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"Jill Valentine."

A living legend if there ever was one. He couldn't say her visit wasn't ever unexpected. They run the same professional circles and a career in zombies wasn't a popular path to be taking. Eventually, they would be in the same place at the same time. He might be the oldest man in the landscape now even among BSAA, barring some of the fossil desk jockeys who didn't often breach containment.

"Nice to meet you."

Reputations and titles ran amok around circles and alliances like hot water. Legends were spoken lightly, stories told of feats done by many different individuals, and that's how the two had come to know of each other, just indirectly. H.U.N.K, rumored and confirmed to be one of the most lethal operatives in this line of work, never killed and able to tough his way out of nearly everything, and Jill Valentine, who defined the very word of survival.

It was a rare chance to properly meet, and on truce grounds no less. Valentine offers her own response nothing short of courteous — she'd return what she was given in kind, and he'd done nothing to warrant anything else. It was nice, doing introductions again for the first time in a while.

"Never thought I'd get the chance."

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somebody laced my cigarette with unmeasurable pain and sorrow

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THE OLD GUARD (2020) :: RP STARTERS :: PT. I .

i've been here before, over and over again.

is this it? will this time be the one?

each time the same answer. and i'm just so damn tired of it.

that couldn't have been cheap.

we don't do repeats. you know that.

admit it. you missed us.

it's a job. we can do some good.

some good means nothing.

i don't know about this. we're not helping.

they reached out to me and i'm reaching out to you.

your team's the best we've ever seen.

you can name your price.

we'll invoice you when it's done.

everyone still with me?

we've been set up.

we did it for the right reasons.

we've done nothing.

the world isn't getting any better, it's getting worse.

we have to tie this thing off.

the world can burn for all i care.

look at all this shit. it's jackpot.

stay with me. just look at me.

not another one. not now.

we're the ones who are exposed.

you can't tell me you don't remember what it was like.

they're more alone than they've been in their entire life.

that makes them a beacon straight to us.

i'll handle the retrieval.

i know i saw them die.

adrenaline was flying everyone was seeing shit they didn't.

a little blood can look like a lot.

you'd rather we sent them home in a body bag?

so let's see the trophy.

there was an unanticipated amount of carnage.

these are extraordinary individuals. they are extremely resistant to capture.

why does it have to be so goddamn slow the first couple of times?

i need you to get back in the car please.

you haven't figured this out yet?

you can't die.

can you please not do that again?

you want answers? get back in the car.

sometimes you gotta work with people you don't wanna eat with.

they stabbed me, so i think they've got potential.

you know, there was a time where i was worshipped as a god.

don't worry, i can't do shit like that.

oh, guess we really do need a pilot.

just keep following that illogic. you're already on board with the supernatural.

i said we're done.

we fight for what we think is right.

it's because we're meant to find each other.

more like misery loves company.

nothing that lives, lives forever.

lost the plot after that.

i strongly recommend that we leave right now.

they've forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn.

we are usually a better judge of character.

just because we keep living doesn't mean we stop hurting.

the only way is forward now.

they will beg you to share it with them and you won't be able to.

they will tell you that your love is weak, or selfish.

you will never forget the hate and despair in their eyes.

you will know what it's like to lose everyone you've ever loved.

your business is yours.

you need help. what does it matter why?

today, i put this on your wound. tomorrow, you help someone up when they fall.

we're not meant to be alone.

it's not what time steals. it's what it leaves behind.

they can't teach you how to live with it.

you and me. now and always.

it wasn't your gift to give.

i've seen it. i know all the good you've done.

we don't get a say in when it ends, we never have.

but we can control how we live.

go big or go home.

you reminded me there are people still worth fighting for.

the good you've done for humanity becomes exponential.

it's nearly impossible to disappear in the world today.

we don't have all the answers but we do have purpose.

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aim  for  the  heart,  shoot  to  kill.  if  you  don't  do  it,  then  the  other  one  will. #𝐒𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐍-𝐈𝐍-𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 , an independant , semi-selective 𝐌𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 blog featuring 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 from resident evil/biohazard.  as written  by  ryxon,  20,  they/them  &  NZST.  Crossover friendly with verses able to be written in various different media.

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gifts  from  the  B.S.A.A!  they  said  that's  the  best  they  could  do  for  us  for  now. #𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐒𝐄-𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓  ,  an  independant,  mutuals-only,  selective  +  low  activity  roleplay  blog  for  𝐍𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐀  of  resident  evil/biohazard  .  as  written  by  ryxon,  20,  they/them  &  NZST.  Heavily  analysis  &  headcanon  based  &  with  a  focus  on  indepth  exploration,  taking  inspiration  from  both  games  &  novelization. 

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today,  i  put  this  on  your  wound.  tomorrow,  you  help  someone  up  when  they  fall. #𝐀𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄-𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐄 , an independant, mutuals-only, selective roleplay blog for 𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄 "𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐘" 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐘𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐀𝐍 of the old guard . as written by ryxon, 20, they/them & NZST. Heavily analysis & headcanon based & with a focus on indepth exploration, taking main inspiration from the film . Crossover friendly with verses in Resident Evil.

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currently insanely mused for @amaranthine-divine so you can catch me over there today

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so there’s this insane rage and anger

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Jill Valentine in Resident Evil: Death Island

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Everything was fucked. Just an hour ago Valentine had been planning on packing the last of her gear and making moves to get the hell out of the city, and now she was running for her life against a Tyrant that was twice as awful as the one she faced in Arklay. Everything hurt and she was covered in rubble, dust, and some traces of blood from where she got cut during her escape, which didn't help things.

Her heart threatened to break free from her chest as she braced herself against the wall, moving carefully and quickly towards the exit of the alley. A cough came through as the dust settled, and through her gaze up ahead, a flash of yellow. Her brows furrow as she attempted to make sense of it, before recognition floods her and he calls out her name.

"Brad? Brad! Hey, over here!"

She let go of the wall, keeping a hand on her side as she jogged over. It had been hit pretty well by the railing on her way out, and she could deal with it later. Right now, she needed a gun, and she needed out.

"We need to move, now."

STAAARS.

“Sorry pal, you didn’t say please!”

STAAARS.

“Still not my name, but you’re getting close! You got the ‘A’ right! Now let’s see if you can get the B. Take it from the top, ugly!”

        That freak had been pursuing him for several blocks now. Brad hadn’t slowed down for a moment, thanking his lucky stars he was used to running marathons. He was making jokes, taunting, trying to feel brave - and utterly failing. It was taxing, he was winded, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, terrified, but none of this was enough to make him stop running. Adrenaline ran through his veins as quickly as he ran through the streets, keeping him moving. The dead were everywhere, around every corner, behind every door. Nowhere was safe. It felt so hopeless, so pointless. But he wasn’t about to give up.

         Custom Samurai Edge was held high, eagle engraving barely visible, the head poking over Brad’s hand. Hollow-tipped rounds loaded into the chamber, safety off. Brad kept running, firing off shot after shot at the behemoth monster, but he wouldn’t fall, wouldn’t even slow down. Turning a corner, Brad found his path blocked by a horde of the undead, whom took notice of him the moment he rounded the corner. Thinking quickly, the pilot leapt onto the roof of a car, dashing across a barricade and running right by a number of barrels.

        Brad practically skidded to a halt in cartoonish fashion.

        Whipping around to see Nemesis powering through the horde, Brad trained his aim on the barrels, praying to whatever higher power may exist that his assumption was right. Nemesis came within range; Brad pulled the trigger. With a deafening boom, flames shot out in all directions. The monster was launched thirty feet straight backwards, crashing through the wall of an apartment building. Opportunity. Now that Brad was out of its line of sight, he took his chance to put as much distance between himself and that creature as possible.

         Alley after alley, street after street...dead end after dead end. The city was chaos. Brad happened upon a few police patrols still trying to keep order, but they were dead as quick as he found them. Barricades fell, the infected flooded in, and no one escaped. No one. His anxiety grew, welling in the pit of his stomach, giving way to panic. What could he do? He was just one guy. He may have been STARS, but the police weren’t trained for this, and neither was he. He wasn’t prepared. He hadn’t been on the ground in Arklay, he’d missed the worst of that (and was damn glad about it), but because of that he didn’t have the experience that-

        He slowed, and finally stopped moving. Had he seen what he thought he’d seen? The exact person he’d been thinking about, moments prior? Spinning around, Brad ran back to an alley he’d passed by only seconds before, and called out, just hoping he was right...and not hollering at some random infected, that had shuffled out of sight momentarily. “Jill! Hey, Jill! Shit...please let it be you.” The latter murmured just under his breath. Hoping desperately for a friendly face in all this, despite how wrong it felt to be hoping to see her wrapped up in this mess along with him. Either way, they stood a far better chance together than alone.

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The night was a far more comfortable thing for her compared to the blinding brilliance of the sun. Even with the faint stars in the sky that peppered the initial stage, the shadows all around reminded her of the caverns from whence she came, from the chill of stone and flickering of fire.

Ailani was the first she'd met here who didn't worry about her presence — the king of every dead, decaying thing never brought good omen when she was around, and yet the other had shown her all the wonders of the overworld, a place she hadn't seen often since she'd claimed her land.

Fragments of bark scattered down as Jill watched Ailani climb, grabbing onto each branch as they came. Valentine didn't join her — she'd have no hope of maintaining purchase, and dress shoes, suits and coats weren't exactly the best attire to scale trees. It brought a glimmer to her eye though, witnessing the expert movements from below, the other had done this a hundred times before. They'd snuck away together, escaping the view of everyone else, and some part of Jill was relieved that she didn't have to listen to Ailani's mother's suspicions and barely concealed pettiness.

"Then you should sneak out more often."

@cupsraised from here

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“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”

— Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (via loveage-moondream)

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they should invent a medicine that makes the aching jagged wound in your soul close

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beep beep how’s my portrayal ?

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A calloused hand reaches into the mailbox, deftly drawing out the object within. Whoever was down the street picking the lock wasn't doing a good job, but Valentine swaps it out for the passport in the bid for her attention. She leafs through it, letters and stamps barely legible and blurred with blotches of ink, but it's him.

Unmistakenly him. Her heart beats seconds quicker, eyes lingering on his face, his headshot, with that smug humor and like he was when she was far younger. She doesn't know what to say, to feel, beside the sudden realization that she missed him more than words could say.

It's studied seconds longer, eyes closing for several moments before it's carefully tucked into her inner jacket pocket, keeping it close to heart and safe. When she opens them, the light flickered, the safe revealed itself and letters made their herald once more. Not unlike the kind she'd practiced with, and broken into more than once.

If anything matched up in this forsaken place, the fingerprints on that dial would match hers, or some other strange individual. A step's taken towards it — she knows the combination, it takes a lot of digging to remember, but in the span of the half a minute it would take her to reach it she was too late. Light, on, light, off, something tore its way out and the metal was warped far too much to be usable again. The shell casings. Freshly spent. They matched the ammunition in her custom weapon. Everything clicked into place like some twisted puzzle with relevance to her, always tying back to her, attacking her.

If the lock opens itself, whose skill is it?

"Luck." comes the answer.

The sparrow alights on the metal above, and her eyes flicker up to it. Her namesake, callsign, the birds that lived through anything and everything. It looked at her curiously, and compared to the sparrows of the city, before fluttering off like the rest of them, leaving her as things have flown before.

An arm leans against the side of the safe, blue moves again to study the bullets, a hand draws out the passport to look at it again. Someone's playing a game with her, and she doesn't like it one bit. Information that should never be released, out there in the wild, left for her to find for who else lies here abandoned?

The siren comes and it reminds her of disaster.

The alley receives her like a throat, narrow, damp, unlit except for the glimmer of a single fluorescent fixture deeper in, buzzing as though insects were trapped inside the tube. The click-click-click grows louder, but it's arrhythmic now, as if the lockpicker has forgotten the pattern.

Halfway down, a rust-flecked mailbox juts from the brickwork. Its door hangs by one hinge, and inside, balanced atop moldering circulars, lies a weather-worn passport. The name is smudged beyond recognition, but the photo is unmistakable: Richard Valentine, ten years younger than when she last saw him, winking as though caught mid-joke. A violet stamp obscures the issue date:

29 FEB - VOID

At the alley's terminus, the fluorescent bulb finally snaps to black. In the instant before darkness consumes it, Jill glimpses what waits beyond: a heavy steel safe bolted to the wall, the dial smeared with greasy fingerprints. A single line of chalk above it reads:

YOU KNOW THE COMBINATION

Then the light dies, and for a heartbeat, the alley is pitch.

When it returns, flickering, strobing, the safe is ajar. The door has been forced from within; gouges mar the inside edge, as though something clawed its way out. Resting on the floor below, arranged like the teeth of a key, lie five spent 9mm casings.

The air smells of ozone and gun oil.

Behind her, at the alley mouth, the radio static sharpens again, no words this time, only a breathy shhhh that rises and falls in sync with her heartbeat.

Above the safe, the chalk sentence begins to change. Letters skitter across the brick as if dragged by an invisible hand:

IF THE LOCK OPENS ITSELF WHOSE SKILL IS IT?

A flutter overhead. A lone sparrow, one eye missing, drops through the gloom to perch on the safe door. It tilts its head once, click, like a tumbler seating, then takes flight, vanishing into a ceilingless fog.

Somewhere deeper in town, a siren stirs, but only for a single, aborted wail, cut short as if silenced by an unseen hand.

Silent Hill does not push her forward.

It simply waits, each echo a question she already knows how to answer, yet never says aloud.

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During get togethers and gatherings, Valentine almost never showed up. When she did, it was because someone made her or she had absolutely nothing better to do than pick fights or sit in silence in the corner while everyone else failed to get along, and occasionally make bets when the others pissed each other off.

She only came for Ailani, this time, and was very quickly reminded of why she barely came. Her reputation didn't precede her well, not among mortals, not among the gods, not when she was the lord of the dead and decaying and the world below their feet.

She'd quickly recognized the situation as it grew, pulling her lover into the bathroom and ignoring the rest, perhaps throwing a few choice words along the way. She stood close to her, a concerned glimmer in her gaze while Ailani messed with her makeup, jaw flexing at the mention of the others. Her gaze flickered to the door before she drew in a breath, turning back to Ailani.

"No, it's because they're assholes."

Jill embraced Ailani when she turned towards her, allowing her to rest her head on a shoulder. She didn't deserve any of this, and Valentine was determined enough to make it everybody else's problem on their way out.

"Just like last time. Letters. Visits. It'll be winter in no time."

@cupsraised from here

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Their entire lives hinged on this metaphorical game of chess, guessing each other's strategies and both sides of the board thinking they're six moves ahead of the other when in reality they knew little to nothing. Jill Valentine might not be the understudy Catalina was hoping for, and Catalina not the mission partner Jill wanted, yet they were both locked together in this dance even still.

"Think I'd prefer a full night's sleep compared to chasing you around the country." Jill responded in kind, continuing her semi-rehearsed steps while leading the spy, ensuring to keep her cover for the rest of the guests.

She slowed her movements in time with the music, eyes flickering around at the celebration as according to her words. Something was about to go down here then, clearly, if verbal confirmation was any proof — which in the case of Catalina, it was.

"Spill."

Catalina allowed Jill to spin her around, the look of love plastered on her face. Any outsider would've likely found her performance particularly convincing, and the spy had plenty of time to perfect her craft. She was incredibly attractive - it wasn't hard to see - and she'd been honing that talent since she was a teenager. Attraction was far easier to play on than fear, but Catalina didn't know which emotion emulated from Jill tonight.

"You know, I was really hoping you'd know how to tango. Waltzes are so boring - not to mention, they're overdone," Catalina huffed. She was the queen of non-answers, and she'd never willingly give her rival a leg up in this game of theirs. The dagger was slipped into a hidden pocket in her white dress; the color would be hard to get bloodstains out of, and revealing a sinister intent wasn't on the agenda for tonight. "I wouldn't miss you, for the record. You'd miss me."

Catalina had come here on her daughter's behalf, but exposing that little secret of hers would be ruinous. The target for tonight had been a former colleague of Elena's parents. Something about the man creeped Catalina out every time they interacted, and anyone with ties to Umbrella had to go. On that matter, she was firm. A loose ringlet came free from her carefully pinned up bun, and she didn't bother to brush it away from her face.

"I'm helping the B.S.A.A. out tonight. You should be thanking me, really. Less of a mess for you to clean up."