Dogs must be trained & broken in. This, the Illusive Man believes. Chris Redfield has fought tooth & nail, defiant to a fault. Wordlessly, his thumb pad traced beneath Christopher's right eye. There, he felt bone strained against flesh. He raised his finger & pushed in. In until he heard a satisfying POP! A squelching sound so horrific, so gruesome, that no one should bear witness. ' Rebellion is in our blood, Chris. ' May he remember the Illusive Man's eyes forevermore.
He is no dog. A beast, perhaps, fighting until his last breath (it’d be easier to die, an option he considers more than he’ll ever admit, but not like this - on his own terms or not at all.) but he is no dog. The weary soldier stands before his self-appointed master because he has no choice, skin stretched over his muscles too big for his body, a heart too weak for his bitterness. These are flaws that glow, the fleshy weak-point of every virus he’s encountered (heart on his sleeve, wonders if he’s yet a monster), waiting to burst.
Stronger men have tried to break me.
This time, it isn’t red (red lights behind sunglasses, red rubies on her throat, a red scarf in the darkness), but blue. Ethereal in a way that unsettles him, that reminds him of the luminescence found in laboratories, in tubes, in the watery graves where it thunders. He has toppled Umbrella’s kingdom, came out the victor (ignores the scars, but can’t ignore what he’s lost, wonders if it was ever worth it) but he will not break. Not like this. The Illusive Man will kill him or use him, but never break him.
Those soulless eyes.
Thinks of Singapore. Of the shadow in the corner of his eye, of Merah’s smile, of the whispers of the woman with those eyes (he still doesn’t know who, but she crawled under his skin, one secret of hers he never learned). The thumb that caresses his skin is gentle - for a moment, like a lover admiring his paramour and all the flaws etched onto skin - before the blackness descends, a sickening noise that fills his head, a foreign object where his eye should be (his fathers eyes, they always said)and he feels it all; squelching, slippery, searing, stinging pain, the warmth of blood pouring down his face, into his mouth, between his teeth. He hears little, unaware if the scream in his throat escapes.
