Emily Kaldwin x Resident Evil: Village

Untitled Part 1

Dust fell from the collapsed roof onto the rubble that Emily lived in. Dark Vision revealed three lycans walking overhead, heavy footsteps showing exactly where they were on her rooftop. She held her breath, hand gently setting the brooch she held for good luck down into the blankets to avoid some kind of blunder resulting in her late demise. Fortunately, this strategy had worked for years, ever since the lycans came to be. It took an embarrassing amount of time for her to learn she could literally just drop and crawl under something to hide from them, but at least she learned at some point. This way, it seemed to be that they just didn't know she existed. They haven't spotted her in years. The house she lived in had a collapsed basement so they couldn't even sneak up on her from below, like they so enjoy doing to other survivors.

Was this always what her life was going to be like? Everyone she knows from the 19th century is dead. Everyone she knew in the village is either long gone, or judging by the screaming in agony from a few houses down, dwindling down terribly.

It was hours like this she couldn't help but wonder what her life could have been if she were never infected. She didn't even know where, or how she got infected, really. It was by someone in London, that was all she knew. Some disgusting bastard on the streets as she took one hour to escape. She could have owned that mining company alongside her mother, despite how many men wanted to take over that company. She could have even married someone, and settled down, lived a normal life and did... whatever it was her parents did, she guessed.

Instead, she was stuck in near total isolation. She wasn't friends with any survivors, she knew she couldn't be trusted anywhere near them - something she had proved multiple times, as she wasn't above eating one of them for a few weeks of survival. Just the bare minimum in order to stay on her feet. Everyone else, even the lycans, or ghouls, or whatever the fuck else was sicced onto the village had to do to survive. Not like any of them were hard to kill or anything. Just stubborn and hungry, just like herself.

But there was absolutely nothing left. No evidence of anyone else. Emily hasn't even seen anyone hiding using her Vision, no matter where she went in the Village. Near the rivers, even though they're still full of fish, has been empty. No tracks in the sand, no gunshots recently, just complete and utter silence. Except for the neighbor slowly dying. It didn't even sound like there would be scraps for her to steal with how long they were tearing him apart - they were just out of sight of her dark vision for her to tell what exactly was going on, or how many there could have been in the area. Besides the three on her roof, she wouldn't know how many were still sweeping the houses. They seemed to be so much more active recently, sweeping every area almost every fucking week.

Every day, another person is killed by one of those things. She could visibly remember the first few days they began slaughtering everyone - the chaos, the blood everywhere, how no one could find anyone, how little anyone knew what was going on. Just monsters coming from nowhere, people vanishing and only scraps of their remains sometimes being found. She remembered the chaos as she hid, completely frozen, as her mother was ripped to shreds by one of them. She didn't hide in a very different place than she did now - underneath some blankets, still as a corpse, just waiting for it to pass. It was mere luck she managed to find her mother's brooch in her pile of remains. The very same one she held down against the blankets, too scared to move a muscle so they didn't hear her. Not necessarily powerless as then, but still stuck in a corner. Even though she always practiced her skills so meticulously, she had found the best strategy to conserve her supplies for as long as she could.

The roof creaked as the lycans settled in, one sitting down after another. She could only guess they planned on waiting villagers out. They would do this for days, maybe weeks at a time in more active areas, it's just Emily's bad fucking luck they decided to right above her head. However, it was fortunate she had mutated the ability to see through walls, see enemies and their lines of vision. With how still they sat, she wouldn't have known at all they were still there at all. Dust wasn't even disturbed, and the old wood didn't creak or shift underneath their weight. Again, her mind wandered back to what her parents would have thought about her now. Jessamine Kaldwin, businesswoman of the new age, smart as a whip, strict. She had answers for anything and everything Emily ever wondered.

Up until she was infected. She could remember the look of horror and shame as she held the bloody clothes up the night after the last murder, her father, pistol in hand, standing guard as they all spoke about what she did, how she did it, and how many people she murdered for existing in the same area as her.

Her guilt back then was a front to appease them. To avoid her father shooting her in the head - she wasn't even sure she could die, but she didn't want them finding that out at the time. How the hell was she going to explain that? There wasn't a single way she would have been able to.

"I guess one day I was walking around London and got infected, and then you moved us to the origin point of this infection by coincidence, and now everyone is dead because this infection makes people... crazy." Is exactly how her conversation would have gone. Her father would roll his eyes, slump his shoulders and sigh, then call bullshit on whatever lie she says about not knowing everything else. Her mother wouldn't say a word, but she would have a face that expresses more than her words would. She had a way of using it on the people around her to get them nervous, to explain themselves more, something she had gotten used to over the years.

It didn't matter now. They were both long dead. She watched her mother get eaten, but never saw Corvo again. It wouldn't be unlike him to try to help the villagers from the lycans, even though he was so old. Didn't see him leave that day. She sometimes wondered what clues she would find as to where his corpse at - he wouldn't hide underground. He wouldn't hide at all, actually. She had to find his corpse somewhere - he would have something useful on him. Anything, even an old lighter.

Screams from down the street finally quieted. Dust fell again, old damaged wood creaking as the lycans finally left. Her Dark Vision showed them walking in the direction the screams came from, probably about to fight over whatever was left of the villager. Emily waited until they were completely out of sight and she could barely hear the wood creaking and groaning as they walked over it, before she finally shifted just slightly. She paused again, just to make sure nothing had heard her, before finally rolling out from below the blankets and kicking them back into the pile that made her "bed".