It isn’t the end, but he can see it from where he is standing, now.
It should have been their exit, but once Birkin is set on doing something, there is no sense in arguing with him, further. Wesker already made plans of when he would return for him, once his negotiations with his new employers are complete. It will be much easier to come back for him once he is in a secure position and can show William that the way forward was safe.
It has been twenty-one years since they first met.
Nineteen years since they have first kissed.
Thirteen years since they have kissed, last.
Twelve years since they have become friends, again.
Only moments left to when they’ll be saying goodbye, again, only for a while, if they were lucky.
He has utmost trust in William Birkin’s mind.
There is no one he could trust with himself, more.
But there is always a chance of failure. It would be foolish to discount it. If this is the last time he’ll get to speak to William, he cannot waste it. There is so much left unsaid between them, but there is one particular thing, a mistake on his end, that has haunted him for the past thirteen years.
His voice breaks, just a little. It doesn’t have that trained flat intonation that he has honed for two decades. He feels his throat tighter and his teeth grit, as he speaks. His jaw is tense, and his brows are furrowed.
He looks as if the words have been forcefully torn from his throat.
“Isn’t that what you always wanted to hear?” His smile is bitter, contemptuous, and falls quickly from his face. He isn’t even looking at William. “Perhaps, if you had heard it when you had first demanded it of me-“
He cuts himself off. A rare occurrence for him. He sounds angry. His words drip with venom. For a brief moment, there are nasty, terrible things he wants to say.
Instead, he stands there and looks defeated.
“I love you, William.” He speaks, again. It doesn’t feel any better, this time. It feels like an ache in his stomach and tension along his jawline, pulsating to his temples in frustration. There is no relief from this confession; not the first, not the second.
“I have loved you since we were children.”
It doesn’t free him from his ache.
Wesker is glad his eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses. He still struggles to look at William, his gaze drifting to the worn grey floor, and he feels juvenile in his shame.
It wasn’t William’s fault, of course. Wesker was weak. Wesker should have outgrown these feelings years ago. He should have never given them dominion over himself, to begin with.
It was cruel to say all of this, now.
Selfishly, he didn’t want to die without having said them.
His gaze drifts to his watch.
There truly isn’t much time. He cannot carry on so frivolously. It’s time to move. Now.
“Do as you wish.” He walks away before William has a chance to respond. “Stay, if you must.” No matter what, they had their duties. They both knew that much. “I will bring S.T.A.R.S. Into the mansion.”
It is a deafening thing, his silence. It brews like a storm, it only ever comes when he is stewing in his fury, or if he is completely lost in his work. Yet both of those possibilities are not present. His face has fallen. He looks somewhere between deflated and frozen.
For a long while, that silence forms, his silence, just the whirring of machines in the background, and his lack of response grows between them like a tumor.
William inhales sharply, suddenly, finally breaking his silence. Wesker's voice cracks, and William's breath shudders, and he shivers, like a kicked dog.
Tears run down his face, dripping on his coat. Drip, drip, drip. His face is still an expression of frozen and muted shock, but his crying has animated him, and starts to thaw him slowly.
“Isn’t that what you always wanted to hear?”
A wretched sob breaks free from William when he hears that. Tears run down his face and his skin burns, his hiccupped gasps bring his hand to his mouth, a thin line of spit leaves his lips, and snot runs from his nose and around his upper lip.
In the twenty one years that they have known each other, William has never cried in front of Albert. William could pride himself in the way he could suck it up, protect himself from that feeling, his anger like a red hot flame to keep others away, to scare off the things that would hurt him.
When he hears those words, he wants to be angry, he expects to be enraged. Furious. The man he has always been. The man he was desperate to be.
But now, that man is a stranger.
That man has been a stranger for over thirteen years. He has been a stranger, on his wedding day, dancing, singing, smiling, he has been that stranger, on the day of the birth of his daughter, as he held her and did not cry, he did not know what to feel. He has been that stranger, in every terse discussion, in every mocking word taking expense at the others around him, at the cruel words lashed out at people he worked with, at the anger.
William looks at Albert and in the sheen of his black sunglasses William sees himself, staring back.
William looks back at that man, and he does not recognize himself.
He sees himself, again, for the first time.
William wants Albert to take it back, to make it a cruel joke, to stab him in the gut, to shoot him, anything, anything! He didn't want this to be real. He wanted nothing more than for Albert to laugh at his crying, to tell him he was as pathetic and predictable as the day they first became friends.
Yet Albert is cruel instead.
Williams face is in his hands. He is hunched over, shuddering into his hands, like a man scorned. He rubs his palms into his face, and tries, desperately, to calm himself, to calm down, to stop, stop, STOP!
"WAIT!" William screeches at the top of his lungs, as if he would die if Albert left him. "W-wait!" He calms his voice, from screeching to yelling, and he stumbles, moving between the shelves and approaching one of the machines in the lab. He stumbles to put the Umbrella security card upon the device and swipe it several times, cussing, swearing upon someone's mother and their life and cursing foul insults until finally the device swings open.
Inside are chilled vials, made portable by the device they were stored in.
"T-the Prototype." He tells Albert, trying to pretend he hasn't snotted and cried, and like his face isn't still red hot with tears and hatred and vile bitter rage. "The old one. Throw it away." William tells him.
He hands over a vial. Ice form along the glass, and the cold wisps of air flee from it, the insides are thin and transparent, and the liquid has a faint purple color, it's thinner than water, like acetone, and William's hands are trembling when he gives it to Al.
When it touches Al's hand, Will reaches out, like a wild animal, snatching Al's wrist so hard and so furiously it's like he could break it, should he have sufficient enough rage.
"Do not inject it until you are absolutely sure you need it." William hisses. "This is the newest version I've made. You remember what I told you, right? It should be as high as 90%. Please don't take the risk for no reason, if you can hold off on using it, please do, I will keep working it... I... I promise, I will keep working it once all this is over. So that... so that next time I'll give you one that works 100%. A-all right?"
William's hands grip Albert's wrist so hard his knuckles are white. His hands are shaking.
"Go already." William hisses at him with the tone of a person shooing away a feral raccoon in the trash. "Just go!" William's rage sparks for just a second, pushing Albert away from him, but the man is already leaving, he's already gone, and William waits until he hears the swish of the automatic doors close before he falls to his knees.
His hands touch the cold tile floors, catching himself on both hands. His wedding ring makes a dull sound against the ceramic tiles. William stares down at his hands. Trembling pale hands.
William smashes his fists down into the ground. Then over and over and over until he has bruised his hands, and he screams, guttural, like an animal driven mad, he screams and cries, like a child throwing the mother of all tantrums, and his tears come back down his face.
Then, once again like a child, he falls forward, on his hands and knees, and sinks his face to the floor, like a man bowing before a king, like a person of prayer in obedience to a god.
The tile is cold against his burning red face.
