“You should have been told." she says quietly.
“It would not have changed the outcome.”
“That’s not the point.”
Another pause.
Then, unexpectedly, he says,
“I have not experienced this level of… unpredictability before.”
Her eyes flick back to his.
“From the virus?”
“No.”
A beat.
“From you.”
Her breath catches.
He looks at her like he’s trying to understand something that doesn’t fit into any framework he has.
“You are… upset,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question isn’t cold.
It isn’t detached.
It’s genuine.
And that makes it worse.
She exhales shakily.
“Because they hurt you.”
“It is a necessary part of development.”
“I don’t care.”
The words come out sharper than she expects.
“I don’t care if it’s ‘necessary.’ You’re not just something they get to break apart and rebuild whenever they feel like it.”
He watches her, something shifting behind his eyes.
“You are assigning value to my well-being beyond functional parameters,” he says slowly.
She lets out a small, disbelieving breath.
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then-
“I have not left this facility before.”
The statement comes out of nowhere.
It takes her a second to process it.
“What?”
“I have not been outside.”
Her chest tightens.
“Not once?”
“No.”
She stares at him.
“You’ve never seen the sky?”
“No.”
The word is quiet.
Certain.
And something inside her breaks.
All at once, the image of the cemetery rises in her mind.
The open sky.
The wind.
The quiet.
Albert’s grave beneath the tree.
Free.
And him..
This man standing in front of her, marked by something he never chose, confined to walls he never left.
He has never seen any of it.
Her voice softens to something fragile.
“There’s a whole world out there,” she says.
“I am aware of its existence.”
“That’s not the same as seeing it.”
He studies her expression carefully.
“You place significance on it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She hesitates.
Because how do you explain something like that to someone who has only ever known artificial light and controlled air?
“Because it reminds you that you’re… not just this,” she says quietly, gesturing faintly around them.
“That there’s something bigger. Something that isn’t controlled. Something that just… exists.”
He processes that.
Slowly.
Carefully.
“And you believe that has value?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
“I would like to see it.”
The words are simple.
But they land with unexpected weight.
Her breath catches.
She looks at him.
At the marks on his skin.
At the quiet restraint in his posture.
At the way he is standing there, trying to understand a world he has never been allowed to experience.
And something inside her shifts.
Softens.
“I’ll take you,” she says.
The promise leaves her mouth before she can stop it.
Before she can think about consequences.
Before she can consider what it would mean.
His gaze sharpens slightly.
“You would do that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She meets his eyes.
Because no one ever gave him a choice.
Because he deserves more than this.
Because she knows what it feels like to be trapped in a place that takes and takes and never gives anything back.
But what she says is quieter.
“Because you should see it at least once.”
He watches her for a long moment.
And for the first time since she met him, there is something in his expression that isn’t analysis.
Isn’t calculation.
Something softer.
Something uncertain.
Something almost… human.
The mark along his face pulses faintly beneath the surface of his skin.
But for that moment, she doesn’t see it.
She just sees him.
And the quiet, fragile possibility of something that might exist beyond all of this.
The road out of the facility is long, narrow, and mostly forgotten.
It winds through stretches of forest and quiet farmland where the world feels slower, softer, untouched by the hidden machinery of organizations that operate beneath the surface of history.
She drives without music.
The silence suits the night.
Headlights sweep across empty asphalt, catching the occasional reflective road marker or the pale blur of a fence. The sky above is open and endless, scattered with quiet stars that the underground facility never allows her to see.
She had almost forgotten what the sky looked like.
It takes hours to get there.
That is intentional.
Distance matters.
Distance makes it real.
Eventually the road narrows into something barely wide enough for a single car, gravel crunching under the tires as she pulls off beside a rusted iron gate.
The cemetery sits behind it.
Small.
Forgotten.
Perfect.
No lights.
No cameras.
Just old stones leaning at tired angles beneath the open sky.
She steps out of the car, the night air cool against her skin. It smells like damp earth and distant trees, the quiet scent of a world that has nothing to do with laboratories or viruses or the ghosts of corporations that refuse to die.
For a moment she simply stands there, breathing.
Above her the sky stretches wide and dark.
Free.
That had been the point.
She pushes the gate open gently. It creaks faintly, the sound swallowed quickly by the stillness around it.
Gravel crunches under her shoes as she walks between the rows of graves.
Most of them are old. Some so weathered the names have faded entirely, the stone reduced to pale shapes worn down by decades of rain and wind.
No one visits them anymore.
That had been the point too.
No witnesses.
No history.
Just quiet.
She knows exactly where she’s going.
The grave sits near the back, beneath a tall tree that leans slightly to one side as if even it has grown tired with time.
The stone is simple.
Gray.
Unpolished.
It doesn’t carry a full name.
Just a single word carved into the surface.
Albert.
She had carved it herself.
Her hands had trembled the entire time.
There is no body beneath the earth.
There never was.
Albert Wesker died in fire and molten stone at the bottom of a volcano. The world saw the footage. The flames swallowing everything he had built, everything he had become.
Nothing remained to bury.
But she couldn’t leave him nowhere.
He deserved sky.
He deserved wind.
He deserved something other than the cold concrete memory of a laboratory.
So she made this place.
A grave for a man who no longer existed anywhere else.
She steps closer and kneels slowly in the grass.
The earth here is soft, slightly damp from recent rain. The grass has grown a little wild around the stone. She never trims it too neatly.
Perfection would feel wrong.
Her fingers brush lightly over the carved letters.
Albert.
The name alone still carries weight.
For a long moment she says nothing.
The wind moves gently through the branches above her, rustling leaves in a quiet whisper that almost sounds like breathing.
“I saw him tonight.”
Her voice is soft.
Barely louder than the wind.
“He came to the observation lab.”
The words feel strange spoken out loud.
She stares at the stone as if he might somehow hear her.
“He walks like you.”
A faint, fragile smile flickers across her face.
“Exactly like you, actually.”
Her fingers trace the edge of the carved name.
“Same posture. Same… deliberate way of moving like the room already belongs to him before he even enters.”
Her voice falters slightly.
“But he hesitates sometimes.”
That had been the difference.
Albert never hesitated.
Not in words.
Not in thought.
Not in ambition.
“He’s still figuring things out,” she murmurs quietly.
The wind shifts again.
Leaves rustle overhead.
“I told him he’s not you.”
The words come out quickly, almost defensively.
“I made that very clear.”
She exhales slowly.
“He didn’t like the comparison.”
Her hand rests flat against the cool stone now.
“He said it makes his identity… derivative.”
A small laugh escapes her.
“You would have hated hearing that word applied to you.”
Silence settles again.
She looks up at the sky briefly, the stars scattered like quiet witnesses across the darkness.
“I see you in him,” she whispers after a moment.
Her voice breaks slightly.
“And I hate it.”
The confession sits heavy in the night air.
“Not because of him.”
Her fingers curl slightly against the stone.
“Because every time he looks at me… there’s this moment.”
She swallows.
“This tiny, horrible moment where my heart forgets.”
The wind moves softly through the grass around her.
“And then it remembers.”
Her shoulders slump a little.
“He’s not you.”
The words sound smaller now.
Quieter.
“But sometimes the way he looks at things… the way he studies people…”
Her voice trails off.
“It’s close enough that it hurts.”
The tears come slowly.
Not violently.
Just a quiet burning behind her eyes that eventually spills over.
“I miss you.”
The words break out of her before she can stop them.
“I miss you so much.”
Her voice cracks completely now.
“You were impossible.”
A shaky breath escapes her.
“Arrogant. Insufferable. Convinced you were the smartest person in every room.”
Her hand presses harder against the stone.
“And you probably were.”
The wind brushes her hair across her face; like the ghost of a touch.
“But you were also… you.”
Her voice lowers to a whisper.
“In those quiet moments. When no one else was around.”
Memories move through her like ghosts.
Albert leaning against a laboratory table, arms folded as he watched her work.
The faint curve of amusement that only appeared when something genuinely surprised him.
The rare stillness when the world felt small enough to exist in together.
“You said I made the world quieter.”
Her chest tightens painfully.
“He found the note in my file.”
She stares at the name carved into the stone.
The tears fall freely now, dampening the grass beneath her.
“I didn’t make the world quieter for you,” she whispers.
“You made it quieter for me.”
Her voice trembles.
“You were the only place that ever felt… stable.”
Another shaky breath.
“And then you burned.”
The words shatter in the air.
“And I watched it happen.”
The silence that follows feels enormous.
She wipes at her face roughly, though the tears keep coming.
“I thought I was done being alone,” she admits quietly.
Her gaze drifts across the empty cemetery.
Row after row of forgotten stones.
“I thought maybe if you were out here… under the sky…”
Her hand rests gently against the carved name again.
“It would feel like you were still somewhere.”
Her voice grows softer.
“But lately I feel like I’m standing between two worlds.”
The wind moves through the tree above her again.
“I don’t belong with the people down there.”
The laboratories.
The endless sterile corridors.
“Not really.”
She exhales slowly.
“And now there’s him.”
Her fingers tighten against the edge of the stone.
“He looks like you. Sounds like you. Moves like you.”
A fragile laugh slips through her tears.
“But he’s… gentler.”
The word surprises even her.
“He hesitates.”
Her gaze drops to the grass.
“He’s trying to figure out who he is.”
A long pause passes before she continues.
“And I don’t know where that leaves me.”
The night feels larger suddenly.
The cemetery emptier.
“I wish you were here.”
Her voice breaks again.
“I wish you could tell me what to do.”
The wind brushes softly across the grave.
The stars remain distant and silent above.
“I feel like I’m the only person left who remembers the real you,” she whispers.
“Not the monster the world talks about.”
Her thumb traces the carved letters slowly.
“The man who stood in quiet labs at three in the morning and told terrible jokes about chemical reactions.”
Her breath trembles.
“The man who trusted me enough to… let me see him.”
Her forehead rests lightly against the cool stone now.
“I don’t belong anywhere else.”
The words barely exist when she says them.
“And I’m so tired of being alone.”
The wind sighs through the cemetery again.
For a long time she stays there like that, kneeling in the grass beneath the open sky.
Talking softly to a grave that holds no body.
Only memory.
Only love.
Only the quiet space left behind by a man who once made the world feel smaller, calmer, safer simply by standing beside her.
And above the forgotten cemetery, the night stretches endlessly outward.
Not late in the ordinary sense. There is no sky here to darken, no evening sun slipping behind buildings, but the facility has its own artificial circadian rhythm. The lights dim fractionally after a certain hour. Monitors lower their brightness. Ventilation softens to a quieter hum. Even the guards speak more quietly in the hallways, as though the underground structure itself has decided the day is finished.
Most people leave when that shift happens.
She almost never does.
The observation lab is empty when she arrives. It sits on the edge of a larger containment wing, its glass wall overlooking rows of dormant equipment and sealed specimen chambers. Soft white lines of light run along the floor panels, reflecting faintly in the glass like distant constellations.
She leans against the central console with a tablet in her hands.
The screen glows.
Data scrolls.
She hasn’t actually read any of it.
Her thoughts have been drifting for several minutes now, and she knows exactly why.
Before he arrived, her mind had been disciplined. Structured. Work filled every corner of it with careful precision. Research had always been the safest place to exist because numbers and biological sequences didn’t ask emotional questions.
Now there is… interference.
A new presence moving through the facility like a variable that refuses to stabilize.
She sets the tablet down and exhales quietly.
The glass wall reflects the room faintly. In it she can see herself standing there; small frame leaning against stainless steel, hair falling loosely around her shoulders, eyes that carry the permanent exhaustion of someone who has spent too many years surviving things that were never meant to be survived.
For a moment, the reflection reminds her of another laboratory.
Another life.
A tall man beside her, blonde hair slicked back perfectly, holding a mug of coffee he once described as “chemically efficient.”
She closes her eyes.
Stop.
Memory is a dangerous place.
Especially now.
The door behind her opens with a quiet hydraulic sigh.
She does not jump this time.
Progress.
Still, her body recognizes the presence immediately. Something about the rhythm of those footsteps carries a familiarity too deeply embedded to ignore.
Measured.
Unhurried.
The kind of stride that assumes the world will move aside for it.
She does not turn right away.
Instead she listens as the footsteps cross the room and slow behind her.
They stop a few paces away.
“You are here frequently.”
His voice is calm. Precise. Almost perfectly controlled.
Almost.
There is still the faintest difference in the cadence, a fraction more pause between words, as though the voice itself is still calibrating how it wants to exist.
She finally glances over her shoulder.
He stands near the doorway, the dim lighting softening the sharp angles of his silhouette. The black coat falls in clean lines over the white suit beneath, every detail immaculate in a way that suggests effortlessness but actually requires enormous discipline.
His sunglasses are gone tonight.
Golden eyes meet hers across the room.
The resemblance is still startling. The bone structure of his face could have been carved from the same mold: the same severe cheekbones, the same straight posture, the same composure that feels less like confidence and more like inevitability.
But there are differences too.
Subtle ones.
Albert had always carried an air of inevitability, as if every room he entered already belonged to him.
This man carries something quieter.
Curiosity.
She turns fully toward him.
“Most people avoid these labs at night,” she replies.
“That is statistically accurate.”
He steps further into the room. The door seals shut behind him with a soft click, isolating them from the rest of the facility.
“You are not conducting an experiment,” he observes.
“No.”
“You are not reviewing data.”
“No.”
He pauses.
“Then what are you doing?”
She considers the question for a moment before answering.
“Thinking.”
He moves closer, stopping beside the glass wall that overlooks the containment area below. He doesn’t stand directly next to her, leaving a careful distance between them that feels… intentional.
“Thinking about what?” he asks.
She could lie.
It would be easier.
Instead she says quietly, “You.”
He goes still.
Not dramatically.
Just… still.
“I suspected that was a possibility,” he says after a moment.
“You say that like it’s a variable in an equation.”
“In some respects it is.”
She studies him for a moment.
“You’ve been analyzing me.”
“I analyze everything.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He tilts his head slightly, waiting.
She pushes herself off the console and walks toward the glass wall, folding her arms loosely as she looks down into the dim lab below.
“You’ve been studying me because of him.”
She doesn’t say the name.
It isn’t necessary.
The silence that follows is confirmation enough.
“That is partially correct,” he says.
“Partially?”
“Yes.”
She glances sideways at him.
“And the other part?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
That alone surprises her.
Until now he has answered every question with immediate precision, as if hesitation were an inefficiency he refuses to tolerate.
Tonight there is a pause.
He studies their reflections in the glass instead of looking directly at her.
“You are difficult to categorize,” he says at last.
A small, tired laugh escapes her.
“That’s a new one.”
“Your responses do not align with predicted behavioral models.”
“Oh?”
“You do not display hostility toward me.”
“I told you why.”
“Yes.”
He shifts slightly, resting one hand against the railing beneath the glass.
“But you also do not treat me as though I am him.”
She goes very still.
“That’s the point,” she says quietly.
“I am aware.”
He lowers his voice slightly.
“And yet there is recognition in your eyes.”
Her throat tightens before she can stop it.
She looks away from the reflection.
“That’s not something I can switch off,” she admits.
Silence stretches between them.
The hum of the facility fills the room like distant wind through steel corridors.
“When I look at you,” he says slowly, “there is an impulse to protect.”
She blinks.
“That’s… concerning.”
“It is not logical.”
“That’s never stopped human beings before.”
He seems to consider that.
“The impulse does not derive from current experience,” he continues. “It exists prior to interaction.”
“The memory imprint,” she says quietly.
“Possibly.”
But he does not sound convinced.
She leans her elbows lightly against the railing beside him.
“You keep trying to quantify this.”
“That is how I understand things.”
“I know.”
Her voice softens without meaning to.
“He did that too.”
For the first time since she met him, something shifts across his expression.
Not anger.
Something closer to resistance.
“I am not him.”
The words come sharper than before.
She nods immediately.
“I know.”
“No.”
He looks at her directly now.
“You understand that factually,” he says. “But the comparison remains present in every interaction.”
She studies his face carefully.
“You don’t like being measured against him.”
“It is inefficient.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Another pause.
He looks down briefly, as though organizing something internally before speaking.
“It creates a framework in which my identity is derivative,” he says.
The honesty of it catches her off guard.
She had expected arrogance.
Deflection.
Instead she hears something that sounds almost like frustration.
“You didn’t ask to be created from his DNA,” she says gently.
“No.”
“You didn’t ask to inherit fragments of someone else’s life.”
“No.”
“So you shouldn’t have to spend yours proving you’re not him.”
He watches her in silence.
Something in his posture shifts slightly, as if the weight of that statement settles somewhere deeper than he expected.
“You speak as though identity can exist independently of origin,” he says.
“It can.”
“How can you be certain?”
A faint, sad smile touches her mouth.
“Because if it couldn’t, none of us would ever change.”
The words hang in the quiet room.
He studies her for a long moment.
“You loved him.”
The statement is quiet.
Careful.
She does not flinch.
“Yes.”
“And yet you are here.”
“Yes.”
“Speaking with me.”
“Yes.”
His brow creases slightly.
“Why?”
That question lands harder than any of the others.
She takes a slow breath.
Because she has asked herself that same question every night since his arrival.
Her eyes move across his face, the familiar lines arranged into a person who is still discovering how to inhabit them.
“Because you’re not him,” she says softly.
“And that matters.”
He studies her expression as if trying to determine whether that statement contains hidden variables.
“If I were identical,” he says slowly, “would you have left this facility already?”
She doesn’t answer immediately.
Then she says quietly,
“Yes.”
Something unexpected happens.
He relaxes.
Only slightly.
Barely noticeable.
But she sees it.
“You’re relieved,” she says.
“I did not say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The lab lights flicker faintly as systems cycle into deeper night mode.
She straightens from the railing.
“I should go.”
But she doesn’t move yet.
He watches her carefully.
“You are not afraid of me,” he says.
“No.”
“Why?”
She considers the question seriously.
“Because when he looked at the world,” she says quietly, “he saw something to conquer.”
Her eyes meet his.
“When you look at it… you’re still deciding what it is.”
He says nothing.
She turns toward the door.
But just before she reaches it, his voice stops her.
Not Doctor.
Not a formal address.
Just a quiet call that makes her pause.
He says her name.
The first time he has done so.
She stops.
Turns slightly.
His expression is unreadable now, but his voice has softened.
“When I first encountered your personnel file,” he says, “there was an annotation attached to it.”
Her stomach tightens.
“What kind of annotation?”
“Handwritten.”
Her breath catches.
There were not many people in Umbrella who wrote things by hand.
He watches her carefully.
“It said,” he continues, “‘She makes the world quieter.’”
The words land like something fragile breaking open in her chest.
Because she knows that handwriting.
She knows those words.
Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“And what do you think it means?”
He studies her with an intensity that no longer feels purely analytical.
“I am still determining that,” he says.
She nods slowly.
Then she opens the door.
“Goodnight.”
He does not stop her.
He does not follow.
But long after she leaves, he remains standing in the dim observation lab, staring at the reflection in the glass.
Not at the man who resembles Albert Wesker.
But at the empty space beside him where she had been standing.
As if, somehow, the room had been quieter when she was there.
It's been a very, very, very long time since I wrote something. So here is my Go for it after finishing RE9 last night. Please be gentle.
This face should be ash
Zeno x female!reader
(Grief, memory imprint, mild RE9 Spoilers so read at own risk)
✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦ ✧ ✦
The first time she sees him, it is not dramatic.
There is no thunder, no alarms, no cinematic revelation that the dead have returned. The facility hums like it always does - cold, clinical, buried far beneath a world that pretends organizations like this no longer exist. Fluorescent lights wash everything in sterile white. The air smells faintly of disinfectant and metal.
She is reviewing data when she feels it.
Not a sound.
Not a shadow.
A presence.
Footsteps approach - measured, unhurried, deliberate. The kind of stride that does not question whether it belongs in a room. The kind that assumes ownership of space before entering it.
Her chest tightens.
She does not look up immediately. She tells herself it’s conditioning. Trauma response. Memory playing tricks on muscle and nerve.
The steps stop in front of her desk.
“Doctor.”
The voice is smooth, precise, carrying that faint cultured lilt that once threaded itself through her veins like a drug.
Her pen slips from her fingers.
She looks up.
Blonde hair, slicked back with surgical neatness. Black coat cut to perfection over the crisp white suit. Sunglasses concealing eyes she already knows are gold. The structure of his face is devastatingly familiar; the sharp cheekbones, the controlled mouth, the posture that feels less like confidence and more like inevitability.
Albert Wesker died in the flames of the Volcano.
She watched the footage.
She memorized the fire.
She mourned him in private because there was no one she could confess that grief to without being judged for loving a man the world considered a monster.
This man standing before her is not him.
And yet her body does not know that.
“You are staring,” he says calmly.
The cadence is nearly perfect.
Nearly.
Albert’s voice used to land like a final verdict. This one carries a fraction more space between syllables as if he is still calibrating the weight of them.
She rises slowly, forcing her hands to still at her sides. “You look like someone I buried.”
A slight tilt of his head. Not arrogance. Assessment.
“That is statistically understandable,” he replies. “My genetic template was recovered from an individual of considerable notoriety.”
The confirmation settles into her bones.
Zeno.
The name she heard whispered. A contingency project, a resurrection not born of faith but of data. A clone engineered from fragments, neural mappings, and whatever Umbrella had salvaged from the wreckage of ambition.
He removes his sunglasses.
Golden eyes meet hers.
The color is identical - liquid amber, predatory in hue - but the feeling is different. Albert’s gaze had always felt ancient, sharpened by superiority and certainty. These eyes are focused, intelligent, but not yet burdened by the weight of absolute conviction.
He studies her face longer than necessary.
“There is recognition,” he says slowly. “Incomplete, but present.”
Her throat tightens. “That’s impossible.”
“Improbable,” he corrects. “Not impossible. I was integrated with partial memory imprints. Emotional data patterns embedded within neural architecture.”
She almost laughs at the clinical phrasing, because if she doesn’t, she might shatter.
“So what am I?” she asks. “A footnote?”
His gaze sharpens, and for a moment something flickers beneath the composure.
“No,” he says. “You are recurrent.”
The word lands heavier than she expects.
He takes a step closer, not invading, but reducing the sterile distance that makes everything easier to deny. Up close, the resemblance is almost cruel. The line of his jaw. The faint downturn of his mouth when thinking. Even the way he holds his shoulders - straight, disciplined, controlled.
But there is something unfinished in him.
Albert had always felt complete, as if the world was a chessboard and he had already calculated every move. This man feels like a game still being learned.
“You were associated with a reduction in stress markers,” he continues, eyes never leaving hers. “In high-risk scenarios, proximity to you correlated with improved decision stability.”
She blinks. “Did you just tell me I made him less volatile?”
“I am stating observable data.”
Her breath shakes despite her efforts to keep it steady. “You’re not him.”
“I am aware.”
“No,” she insists, more quietly now. “I need you to understand that.”
For a fraction of a second, something almost defensive crosses his features - not anger, not pride, but resistance to being mistaken for a shadow.
“I have no intention of replicating his trajectory,” he says.
She studies him carefully. “Good.”
Because loving Albert had meant loving brilliance and terror in equal measure. It had meant standing beside a man who aimed to transcend humanity entirely, even if it cost him what little humanity he possessed.
Zeno watches her with unnerving focus.
“You mourned him,” he says.
It is not an accusation.
It is not curiosity.
It is recognition.
“Yes,” she answers, the word steady despite the tremor in her chest. “I did.”
His gaze softens - barely perceptible, but real.
“There is an imprint of protectiveness,” he admits. “Anomalous within broader behavioral analysis. It does not align with his documented disposition toward most individuals.”
Her heart stutters.
Albert had never been gentle in public. He had never displayed softness where others could see it. But in quiet rooms, in rare unguarded moments, he had been something else. Something human enough to make her believe he was not entirely lost.
“You don’t inherit that,” she says carefully. “Whatever he felt. Whatever I felt. That doesn’t transfer through cells and code.”
“I understand,” Zeno replies, though his eyes suggest he is still trying to quantify what understanding actually means.
The silence between them stretches. Not charged with passion, but dense with unasked questions.
He steps slightly to the side, breaking the direct intensity of their alignment. It is subtle, but intentional, as though he senses that standing too directly in front of her creates too much pressure.
“There is familiarity without context,” he says. “An emotional residue without narrative. When I look at you, there is a destabilizing effect on otherwise linear processing.”
She exhales slowly. “That sounds inconvenient.”
“It is,” he agrees without hesitation.
And somehow that honesty steadies her more than reassurance would have.
She studies him. Not the ghost of a man she once loved, but the person in front of her. The slight hesitation before certain words. The way his gaze lingers not possessively, but analytically. The faint tension in his jaw when confronted with something he cannot immediately categorize.
“You’re trying to decide if you’re supposed to feel something,” she says.
“Yes.”
No deflection. No arrogance.
Just truth.
“And I’m trying to decide if I’m looking at a memory or a stranger.”
That lands between them with unexpected weight.
He slides his sunglasses back on, as if the barrier helps him regain equilibrium.
“You are not reacting with hostility,” he observes.
“I’m not sure what I’m reacting with at all,” she admits. “Shock. Grief. Curiosity. Maybe all three.”
He inclines his head slightly, processing.
“There is something about you,” he says slowly, almost reluctantly. “A pattern recognition that exceeds available data.”
Her pulse stutters.
“That doesn’t mean it’s fate,” she replies, more firmly than she feels. “It just means you have fragments.”
“And you?”
She holds his gaze, even through the dark lenses.
“I have history,” she says. “Not with you.”
The distinction matters.
He nods once.
“Then we proceed without assumption,” he states. “Independent evaluation.”
A faint, involuntary curve touches her lips. “You mean… we get to know each other like normal people?”
“If that framework is preferable.”
She studies him for a long moment, the hum of the facility filling the quiet.
This is not resurrection.
This is not destiny clawing its way back from ash.
This is a man engineered from another’s blueprint, standing at the threshold of something undefined, carrying echoes he does not fully understand.
And she refuses to reduce him to a replacement.
“Fine,” she says at last. “We evaluate.”
He turns to leave, coat shifting with precise movement. But as he passes her, he slows - just enough for his voice to lower slightly.
“There is something about you,” he repeats, quieter now. “I have not yet determined what it is.”
He does not touch her.
He does not linger.
And when he walks away, she is left standing in sterile white light, heart steadying slowly - not with love, not with longing, but with the fragile awareness that whatever this is, it will not be simple.
Not a ghost.
Not a second chance.
Something else.
And for the first time since Albert Wesker burned in volcanic fire, she allows herself to feel something that is not grief.
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