Archive of Our Own

He finds you in one of the hidden rooms in the Spencer Estate after he kills the old man.

Wesker starts strolling along the dark, endless corridors, sneering at the disgusting, old money opulence on display, and wonders what hidden secrets he might find buried behind false walls and vaulted doors, things Spencer has kept to himself all these years but which would be better suited in Wesker's capable hands instead. His boots thud loudly on the polished wooden floors and echo strangely in the empty manor as he walks.

His feet take him to an ornate door at the end of an out of the way corridor, sporting a strange, intricate lock that he can guess only Spencer has the key to – stashed away somewhere clever, knowing the old man. It piques his interest because it's uncharacteristically eye-catching – any moron with half a brain cell could look at this door and determine that something important is squirreled away behind its lock. That can only mean one thing: that it's less about keeping people out and more about keeping something in. Wesker doesn't bother with mundane things such as going on a convoluted journey to track down the key – he simply kicks it with all his superhuman strength and watches as it blows away from him in splinters. So much for fancy locks.

As the dust settles, Wesker steps over the remnants of the door without care and takes a look around. He's on his guard, ready for any number of threats to jump out at him knowing Spencer – though not with too much concern since hardly anything could truly be a match for his strength and abilities – but he has to admit, privately of course, that he is a bit puzzled at what he finds.

Inside, the room is… normal. It looks like a child's room. Not a terribly young one, but not a teenager either. It's tidy enough but holds that disarray most kids bring to any space they inhabit – clothes thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, desk messy with books and papers and pens scattered at random, posters on the wall, figurines on shelves. Last time he checked, Spencer didn't have children.

Intrigued, Wesker stops in the middle of the bedroom, red eyes scanning his surroundings attentively, and wonders where the child that is supposed to go with the room is. He doesn't do something as silly as bending down to look under the bed. Instead, he keeps perfectly still and listens. His senses are much more heightened than a regular human's and it takes no more than a few seconds of perfect silence for his hearing to pick up on it – scared, uneven breathing and an elevated pulse. Coming from… the closet!

Not a bad hiding spot, though pathetically predictable.

Wesker makes his way there slowly, his steps deliberate and heavy, and he grins at the sound of that heart rate picking up. Just what exactly has Spencer been hiding, huh?

When he rips open the closet door, he both expects what he sees and doesn't.

He sees you. Small, young, scared, folded into yourself as tightly as you can so you can make yourself a smaller target. Your eyes are screwed shut and you're trembling. You reek of fear but more than that – you reek of misery. Wesker should know, he remembers well what that smelled like on his own childhood self.

Curious, Wesker goes down to one knee until he's no longer towering over you and speaks.

“I didn't expect to find a child here. What is your relation to Oswell Spencer?”

You flinch at the sound of his voice but slowly, unsurely, you unfold your arms from over your head until you can move your head and take a peek at him. The face that stares back at Wesker is so innocent it almost makes him feel wrong to be in its presence – like just by being in its vicinity he's corrupting it. Yet he stays right where he is, for he knows that nothing that has come into contact with Spencer could ever retain its innocence for long. He fears Spencer eradicated any traces of it long before Wesker got here.

“He… He told me to call him father,” you answer, voice rough as if it doesn't get used much.

Wesker raises an eyebrow at that. “And was he? Your father.”

You shrug. “I don't know. I never had parents before him, just the white coats.”

Wesker hums. So… another manufactured creation? Decided to be more hands-on this time around to ensure success? How typical.

“And this is your room, then?”

You nod hesitantly but Wesker notices how you're slowly unfolding more and more of your tightly wound body, relaxing bit by bit the more he doesn't do anything to prove to you that he's a threat. Foolish. He could kill you before you can even blink – just because something hasn't proven itself threatening it doesn't mean that it isn't. It just means it has more intelligence than to telegraph its intentions.

“I'm not allowed outside unless father is with me but he hasn't taken me out in a long time. Because of his health.”

Well. Wesker never thought Spencer would win any father of the year awards if he had a child, but this is abysmal even for him. At least Wesker got his illusion of freedom even if all of his choices have been carefully puppeteered from behind the scenes his entire life – a fact that makes his blood boil all over again when he thinks about it, so he forces himself not to think about it.

“And when you go out? What do you do?”

“Tests,” you answer and you bite your lip in a distinctly childish way that makes Wesker want to scold you into ceasing the behaviour. He tamps down on it, though, because he is not in charge of you and you can tear your lip to shreds as far as he's concerned. “Sometimes he gives me shots, like the white coats did before. Otherwise, I train and run tests to show how strong I am.”

So, you have powers too. Infected, by the sounds of it, though God only knows what with.

He should… He should probably kill you. Whatever Spencer was doing with you is of no consequence to Wesker – he has his set path already and anything that might be of use can be found in logs and reports stashed away somewhere in this palace of a manor. He'll undoubtedly get his hands on blood samples, too – the old man wouldn't have been foolish enough not to stash a bunch of them away, just in case something happened to his precious child.

Leaving a juvenile B.O.W. with no guidance or handler alive in this place would be a mistake. And if the BSAA get wind of your existence and start following your trail – which wouldn't be difficult since you're a child and a naive one at that, unused to the real world and unaware of its dangers, of how to navigate it without leaving traces behind – it's not like living as a captive of that organisation would be terribly better than what you've known under Umbrella and then Spencer himself. Killing you might even be a mercy in a way.

But for whatever reason, Wesker decides to ask you how old you are. He doesn't know what compels him to do it and why the answer matters so much to him, but he asks. And the second he hears your answer, his decision has been made. Perhaps it was made the second he laid eyes on you and this is just pretext.

“Thirteen.”

“Right. You're coming with me. Up you go,” Wesker beckons, climbing to his feet fluidly and extending a helping hand to get you off the closet floor and to your feet as well.

Wide-eyed and clearly confused, you take the offered hand nonetheless and let Wesker pull you up. Your hand is comically tiny in his gloved grasp and it stirs a foreign feeling in Wesker's chest when he observes the difference in sizes, but he shakes it off brusquely as he lets you go and steps aside to let you pass. You do so timidly, looking at him over your shoulder, uncertain, and Wesker has no fucking idea what he's doing right now but he knows that he may be a monster but even he can't bring himself to kill a defenceless thirteen year old.

“Do you have a backpack?” You nod. “Take items of value you wish to bring with you. And hurry, I have other business to attend to.”

You do as you're told without kicking up a fuss – you haven't asked who he is, what he's doing here, where he's taking you, why Spencer isn't here. Something tells Wesker you learned not to ask questions a long time ago, that simply going with the flow is in your best interests. It doesn't sit right with him. Questions are the way one learns how the world works; without them, we're just machines, completing tasks mindlessly and living out our days until the day we die. He would have thought Spencer of all people might understand at least that. But perhaps not.

Wesker waits semi-patiently while you gather what meagre belongings you wish to take with you. Your movements are efficient, speedy but precise, and something in him hums with approval at the way you're carrying yourself. It reminds him of his own self, just a little.

“I'm done,” you announce needlessly a couple of minutes later, clutching a purple backpack sporting some fictional character whose name Wesker has no clue about or what IP it belongs to.

“Excellent. Come along now.”

You follow dutifully, small legs making quick work of trying to keep up with Wesker's long strides. He notices your struggle and heaves a quiet sigh before he slows his steps down slightly to allow you to catch up. You offer him a bright smile in gratitude when you notice, which is unwarranted and undeserved, and it makes Wesker frown before he turns to scowl up ahead as he goes back to the room he killed Spencer in.

How can you still be so bright and naive? It's almost irksome.

He watches your reaction to Spencer's corpse closely, expecting tears, tantrums, fear. Instead, you observe the pathetic corpse and the pool of blood it lies in with an apathetic expression before you turn your eyes to Wesker curiously.

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes,” Wesker answers honestly, curious to see if fear and apprehension might enter your eyes when you look at him now, but it doesn't happen. You just blink at him and nod before looking back at Spencer while you fiddle with a charm attached to your backpack.

“He wasn't very nice, you know,” you say absently, conversationally, with the blunt, out of nowhere honesty only children below a certain age are capable of. “He yelled a lot. And when I failed he… He had this cane he used before the chair and he would hit me with it until I got it right. He said I was a disappointment, like the others. I don't know who that is, I never saw anyone else like me around. Are you like me?”

Wesker watches you silently while you speak, noting the way you rubbed your arms, obscured by your shirt sleeves, when you mentioned the cane, observing how quietly resigned your voice is when speaking of your failures. But as he listens to your words, he wants nothing more than to resurrect Spencer and kill him all over again – much more violently this time. That bastard got off too easy, he should have made him suffer more.

Slowly, Wesker pulls his glasses away from his face and lets his hand fall at his side with the arms held between his fingers. He looks at you with his inhuman eyes on display and for the first time since he became what he is today, someone doesn't look at him with fear or disgust or both. Your eyes light up and then… Then they light up as you extend a hand towards him and show him your suddenly elongated claws and glowing veins, lit up in a white so bright it looks artificial. Your eyes are the same colour.

“We're the same!” The excitement in your voice is infectious and it makes Wesker's lips pull up in a smile as he chuckles involuntarily and nods.

“Yes. It seems like we are.”

Your eyes go back to their regular colour as the glow fades away with the retraction of your claws, but the excited smile on your face remains.

“Cool,” you chirp, moving closer towards Wesker now that you've found a kindred spirit in him and he, surprisingly, allows you to invade his personal space. When you look up at him with tightly furrowed brows and indecision painted all over your features, he knows that a question is incoming. He just doesn't know what it might be about. “What's your name?”

He will have to get you used to asking questions if you're going to be under his care. Having this much difficulty asking such a simple thing is unacceptable.

“Albert Wesker, little star.”

You blink up at him as you mouth the two names to yourself before you speak again.

“Can I call you Al?”

Were you anyone else, he would kill them just for the audacity of asking. But… He supposes that a child using a shortened version of his name is not something terribly outlandish. It will engender closeness and trust, at the very least, something he will need if he wants to figure you out without making you see him as just another Spencer.

Dreading it already but knowing that sacrifices must be made, Wesker nods, giving you permission for the utterly pedestrian nickname.

“You may.”

You beam in response to his acquiescence as you rock back and forth on the balls of your feet and Wesker knows, right then and there, that you are going to be a massive headache in his life but that it might just be worth keeping you around regardless. He doesn't know just how often he's going to think back on these thoughts and agree with them, but he also doesn't know just how much fondness will accompany that reminiscing in just a few short months.

For now, he just takes your small hand in his again and leads you to a spot by the window where he tells you to take a seat and wait patiently for him while he takes care of some stuff in Spencer's study.

Wesker escapes the Spencer Estate with two more people in tow than he expected – you and Jill Valentine. Jill, he uses for his experiments, and slowly turns her into a very well trained attack dog. He takes a perverse sort of pleasure out of hijacking Chris's beloved partner and turning her into his puppet and he is not ashamed to admit it.

You, on the other hand, are a different matter altogether.

You latch on to him fairly quickly once he takes you away. You seem to be under the impression that your shared nature links you in a way no other connection could. You like to trail after him everywhere he goes – once he explicitly gives you permission to leave the room he put you in at your discretion – and observe from as closely or as far away as he permits it. Sometimes he sends you to a faraway corner when he's dealing with volatile experiments children should not be around, but other times you just pull up a chair next to his desk and swing your feet absently while you watch him work.

The day he pulls out a blank notebook and a set of colourful pens for you and tells you to entertain yourself instead of just looking at him for hours on end, he's pretty sure he becomes your favourite person on the planet.

Slowly, Wesker learns how to behave around you. Imposing his will on others is something that comes easily to him, no doubts about it, but he has trouble determining how to go about it when the ‘others’ in question is a teenage bioweapon who looks at him like he hung the stars in the sky simply because he gave them something to occupy themself with.

You're fairly easy to handle, something he knows to be grateful for. You don't throw tantrums and you don't question him when he issues an order, but as you grow more comfortable with him you start asking random questions more often or clarifying questions when he tells you to do something. ‘Why’ becomes a very popular word in your vocabulary and, as vexing as it is to have his words questioned constantly, he is happy to see it – how else will you learn otherwise?

He starts teaching you things when it becomes apparent that your education is severely lacking. You are bright and attentive, a diligent student who soaks information up like a sponge and asks for more. Soon, Wesker finds himself lending you books from his own collection just to satisfy your need to know more. It doesn't take long for your time spent in his lab or office to be filled with your nose buried in a book, the quiet scribbling of your notes in a notebook, or the rapid-fire questions of a young mind hungry for knowledge.

You also seem very nonchalant about letting Wesker test your blood and powers. It's all you've known, so obviously you wouldn't find it out of the ordinary for a guardian to engage in such activities, but he expected more fear and anticipatory dread from you. When he inquires about that the first time, you just shrug and say, “I trust you, Al,” and he doesn't realise he's bending the metal table next to him into a fucked up origami figure until he hears the crunch of metal.

Annoyingly, Wesker starts… feeling things. When it comes to you specifically. He feels pride when you do well in your studies. He feels amusement when you get frustrated with a complicated math problem and your face scrunches up adorably while you whine at him and tell him that math sucks. He feels concern when you trip while running towards him excitedly and get a scrape on your elbow – it heals almost instantly but your face scrunches up in pain and tears gather at your lash line even if you never let them fall and it makes something odd and foreign blaze in his chest at the sight.

Slowly, weeks turn into months, months turn into years, and next thing he knows, you are sixteen years old and he feels love when he looks at you. No matter what you do these days, no matter what the primary feeling you evoke in him with your actions or words may be, the underlying emotion present at all times is love.

You are not his child. He doesn't even know where you came from – if, like him, you are a child stolen from your hapless parents and turned into a weapon at Spencer's whims or if, perhaps more insidiously, you were grown in a tube and manufactured for the sole purpose of becoming a B.O.W.

He may not be biologically linked to you – he checked, just to be sure, because he didn't put it past Spencer to do something like take Wesker's DNA and fuck with it to create a more suitable puppet – but he sees you as his own regardless. He's taken you from your prison and given you freedom – freedom of movement, of thought, of self-discovery. He has watched you grow from that ignorant, naive child into a respectable teenager with the potential to rule the world, who is smart and industrious and inquisitive. You are strong – so strong, in fact, that Uroboros bonded with you seamlessly when you accidentally infected yourself with it a few months ago – and as radiant as the sun.

You make him proud just by existing.

“Hey, Al?” you ask one day close to his planned deployment of Uroboros, knocking on his office door right after Excella has exited. You sound hesitant but not scared; just… unsure. He looks up from his calculations immediately and gives you his full attention.

“Yes, Astro?”

It's a name he gave you. It started as a nickname – little star – because of the way your eyes and veins glow when using the powers your initial infections gave you. But then you told him, quietly, a few months after you started living with him, that you hated the name the white coats and Spencer gave you. That it didn't feel like your own. In a way, Wesker could understand. After all, his last name isn't his own either. Chances are, he'll never truly know what it was supposed to be – what it once was. But while he has made his peace with this and made the name his own, it's understandable that the same couldn't be applied to you.

You asked him to name you. He said Astro, for star. You haven't answered to anything else since.

“I wanted to ask you something,” you begin, walking into his office properly and shutting the door behind you. Wesker watches as you approach his desk and sit down opposite him, letting his pen rest on top of his paperwork as he looks at you steadily.

“Go ahead.”

You swallow, nervous and hesitant, but Wesker's unwavering eyes seem to be a comfort more than another source of fear like it is for everybody else, because you visibly steel yourself before you square your shoulders and look him in the eye.

“I want to call you dad.”

For a long moment, Wesker is frozen in time. He looks at you and he sees your quiet anxiety hidden deep behind your eyes and he knows that he should respond. But he can't. For the first time in his life, Albert Wesker has been completely blindsided and rendered speechless.

He swallows and he coughs to remove the lump in his throat and he leans back in his chair in a bid to appear much more composed than he actually is. His fingers spasm on the desktop and he subtly brings his hands down to the arms of his office chair, gripping the supports with what he hopes looks like nonchalance.

You wait for his response in silence while biting your lip anxiously – a habit he hasn't managed to train you out of in the three years you've been at his side.

“Is that… truly your wish, my dear?”

You nod, looking a mix between serious, determined, and excited.

“May I ask why?”

“Well… You know how I've never had parents and all. And Spencer sucked ass.” You sheepishly mutter a quiet apology when Wesker shoots you a reprimanding look at the language. “And well… You're the closest thing I have to a dad. You're a little emotionally constipated but you do all the things a dad does already! So I thought… I really want you to be my dad.”

“I see.” He keeps looking at you intently for long moments even after that explanation, trying to make sense of all that he is feeling right now and failing spectacularly. In the end, he has to accept that he is still woefully human in some aspects and that he isn't likely to untangle all of these emotions any time soon, then nods slowly but decisively in your direction. “You may call me that if it's truly what you want. Our dynamic will, of course, remain the same.”

You grin so brightly in his direction that he has to wonder if your powers affect your teeth too now, then you jump out of your seat and round his desk so you can throw your arms around his shoulders in a brief, tight hug. Wesker allows it because he knows how important physical affection is to growing children, but he shoots you an unimpressed stare when you smack a wet kiss on his cheek before finally departing too.

“You're the best dad in the world! Thank you! I'll let you go back to work now, though, ‘cause I want to torment Excella before I do my homework. Okay, bye!”

Wesker shakes his head at your antics as he watches you go – closing the door behind you because you know he hates it when people leave it open – and rubs worriedly at his chest when he feels that annoying tightness in it that he has come to associate with you. He'd worry about heart attacks if he wasn't already in peak physical health.

One day, you are going to be the death of him regardless, he just knows it. It's only a matter of time.

“I expected more of a challenge after all this time, Chris. How disappointing,” Wesker tuts right as his phone rings. He turns away from the pathetic sight of the man who's been a thorn in his side for way too many years now as he pulls his phone out and answers the call. “Yes.”

“It's almost time for my injection, dad. Are you still busy? I can do it myself if you are.”

Your voice is a balm to the disappointment he feels at the lacklustre fight he engaged in with Chris and his sidekick – if it can even be called a fight – but before he can tell you that he'll be right there, Chris has to insert himself back into the situation like he always does.

“Wesker, stop!”

Wesker sighs, muttering a quick, “Wait for me,” before he hangs up and turns to look at Chris with a delighted smirk that blooms into being when he catches sight of Jill showing up to give Chris and Sheva a good asskicking before he leaves.

Seeing Chris's sad attempts at getting through to his precious partner is deeply amusing and vindicating but it's not enough to quell the impatience he feels to get this over with and reach you.

Like him, your body is swimming with various viruses that Spencer injected you with, some of them stable, some of them not. The more volatile ones had been causing you issues just like him so, in addition to PG67A/W, he and Excella also worked on a stabilising serum for you too. And just like his own, yours needs to be administered periodically at precise intervals to ensure optimal results. Unlike him, Wesker doesn't let Excella get anywhere near you with a needle and a substance that could be very dangerous if administered incorrectly – he prefers to take care of it himself and, on the rare occasions where that is impossible, he trusts you to handle it on your own. He taught you how to administer it himself, after all.

But he still doesn't enjoy leaving the task to you.

“Jill, come on! It's me, Chris! Snap out of it!”

“Nice move, Chris. But now that your ‘partner’ has arrived, I'll leave you two to catch up,” Wesker taunts, sneering down at the struggling man as he turns away from the pair and heads towards the exit.

But it seems like his departure has to be delayed still. Chris's desperate entreaties towards Jill are having more of an effect than Wesker anticipated and the mindless robot briefly turns back into a real girl as she weakly utters Chris's name. Well, that simply won't do.

“Remarkable. Still resisting at such an advanced stage,” he remarks as he pulls out the device he uses to control Jill's pump and gives her a nice little overdose. That should keep them busy for a while. “Commendable, yet futile. No more time for games, Chris. I've got work to do. Have fun watching Jill suffer.”

And with that parting shot, Wesker finally turns on his heel and marches out of there, letting the doors bang shut behind him and sealing the two stooges with an overdosed Jill for the foreseeable future. If he's lucky, they might all just kill each other and save him the effort.

He finds you in your room, lounging on your bed and reading one of his PhD textbooks with a concentration that he always finds endearing even if he'll never say so out loud. Your head whips up in his direction the second he opens your door and the book is discarded – carefully – on your bed as you scramble to arrange yourself in a more dignified pose. Wesker snorts at the attempt, feeling his heart grow lighter just at the sight of you.

“Having fun?” he asks lightly, amusement loud and clear in his voice, as he heads for your messy desk and lays down the case that holds your serum and opens it up carefully.

“Yeah, actually! This stuff is really interesting, no wonder you're such a nerd for it.”

“‘Nerd’?” The unimpressed eyebrow he aims at you over his shoulder while he prepares the syringe doesn't seem to have any effect if the way your lips twitch up into a mischievous smile is any indication. He misses the days when he was a menacing danger to people and they cowered in fear at the mere sight of him.

“Well, yeah. What else would you call someone who got their PhD in virology at seventeen,” you point out with a roll of your eyes. Teenagers – so disrespectful.

“A dedicated person who knows what they want their future to look like. You might want to give that a try, you know?” Wesker teases as he makes his way towards your seated form and kneels in front of you so your arm is level with his eyes. He disinfects the area, a familiar song and dance between you by now, then lets some of the liquid out to get rid of any air bubbles as he prepares the injection.

“Dad, I don't even exist legally. I doubt I could get a PhD even if I applied for one.”

He tuts in mock disappointment while he sinks the needle in your arm, squeezing your flesh gently in support when he sees you wince out of the corner of his eye, then applies pressure on the puncture wound for a moment before applying a colourful bandaid – that he stocks up on for your sake and your sake only – and getting back up to his feet.

“Well, soon you won't need any kind of certification to prove your knowledge, Astro. Uroboros will be released in a few hours and then you can take your rightful place as a God at my side,” he says softly, stopping in front of you with the used needle hanging from his right hand while his left cups your face tenderly and holds you for a quiet moment in his grasp.

You close your eyes to bask in the affection, rare as it is for Wesker to initiate it, and your lips curl up into a contented smile when his thumb rubs slowly under your eye before he pulls away.

“As long as we're together, dad, everything else is irrelevant,” you answer, as you always do when he speaks of his plans and his desire to see you recognised as the deity you are – no child of his could ever be anything less. Your lack of ambition in this direction is disappointing, he won't deny it, but he understands that you and him may be cut from the same cloth but that the shapes are just different enough to cause this occasional dissonance between you. But that's alright. Even if you don't hunger for the world in the same way Wesker does, he will still give it to you on a silver platter – it's nothing less than you deserve.

“Indeed,” he drawls agreeably, recapping the syringe and putting it back in the case to be disposed of later. “I will be quite busy with last minute preparations for the Uroboros release. If you need me, you know how to reach me. Be good and wait for me to come back, alright? I don't want you wandering around the facility with Chris and Co. running around like headless chickens.”

You groan at his firm directive, hating to be confined to your room even if it's for your own safety, but this is something Wesker won't budge on. You may be displeased with him for a few hours if it means you are safe and sound right here where no one can get to you. If he didn't know Chris will inevitably find his way to him for a final confrontation, he would be taking you with him since being at his side is usually the safest place for you. But not this time.

“Yes, dad. I'll be good and sit here all by my lonesome and wither away in captivity while you do cool stuff and fight bad guys.”

Wesker snorts despite himself at hearing you describe the two BSAA agents meddling in his business as the ‘bad guys’ – he's sure you're the only person who would ever think to do that – but he covers it up with a fond hair ruffle that you squawk at him for even if you very obviously lean into the touch.

“Your time for fighting will come, little star. Don't be so eager to usher it in.”

He leaves you with those words, letting the door close behind him soundlessly, then heaves a fortifying sigh before he straightens his shoulders and walks away from your room. There is work to be done and no time to waste – you will be safely waiting for his return right here and, in the meantime, Wesker will make sure that the new world he is preparing for you is worthy of your rule. You will appreciate it when you're older even if you seem disinterested in his efforts now. That is simply the way of parent-children relationships.

POV CHANGE

“Are you sure this is the right course of action, Chris?” a female voice whispers behind your door, her voice accented and pleasant to listen to. You sit up straight in bed, clutching your dad's book in a death grip, as your heart races with anxiety. You don't know that voice but you do know that name – dad has talked about Chris Redfield extensively in the past three years since he took you away. That is enough to tell you that you are not safe here but… You have nowhere to run.

“Yes. Jill said he cares about them. If we have his kid, he might give this insane plan up and come in quietly.”

“But is using a child truly wise?”

A moment of silence passes during which you look around, trying to find a good hiding place and coming up empty, before that deep, male voice answers.

“We won't harm them. We just need a bargaining chip to bring Wesker in quietly. It's going to be alright, Sheva.”

Immediately after those words, your door opens and in come two people you've never seen before, guns at the ready and expressions serious. You're in a defensive stance, your dad's book still uselessly held in one hand as if it'll protect you, and you stare up at the man you can only assume is Chris with a defiant glare.

“You're not supposed to be here,” you spit, puffing yourself up to appear bigger. You know you're no match against someone like Redfield and the woman behind him blocking the only exit, but like hell are you going to go down without a fight.

“Yeah, well. Jill told me about you.”

It hurts, the knowledge that she gave you up so you could be used against your dad. You thought she was your friend – you did your best to make her existence comfortable while under your dad's thumb, often coaxing him into being gentler with his handling of her, to be considerate of her pain, by reminding him that he wasn't Spencer and his white coats. It worked. It could have been so much worse for Jill if not for you.

You understand why she did it, but it doesn't stop the feeling of hurt and betrayal from festering in your heart regardless.

“And are you here to kill me? Or just lock me away like a rat in a cage?”

You're stalling and you're afraid that they know it too, but you can't do anything else. You can't escape. Dad isn't here to help you. You can't contact him nor get him here in a timely manner. In short, you're screwed.

“None of that. We just need you to come with us,” the woman says. Chris called her Sheva outside your door. “Wesker is going too far this time and he needs to be stopped.”

“And you're going to use his kid against him?! What kind of heroes are you?!” you yell, frightened and feeling your control slipping in spite of the recent dose of serum you were given a few hours ago. Your veins flicker on and off like a broken light bulb and you feel like you're one wrong move away from exploding. You just want your dad.

“The kind that do what needs to be done,” Chris replies sharply, warily eyeing your flickering form and clenching his jaw momentarily before he asks Sheva to hand him ‘one of them’. One of what, you aren't sure, too busy freaking out and trying to stay far away from the pair, but it becomes clear when Chris steps up to you with a very familiar injector in hand.

“What are you doing with dad's serum?”

“What needs to be done,” Chris repeats heavily and before you can blink, he has you in a headlock and is plunging the needle into your neck and releasing the serum into your bloodstream.

You scream, frightened and panicked, because that serum was not made for you and you can only guess in horror what it might do to you now.

You don't have to guess for long.

Pain the likes of which you can't remember ever feeling burns like wildfire through your veins and you let out a scream so laden with agony that your voice breaks and you cough out blood. You slump in Chris's hold – would have fallen to your knees were it not for his arms keeping you up – and drop your dad's book to the floor with a dull thud, body going numb after that horrible pain, vision going blurry from tears. You can feel your heart beating in your throat and your hearing glitches, feeling as if you're somewhere underwater and trying to swim back up to the surface.

Very faintly, you can hear two voices exchanging words, one of them worried, another angry, but all you can make out from their traded lines is your dad's name.

“D-dad,” you moan, pitiful and scared but weary, exhaustion and pain dragging you under and forcing your eyes to slip shut. Something inside of you twists so violently it feels like it's ripping you apart and bursting out of your chest but you slip into a dark, silent haze where your consciousness fades away, unaware of what happens to your body and if it's safe in Chris's possession. All you know is that you're scared and you want your dad. Everything else is irrelevant.

POV CHANGE

Wesker doesn't want to admit it, but he is worried. He expected you to call him just to be a nuisance and pester him about letting you come out of your room or at the very least, insist that he visits you for a few minutes lest you expire from boredom. Knowing you, you should have called about twenty minutes ago.

He pulls his phone out and dials your number while his fingers fly over his keyboard as he tracks down Chris and Sheva's locations, impatient to get this whole thing over with so he can dispose of them and proceed with his plan, but he feels his entire body freezing over when his eyes fall on the live footage shown on screen.

His phone falls from his lax fingers, dialing without answer as it crashes to the floor, while on screen he can see Chris and Sheva walking out of your room with you draped over Chris's shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Zooming in on the image shows that you are unconscious but your veins flicker intermittently in a way that is not normal after taking your serum so recently and he can see your body twitching, limbs spasming and fingers curling up before going limp again.

“Just what in the hell do you think you're doing with my child, Chris?!” Wesker yells into the microphone, speakers broadcasting his rage for all the facility to hear – if there were anyone else alive but you four to hear it.

“Nothing bad, I assure you, Wesker. Unlike you, I don't sacrifice people for my cause,” Chris replies, anger dripping from his words as he sneers in the direction of a random camera. “They're alright, I just weakened them so they wouldn't get themself hurt with those nasty powers I'm sure you forced on them. Poor kid.”

“I didn't force anything on my child!” Wesker spits, incensed, and the desktop under his hands creaks ominously as he grips it for dear life. “And what do you mean you weakened them? Chris, what did you do?!”

Chris holds something up to the camera tauntingly then and it takes a bit for the lens to focus and for Wesker to read the label, heart in his throat, but when he does he feels like he might just rip this entire facility apart to get to Chris in the next five seconds.

“This seem familiar? Don't worry, they'll be just fine. But if you want them, you'll come quietly and give yourself up into my custody. Maybe I'll even talk the BSAA into letting you see the kid sometimes.”

“You FOOL! THAT SERUM WAS NOT MADE FOR THEM–”

But Wesker's enraged, worried words die in his throat for in that moment, Uroboros bursts out of you so violently it makes Chris drop your body and stagger away from you, and all he can do is watch in horror as your body gets ripped apart and rearranged into a horrifying mutation that no longer resembles his beloved child. Humanoid in appearance but encased in Uroboros with blindingly bright vines threaded through the glossy black, your mutated form looms over Chris and Sheva and roars so loudly Wesker can hear echoes of the scream all the way here.

What breaks him is the almost childish whimper that follows the scream.

“Dad…” your voice, distorted and in pain, moans pitifully in the wake of your anguished roar.

Wesker turns away from the screen with fire burning in his eyes and agony constricting his chest, and sprints out of the control room like the hounds of hell are on his heels, abandoning the imminent launch, abandoning everything, his only goal being to get to you in time and reverse the mutation. He will do everything in his power to bring you back – there is no alternative. There is no world in which he is alive while you are simply a… thing incapable of higher brain functions. Especially not because of the likes of Chris Redfield.

Wesker makes haste to get to you, crossing the facility at inhuman speeds to reach the corridor that leads to your room, but it is still not fast enough. His heart is in his throat as he rounds the corner and when he emerges behind Chris, he has the perfect view of your mutated form struggling and wailing in agony, thrashing around while your weak, Uroboros limbs try to take out the threats in front of you, and of Chris, aiming his rocket launcher at your vulnerable body and shooting you head on without hesitation.

“NO!” Wesker roars, desperate and useless, too late to stop the rocket before it crashes into you and renders you immobile, a lump of twisted, mutated flesh pooled in the middle of the corridor. Still, he rushes to your side, driven by the same illogical instinct all loving parents possess to check on their child, to gather them up in their arms, to heal their wounds. There isn't much for him to grasp, no clear space where your arm goes or a leg, but he can see your face peeking partially from the mutated mass on the floor and he clambers on it without a care so he can look at you and comfort you one last time. “Astro… Little star… Can you hear me?”

Half of your face is encased in Uroboros, mouth partially sealed shut as well, but the other half is bare. Your one visible eye struggles to open while a pained keen slips past your barely open lips. Wesker rips his gloves off his hands and cups your face desperately, left thumb rubbing under your eye in a muted echo of your parting exchange just a mere few hours ago.

“D… Dad…?” you groan weakly and Wesker's heart breaks at how unlike you you sound. A tear slips free without him even realising it as he nods and brings his forehead forward until it rests against your own.

“Yes, little star. It's dad. I'm here, darling. Dad is here. You're safe,” he lies through his clenched teeth, wanting to sob but knowing that he has to be strong for you now – he can't scare you when you need him to be your pillar instead.

“S-sorry. Dropped… your book when he… took me…”

Wesker chuckles wetly, incredulously, and shakes his head even if your eye has slipped closed again.

“You can drop all of my books, darling. Just as long as you're here to do it,” he whispers uselessly. Your mouth has already fallen open, no breath passing through it, and while it's hard to gauge chest movement, your body has grown utterly still. He cannot hear a heart beat. You are gone.

Gone from the world. Gone from his hold. Gone forever.

Wesker balls his hands into fists as he rises to his feet and jumps back down to the floor. Chris and Sheva, apparently respectful enough not to intrude on the moment for the scant few minutes he got with you before you faded away, are now ready to fight him and win – guns raised, PG67A/W prepared, grim faces set in stone.

Wesker looks at them in silence for a long moment, feeling so much that he almost feels nothing at all, before he lifts a hand up and plucks his glasses away from his face. He lets them fall, clattering uselessly to the floor, then looks back at Chris with a look that could set him on fire.

“You killed them. My child, the only person on this Godforsaken planet worth anything at all!” Wesker starts off quietly, dangerously, but devolves into a rage-filled scream towards the end. “Your carelessness and incessant need to save the day took them away from me! You are no better than me, Chris Redfield. You can tell yourself otherwise, you can spew all the lies and justifications you want in order to make yourself feel better, but you and I – we're not that different. The only difference is that you won't live long enough for this realisation to truly sink in.”

With a snarl, Wesker teleports himself right in front of Chris and plunges his hand through the man's chest without wasting another second, grasping his beating heart in the bare palm of his hand and crushing it in a furious grip before ripping it out and throwing it away like so much trash. Chris is dead before he can even realise what happened.

Behind him, Sheva gasps and fires her gun in his direction, but Wesker expertly dodges the bullets before he grabs her by the neck and twists viciously – it breaks before she can do more than lift the injector clutched in her hand.

Wesker discards her corpse just as carelessly as he threw aside Chris's heart – both her and the injector falling uselessly to the floor – then simply stands there for a moment, suspended in time, breathing heavily with blood dripping down his fingers, as he tries to get himself back together. But the more he tries, the more he thinks of you, the more he can't put a lid on the feelings brewing in his chest. He feels like everything ended. What is the point of anything? Uroboros? What for? He'll just kill every last person on this planet, with his own hands if he has to, so that no one can take another breath while your lungs have ceased to inflate. Fuck saving the world, they can all rot in hell for all he cares.

Tears fall down Wesker's face, silent and scorching as they carve a path down his cheeks and drip down his chin to the floor where they mix with Chris's blood. He hasn't felt anguish this powerful in all of his years alive. He wants to tear the world apart and turn it to ashes. He wants–

“Wesker!”

He growls as he whips around to face the owner of that voice, unsurprised when he sees Jill's blue eyes staring at him, wide as saucers and full of regret. The puncture wounds from the P30 pump are stark against her pale skin from where she stands facing him.

“If you wish to make it out of this place alive and live long enough to say goodbye to whatever pathetic excuse for a family you may have left, you will disappear from my sight, Jill. If you insist on fighting me, you will not live. That, I guarantee.”

But Jill shakes her head, ponytail swinging behind her, and extends her palm towards him. In it lies a vial.

“I'm sorry. I didn't know… But I should have. I shouldn't have told Chris about them.”

Wesker's eyes snap back to her face and he snarls in her direction, ready for murder all over again, as he hisses at her, “You?!”

Fearlessly – or perhaps too filled with regret to care about her well-being anymore – Jill nods, every movement laden with remorse.

“You can kill me all you want but first… Excella kept this a secret. It was her own little dead man's switch, I suppose, though she never got a chance to trigger it. It's supposed to nullify the effects of the stabilising serum. Under normal circumstances, I'm guessing it would've rendered you too weak and volatile to attack her. In this circumstance… Maybe it'll help. I don't know. It's worth a shot, at the very least.”

Wesker snatches the vial from her viciously, resisting the urge to grab her arm entirely and twist until it snaps, and takes out a spare syringe he keeps on him so he can start drawing out the liquid inside. He marches past Jill's frozen figure, uncaring that he knocks into her and sends her sprawling to the ground, then clambers on top of the mass of Uroboros that was once you until he can reach your face once more. Your heart is as still as it was five minutes ago, but Wesker has to try this, even if it fails, even if it doesn't do anything. He could never forgive himself if he gave up on you now.

He tugs on the tentacles wrapped around you until he frees enough space at your neck for an injection but he pauses with the needle hovering over your skin. Without turning his head to look at Jill, he tells her, “You had better pray this works. If it doesn't, I will make the P30 trials seem like child's play,” then finally inserts the needle into your neck and depresses the plunger with bated breath.

He looks at you, ravenous gaze analysing your face for any sign of life, for a twitch of an eyelid or a stray inhale, but when minutes pass without anything happening, he climbs back down and throws the used syringe away with a heavy heart. He doesn't know why he hoped for anything else.

Jill lets out a pathetic sob when your form remains immobile and it makes Wesker see red. How dare she cry for you when she is the reason you are dead?! She told them about you! She told them to use the serum on you! She is the reason Wesker is child-less now, alone and bereft in a world he despises and wants to see burned down to cinders.

He turns towards her with murderous intent, not even caring about upholding his promise of drawing things out and making it more agonising than the experiments he previously did on her, but one single sound stops him in his tracks. Weak, faint, and sluggish. A war drum in his ears. A reason to live.

Ba… dum. Ba… dum. Ba… dum.

Wesker snaps his head in your direction and he cannot quite contain the relieved, wondrous gasp that escapes him when he sees the Uroboros around you shrinking, coiling into itself and slowly being absorbed back into your body. Your heart, fragile and struggling, valiantly starts beating again and your lungs fill up with enough oxygen to make your small chest visibly rise and fall the more of the Uroboros your body absorbs.

Jill is a forgotten concept as Wesker rushes back towards you just in time to catch you when the mass of mutated flesh beneath you disappears and sends you toppling to the ground. He cradles you in his arms, sobbing freely as relief floods his system, and he couldn't care less how weakly human it makes him. His child is not lost to him – everything else is irrelevant.

Despite your beating heart, your body is weak. You don't wake up immediately. In fact, you don't wake up for a long time. Wesker spares Jill, if only because she brought you back to him by giving him that vial, but he promises her that the next time they cross paths she won't leave the encounter alive. The bomber full of Uroboros is left behind – he doesn't care to save humanity from its own weakness and stupidity anymore; they can burn themselves into extinction on their own if that's how they want to be, Wesker wants no part of it any longer. All he cares about is you.

He takes you away, hides you so well no one will ever find you unless he wishes it, and then he slowly nurtures you back to health. It takes months. Months of despair and thinly veiled hope and more crashouts than Wesker is comfortable admitting to. But slowly, bit by agonising bit, your body heals and it pulls itself out of the coma it induced on its own.

The day your eyes flutter open is the best day of Wesker's life, followed closely behind only by the day he met you.

“D-dad?” you call out in a raspy voice, confused and disoriented.

“I'm here, Astro. Dad's here,” Wesker answers immediately as he helps you into a sitting position and hands you a water bottle with a straw attached. You take small sips, throat parched but sensitive to water, then blink slowly at him with so much confusion it makes Wesker's heart twist.

“What's going on?”

“Oh, little star,” Wesker sighs, weary and relieved in equal measure, and gathers you into his arms for a long-awaited hug. A surprised huff escapes you at the uncharacteristic show of affection but your weak arms wrap around Wesker's back as far as they can reach while he tucks your head beneath his chin and kisses the crown of your head tenderly. “I will tell you everything. But not now. At the moment I just want to hold you for a little bit.”

“Okay, dad,” you agree quietly. You're clearly baffled and a little bit concerned but you're willing to indulge him, especially if it means free hugs from him for an unspecified length of time. “We can do that.”

“Thank you, Astro,” Wesker murmurs, heart finally settling in his chest now that he has you in his arms, breathing and talking, and gets comfortable at your bedside as he keeps you close to his chest and forces himself to accept that you really are okay and that nothing will ever touch you again.

If he has to kill an entire planet's worth of people to keep you safe he will do it. Just as long as it means that you're alright. His little star – the brightest in the cosmos and the one guiding him home – right back where you belong, lighting up his sky. You were right after all: everything else is irrelevant.