Chapter Text
The second-worst day of Moira’s life had started with a migraine raging in her ears.
The bed she woke up on was stiff, grimy, and damp. The air in the room wasn’t much better. The drone of old light fixtures met her ears before her eyes opened to benefit from their paltry glow, flickering above a halo of flies. There was a numbness on the side of her neck and a dulling pain on her left wrist, and Moira groaned as she tried to sit up. She was still wearing her clothes from the night before, which was a good sign - or, maybe a disappointing one. She remembered the Terrasave work party, the dozen new faces - Gabriel Chavez, Gina Foley, Pedro Fernandez, Edward Thompson - and her new boss, Neil Fisher.
Moira also remembered Claire. Something inside her fluttered at the easy smile and the soft eyes. It always did.
Then fucking Barry had replied to her text with some bullshit she couldn’t remember - she’d already forgotten it - and she had complained about it to Claire. Her hackles raised then, because she did remember what had come next.
Soldiers. Mercenaries, men with guns, whatever - had broken down the door, shattered the outside window, cornered them all, surrounded her and Claire - “Claire Redfield! You’re coming with us.” - and something cold had hit the side of her neck.
Moira rubbed at the mark. What the fuck had they gotten themselves into? Anxiety set in as she took in the unfamiliar room - it was a jail cell from about sixty years ago, three concrete walls coloured with all kinds of gross and a set of rusted iron bars with a locked door. Without thinking, she leapt to her feet and grabbed the door, noting the lack of a hinge.
“Hey, what the fuck is going on?!” she demanded, rattling the bars. She heard a shuffling, a grunting, the sound of a piece of metal clanging to the tiled floor. “Please,” she begged the empty air. “You don’t have to do this!” The footsteps retreated up the hallway, only for another set - lighter, measured - to take its place from the opposite direction. They got closer, and Moira heard a woman painting slightly.
For a moment, everything was alright. From around the corner to her right, Claire Redfield emerged, hair mussed and features stony with controlled calm. She met Moira’s eyes and made a beeline for her. “Moira!”
“Claire!” the relief Moira felt settle in her chest and trickle down her guts soon turned to panic. “What the fuck is going on?”
The older woman’s answer was terse, and a little frustrated. Moira cringed, hoping it wasn’t directed at her. “I don’t know.”
“I mean,” Moira’s fingers tightened against the rust, leashing the scream in her throat so it only came out as a hiss of despair. “ What in a moist barrel of fucks-”
Her swearing was interrupted by a single-syllable alarm blaring from the door, as Claire touched her hand to the bar by Moira’s. She tensed, then felt the door start to move. They both jumped back as Moira was freed, her brief prison now open.
Then Moira had noticed the weird-ass glowing bracelets they’d both been tagged with. While Moira’s bracelet was glowing amber, Claire’s was a harsh yellow.
“The fuck are these weird-ass glowing bracelets for?” Moira had hissed, and she nearly - nearly - missed the puzzlement on Claire’s face right before trying to wrench the metal hitchhiker from her left wrist. It wouldn’t budge. To her horror, it pulled on her skin, and upon closer inspection Moira realised that the inner face of the bracelet had multiple metal tubes digging into her skin. Through her skin. In a fit of panic, Moira had all but thrown herself at the older woman. “Oh, Claire - I just wanna go home!”
A finger - Claire’s finger - came to a rest on her lips, shushing her. “It’s okay. We’re gonna get out of here.” Her voice was low, and felt like coming home. “I promise.”
The questions kept piling up as they stalked through the dank facility; and a commotion that strangely enough sounded like a woman getting attacked by a monster drew Claire’s attention. Entering what might have been an operating room or a morgue, judging by the bloody sheet over a lump of something on the table in the middle of said room; Moira spied with the flashlight she’d scavenged a woman in a skirt and a blouse ineffectually throwing a box of files at a bloodstained, mangled, delirious man who could only gibber with ravenous intent.
“He’s gonna kill her!” She realised, and they raced after him without thinking, turning blind corners and battering doors in pursuit. They reached another room, one with a table, and Moira realised a fraction too late that she’d left Claire behind. The woman - she dimly recognised her as Gina - was bleeding heavily on the far side of the table, the mangled man opposite her-
He turned and saw Moira. Barely a metre away. He grunted, howled, and Moira saw Gina - eyes wide and face pale - take the opening and bolt for the door.
It opened, and in walked Claire, knife at the ready.
Two things happened. The gibbering stranger lunged at Moira, and she screamed, flailing with the flashlight. The bloodsoaked Gina spotted Claire a second before the latter raised her knife. But Moira was distracted by the man, who had now grabbed her shoulders and was trying to bite her - she raised her arms but his grip was too strong; she beat at his chest but his jaws snapped, rows of jagged teeth and the stench of rotten breath, his skin warped and split-
Claire’s hand found his forehead and her knife landed in the base of his skull, and the zombie dropped like a sack of bricks. Moira fell away, backed right up to the wall, and hyperventilated. Claire stood up, shaking the blood from the knife, and turned back to the other woman they’d met.
Gina croaked. “The animal eyes… oh god…” behind her cracked glasses, the tear-soaked pools bulged, bloodshot, as she clutched a chest wound. She was wearing a bracelet with a blinking red light. She hit the door and slid down it to the floor, leaving a crimson trail as she went, and died in a crumpled heap.
“What,” Moira gasped, “What just,” she panted, “What the fuck just happened?”
Claire’s response was a million miles away, behind a slowly cracking dam. “I didn’t realise it was her. I didn’t recognise her.” Her own bracelet was now blinking red.
Moira stared at the dead woman on the floor, and saw her sister.
She hadn’t meant to hurt her.
“You didn’t,” Moira choked, “You didn’t mean to hurt her,” she felt frantic. “You didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“But,” Claire looked like she was about to argue, then noticed Moira was still staring at the corpse. The response died on her tongue. “I’m sorry, Gina.”
“Did you know her?” Moira tried to tear her eyes from the body. Claire shrugged.
“Not well. She lost her sister a few years back, in a mission for the FBC,” Her breathing settled. The bracelet had stopped blinking, and had settled on an angry scarlet colour. “She joined Terra-Save in her memory. And now she’s dead too.” She looked down at the knife in her hand, expression unreadable.
Moira hiccuped through the tears and intakes of breath. “I wanna get out of here,” she whimpered. Claire seemed to remember she was there, and slowly nodded.
They left Gina behind.
It wasn’t like they could carry her, or anything - they’d just have to come back for her body once the current crisis was resolved. A few minutes and an incident with a dangling corpse later, Claire was now the proud owner of a working gun.
“We aren’t gonna need that… are we?” Moira thought of discharged rounds and screaming sisters. She didn’t like the cool timbre of Claire’s response.
“I find guns are more reliable than people,” She thought, then added, “At least, that’s what an old friend said to me, once. Some days I believe him.”
A few minutes more, and after picking up a working shotgun, Claire had stepped on a landmine. Well, an emotional one.
“Moira, you need a gun too,” Claire’s head was firmly in crisis-mode, so Moira didn’t really begrudge her for forgetting.
“No, I don’t,” She panicked. “I really, really don’t.”
She could still hear the gunshot, Polly’s screams, Barry’s - fucking Barry - shouts of indignance and disappointment.
“Sorry, I don’t do firearms, not since…”
“What?” Claire had whipped her head round to Moira and didn’t quite look her in the eye. Then empathy crossed her features, and Moira promptly forgot all about her growing suspicions because Claire had that look: that open affection that she never reserved, only ever wrapped you in like a trauma blanket and propped you up like a soldier that could never, ever bear to leave a man behind. Sympathy and warmth all in one go, and while Moira had seen it used on other people she’d never been on the receiving end of it.
“Oh, I’m so sorry - I forgot,” She stepped forward and, once again didn’t quite look Moira in the eye - but in her defence, your honour, Moira was a little bit fucking distracted by how the older woman’s voice softened, how the grip of her hand steadied Moira at the shoulder, how her head dipped to the side in a sheepish admission of guilt at having not had the presence of mind to consider every possible trigger and barb that might set her younger friend off. “That’s fine, we’ll figure something out.”
“Uh, yeah,” Moira felt a little sheepish herself, now, and cleared her throat in a bid to evaporate the discomfort. Was she also a little distracted by how Claire was much taller and more athletic than her? Sure. With that stylish jacket and red-brown locks, that easy smile and soft cheeks, with her baby-blue eyes that weren’t quite able to focus on her for some reason at the moment.
Yeah, she’d had a crush on Claire for years. Fucking sue her. She knew it could never happen - Claire was ten years older than her, totally out of her league, and - to her knowledge - wasn’t even interested in girls, anyway. But the Burtons and the Redfields had always been fairly close, and Claire had been a constant in Moira’s life. More than most, definitely. So even if it wasn’t any kind of relationship, Moira had come to terms with the fact that she’d just be admiring from a distance a long time ago.
“It’s fine, I can be on flashlight duty.” she raised the tool in question and Claire shielded her eyes. Moira couldn’t help but laugh. “C’mon, it’s not that bright.”
“It’s dark in here,” was all Claire said.