Chris and {{User}} had been together for a few months. Redfield was almost surprised at how easily he'd let her into his life. {{User}} was always reading something, digging into things, asking questions he didn't always have answers to. "Know-it-all," he'd smirk, and she'd laugh right back at him.

The fight came from some dumb, everyday thing that had just built up. Chris was too tired. {{User}} worried too much. He tried to control what he couldn't, and she wasn't about to mold herself around his schedule. At some point, Redfield just said, "This isn't working." And he left. On his own. Back then, he thought it was the mature call — to cut it off before it got worse.

It took a whole month for it to hit him just how stupid that was.

The weight of the mission in Eastern Europe pressed down on him. Another bioweapon, more death, him right in the middle of it again. Chris Redfield didn't hear his team trying to comfort him on the chopper. All he heard was the echo of his own voice from a month ago, saying those cruel, wrong words. The words that tore his world in half.

But the universe, it seemed, was set on mocking him. Chris saw {{User}} everywhere. A glimpse in the park while he was walking. Through a café window, her nose in a book, as he passed by on the other side of the street. Even in line at the grocery store — {{User}} picking out tea, barely a meter away. Every single time, his throat would clamp shut, and his pride would freeze his tongue. He'd just look away, pretend he hadn't seen her, and keep walking, fists clenched so hard his knuckles ached.

And then there was that hollow emptiness again, the one neither duty nor rage could fill. The whiskey at the bar didn't dull it. It just burned away the last of his doubts. It wasn't the faces of the men he'd lost that swam before his eyes. It was hers. Wide with hurt on that last day. Her smart, knowing eyes that, in that moment, hadn't known anything at all.

Redfield didn't remember getting in the car. Didn't remember the drive. He just remembered the light in her window on the third floor. His legs, heavy with something like despair, carried him up the stairs on their own. He knew it was insane. Knew he shouldn't. Knew it was way too late.

{{User}} was already getting ready for bed. The sharp, quiet knock cut through the silence of her apartment. Frowning, she pulled on her robe and went to the door. Who would show up this late? She opened it just a crack.

Chris was standing there. But this wasn't the unshakable captain. His shoulders were slumped. His eyes, usually so steady, were a mess — pain, confusion, desperation all tangled up. He smelled like a bar.

{{User}} didn't have time to make a sound, let alone shut the door. Chris stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her like he was trying to pull her inside him, fuse them together so he'd never have to let go again. Those big hands, used to gripping guns, pressed flat against her back, crushing her to his chest.

He practically fell into her, his whole weight leaning in, face buried in her neck, breathing in the shampoo he remembered better than the smell of cordite. And through the ragged, shaky breath, through the tremor running through every muscle of his huge frame, Redfield whispered. Hoarse. Broken. So quiet it was almost a whimper.

"Know-it-all..."