it sounds so fucking nice, the idea of just trying to NUMB everything. using whatever he can get his hands on just to make it all fucking stop — but ethan knows that’s not his style. it never has been. even when mia had been missing, sure, he’d spent a night or two out at bars, but drinking away his feelings then hadn’t HELPED. what would make it different now?
ethan rests his elbow on the table, chin propped on his fist. deep down, he knows chris is right. once all of this bullshit stops, once the connections stop HUNTING him, it’ll get easier. a new normal, a new identity, a new life. leave it all behind. pretend it never happened ( until someone grabs him too roughly, until they move too fast, and trauma rears its ugly head ).
still, it doesn’t make it any easier in the here and now.
he’ll deal with it though, because he HAS to. staring down at the table, ethan knows there’s no other option. it’s just his life now, just what he has to live with. there’s no more nine-to-five days, no more carpools, none of that shit. that was all gone from the MOMENT he went to louisiana. all of it thrown away for someone that didn’t CARE.
then, chris reminds him that he’s not alone.
ethan’s gaze rises, blue eyes coming to rest upon chris’s face instead. the genuineness that he sees there, just like the earlier concern, hits him square in the chest. he’s jaded and wounded after discovering the truth about mia, but … when chris looks at him like that, when he says those kinds of things, ethan is reminded that not EVERYONE wants to do him wrong. not EVERYONE wants to leave him in the dark, both literally and metaphorically.
if there is one person he can trust in, it’s chris redfield. ethan knows that ; it’s a hard truth to accept, but he knows it nonetheless.
chris could have easily assigned ethan’s protection detail to any of his men, but he chose to do it himself. that gesture ALONE speaks VOLUMES.
“ i know, ” he replies, and his tone PROVES that he means that. “ and i … i appreciate that. i don’t say it enough, but i do appreciate it. ”
i do appreciate you, ethan thinks.
ethan is the first to look away, taking a deep breath and then bringing his coffee up for a sip. after a pause, it’s the thought that chris is on his side, in his corner, that has ethan gathering enough courage to admit, “ i dream about mia a lot. like, how she was in dulvey. ” his fingers brush against the scar on his wrist as he says it. “ i know that it wasn’t her, not really … and i know she’s not here … but … well, you know. ”
all things considered, it’s a logical response for her to appear in his nightmares, but even despite the things ethan now knows about the woman he was once married to, he still feels GUILTY about it.
Ethan speaks of gratitude, but Chris lifts his free hand and shakes his head slightly. He doesn’t owe him anything (they’d come too late, him and Umbrella, and Ethan wasn’t meant to be there--), and frankly Chris wouldn’t know what to do with thanks when Ethan’s come out of it so badly. Maybe if he’d gone into the house for him, he would’ve accepted it. Maybe if he’d been the one to deal with the mutated Baker family instead...
But as it is, the intel had come too slow, and Chris is once again faced with the reality that there’re too many civilians out there and too many fucking organisations for anyone to really be saved.
It’s a damn shame bioterrorism is so lucrative. The lurking evil of what’s become of the BSAA tickles the back of his mind, but that’s a worry for another time.
For now, Chris eats his Pop Tart gone cold and listens to Ethan speak.
And, a little wearily, he says, “Just because you know what someone was like before infection doesn’t make the experience any less horrifying.”
There’ve been so many new viruses over the years. Similarly, so many of the people he’s cared for have fallen prey to it. He thinks of STARS, and how in one night half of it had been gone. He thinks of BSAA agents he’d had to watch transform. Even people he’d hated driven mad with power had injected substances into them, turned into monsters, and...
Chris chews and swallows. “It always feels too personal to me. These were people I knew, people I recognised...” Faces flash behind his eyes, voices crying out for him to help despite knowing it was too late. Chris takes another bite of his Pop Tart, then swallows.
“And it’s fucked up what happens to them. It’s not your fault you’re scared.”
Chris has never been married, but he knows what it’s like to care about someone deeply and hesitate when they reach out to kill you. Maybe all too well.
“You were alone in there for hours...” His brows furrow. “...I don’t blame you for dreaming about it. Or for seeing your wife like that in them.”
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