Chrisker One-Shots

Evanescent

Summary:

After the Mansion, Chris fades.

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You are strong. That's what everybody thinks.

You are unfaltering and brave, determined and persevering. You never give up, under any circumstances, and you make sure they don't, either.

They all lean on you. They look to you for answers and direction when things become hopeless, and when they're lost, they depend on you to find a path home.

Even Jill, strong, levelheaded Jill, cried on your shoulder after the Mansion. She clung to you and wept for your dead teammates, adding her own horrors to the burden of your own.

But you've never cried. You've ranted at Irons and turned some of your rage onto your coworkers, and you've created a good, believable façade.

You have hate, not sorrow.

You hate Umbrella. You hate Irons. You hate Wesker.

You don't sit in your empty, lifeless apartment at night, unable to sleep, and think about better times. You're not haunted by phantoms of a life you used to have, of a relationship that turned out to be built on lies, an extension of a job.

You don't have nightmares about Wesker's expression as the Tyrant's claws sliced into him, or how his body looked, lying there crumpled on the floor of the lab.

You're not in mourning.

You're strong. You're the leader.

You're the one who's not going to stop until Umbrella pays.

That's what they think. It's what you tell yourself constantly, to try to keep going.

But it's a struggle. Each day that passes is darker and bleaker than the next, a colorless existence spiraling towards an uncertain, unhappy future.

Getting out of bed can be such a momentous task, when you have nothing to look forward to.

You are many things, but you are not strong. And as time passes, as you grow more and more worn and tired, you become even weaker than you were. Reality is like a faint, grey dream; you only really exist in memories. You're trapped in a mansion that is no longer there, staring at a body that's long burned.

You survived the horror, but you haven't really been alive.

Just existing.

You have survived impossible things.

But you die so easily at the end of a gun.