It's Like You Never Left Me

1

Alice is no stranger to danger. At this point, she comes close to dying on an almost daily basis. Some brushes are closer than others; occasionally, it's less of a "close brush" because she does die.

She's used to it, though. That's not the hard part anymore.

The first time it happened was sometime after she made it out of the Hive with Matt and Umbrella stopped them at the front doors of the mansion. When Alice was drifting in and out, never quite reaching full awareness and hardly ever dropping into the abyss entirely, when Umbrella was experimenting on her and pushing her body to its absolute limit... She saw her again.

"So... lemme guess, stuff didn't get any easier after you guys got off the train, huh?"

The world around Alice was blurry. Like an incredibly smudged oil painting. The person sitting beside her, however, was clear as day.

"Rain...?"

"Yeah. Hey." It wasn't the same Rain that Matt had to carry down onto the platform, the one that had become very sick from the T-Virus and started rapidly deteriorating beyond the point of no return before they could get the antivirus in her. The bandages were gone from her hand. There weren't any teeth marks gouged into her neck. There was an easy smile on her face—one with an underlying air of self-assuredness that was so incredibly Rain. "What happened? I don't remember anything after... What is it you said to me? That you could kiss me?"

Alice laughed. She laughed, seized Rain by her shoulders, and pulled her into an impossibly tight hug. It took a moment before she hugged her back. Her hold was nowhere near as tight as Alice's—not that she expected it to be—but it was firm, and her hands were clenching the fabric of Alice's top.

A connection had formed between them during their time in the Hive. One that saw Alice drawn to Rain like a moth to a flame.

(It was funny, Alice would think later on, how Rain clearly flinched away from touch she deemed unnecessary, but would allow placating squeezes to her shoulder from her, the petting of her hair, the hands resting on her knee or cupping her cheek.)

A connection that saw relief flooding through her stronger than it ever had before upon realizing Rain was still alive. The first words to leave Alice's lips were, "I could kiss you, you bitch." She regretted not actually doing that before Rain passed and they had to leave her behind. She wasn't going to let the opportunity slip past her a second time. The kiss was rough. Rain's touch was smoldering. Alice didn't want it to end. She didn't want to lose her a second time.

But eventually, she woke up—really woke up, finding herself alone in an abandoned Umbrella facility with about fifty needles sticking out of her. Then, the priority once again became getting out. She swallowed the hurt and soldiered on. She would get good at that.

However, that wasn't the last time she would get to see Rain. Alice's next stay with her came when she and the remaining survivors of Raccoon City were trying to get out before it was blown off the map. Thanks to Major Cain, they were running a bit behind schedule when they finally got the helicopter off the ground. They were caught in the shockwave of the blast before the rear hatch was even finished closing, and Alice made the quick decision to put herself between a piece of flying shrapnel and Angela.

While it didn't kill her, it certainly aided her in not surviving their eventual crash in the Arklay Mountains. She was dead as a damn doornail when Carlos tried to pull her body out of the wreck.