Rebecca kept her fingers firmly against Chris's wrist, her head bowed slightly as she focused on his pulse.
"Well?" You asked after a few moments of silence.
"It's getting stronger," Rebecca nodded slowly, removing her fingers after another minute or so. "Yeah, it's getting back to normal. He'll be just fine."
You let out a small sigh of relief, feeling it wash over your shoulders and remove the weight that lingered on them.
"You gave him the serum just in time," Rebecca commented, leaving Chris's right side to focus on the wound on his leg. "Another minute or so, he probably would've gone into shock or a coma. Did you know what type of snake it was?"
You shook your head, watching Rebecca fold a square of thick gauze a few times over. "No, I only know it was a diamond head shaped snake. Those are the poisonous ones."
"You're right." Rebecca proceeded to inspect the damage more, gently dabbing away the remnants of fresh blood that leaked from the wound. "Thankfully it wasn't too deep at all. If it was on his thigh, it could've severed a major artery. I don't even wanna imagine what could've happened if it did."
"Geez Rebecca," you smiled a bit, "You got this all written down on your arm or something?" You asked, all while taking a sip of your water that Rebecca had brought for you.
She giggled, folding a new piece of gauze while looking back at you. "I just really studied is all. Being a team medic means I have to know all of this down to the science, it comes naturally to me at this point."
"I bet it does." You watched her clean the wound completely of dry blood, exposing the slight swell and bruising around the scratch that was caused from the venom. Chris, in his unconscious state, sounded like he was improving slowly but surely. His breathing was no longer ragged and strained, and he didn't appear to flinch when Rebecca cleaned the wound with saline soaked gauze pads.
"You barely kept your eyes off him when I came back," Rebecca inquired, seeing your attention on Chris at this very second, "Did something happen?"
"Besides him blacking out," you began, leaning against your arm as you sat back some, "Not much. It just scared me the way he did." You kept staring at him, thinking back to how rough the texture of his hand was when it held your wrist, and just the way he looked at you. The look in general was something you couldn't get out of your head. Their was something else, some unfinished words that Chris looked like he was gonna say, but passed out before he could say it.
"Alright, I did all I could. Now we just have to let the serum do it's work." Rebecca finished tying some bandages around his leg to keep the gauze secured on the wound, setting the trash aside in a small pile away from the group.
"Thanks Rebecca." You saw her smile and nod, her attention frozen on Chris as she sat in her spot, just as excited in the anticipation for Chris to wake up.
Not even a full moment later, Chris began to stir. Both women rose slightly, seeing his head lift and his eyes blink, as if he had been sleeping.
"Chris!" You called out his name with excitement, a faint smile appearing on his lips as he acknowledged you.
"How're you feeling??" Rebecca asked, watching Chris blink some more as he appeared groggy and weak.
"What happened?" He asked, his voice faintly raspy due to his dry throat.
"You were bitten by a poisonous snake and fell unconscious," Rebecca commented, seeing you hand your water bottle to Chris, which he immediately took as he sat up from being against the wall. He drank graciously, sounding relieved after downing the rest of the bottle.
"Easy," Rebecca gently ushered, seeing Chris start to get himself off the ground. You got up first, watching Chris struggle slightly the moment he put weight onto his left leg.
He groaned, his back leaning against the wall as he brought a free hand to his head, rubbing against his right temple. "My head," He groaned, closing his eyes momentarily as he felt the pain of dizziness throb like a migraine, "Oh my head is killing me."
"You should be fine cause (Y/N) gave you a shot of serum," Rebecca reassured, holding her hands out gently with her statement, "But again, don't do anything-"
"That you wouldn't do?" Chris finished her statement, holding out both his hands in reassurance, getting himself to stand properly on his own two feet. "I'll try to remember that. I owe you one."
Rebecca nodded in agreement. "Not just me, but I appreciate it. Just please be careful if you guys run into that thing again. Their's only so much serum to disperse." Rebecca held out another new brown glass tube, which Chris immediately took.
"Thanks." Chris nodded, Rebecca looked over to you with a smile before turning around to leave, going back to Richard like before.
"Here." Chris handed you the tube, which you were quick to take into your own hand.
"Thanks by the way," Chris began, only to be met with the shake of your head, "It's alright. You would've done the same for me."
"I would've, yeah." Chris agreed. You bit your lip a little as you slipped the serum into the same place where you had the previous one, wondering what Chris was gonna say to you before he lost consciousness.
"So," you began, "Are you okay?"
"I think so. My head feels like I got knocked pretty hard, but I feel alright enough to hold a gun. I'll be alright."
"Do you by chance remember what happened after you got bit?" You asked slowly, really hoping Chris would kind of fess up and explain what the moment you two shared was about. Especially his unsaid words.
"Uh," Chris looked behind him, seeing the stairs and abandoned medical trash close to the haphazardly made door, "I fell down the stairs. Now that I think of it, that's why my head must hurt this bad. Besides the venom."
"Anything else?" You pressed on.
To your disappointment, Chris shook his head as he looked back at you. "Sorry, after that is when the pain just.. you know, filled my brain. Why?" He asked, his face beginning to display curiosity to why you were questioning. "Did something bad happen?"
"No." You shook your head, quickly deciding to just drop the topic, despite the faint aggravating feeling you began to feel in the back of your head. How could he forget something like that?? You knew it was cause of the pain from the venom, but a guy can't just hold your hand and say something and immediately forget right after.
"No wait," Chris urged you, bringing his hand on your shoulder to get your attention, "What happened? I want to know."
You frowned a little, thinking you should tell him the whole thing. But again, you wondered if it would've made things a bit weird if you told him what really happened? You didn't know how to play this out.
You turned to face him, biting the inner meat of your cheek for a second. "You were struggling to stay awake after I gave you the serum, but you.. were gonna tell me something. But before you did, you passed out on me."
Chris stared at you, his brow raising in question. He was gonna say something to you? What exactly would he say to you?
It was something that made you irritated for sure, he could tell that right away. Maybe you were just irritated because whatever he was gonna say he couldn't finish, leaving you on a cliffhanger.
"Sorry," he immediately apologized, removing his hand from your shoulder, "I don't remember. I'm being honest."
Seeing his face grow from concerned to one of guilt made your face soften, feeling a bit of shame for making Chris feel bad for something that wasn't his fault. I guess he doesn't remember, I'll just figure it out later on what he wanted to tell me.
"It's alright, I'm just glad you survived something that could've been worse." You smiled, letting the man visibly relax. "I don't know what I'd do if I had to scour this entire mansion on my own."
"You kidding?" Chris chuckled, "What kind of teammate would I be leaving the rookie to do all the hard work?"
"A bad one." You giggled, seeing his smile grow. He brought his hand to your shoulder, giving it a firm pat.
"Alright. Let's keep going, shall we?"
While the two of you pressed on, you managed to end up in a sort of an outdoor hallway area, with missing windows and walls, letting in the natural moonlight from outside. The walls and floors that were available were covered in dense leafy vines and various wild ferns, crunching under your boots as you walked slowly. By then, the night air began to smell of moisture from the threatening storm coming from somewhere unknown. It was a welcoming scent, better than dust and rotting corpses.
"Hey, look at this." Chris stopped at the steel door at the end of the hallway, lit up by a bright light. Beside the door was a stone wall, with a crevice inside that presented an octagon shape indentation inside.
You peered over to a small square section that held a bit of cursive writing. It stated: The defiler of the cursed coffin.
"Huh," you said, looking over to Chris, "I guess we did need that emblem thing after all."
"Couldn't have said it better myself." Chris brought out the red and silver emblem, placing it against the indentation. The item slid perfectly inside the spot, causing the steel door to let out a few series of clicks, unlocking it.
The two of you went through the door, which presented you to a small room with bare concrete walls smeared with old water stains, not presenting much to the naked eye. At the most, it looked like an old supply bunker, only their weren't many interesting supplies at all.
Their was another door at the end that led both of you outside again, the two of you greeted to the sight of the night skies with various thick trees. Wooden fences sealed in the beaten path with wooden steps that was going down towards somewhere, the area lightly blanketed with fog.
"Hey, Chris?"
"Yeah?"
"I get that we needed the emblem thing to get through here," you saw Chris stop at a wooden stand, displaying four planks of wood with white words scrawled on them, "But does that make us desecraters?"
"I don't think so," Chris looked over at you, "It was put there purposely to find, I doubt that makes us bad people."
"I'm not saying we're bad," you shook your head, a smile starting to form on your face, "I just couldn't help but feel bad that what it said back there, calling us defilers just for getting that thing, like we weren't supposed to."
Chris chuckled, bringing his hand forward to rest on your head, his fingers ruffling through your hair. "Don't beat yourself up on it kid, I don't think labeling ourselves as defilers is the worst of our problems."
You grabbed Chris's arm, unable to contain a sudden laugh as you pulled it away. "Kid??" You repeated with feigned shock. "I have a name Redfield. You should use it more often."
"It's a nice name," Chris insisted, shrugging his shoulders with a false sense of innocence, his sense of mischief being highly present in the smirk of his eyes, "I just can't help but have it go lost on me sometimes."
"Awww," you stretched out the word while slowly walking past a weather vane with a bright red painted rooster, staring up at the man as he walked beside you, staring at you with a brow raised. "Your mind go blank when you think of me Christopher?"
Chris started laughing, never quite hearing you say his full name in an expression like that before. Hearing his laugh made your own begin to form, your heartbeat seeming to speed up just hearing how interesting his laugh was. It made butterflies flutter, causing you to laugh in the first place.
"It's actually quite the opposite." He said, slowly seeming to recover himself. Your laugh stopped, taking to notice what he meant when he said those words.
He thinks of me?
"Really-?" You were cut off by a foreign beeping sound, making Chris halt in his footsteps. His hand immediately grabbed ahold of something, bringing it forward to reveal the radio that Richard had given Chris.
Chris pressed the button, immediately receiving static sounds, with a faint voice breaking through it.
"Someone... respond."
The deep voice that came through allowed you to know who it was right away, sparking a bit of hope in your system.
"Wesker?!" Chris asked, pressing the button again in an attempt to reply. Instead of your captain replying to Chris, he kept talking, despite the static cutting out most of what he was saying.
"The monster in chains... Retreat.. do not resist."
"Monster in chains?" You asked, seeing Chris visibly look just as confused as you sounded.
"Stay away... from the woods outside... the mansion."
The voice ceased, as well as the static as the signal was lost. Chris lowered the device, clicking his tongue in disappointment.
"Maybe the signal was weak," you guessed, crossing your arms slowly, "We're out here. He's possibly inside somewhere, but what does he mean by a monster in chains?"
"I don't know," Chris put away the radio, "But the woods, something's out there he doesn't want us to run into."
"Should we go back inside then?"
"No."