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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Carlos Oliveira & Jill Valentine Characters: Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira, Carlos Oliveira's sister, Original Characters Additional Tags: Reunions, Chance Meetings, Grocery Shopping, It's happy and it's sad, Starting Over, Jill Valentine Needs a Hug Summary:

There’s a moment where she knows he doesn’t recognize her, and she starts second-guessing herself. It might not be him—everything is too different. Her pulse is uncomfortably loud in her ears. Great, she thinks. She might as well go for it. “I'm Jill.” His careful expression changes, breaking into the warmest, brightest smile she’s ever seen. “Jill?”

***

She holds the refrigerator door open longer than she should. The row of milk cartons is a little daunting, so many different labels and specifications. She just wants almond milk. Is it worth finding a dairy substitute at all? Should she just take her intolerance as a sign and skip the whole thing?

She sighs. It’s Friday. She’s already made enough decisions this week.

Under her shirt, she can still feel residual adhesive on her skin where the electrodes had been stuck. They’re having her do sleep tests now, apparently needing to get data from her while she’s unconscious, too.

She gets it—there’s not many people who have been through her shit. There’s valuable information to be found there if they know what to do with it. That’s the thing that gets her through every barrage of tests.

Maybe this will help someone.

That, and the fact that the BSAA has been weird about the idea of her going to a different primary care physician. They get antsy when she brings up going anywhere other than their designed clinics. Slightly passive aggressive emails, evading the topic. It could be an insurance thing.

A couple comes down the aisle and opens the door next to hers. She gives up on picking a milk and starts to move down the row, wanting the space. As she goes to shut the door, she glances through the glass and goes still.

The man is leaning down to grab a gallon jug. She must have seen him before. A memory scratches at the back of her mind, just out of reach. She just stares at him like there’s something on his face.

Then he chuckles at something the woman next to him says, and it clicks.

“Carlos?”

He look up, notices she’s there, and stops. There’s a moment where she knows he doesn’t recognize her, and she starts second-guessing herself. It might not be him—everything is too different.

Her pulse is uncomfortably loud in her ears. Great, she thinks. Well, might as well go for it.

“I’m Jill.”

His careful expression changes, breaking into the warmest, brightest smile she’s ever seen.

“Jill?”

She can’t fight a smile. He closes the door and pulls her into a hug.

“Wow,” he says over her shoulder. When he steps back, he keeps his hands on her shoulders. He gives her a once-over like there would be bumps or bruises to check for—back from a quick trip down the hall, instead of fifteen years of nothing. She realizes that must be the way he is. Attentive.

“I like the new look,” he says, nodding to her hair.

“Ah, yeah,” she touches it reflexively. It’s not really the time or place for an explanation.

She wouldn’t mind talking about it here—she’s had enough practice with it in clinics and offices over the last few years, all with total strangers who didn’t give a shit about her. But there’s something hopeful in the way Carlos looks at her. She doesn’t want to squash it.

She turns to the woman, who she hasn’t determined his relationship to yet. She has the same hair color as he does, her eyes a darker brown. She seems a lot younger than him. She watches Jill carefully, unsure.

“Jill, this is my sister, Ava.”

“Hi,” Jill says.

“Hi.” Ava just looks a bit more spooked, but shakes the hand that Jill holds out to her. She looks at Carlos with wide eyes. “Jill?”

It sounds like they’ve talked about Jill before.

“The one and only,” Carlos says proudly.

He shouldn’t look proud. They barely knew each other then, and they know nothing now.

They’re standing in a Walmart in the suburbs of central Illinois, the last place she’d expect Carlos to still be. She’s surprised she could even recognize him. He barely resembles the image in her head—instead of full gear, there’s a sweatshirt and denim jeans. Instead of his hair loosely hanging down over his eyes, it’s styled back to show his forehead.

She looks into his smiling eyes and hopes the last fifteen years have been kinder to him.

Hers were a mixed bag. She feels like a completely different person than she was then. Her hair is only the most obvious, surface-level change. The actual startling ones are all on the inside. She switches the basket handle to her other hand, suddenly feeling nervous.

“So, wow, how have you been?” he asks.

“I’ve been okay,” she says honestly, nodding a little.

“You look great,” he says. Then he absently shifts his weight and shoves a hand in his pocket. “I mean— yeah, sorry. It’s just so crazy to see you.”

The understatement of the year. It’s so crazy to see him anywhere besides Raccoon City. She didn’t realize how much his gear and gun were attached to her idea of him. Seeing him in his casual clothes—just his regular clothes—makes her feel like she’s seeing something personal.

He still fidgets, though. Even standing here, he keeps shifting back and forth, looking down into their cart like it’s interesting. That’s the same.

He offers to get her a coffee from the place across the parking lot. He and Ava let her tag along to their car, where they load their groceries into the trunk.

“You don’t have to put this off for me,” she says.

Carlos just looks at her like she’s crazy. “They’ll be fine.”

At the coffee shop, he insists on buying, even though she’s already pulled out her card.

“I got it,” he says, tapping her arm down.

“What? Why?” she frowns at him.

“Because I want to.”

“You won’t even split it?” she asks.

“Jill, c’mon,” he says, turning to face her. “Please let me do this.”

She doesn’t have a clue why he’s being so insistent, if it’s just a fucked patriarchal thing or if he feels guilt about…something. That doesn’t make sense either; he’s the one who saved her ass. She should be paying for this coffee, fifteen years down the road.

A measly five dollars as payment for saving her life. He doesn’t even let her have that.

“Fine,” she concedes.

He passes his card to the cashier with a grin on his face. At least he appreciates the win.

Ava lets them have their own table. At first, Jill assumes it’s because of her—she must not have come across friendly enough. She checks over her shoulder to a table across the room, where the woman sits stares at her phone.

“She’s just shy,” Carlos says, following her gaze. “Nothing personal.”

“Oh, okay.”

She opens the lid of her drink and blows away steam, taking a sip. It’s really sweet. Hiding a grimace, she takes another one to be nice.

“I never pictured you as the blond type,” Carlos says conversationally. He got something iced and stirs it aggressively with the straw. “When’d that happen?”

He says happen like it was just an impulse, a late-night decision with a boxed kit in her bathroom.

“Oh,” she says.

She keeps touching her hair every time it comes up, every time she catches him looking at it. She pauses and consciously puts her hand on the table. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” he says.

She sighs.

It’s hard to approach. There’s a lot of ways she can breach the topic, and all of them feel bizarre. Mind control, Albert Wesker, experiments, you know…

She got used to it a long time ago. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she doesn’t even connect it to those memories. She’s just herself.

But sitting here suddenly puts her in Carlos’ perspective.

“In oh’six,” she begins slowly, “I was on a mission with my partner that went bad really fast. We were going after Oswell Spencer.”

She doesn’t look at Carlos, choosing instead to stare at a scratch on the back of her hand. She doesn’t see how Carlos reacts to the name, if at all.

“I was taken and part of some experiments for a few years,” she continues. When she tucks a piece of her hair behind her ear, she smiles a little bit. “This was a side effect.”

Carlos has gone quiet, listening carefully. He flashes a brief smile to mirror hers, but it gets lost when he shakes his head. “What kind of experiments?”

“Um,” she glances out the window. “I don’t really want to talk about it. It’s…heavy.”

If either of the Redfields were here, she could do it. She would look at them while she spoke, get it all out. They wouldn’t bat an eye.

“No, it’s okay,” he waves a hand, leaning back in his seat. “I didn’t mean to pry like that.”

“You’re good,” she says quickly. “Sorry I don’t have a better story.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

The mood is more somber now. They sit in thought, the coffees forgotten on the table between them. “But,” she says, brightening as much as she can, “what about you? What do you do now?”

She can’t decipher his expression. He smiles a little, looking down at the table. “Y’know just getting by. I got picked up by another agency a couple years ago.”

“Like…another pharmaceutical group?” she asks, hedging around the word umbrella.

“No, nothing like that,” he says. “They’re the ‘BSAA,’ super long name—”

Jill just blinks at him.

When he’s done trying to explain why he can’t remember all the parts of the acronym, he realizes she’s stopped listening. “What?”

“You’re with the BSAA?” she asks, a bit numb.

“Yes,” he says slowly. “Why? Is there something I should know about them, too?”

She fishes her wallet out of her pocket, sliding out her ID. When she holds it out in front of his face, he goes cross-eyed to read it.

She waits with bated breath.

“Holy shit, Jill,” he says. She lets him take the card so he can examine it more closely. He smiles in disbelief. “Jill Valentine. Special Ops. Damn.”

“I didn’t know you joined,” she says.

She knew contextually that the organization is constantly expanding, searching for potential recruits and bringing them in. It still blows her away that Carlos Oliveira could be under the same name and not even know it.

He pulls out his own card and slaps them down on the table, side by side. “That’s insane.”

She laughs.

“We’re coworkers! And we didn’t even know.”

“Where are you stationed?”

“I was out at HQ for a while. They’re putting me through a new training here though,” he explains. “It’s nice. I get to be at home for a few months.”

She nods. Once again, the gravity of meeting him hits her. They could’ve been an ocean apart, they have been for years, until now.

“Where’d they put you?” he asks. He notices his coffee again and takes a drink. The condensation has left a thick ring on the table.

“I’m under observation,” she says. When she realizes her slipup, she looks at him quickly. “Not for anything bad, just monitoring after the…experiments.”

She could kick herself. Good job, you look like a nutcase.

“Huh,” is all he says, somewhat thoughtful. “Sounds boring. Not at all what I’d picture Jill Valentine doing.”

“Maybe I’ll get back on the field,” she says. “We’ll see where they want me.”

“They’d be stupid to put you on the shelf,” he says.

It cuts deep, unexpectedly. She feels herself slump against the back of her chair. Huh. On the shelf.

She hadn’t put it like that before. It makes sense to hear the words, like it unlocks something she had been trying to get at. Dissatisfied, yes. Confused. Wounded. Even Chris was pissed about it on her behalf.

On the shelf sums it up so nicely.

“Yeah.”

Carlos asks her about her ID picture, steering the conversation back to casual. She takes the out gratefully. They laugh about each other’s photo faces.

When their cups are empty, she’s alarmed to find that she gets frantic. She watches Carlos as he takes their trash and shoves it in the bin. Her brain is trying to memorize details. She pinches her wrist, grounding.

Nothing bad is going to happen. He’s still here right now, not leaving yet.

Much to her relief, Carlos offers to walk her to her car. Ava splits off from them towards the Oliveira car, not before giving Jill a small wave. They weave through the parking lot until they get to her Challenger.

“So,” he says. He saunters past her and leans against the driver door before she can get to it. “How can I reach you?”

She holds back an eye roll. “Are you asking for my number?”

He feigns nonchalance, shrugging.

“You could just look me up on the BSAA site,” she says.

“That’s cold, spec ops,” he says, sighing. When she goes for the door handle, he laughs. “I guess I will.”

“Give me your phone,” she says. He pulls it out of his pocket, opening it to the contacts before handing it over.

As she types her name into the blank boxes, she feels like the future opens up in a new way.

It’s been monotonous for a few years—she goes in for observations, flies out for meetings and conferences, gets talked to like a test subject. She’s got Chris and Claire in her corner, always, and she doesn’t know where she would be without them. But the rest of life around that feels dead.

Dead and unrevivable.

She hands Carlos back his phone. When he raises it up, she has no time to react. She hears the canned shutter sound and glares at him.

“You need a contact photo,” he says. “How will I know who’s calling?”

“The contact name?” she says. “Asshole.”

He meets her eyes and she smiles. She couldn’t even pretend to be mad at him, not now. She feels a little bit giddy and hopeful, two muscles she hasn’t had the chance to use in a long time.

He pushes off of the door and gives her space. She opens it.

There’s a lot she wants to say. Words fill up her brain, clamoring together to try and make something coherent. Carlos stands there in the empty parking space next to her car, hands in his pockets and a contented look on his face.

What could just say in one second that would wrap this up? Did she even want that?

Your number is in his phone, she reminds herself.

As she stares back at him, she knows there’s time.

“Bye,” she says.

“Oh, c’mon, Jill,” he teases.

She turns as he steps forward and pulls her into a bear hug. It squeezes the breath out of her, locking something into place. She grips the back of his sweatshirt.

“I’ll see you around, okay?” he says.

“Of course.”

And she’s so grateful that it’s true.

#jill valentine #carlos oliveira #resident evil #nini is writing #long post

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