A. WONG.

𝚂𝙿𝙾𝙺𝙴𝙽 :

" that's a lot of blood. "

" it isn't mine. "

" what did you do ? "

[ sigh ] " what did you do ? "

" come on. have a taste. "

" holy shit, are you okay ? "

" it looks worse than it feels. "

" you should see the other guy. "

" it's a good look on you. you should get covered in blood more often. "

" lean on me. "

" oh my god. oh my god, oh my god, what the fuck ? is that what i fucking think it is ? "

" . . . gross. "

[ standing over a body ] " oops. "

" is that a fucking body ? "

" look, i'm sorry, okay ? "

" what the hell happened ? "

" before you say anything, it wasn't me. "

" at least it wasn't me this time. "

" look at me. this is who i am, no matter how much you pretend it isn't. "

" look at me. this is who i am, no matter how much you wish it wasn't. "

" i'm not scared of you. "

" you don't scare me. "

" shut up and let me help you. "

" i got your shirt all bloody. "

" let's get you cleaned up. "

" that looks like it hurts. "

" i'm fine, just. . . give me a minute. "

" we are so fucked. "

" what the fuck is wrong with you ? "

" are you gonna help me clean it up or not ? "

" the fucker deserved it. "

" red looks good on you. "

" what the hell did you do ; tap - dance all over the body with ice - skates ? "

" what, did you run over the body with your car a couple times after ? "

" i. . . i didn't mean to. . . "

" sorry. fuck, i'm sorry. "

" this isn't what it looks like. "

" it was an accident. "

" motherfucker ran right into my knife, i swear. "

" people need to look both ways before crossing. . . bullets. "

" would you believe me if i said wrong place, wrong time ? "

" hey, look at me. i don't care. are you okay ? "

" they deserved it, right ? please tell me they deserved it. "

" you're bleeding. "

" what the fuck happened to you ? "

" you're getting blood on the carpet. "

" sit down before you fall down. "

" that looks like a you problem. "

𝚄𝙽𝚂𝙿𝙾𝙺𝙴𝙽 :

sender spits out a mouthful of blood at receiver's feet

sender spits out a mouthful of blood on receiver

receiver finds sender covered in blood

sender tries desperately to stop receiver's bleeding

sender helps receiver clean up after a kill

sender wipes blood from receiver's face with a washcloth

sender wipes blood from receiver's face with their thumb

sender licks receiver's blood off a knife

sender licks receiver's blood off their thumb

sender lights up a cigarette a foot away from someone they killed before offering one to receiver

receiver finds sender stood over a body

sender stitches up receiver's wound [ optional wound placement ]

sender digs their finger into receiver's wound [ optional wound placement ]

sender frantically checks receiver for injuries under all the blood

sender guides receiver's bloody hands under a faucet / water source and begins washing them clean

sender bites receiver hard enough to draw blood

sender tilts receiver's head back to staunch a nosebleed

sender draws a smiley face out of the blood they spilled :)

receiver finds sender cleaning up a kill in a daze

sender looks receiver in the eye as they shoot / stab / kill someone

sender ruffles receiver's hair, getting blood all over their hand

sender gets some of receiver's blood on them and makes a face

sender flicks blood at receiver to annoy them

sender stomps in a pool of blood to splash it on receiver

sender slips in their victim's blood but receiver steadies them before they can fall

sender steadies receiver when they slip in the blood sender spilled

receiver comes home to sender covered in blood and waiting for them with all the lights off

sender spits out a tooth and it hits receiver

sender tries to wipe blood off receiver but the blood on their hands just makes it worse

sender takes an injury meant for receiver

sender shows up on receiver's doorstep covered in blood

sender sits down quietly next to receiver after receiver kills someone

sender punches receiver in the mouth

receiver watches sender lick the blood off their fingers like its cheeto dust

sender helps receiver bury a body

sender hugs receiver just to get their victim's blood all over them <3

sender hugs receiver just to get their blood all over them <3

sender leans on receiver for support

sender kills someone to protect receiver

receiver finds sender in a frenzy maiming a body after they've already killed it

sender kills someone and the blood spatters on receiver

receiver finds sender desperately trying to wash the blood off of themself

sender kisses receiver to taste the blood on their busted lip

boots on the ground, they'd parted the initial sea of snapped jaws in one calculated wave. set an example for the rare few of raccoon city's civilians who'd taken up arms. and the tides should have stayed on their side. they should've waded the worst of it and come out the other end barely worse for wear. one more reminder that plans were better made as after thoughts and the only good ones were on the fly.

he's glad it isn't a bite. keeps stretching his fingers and forming a fist that begs that leak in his glove to stop. ease the flow so he'd not feel its trickle every time he pulled the trigger. starts a new itch that spikes upward and lands in a strong jaw, five-o'clock-shadow long since striking midnight. so close to a tickle, it's easy to grin with her input. glance upward and take in more than just the toes of @opherative 's pumps. over stocking-clad knees, carlos stops at the hem of ada's dress before flicking upwards to find her face. remembers some far-off manners that, in retrospect, had more to do with that wound on his hand than any life lesson taught by an absent mother. man made shield, it'd been a matter of time.

" yeah.. it'll be fine though. " the hole would mend itself. a nice, patchy scar to tell his future grandkids about some day. make up a story that doesn't leave their skin crawling with the same sinking feeling his does, there. with another groan on a skyline, the night doesn't care if they're tired. " 'm a big boy, i can handle it. "

elbows to knees, he's put sore spots towards the back of his mind. returns to the now. pins a somewhat familiar face with the scrutiny it's warranted. her being here, in the thick of it, didn't make sense. umbrella had protocols. they had a system and it started and ended with the ubcs. bold, certain, the line in the sand no one was supposed to cross. and up till now, they hadn't. submission from the living, he understood that. could make it make sense. gunfire, trenches.. it'd been an enduring stent since he'd say he missed the jungle.

If there's anyone in this story Sī Yǔ should be worried about, it's the U.B.C.S.     The last of the living she’s crossed paths with have been bit players throughout each grisly scene, something distant enough from her mission to ditch her previous role for the next. She’d been a tourist to a man she’d hauled out of the way of a horde, a grieving girlfriend to a storeowner gracious enough to let her in. Each step, each off-script conversation that veered center stage, has been with the extrinsic motivation of obtaining the g-virus, and if it's taken a few costume changes, then so be it. But @vilifyme is closer to the blood and guts of Umbrella in a way very few else have been thus far, and here Sī Yǔ stands, hands as red as her dress, knowing she has no other choice but to play a tired part. Ada Wong is a mask she must maintain, then. It wears a wry smile, not quite reaching the eyes.   "That’ll have to wait."

She can’t even remember how long the two of them have been together now. At some point the curtains opened on a dismal morning, the sun highlighting chunks of fat and gnawed-on bone scattered about the streets. Unlike the cheesy B movies the Arklay scientists used to crack jokes about, the day doesn’t stop zombies in their tracks— it just makes them easier to spot, which really only does so much against their relentless, inhuman slog. Now that night has fallen again, they're back to sidestepping the shambling crowd, guns at the ready as they peer around each corner. This iteration of Ada— the researcher seeking redemption— had earned Carlos' trust when she'd shoved a family he was guiding into safety. He'd returned the favor some odd hours later, firing off at what once might've been a woman, but whose skin had long since sloughed off to make any details out. She'd reeled back from the corpse so fast she’d tripped over her own feet, eyes wide, breath heaving, and truth— the luxury she can so rarely afford— broke clear through her facade: She was scared.

It was gone by the time she stood. 

So here they’ve landed: intermission, a meager fifteen minutes before the next act. Ada’s eyes fall to the hand Carlos tentatively flexes; blood runs between the valleys of his knuckles, stark against his gloves. She’s not so much worried about an infection— Umbrella’s soldiers weren’t spared from their experimentation, after all, even if the antibodies worked in the end— but he’s got a quick shot that rivals her own. The corporation was lucky to find him wherever the hell they did. She’s just lucky he’s fallen for her ruse.

Ada swallows thickly, abandoning her guilt backstage. She digs around her hip pouch, eventually coming up with a salve, the tube crinkled from use. Her nail polish– chipped as it is, now– briefly follows the lines of the same logo emblazoned on his uniform, red and white and damned all over. Her chuckle rumbles rawly as she passes it down, glancing out to the piles of cars to avoid her own kindness.

the  storm  had  exhausted  itself  against  the  ancient  bones  of  the  castle,  leaving  the  night  washed  clean  and  gleaming  beneath  a  pallid,  watchful  moon.  water  clung  to  stone,  dripping  from  gargoyles  and  crumbling  balustrades  in  slow rhythms  as  though  the  fortress  itself  were  bleeding  out  the  last  remnants  of  the  tempest.  the  air  was  heavy  with  petrichor  and  decay,  mixed  with  the  faint,  coppery  residue  of  sacrifice  that  did  not  belong  solely  to  the  dead.  yue  idly wove  her  way  through  the  colonnade,  dark  hair  trailing  against  the  pale  gleam  of  skin  that  almost  fevered  in  the  gloom  of  moonlight.  the  castle  loomed  around  her,  opulent  and  obscene,  its  grandeur  rotting  from  within,  much  like  the  minds  tethered  to  the  parasite  she  felt  crawling  through  the  land  like  a  nervous  system  laid  bare.

las  plagas  did  not  feel  like  any  bioweapon  she  had  come  to  know.  it  was  not  the  feral  chaotic  hunger  of  the  t-virus  nor  the  calculated  brutality  of  its  engineered  successors.  this  was  something  older  in  temperament,  if  not  in  origin.  a  communion  masquerading  as  divinity.  it  pressed  against  her  senses  like  a  vast,  biological  network,  a  lattice  of  minds  threaded  together  by  something  that  was  neither  wholly  animal  nor  wholly  human.  she  felt  it  in  the  villagers  scattered  across  the  valley,  in  the  zealots  pacing  candlelit  corridors  below,  in  the  distant  hum  of  the  industry  on  the  island  where  its  dominion  was  strongest.  each  mind  was  a  node,  each  thought  a  ripple  carried  along  invisible  filaments  of  flesh  and  will,  all  converging  toward  a  singular,  towering  presence  that  loomed  at  the  centre  of  it  all  like  a  dark  star:  saddler.  the  sensation  was  …  not  so  much  unsettling  as  it  was  tantalising.  not because  it  rivalled  her  own  power,  but  because  it  mimicked  it.  in  a  grotesque  parody,  it  was  the  very  transcendence  her  creators  had  sought.  where  she  was  singular  and  overwhelming,  this  was  communal  and  invasive,  a  congregation  of  stolen  wills  kneeling  within  the  skull.

she  paused  along  a  moonlit  terrace  overlooking  the  abyssal  ravine,  the  wind  stirring  the  damp  strands  of  her  hair  as  her  awareness  stretched  outward,  brushing  against  the  hive-like  consciousness  that  suffused  valdelobos.  the  minds  she  touched  recoiled  and  reformed  their  perfect  compliance,  their  individuality  worn  thin  like  names  spoken  too  often  to  retain  any  meaning.  beneath  that  suffocating  unity  lingered  faint,  fractured  remnants  of  people  they  had  once  been.  she  would  kill  them  with  a  thought;  they  were, after all,  nothing  more  than  obedient  circuitry  of  meat  and  faith.  it  would  be  of  no  consequence  to  her. her  purpose  here  was  clear:  find  saddler,  sever  the  network  at  its  heart,  and  let  the  web  collapse  into  silence.  but  the  presence  of  another  and  his  damsel  had  introduced  complications,  their  movements  cutting  erratic  paths  through  psychic  mesh  and  drawing  attention.  yet  they  were  merely  variables—disturbances  in  the  pattern  rather  than  its  design.  she  would  account  for  them  when  necessary. however,  through  the  damp  hush  of  the  terrace  and  the  distant  murmur  of  the  parasite's  chorus,  she  felt  something  that  did  not  belong.  it  did  not  echo  with  saddler's  authority.  it  was  distinct  and  self-contained  and  …  familiar.  recognition  settled  into  place  without  surprise;  everyone  possessed  a  signature,  a  particular  cadence  of  thought.  while  most  blurred  into  obscurity  over  time,  this  one  had  not.

❛ ada. ❜

Night stretches over Valdelobos like a thinly woven veil, masking the mourning. The village attends her little funerals not in silence, but with the cacophonous call for more, and the mountains, her cheekbone, press against the fabric until it tears, dappling the village in moonlight. It's in one pearlescent patch that Ada's just risen from a dry heave; her fingertips scale the castle's stony walls as she braces herself against them, pushing past the visions that peek in and out from the corners of her eyes.

She doesn’t know how long it’s been since her and Luis separated. Long enough for her to have swung across a building or two, threading between the throngs of cultists whose minds had been led to slaughter the same way hers is now. The air had only been broken by a less-than-welcome call from Wesker, chiding her and her dog as a hurdle to the amber. Never mind that the scraggly rock helped shove a parasite down her throat— even with The Connections having signed his paycheck the last however many years, he was only ever out for himself. It's a pretense Ada's more than familiar with, after all, even when she pretended she wasn't. In the end, she is as she’s always been as she always will be: alone.

… Or she was, rather, given the figure at the end of the corridor she rounds. The spy's gun raises on instinct, finger flicking off the safety, only to still in rare shock at its target.

Yue’s stark-white hair frames her face like that of wings, gannet-like in the fluttered collapse and rebuild of her aura. All of the memories Ada'd drowned in waters murkier than her conscience reemerge with Olympian speed, breaking the surface to drag her under. Would you look at that, she scolds herself— six years since that night, since that damned mansion, and yet sentimentality still collects like stones in her pockets, bogging her down. Her heart pounds thunderously, all the more vulnerable knowing Yue can sense it— can let it flow through her, reflect back the miasmic waves of the parasite lodged deep in her chest.

The grip on her gun tightens. “Surprise, surprise.” She quips in their native tongue, arching a brow sheening with fevered sweat.

The moment yawns between them, a flash of darkness before the teeth grit. There’s plenty more she could hiss here ( Bet you didn’t think I’d make it out. I didn't, either. Do you miss it like I do? ) but she swallows the thoughts down instead, finally dropping her arm to her side. Musing never did her any good before; no use starting now. “It looks like you beat me to the punch,” Ada fixes that familiar smirk back onto her face, the one Claire would call bullshit on if she were here, “have you run into any of our friends yet?”

the safehouse door opens without a sound, which tells arthur more than a knock ever would. his hand stills over the open field report, pen hovering above a half-finished note about cold-chain routes and missing tissue samples. the room smells like old dust, rainwater, and the cheap coffee he forgot to drink. he does not reach for his gun immediately, though his eyes flick once to the reflection in the dark window and catch the shape of red where no red should be. ada wong moves like a rumor deciding to become real. arthur exhales through his nose, tired and almost amused, though the faint gold at the edge of his eyes betrays the part of him already measuring distance, intent, and exits.

“ you know, most people use doors because they want to be invited in. ”

his gaze drops briefly to the folder tucked under her arm, then returns to her face. the corner of his mouth lifts, small and wary.

Arthur is a powder-keg in waiting,    a firecracker seconds before the boom. Ada always has the instinct to shield her eyes around him, as if the sparks he’ll inevitably spit will shimmer between her fingers, lighting up all their little capillaries. Even now, she smells it– the familiar smoke of his self-flagellation as it marks the air, casting him in shadow. She offers her own smirk back, smart and red and something to cut through the smog. “I think we’re a little past that.”

She waltzes past him, tossing the scant folder on the table. “Here,” she sighs, “it’s not much. Another day, another senator.” It’s phrased dull on purpose; in truth, it’d taken a fair amount of sidestepping around Simmons’ omnipresent influence, but there’s only ever so much Ada’s willing to let on.

She turns over her shoulder, gaze following the horizon of the safe room. It’s cluttered, but not messy— a blanket is tossed over the back of a worn leather couch, the leather softened in his shape; cups and plates are scattered across the coffee table and counter, discarded haphazardly on his way out the door; books she can barely make out the title of sit snug on distant shelves, each and every piece tucked away in her file of Arthur Branham. It’s a perfectly fine, safe room.

And it’s not his.

The recognition— or rather, the fact that she’s recognizing it— catches her off-guard. This place isn’t Arthur, it’s a dollhouse built just for him, a place where hands far larger than either of them can come and toy with him at their will, twisting his limbs with the clumsiness of a cruel child. It’s all play-pretend— these folders, the furniture, her, especially her, a doll from the wrong set shoved into the scene. The fingers that dig into her own plastic make careful work of poising her just right to keep up the character, but there is a truth here only one of them knows: her dollhouse isn't that much bigger than his.