#˪♞˥ v: ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴍᴏɴsᴛᴇʀ

[shinylugers]

@terrorsave

it's been years-- how many though? he's really lost count

between a throttling pandemonium of viral attacks, the world has only grown rotten and more dangerous with the passage of time. there are only a few soldiers left from an era far off that still 'fight the good fight'- whatever that fucking means anymore. it's a losing battle against corporation after corporation that vie for power through greed - the expense of innocent lives simply didn't matter.

it never does.

with the aging days, steve's memory remains a vault. locked in memory; fresh blood, gunpowder, the scent of decay, a mammoth mountain of pain and torture set before his eyes. bodies. bodies. and more bodies. the island never left the boy's thoughts, his dreams nightmares. it serves as a reminder of mistakes, stolen time, childhood. -- love.

staring at the overgrown headstone, the chiseled beginning of the name starting with 's' only manages to breed nausea in the pit of steve's gut. wrong, wrong, wrong. he should be in that grave. should be the one rotting, with worms crawling through his eyes and infection long since faded away.

ghosts don't belong here.

but why was this fucking thing here in the first place? HOW long has it been here? but more importantly, why is HE here?

claire. of course she'd never leave him behind, after all this time.

in truth, he's been running for so long. afraid. yes-- fucking scared shitless, really. in his youth steve wouldn't have come to the conclusion so fast; always eager to prove himself, to please others, to not be USELESS. but those ideals withered and transformed after the island incident, rockfort had changed everything.

SHE did too.

seeing his own grave with a fresh layer of snowfall and wired brambles clutched at the base fills the boy with a visceral pull that hounds every last muscle taut. december has it's demons and each cycle of seasons only roots him deeper into a lingering despair. its stupid, he knows. steve knows he should think better, make the most of his time while he still lives and breathes.

it's a gift; no-- its a fucking curse. just a sick game and we're in for the long haul. the chess board's been flipped so many times over, long before the burnside name was wiped clean from umbrella's records.

for what he assumes is the cemetery's usual visitors car door closing, eventually break steve out of just staring at the headstone like some pining idiot craving past dues and justice. one knee digs into the snow; it's cold but he's layered in a simple jacket, gloves, a hoodie pulled up beneath the first layer. steve realizes he doesn't feel the temperature as well as he should, learned over the years the virus' keen abilities to surpass most human limits.

slow, steady fingers graze over the top of stone - brushing away the powder. soon to follow are the dried brambles, broken and brittle, disintegrating under simple touch alone. it reads the remaining letters of dread that spell out the name: 'steve burnside'.

[shinylugers]

it's the smoke that kills long before the flames

and even then, inhalation; the very exposure to such blinding variation of trauma chemicals stay with you. long term damage. they were long-fucking-term, alright. so much that its ingrained to the marrow. the scent of gunfire, burning decayed bodies, rotted blood, an echo of a guillotine blade dropping. . . [ CHOP ].

he doesn't pretend to know leon's pain, only to perhaps sympathize - despite his own blood on the verge of boiling at even a modicum of pity. there's nothing worse. though, from what he gathered through the grapevine, the records, and whatever public knowledge there was left of raccoon city -- leon was one of the good ones. not broken, but oh- so very bent to the weight waiting on the day to crush them all. shoulders of soldiers, wounded with phantom holes that steadily fill with black, black, black.

but that's neither here nor there. (not now at least)

what steve's eying up and focused on right NOW is an experience of a lifetime; a trip down to his childhood of working on anything with an engine, "no friggin' way, dude. are you SERIOUS?" he barely scrapes by with a blatantly staged whisper, as if anything louder might attract the FEDS-- y'know, the thing that presumably leon is. though. . . even at steve's age, the guy can't deny the excitement that suddenly invokes at the idea of racing down the streets and popping a stunt wheelie at 50MPH.

the keys dangle; a bait is set. the redhead can't hold back taking a swipe for the shinies and gently shoulders into leon with a friendly bump.

can't remember the last he felt at ease. so unadvoidant to touch and camaraderie. like a kid again. something so simple-- is it really this easy? will always be this easy?

"i promise to have it back by midnight? cinderella style. nothing missing, no scratches. which REMINDS me... since you're totally not a secret agent man with all the hookups..." ahem. steve's lips curve into a wide grin, sharp blue eyes fixated at leon and perhaps tethering on a judgement call. is he COOL enough? or is he really just fucking with him about the ride? "did you mod it yet?"

           * @shinylugers ︴ continued from 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔!

A GRIN IS BARED,  perfect  white  teeth,  (  as blinding  as  car  headlights  to  a  stray  deer  )  in  return  to  steve's  own  smile. steve's smile, it's  tight,  drawn  stiffly,  like  military  bootlaces,  leon  notes,  pulled  to  strain  the  leather,  cut  off  the  blood  pressure  -  up  to  code,  but  an  expression  not  up  to  scrutiny  under  leon's  sharp  attention,  and  familiarity.  it  didn't  surprise  him,  the  kid,  too  young,  had  been  through  several  layers  of  hell,  too  many.  leon  can  picture,  clearly,  his  own  reflected  face  pulling  the  same  expression,  over  and  over  again  in  the  mirror,  imperfect  every  time  to  his  grief.  back  then,  it  had  been  like  something  had  reached  into  him,  and  drilled  a  hole  straight  through  whatever  made  the  expression  easy  to  recall,  a  lobotomy  operation  that  dug  too  deep  and  pierced  from  his  brain  to  his  wounded, festering soul.  every  memory  that  summoned  a  relaxed  face  was  tainted  by  the  spreading  stain  of  raccoon  city,  saturating  everything  in  his  head,  like  a  popped  pustule.  why  do  you  look  so  angry  all  the  time,  leon?  you  should  get  some  sleep.  

we'll  get  on  like  a  house  on  fire,  you  and  i.

❛ i've  always  been  a  trendsetter,  just  knew  this  look  would  come  back  into  fashion  some  time  again.  they  all  doubted  me,  but  i  knew  the  truth!  people  hate  what  they  don't  understand,  the  amount  of  times  someone's  threatened  me  with  clippers,  pfft,  you  couldn't  count  it  on  both  hands.  they'll  have  to  burn  me  as  a  witch  before  they  touch  my  hair  at  this  point,  they  probably  wouldn't  let  me  into  my  own  secret  agent  man  office  if  i  got  a  haircut  anyways. ❜  there  it  is.  steve's  cheeky  smile  is  marked  down  as  a  small  victory  in  leon's  book.

it's  like  a  match  has  been  struck  and  lit,  and  it  doesn't  escape  leon's  notice  for  a  second,  the  minute  the  boy  in  front  of  him  lights  up  like  a  sparkler  at  the  sheer  mention  alone  of  his  heavensent  piece  of  fine  machinery.  leon's  trying  desperately  not  to  laugh  at  the  display,  straightening  up  with  a  playful  raise  of  his  brows  as  steve  scoots  closer,  leon  bends  towards  him  conspiratorially  -  he  just  can't  help  himself,  leon  is  more  than  eager  to  feed  the  hobbyist  flame,  holding  the  keys  just  above  steve's  nose,  teasing  him.

❛ ..you  gonna  pass  out  on me if  i  tell  you  it's  not  on  the  market  yet? ❜  as  with  most  high-class  goods,  the  ducati  xdiavel  was  introduced  to  the  government's  personal  lots  first,  then  would  be  filtered  down  to  the  pocket-heavy  public  a  handful  of  months  to  a  year  afterwards.  leon  had  been  lucky,  extremely  lucky,  to  dexterously  schmooze  through  the  right  channels  and  charm  &  sweet-talk,  wheeling-and-dealing  his  way  into  being  able  to  bring  the  beauty  home.  it  was  a  huge  expression  of  good  faith  to  entrust  steve  to  carry  the  keys,  let  alone  ride  her,  but  even  if  leon  ended  up  shoulder-deep  in  the  ducati  xdiavel  for  repairs  afterwards,  he  held  not  a  single  urge  of  hesitation.  this  was  his  torch  in  the  darkness  for  steve,  and  leon  wasn't  going  to  douse  it  for  fear  of  getting  burnt.

[shinylugers]

how did he really get here though? no doubt, there were thousands upon thousands of cemeteries and graveyards filled with those dead and gone even before umbrella. claimed by age, sickness, or accident -- steve doesn't feel like he belongs in those categories and yet here his name is. carved with a permanence of history and finality. the boy was cursed to follow in shadow of course, he REFUSED to leave claire's memory alone the moment he saw that flash of red hair on tv highlighted on global news. he started doing research, started following whatever trails there were - fuckin' hell, the internet was a lot more advanced than he remembered before rockfort. he eventually found out what he needed, where she was located - or at least the headquarters of work.

terrasave; the name of the human rights organization-- to bite back the thralls of bio-terrorism and fight against corps and governments. yeah-- that sounds like claire. something she would head, or at least be the running spokesperson of. even in the short span of time steve knew her, the woman's sense of justice and compassion was goddamn unparalleled.

she could have left him to rot in the beginning of their journey, could have done so many things to seal his fate far earlier than the t-alexia virus ever could. maybe some part of steve would have preferred that- that maybe the island could have just claimed him before puppet strings stemmed through his veins and dragged his body from the grip of death to dance to a mad queen's song. spare him the pain of reliving it, day after day.

but it was within steve's research that the location of where he might be able to shadow her came to light, at least from a safe distance. a few times the boy had gone to public events, just to confirm that this wasn't a lie, that claire was still actually alive and that she ESCAPED the island. maybe some part of his promise hadn't shattered in the end.

and it turned out that every december . . .

"...steve?"

he swallows down the beating drum of a heart threatening to burst from his throat; no-- no, no .. it's like a crack of molten lightening that surges down his spine. and for once in a long long time, steve feels a prickling heat clawing at the nape of his neck. but every inch of humanity left is screaming for the boy to run, to not look back. to not force claire to relive everything all over again, to stare down another phantom. another tragedy.

( but you've always been a selfish kid, right? )

steve wills himself to stand, boot crunching with an unseemly weight of decades of the owner as he slowly turns, hands pocketed as if having them loose would only shift reality. it was by chance that the wind knocked his hood back and let that pyre of hair stand stark against white snowy graves; and it was by chance that claire decided this would be the year to visit again.

color blooms in his line of sight, flowers - and for a moment the reason is lost on the boy. until it isn't, and all he could see was a reoccurring dream that's lasted for more than a decade come to fruition. the voice trembles, but a smile prevails,

"-- are those for me?"

long ago december lost it's festive aura to give way to the bleak, the vast, the empty. baubles in shiny red and green that seem a little more lacklustre than they used to, mulled wine in apt supply warms her gut but does little to quell the ache inside her. she has remembered him for longer than she ever knew him - that is burden she carries, gladly, because she owes it to him, because if not her, then who? rockfort is emblazoned on her skin like embossed thread of scar tissue along her thigh, her hip, numbers she can recount like her phone number, her home address - mfd two-eight-seven-two and wkd four-four-nine-six.

snow serves as a bad reminder and she is thankful, if nothing else, that the biting chill of winter has not yet tormented her with footpaths painted white. it seems a lifetime ago that she had ran, bare arms, bare legs, through a crumbling city and then again, unprepared for the subzero temperatures of antarctica here everything she touched left her fingers red and raw. she is older now, god does she feel older, old enough to wear a coat and gloves and keep her phone wedged into the pocket of her jeans. a image of a woman who could be considered responsible, but this time of year, she feels anything but.

it is a routine tradition, every december - or, at least, when she can - she leaves flowers at the headstone she had made for the empty grave. a memorial for her to lay her grief at, somewhere safe for his memory to rest, where people passing will look upon the name and for a moment, know he existed. small and insignificant, another breath of life into the boy she knew, if only for a few fleeting seconds.

in her arms, a small bouquet, the same one she gets every year. one she has put time into, her artistic streak surfacing in the research of each flower picked, pretentious, perhaps, but she has sat here on the drier days and explained each one, imagined how he'd laugh and mock her for it. pink carnations, i won't forget you, edelweiss, courage, dark crimson roses, mourning, gladolus, for her knight in shining armor.

she does not expect to see someone standing there, red hair like fire amongst the winter grey and her pulse quickens, instinctive, a tightening in her gut she has learnt to live with, the quick inhale as if seeing a ghost. her steps are awkward, cautious, a minor curve to her path to glance the face - no one should be at this grave but her.

no, it can't be - but it is, she knows, oh she knows. just as she remembers him, perhaps a little older, not by much. tightness sets in her jaw, the burning behind her eyes of tearducts kicking into action but she will not cry. not now. not yet. not until she is certain it isn't a trick of the light, an overactive imagination superimposing his features on a stranger.

"...steve?"