resident evil fic: evergreen (alice/claire)
Title: Evergreen
Fandom: Resident Evil Extinction
Pairing: Alice/Claire
Rating: teen
Notes: It was only like a billion years ago (possibly two months) that I offered to write holiday ficlets. This one, along with being way late, is for thenewhope. Her prompt was 'the way snow feels when you've grown so used to sand'. 1120 words.
There are trees this far north.
It was the first sign that what they were heading for wasn't all a lie, green dotting the landscape as it flew past beneath them. And they all knew, as soon as they saw it. Green, it meant water, meant life.
When Alice comes, she appears out of the trees like something romantic, like a heroine in a fairytale. Claire watches her approach through the binoculars and thinks of those resourceful girls, combs turning into forests, needles into mountains.
"It's okay," she tells the others. They trust her now, it's been two months since she and the kids came out of quarantine. "It's okay, it's her."
-
She's the latest attraction, apparently. A whole crowd gathers to see her arrive, a lot of hopeful faces, and wary ones. And then there are the familiar ones.
"Alice!" K-Mart yells when she sees her, runs, launches herself at Alice. "Hey, you made it! Shit, like you weren't gonna."
"Hey." Alice is grinning as she hugs her back.
With Claire there's less hugging, but she approaches her, smile wide and shaking her head. "God, I could kiss you," she says.
Then Alice doesn't know what to say, while Claire is just looking at her, and K-Mart is hanging off her side, swaying them a little side to side.
"So you brought it?" a voice comes from the one of the others standing around.
"Does it really work?" comes another.
There are more questions, and she crouches over her pack, tossing aside the clothes and rations to reveal what takes up most of the room, a large sealed case. She digs a memory card from one of the side pockets and holds it up. "The data's on here, everything you need to replicate your own - assuming the facilities you've told me about are functional. I brought enough for a hundred doses, anyway."
"Well we have to run tests, first," Claire says, rubbing her forehead with the back of her hand as she thinks. "And volunteers to try it out - that's me, I'll be first guinea pig. But a hundred doses... we can do all the kids."
There's a lot of talk about testing, but with an air of cautious optimism, and there's K-Mart beside her, clinging to her hand like she might run away. Honestly, it's not like she isn't thinking about it; they're all still staring at her.
"God I think I really will kiss you," Claire says, leaving the tight knot of discussion to rejoin them. She doesn't, though. She does put her arms around Alice's shoulders and hug her, tight and brief. "Come on," she says then, "the science guys are going to be busy for a while. How about we show you around?"
-
There are twin racks in the small room, lit by a bare fluorescent bulb.
"Guest of honour gets her own room. I'm down the hall with K and four other people."
"I don't want to -"
"We use it for people when they're injured or sick. We don't actually get a lot of visitors. It's here or out in the snow."
"Oh."
"So you can leave your stuff. Clean up, take a shower if you want."
"A shower?"
"Yeah, I know. It's almost like we're civilised up here."
"Weird," Alice says, and throws her backpack on the closest bunk.
-
The communal spaces are filled with growing things. Shelves of hydroponics line the walls, trays of seedlings hang from the ceilings. People fill up the large rooms as much as possible, sharing their body heat with the plants and each other.
K-Mart, celebrity by association, sits between Alice and Claire at one of the long tables. Other kids are sprawled all over the place, and people wander in and out, stopping to eat or join in the conversation or just to meet her.
Alice doesn't remember the last time she was around so many people whose faces weren't just like hers - or rotting off. But K-Mart and Claire - mostly K-Mart - keep story time going pretty well between them.
"Oh hey, Claire, we should tell Alice about the grizzly bear."
"A bear? I didn't see any on my way up - it was just empty trees for miles."
K-Mart is shaking her head, her eyes big. "No, I think this one, like, ate them all."
Alice blinks. "You mean it was -"
"Oh yeah. Bet you're sorry you missed that one," Claire says dryly.
A t-virused-up grizzly bear. It's enough to make even Alice take pause, her eyes widening at the thought.
"That thing was..." Claire searches for a word and can't come up with one. "Scary." She cranes her head around K-Mart to look at Alice. "Scarier than you."
"Whoa," Alice deadpans. "That is scary. So how'd you take it down?"
"It involved an old mine shaft, two pounds of C4, and a bazooka."
"Bear go boom?"
K-Mart rocks from side to side, bumping shoulders with both of them in turn. "Bear go hell-a boom. Oh! Now tell her about the moose herd!"
-
Checking in with the watch posts - same time every night like clockwork. Tonight, though, Alice trails after her, and they linger outside once the rounds are done. The floodlights are bright out here in the yard. Beyond the fences the tree line is a dark void in the distance.
"And I thought the desert was cold at night," Alice says, glancing sideways. Her crooked smile half hidden behind her hair, her hands buried deep in her pockets, she's hunched in on herself against the chill in the air.
And yet somehow it's still not hard to remember that this woman burned a sky full of monsters to save them.
"Just wait till someone shoves a handful of slush down your back," Claire says. Adds, "Not that anyone would try that with you."
"You might."
"Hell, yeah." Claire nods, grinning.
Yeah. Maybe tomorrow, she thinks.
-
The vaccine works. Alice already knew it, but now the people here do too. Up ahead of her through the trees Claire walks with a little round bandaid on her arm and snowflakes falling in her hair.
There are others out there, other survivors, communities, remote havens of safety like this one. And Alice has an army on her side, but she wanted to come here herself. She likes how it's cold here. The air feels good to breathe.
Footsteps crunch over pine needles and ice as Claire comes back to find her, saying something about how taking a walk usually involves actual walking. She stops in front of her, says her name, and Alice opens her eyes.
"I could kiss you," she says, and starts to smile.