Short story // Chris takes his daughter to the office
Ohhh, did you use AI ? YEP, one day I will have money to commission art from people that I admire, but this day is not today.
So I was playing a little bit and I imagined this story :
He didn't see himself as a father when Rose was a baby. Mia was never really close, and investigations later confirmed she'd been a secret agent, so until they knew more, things were just complicated... Mia was distant.
For a long time it was just Chris, and a baby he hadn't planned for, and the slow realization that he couldn't keep operating like he used to.
When he arrived in USA he had to call for some days off after ordering a full scale investigation on BSAA North American branch, it had to be done in the dark, he knew it as dangerous and it could take a long time, meanwhile the baby was taken for a short batch of exams to understand if she was different... And to no one's surprise... She was.
The investigation was running smoothly, but it would take a long time to make real progress, he was impatient but the Wolf Hound team asked one thing, "Trust us Captain", he remembered Piers for some reason, it felt like he would enjoyed being part of that team.
When Chris arrived at the hospital, he saw Rose again, the doctor said that she was very healthy, but she was a little bit different and it would be better for her to be 24/7 in there. He did not agree, it was not right nor what he promised to Ethan, he used his authority and immediately grabbed her.
"I have a team in mind to help me with her health, I will tag them, you're dismissed"
When the doctor left, Chris was concerned, about whom to trust in BSAA... Was the entire branch corrupted, some regions, some cities ? With that in mind he knew that Rebecca was the best person that could assist related to exams and the baby's health.
He took Rose to his SUV, a very expensive one like Leon's in RE9 Requiem, and before starting the car he hold the baby, and she started to smile, almost like laughing... He didn’t know how to feel, probably sad because it felt that he failed another person again, but it was such a warmth moment that his heart felt better, so he smiled for the first time in a long long time.
When he arrived at this place, it was a dark apartment, no dogs, nor animals, it's very fancy and modern, but he was never there. When he opened the door he could smell the cigarettes and it another reminder to him to take better care from now on, he opened the windows and took the baby to a bed that he had, created a protection with pillows so she doesn't fall.
Second thing was calling Jill.
"What do you mean you have a baby?"
That was the first thing she said. He could hear everything in those words: the concern, the confusion, and underneath it all, the fear that she was only now finding out about something that involved another woman. They had never gotten engaged. Their mission had always been the focus, and whatever they were to each other existed in the space between assignments, in visits whenever they could manage it, in conversations about making things official that never quite landed anywhere. Neither of them knew how to say I want to live together and marry you, so they stayed as they always were. Respecting each other's boundaries, not seeing other people, and being together whenever the world allowed it.
He felt her fear and her anger through the phone and he understood. She had every reason to assume the worst. So he explained everything: the mission, Ethan, Miranda, all of it. The silence on her end shifted somewhere into relief, and then curiosity.
From that point on, whenever Jill was in town, she was at the house. It became routine. She told Claire about the smoking, naturally. Of course she did.
(It is not a secret that Jill feel in love instantly, Rose was pumpkin pie <3 - it even made her consider having a kid, but it was not a topic that she bought up instantly, and she saw the way Chris handled her... it was something entirely new to her)
-- A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER --
It was not unusual for Chris to call Claire whenever he was in the city, just to let her know he was around. He didn't always do it, but he tried. That particular day, he didn't get the chance.
She spotted him in the supermarket first.
It wasn't quite a yell, but it was close. She rushed over, and he turned with the particular expression of a man who knows exactly what is coming.
"Of course it's me! Since when are you in the city?"
"I know, I know. I should've called."
She stared at him the way only a little sister can, running her eyes over him like she was looking for something out of place. A bad mission. A dark mood. One of those weeks where he went quiet and gloomy and deflected every question. But it wasn't that at all. He looked genuinely well, almost suspiciously well, and that only confused her more.
"Did something happen between you and Jill?"
"She's been coming by more often."
"Ohh, you dog." Claire laughed, and then her eyes dropped to his cart. She went still for a second. "Why are you buying baby powder, Chris."
He didn't answer fast enough.
Claire's mind went immediately to the best possible conclusion, and she was not entirely wrong. He invited her to come by later that afternoon, which was a mistake, because she grabbed nothing from her own cart and said simply, "No. I'm going with you right now."
The entire drive she lectured him. He should have called. She had a right to know. What was he thinking. He just stared at the road with the patience of someone who has survived far worse. Down the hallway to his front door it continued, her voice carrying everything she had saved up.
"Because you are being immature, how do you even think thi--"
There was Jill, sitting on the couch, holding a baby that looked up at the noise with wide, calm eyes.
Claire went completely silent.
She walked over slowly, like she was afraid to break something. She looked at the baby. She looked at Jill. She looked at Chris. And then, very quietly, she asked the only thing that mattered.
Chris smiled. "Yeah. You can, sis."
And they had a nice dinner after, Claire started to visit constantly (If Claire is Leon's wife, consider that she is visiting with Leon)
To offer her a better childhood and more protection, the move was inevitable. It was never really a question of if, only when. Chris and Rosemary moved.
Chris and Rose live now together in a cozy house in the suburbs, very different from anything Rose had known as a baby, but Chris had his reasons for choosing it. Claire always used to sketch her dream home growing up: something warm, tucked away in a quiet neighborhood. He never forgot that. Buying a house like that felt like a promise he had managed to keep.
It's a good place to grow up. Rose had neighbors, a park nearby that Chris took her to every once in a while, and the kind of normalcy that neither of them were exactly built for but tried anyway. Jill comes by often enough that Rose has always known her as a constant presence, though she never quite figured out what they were to each other. Not that Chris ever made it easy to understand.
The house looks normal from the outside, but it isn't. Chris always had tight security, and here was no exception. Nobody came in except family. There's a safe room, bunker-grade, built to survive worst-case scenarios for when he's away on a mission. He didn't sleep well until it was finished. Not for himself. For Rosemary, and the promise he made to Ethan.
Chris was up early, as always, already in the kitchen by the time the house was still quiet. He made breakfast and called for Rose.
"Come downstairs --- Breakfast is ready"
She came right away, which told him she had been awake for a while already. Her bed was already fixed. She had picked one of her favorite outfits without being asked. She sat down at the table with the particular energy of a six year old who has been holding something exciting inside since the moment she opened her eyes.
Today was the day. Chris had promised to take her to the BSAA headquarters to train and meet the team. She had been thinking about it all week.
Breakfast was calm. Chris was quiet, which was normal. Rose ate and watched him the way kids do when they are waiting for the adult to acknowledge the thing they both know is happening today.
He finished his coffee. He cleared his plate. Somewhere between sitting down and standing up, it became clear that the day had started in his head without that detail in it.
Chris looked back at her with the expression of a man slowly arriving at a realization.
"Well," he said, with complete composure, "I can take you some other day."
Rose was not the kind of kid who let herself fall apart. She had decided that early on, somewhere between all the exams and the good grades and the quiet pride she took in doing things right. She liked the rewards. She liked the time with Chris, especially now that he had started going on missions again and those moments felt like something worth earning. She told herself she didn't get sad.
Chris looked at her. "Are you angry?"
She looked angry and sad. Mostly sad.
"Hey. Don't be like that. I'll take you next week."
"BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU SAID LAST WEEK, AND YOU ALSO FORGOT THIS WEEK, SO YOU KEEP FORGETTING."
It landed the way only a child's honesty can, completely accurate and impossible to deflect. Chris was not always good at moments like this one. Feelings were not his terrain. Missions were his terrain.
The bus was coming. Her backpack was still in the kitchen.
"You should go," he said. "Next week."
She stared at him. The look on her face held everything she was too proud to say out loud.
She grabbed her backpack. She walked to the door. Even angry, she turned back, picked up her plates from the table and took them to the sink before heading outside.
Chris stood in the kitchen and watched her go.
Rose sat in English class and heard nothing. Miss Candace was explaining the verb to be and it was the same as silence. The whiteboard might as well have been blank.
She opened her notebook and started drawing.
She wrote it under the sketch with full conviction and stared at it for a moment like it was a fair assessment.
Then someone knocked on the door.
The teacher went to check, and the shift in her energy was immediate. She straightened a little. Her voice came out different when she spoke to whoever was on the other side.
When she came back in, she looked at Rose with a slightly dazed expression.
"Rosemary, your father is here."
A couple of boys near the back were already opening their mouths. The usual ones, the kind who poked at her specifically because it got a reaction (Specially kids that have a crush on her). But the door had been left open, and everyone in the class could see the hallway, and in the hallway stood a man in full uniform who looked like he had been carved out of something solid.
Rose shut her notebook, picked up her things, and smiled.
"Thanks, Miss Candace. Bye."
She walked out and hugged him in the doorway. It was quick and tight and she didn't say anything.
He pat her head and said "Hey Kiddo"
Walking the corridors with Chris felt strange in the best way. He was enormous next to the lockers and the low ceilings and the posters about the school play. He didn't quite fit, and Rose found herself walking a little taller beside him. She slowed down near the science hallway and pointed at the display case by the wall.
"I got the highest grade in the class on that project," she said, casual, like it wasn't the reason she had been steering them in that direction. "Miss Candace put it there." (With a proud tone on her voice)
After walking a little more she stopped and said:
The display case had a lot in it. Some story books, a couple of small gifts from people who knew her, drawings, the kind of collection that builds up around a kid who has people rooting for her. Rose pointed things out without making a big deal of any of it, which meant she had thought about showing him all of it.
She was different from the morning. The anger had gone somewhere quiet. She was smiling now, and talking, and that was enough.
"You're bigger than the lockers, Dad. You must be the same height as the lights up there."
Chris looked up at the ceiling, genuinely considering it.
He reached down, picked her up, and put her on his shoulders before she had time to object.
Rose grabbed his head with both hands and made a noise somewhere between anxious and thrilled. The corridor stretched out ahead of them from up there, completely different from the height she was used to. The lights were close. The lockers were small. She could see everything.
She didn't ask him to put her down.
They went through the rest of the hallway like that, her gripping his head and looking around at the school from the tallest she had ever been. By the time they reached the car she had gone quiet in the good way, still holding on a little longer than necessary before he set her down.
A quick note: Rose calls Chris "Dad" throughout her childhood without much ceremony, it just became the word that fit. It stays that way until her teenage years, when things get complicated the way they always do (RE8 VILLAGE), and she pulls back from it during the rough patches. She would never admit that it still means the same thing to her. It does.
Thanks for reading so far, I've always wanted to get this view of Chris as a father, specially after reading the files in RE8 Village. So if you like please comment, I can post more, It feels good and heart warming.
I also wanted to open up about my personal life for the first time here...
I know this has nothing to do with Resident evil, nor this beautiful fic, but I am sad today, and I have been sad for a long time now... Depression is not a joke, and as a man I have no one to talk to and it feels that I need to pretend that I am not feeling like that, that I need to smile and be strong, for my friend, for my mother.
I've always wanted to live a happy life and to have a present father like Chris in this story, but mine was quite the opposite and I hated him for so long, and I also hated my mom for being depressed most of my childhood and teenager years. Now that I am a grown men I understand that he is not to blame as well, because this was how he was raised, and that the role of a man is to endure, I need to be strong for my mother because I CAN be strong.
Why am I sharing this ? I honestly don't know.
I never found love, never had a girlfriend, and I never heard someone loved me, but I haven't given up, I am a good person and I want to make people happy.
Still... I want to say something, if you are like me, if you want to be loved, if you want to be good, DO NOT GIVE UP, I go to the mirror I say everyday as loud as I can, DO NOT GIVE UP, BE STRONG, BE BETTER , YOU DESERVE LOVE. Understand that there are people like you, that are doing their best everyday, like me, and try to be gentle with yourself.
You deserve the love that wish for the characters you ship together.
Since I have no energy left I am using someone's else, Jesus Christ.
I pray that he hears me, because sometimes I feel like no one else will, and I will pray that he hears you as well.
So I am trusting in the only one that ever heard me, him, and I have faith that I will make through depression. I am jobless, depressed and weak, but I will find energy in him, in everything that I love. (If you have a remote job that is cool hit me up ;P)
BTW, I got refused in all USA Universities that I have applied, almost all actually, there is one letter pending.
I don't want to bother anyone, I feel bad even about writing about this, but I wanted to show to everyone that if you are in a bad spot right now, that you can find better days ahead. (and I will post when things better happen)
I hope god bless you, that he bless us, that the war stops and that evil vanish from the world.
