wesker stares at jill, first blankly, but soon it ignites into a deep anger. crimson bleeds into the blue of his eyes, darkened veins begin to crawl up his arms. ❝ worse things? don't give me that. ❞
he thinks of the terrible past, of her quiet acts of defiance. but more than that, he thinks of everything he had wanted from her. not her obedience, not really, but her strength. it turned out that the two people he believed would prove him wrong had failed to do so.
❝ i thought you were better than that, jill, ❞ he hisses, before taking a few breaths, stepping back from her. he holds his infected arm to his chest like a wounded beast trying to hide its weakness, and still his eyes burn. ❝ i see, now. it isn't that you haven't tried to heal, it's that you don't want to. you have grown content with this pain. instead of overcoming it, you let it eat away at you. here, i thought we had nothing in common. ❞
anger is easier than grief. it always has been. albert wesker had taken to anger naturally; it always simmered under his skin. he'd hidden it well in the past. just as he had learned to hide his anxieties. he remembers taking most of his frustrations out on lisa trevor, locked deep in the bowels of arklay manor. sometimes he would throw things at william, even though deep down he knew better. he remembered how the smaller man would recoil and shake, before he would throw biting words back. william birkin knew he could never take albert wesker down in a physical fight, but he knew exactly what to say.
after all, it was birkin who administered the final dose of the virus. after one of their awful fights, albert sat silently as william picked a proper injection site. a vaccine, he'd said. something that would make him remain healthy and strong for the trials ahead. william had said it in such a strange tone, as if he had been instructed on it.
⎛ "you know that you'll need this, al. trust me, you know that i won't hurt you. not like that." there's a strange look on william's face. almost guilty, but not quite. anxious certainly, but he always seemed that way. as if he expects albert to fight back. but albert's blue eyes seem dull, as if in a trance. william injects him with the supposed vaccine and gently pats his arm. "all done. look, i know you're not keen on getting shots. i'm more observant than you give me credit for. but it's all done now. i wouldn't give you something that you didn't need."
how cruel of spencer to use someone that al trusted. how cruel to use william. and how tragic, because when wesker looked back, he realized that maybe he had never known exactly the sort of person that william birkin was from the start. ⎠
❝ deep down, i wanted someone to prove me wrong. i wanted someone to not just tell me, but to show me that there was something worth saving in humanity. i thought chris, with all of his heroics ... but he directed so much of his energy to a specific cause- ❞ wesker had wanted to think that he could always count on chris redfield to be a hero.
❝ his ambition was driven by anger. he pushed himself beyond his limits because he knew he would have to fight against something that wasn't human. that anger and the sting of betrayal... you know, there were so many others he could've saved. he chased after me, instead. ❞ and maybe that wasn't fair to chris, but when had albert wesker ever learned about being fair?
❝ do you know why i allowed you to keep your consciousness back then? if i wanted a mindless doll to follow my every order then i would've made you that. but i wanted you to fight back. you, with your noble heart- and you didn't! i wanted you to be strong enough to fight back, because i knew i wasn't strong enough... i lived my whole life by the rhetoric of a man who stole everything from me! from childhood to his death, and even then... i didn't know how to be free and i wanted you to show me, and you didn't! ❞ his voice cracks with an emotion he doesn't want to name. it is no longer the virus that makes his eyes burn, but the sting of unshed tears that he knows he has no right to cry.
❝ and so i saw the human beings that i thought were good and noble succumb to hate. what was there left to save? i saw goodness die over and over. it reminded me that maybe spencer had been right and humans were weak and doomed ... ❞ it loops back to why he brought her the coffee. he knows that this is a part of it. the pain and the desperation and the final, quiet acceptance of the truth.
❝ no one could save me- no one wanted to try, and i know ... i know that was my fault, so i lost everything. it means that now, i only have everything to gain. i brought you coffee because it's something kind. and if the heroes that i once wanted to believe in can't prove me wrong about everything i was fed from the day i was sent to live in hell, then i'll do it myself. if i have to learn to be kind to prove to myself that it exists, then so be it. ❞
his chest heaves, he lets his arms fall to his side and lets the anger fade. he's tired, too. he's tired of the person who existed before. he's tired of the grief that came with mourning the life he never lived. and he knows she's tired, too. ❝ prove me wrong, jill. you want your final victory over the monster? then prove that i didn't win by turning you into something just as hateful and mistrustful as i am. otherwise, you will always feel hollow. ❞
he turns then, and softly adds:
❝ i will leave you another coffee tomorrow. you can do with it whatever you want. ❞
