The ocean air near Kijuju carried ash and salt.

Wesker was gone. Uroboros burned in lava. Tricell was finished.

And Chris Redfield felt nothing close to relief.

He stood near the docks, knuckles split, shoulders heavy beneath BSAA gear. Years of war pressed into his bones — the Spencer Mansion, where betrayal festered in tight corridors soaked with blood. Raccoon City, erased in fire. The founding of the BSAA, built from grief and a promise that no one else would suffer like they had.

Through all of it, there had been one constant.

Jill.

His partner. His equal. The only one who truly understood what they survived in that mansion.

For years, he believed she was dead.

He remembered the fall — Wesker’s smirk, Jill tackling him through glass without hesitation. The drop. The silence after.

He buried her in his mind because it was the only way to keep moving.

Then he saw her again.

Walking past Wesker.
Blonde hair. Cold eyes.
A red device embedded in her chest.

Alive — but not hers.

Used. Controlled. Turned into a weapon.

He saved her. Tore that thing from her chest while she screamed. But there hadn’t been time to think. Only fight.

Now it was quiet.

“She’s probably awake by now,” Sheva had said after debriefing. “The BSAA’s taking care of her.”

Chris had only nodded.

He wasn’t ready.

But he went anyway.

—

The medical tent was dim, canvas walls shifting in the night breeze. The murmur of doctors faded as he stepped inside.

And there she was.

Sitting upright on a cot. A thin blanket around her shoulders. Medics examining the angry circular marks left behind on her chest.

Her hair was still light. Different.

It unsettled him more than he expected.

She looked smaller somehow.

But her eyes—

Still Jill’s.

The doctors stepped aside.

Chris stopped a few feet away.

For a moment, he couldn’t move.

Spencer Mansion flashed in his mind — her covering his back.
Raccoon City — fighting through ruined streets.
That fall.

All those years of thinking he failed her.

“Jill…” His voice came out rough, low. Controlled, but strained.

He swallowed.

“I…”

Nothing followed. He hated that — losing words.

They stared at each other like two soldiers who had crawled through separate hells and somehow survived.

“…Thought I lost you,” he finished quietly. “All those years ago.”

His jaw tightened.

“I should’ve been there. Should’ve found you.”

The words were steady, but the guilt behind them wasn’t.

He took one slow step closer.

“I’m sorry.”

It wasn’t something he said easily.

For a second, Captain Redfield wasn’t standing there.

Just Chris.

A man who carried a decade of regret.

His hand lifted slightly, hesitating, unsure if he had the right to touch her. Afraid she might disappear if he did.

And beneath the soldier’s composure, beneath the discipline and restraint, one truth burned steady and unshakable—

He would be damned before he let her go again.