Belated prompt for justprompts
More completely ignoring the RP I'm in with Sherry... this may turn into a longer fanfic if I'm ambitious enough, mostly because writing Wesker is... interesting. And we don't have one in our game. >.>
This stuff happens immediately after the events of RE2.
In the cold light of morning, the Birkin house was quiet. Much too quiet.
Wesker had begrudgingly returned her here, a modest two-story colonial in the suburbs of Raccoon City, to fetch her belongings. He told her to take only what she needed most. Clothes, her toothbrush, that sort of thing. They couldn’t stay long; the army had the area locked down but they wanted everyone out. Wesker stared down at her, face completely expressionless, and asked if she understood. She said she did.
“I’m waiting here,” he said, crossing his arms and looking about the foyer. He said he had no intention of helping her. She was old enough.
Sherry climbed the stairs, slowly, bogged down by a sick stomach. She still couldn’t tell if it was from the effects of the monster attack or just from grief.
“And make it quick!” Wesker called after her.
She went into her room. She had helped her mother decorate not long before with a theme of lime green and pink, grabbed her school backpack out from under her canopy bed. Dumped out her textbooks and notebooks onto the floor and replaced it with some clothes. She had no idea how much to bring and had a feeling Wesker wasn’t going to give her a good estimate. He hadn’t even said where they were going after this.
She packed her Barbie and Ken, the only two dolls her father had allowed her to have. She took toiletries from the adjacent bathroom. She tried not to think about what Wesker had said. That all of this, every last bit, was her dad’s fault. Even if he was turned into some giant monster, then he had called out her name to warn her. He must have.
He’d never want to hurt her.
Without realizing it, Sherry was crying again.
She tiptoed across the hall, into her parents’ bedroom. Everything was how it should be. Neutral tones of cool teal and mahogany brown, in direct contrast with her bedroom, which her father said hurt his eyes to look at.
The bed neatly made. The ironing board was still out; her mother always ironed her father’s shirts in the morning before he wore them to work. She opened the closet where his clothes still hung. She took her favorite tie of his, the light blue one that matched his eyes. She wanted to take a shirt but it would be so big on her, and get so wrinkled if she stuffed it in her backpack. She didn’t know how to iron; her mother had never taught her how.
Dropping her backpack to the floor, Sherry crawled onto the bed, hugged a pillow, and sobbed. For the first time, she realized she would never be seeing them again. She cried and cried and thought she’d never be able to stop.
Downstairs, Wesker pounded on the wall and yelled at her to hurry up. She could feel the vibration surge through her chest; it was like the whole second floor shook. She was confused how one person banging on a wall could cause something so powerful, but her thoughts were interrupted by a crash. She looked up and saw that her mother’s jewelry box had fallen off the bureau.
Sherry scrambled over to it, hoping it was okay. It had been a Christmas gift from her father to her mother when she was very little, but she could still see the thrilled look on Annette’s face when she saw the dark polished wood, the engraving on top that spelled her initials, AB. She sniffled, but the box seemed to be intact, although on its side with the contents splayed out on the carpet.
She started to put the jewelry back inside, knowing there were a few valuable pieces her mother had owned - namely a diamond bracelet from her father, pearls from her grandmother, whom Sherry hadn’t seen in years. But when she realized she could not fit the entire box inside her backpack, she decided to just take the jewelry. She noticed an envelope, lying flap up, and decided this would be the best place to put the jewelry.
However, when she picked it up, she noticed two things: one, there was already something weighty inside, and two, that the back of the envelope had her name on it, written in her mother’s handwriting.
Sherry’s throat constricted as she opened it and pulled out a small note.
Sherry -
In case of an emergency, take the key to the garden. Tell no one.
Love,
Mom
Inside was an old skeleton key, tied with a red ribbon.
Sherry stood and ran to the window beside her parents’ bed, the one that looked out on their backyard. Years ago, when her mother had more spare time away from work, Annette had planted a garden. The back corner of the yard already had an old brick patio and stone walls, left over from a previous owner, although in Sherry’s early life she remembered it was choked with weeds and unsafe for her to play in. Then her mother had began working in there, taking out the dead plants and planting rose bushes, climbing ivy, and other things. Sherry remembered playing there as Annette worked, both mother and daughter completely content with the world.
That had been years ago. An increasingly demanding work schedule had forced her mother to abandon the project, and now that area was wild and overgrown, and she still wasn’t allowed in, given what kind of wildlife might be lurking there.
But she remembered finding the door. In the back wall, a small wooden door, locked. Her mother had said it was probably once used as a garden shed. But there had been no key. How had her mother found the key? How long had she been planning to hide something out there for her daughter to find?
Sherry would never know.
What she did know was that there would be no way to sneak back there past Wesker, since he was in the foyer, right at the base of the stairs. And her mother had said not to tell anyone, even the most trusted family friend.
Sherry realized, with sudden clarity, she would have to go out the window.
She replaced the jewelry box, the pieces she had wanted safe in the envelope with her name on it, took her backpack, and opened the window by her parents’ bed. She removed the screen, and crawled out onto the roof below, so that now she was on top of the breakfast nook in the kitchen. A tree extended its branches to her like the arms of a welcoming friend. Sherry pulled herself onto a branch that seemed sturdy, shimmed inward. When she reached the trunk, she climbed, slowly and meticulously, to the ground. She reached the grass sweaty with scratched palms, but intact. If her father had seen her up in a tree like that, he would have had a panic attack.
Without knowing why, she broke into a run, all the way to the corner of the lot with where the garden walls rushed up to meet her. She pushed past the gate, tromped through the cracked stone path, ignoring thorny branches that scratched at her face, flies buzzing in her ear, a water fixture Annette had never gotten fixed featuring a cherub boy pouring invisible water from a pot, broken forever. She had to find the door.
It was not where she remembered it. Instead, the ivy dominated the walls, covering the surface entirely. Undeterred, she pressed her hands through the tangles of plant, trying to find where the concrete wall gave way to a small, wooden door. Still, as she worked, she feared some sort of dark magic had befallen the door, and it was gone forever. At the same time, she feverishly hoped she would find both her parents beyond the door when she found it, and they would take her away from this hellish place. She could see them so clearly in her mind, her mother’s elegant smile coupled with her father’s more reluctant grin, as if enjoying himself was somehow a crime when there was still so much work to be done…
One palm found wood, the other the wrought iron knob.
Sherry, unable to breathe, tried to pull away the curtain of ivy, only to find that it had already been displaced not long before, coming away easily from the door, and just as effortlessly replaced. She slipped behind it, dug the key out of her pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned.
The lock clicked, the door opened. Her parents were not inside. Just darkness. She tried to pull the door open further to cast light on the small space. Her mother had been right; it was a small storage area with a few shelves. In one corner was a shovel and a rake; on the shelves only dust.
Except not quite.
Sherry stepped closer and realized, on the middle shelf in front of her, directly at her height, lay a black leather-bound book. She reached in and snatched it, pulling it to her like a newborn kitten. On the front, the word Diary was etched into the leather. Not daring to breathe, she opened to the first page.
9/12
My Dearest Sherry,
I write this with a heavy heart, knowing that if you are reading it, I am likely dead, as is your father. I am so, so sorry. I am writing this diary to you in the hopes that you will never have to see it, but if you do, so that you can understand the actions of your parents and why we never told you the nature of our work. Please, show this to no one; it is very difficult to know who to trust these days. Just know, that despite whatever is revealed to you in these pages, your father and I still love you with all our hearts. It was you who was our best accomplishment, not any amount of scientific research, even if it doesn’t feel that way. My biggest regret is that I could not spend as much time with you as I wanted.
Anything beyond that became difficult to read, not just because of the dim lighting but because everything was blurred by her tears.
“Sherry!”
Wesker’s angry voice shattered the reverie. He was somewhere in the garden, and his very presence seemed like an invasion. Suddenly panicked, Sherry shrugged off her backpack and shoved the journal inside, hidden by her clothes. She zipped it and replaced it on her back before exiting the shed and emerging from behind the shield of ivy, sniffling and wiping her face. She walked back toward the entrance and Wesker’s voice.
He was standing by the cherub fountain, scowling. He turned, saw her approaching, and stormed toward her. “Insolent girl! Trying to give me the slip?”
He grabbed her arm above the elbow, much harder than when they were at the camp, and yanked her toward the garden’s exit.
“Ow! You’re hurting me!” Sherry protested.
“Good. You should know what it feels like when you disobey,” Wesker growled.
She had never seen him this mad. At family dinners and birthday parties he had always regarded her with disinterest, waiting until she was distracted to discuss business with her father in hushed tones, but he had never been openly hostile to her. All the chivalry he showed at the army camp had dissolved.
Sherry began to cry again. “I just wanted a few minutes to myself! I swear! I wasn’t trying to run away. I just wanted to remember my parents, okay? They’re not getting a funeral, are they?”
By now they were out of the garden and marching around the side of the house to Wesker’s jeep that waited for them in the driveway. “No, they are not,” he confirmed, although her explanation did not soften him at all. “But try disappearing on me like that again and you’ll regret it. What I neglected to tell you because it was likely to upset you was that in about an hour, the government plans to wipe Raccoon City off the map. This whole place will be cinders. And if I hadn’t been able to find you, you would have gone up with it.”
They were going faster than Sherry could keep up with. She tried to run and even that didn’t work; she stumbled and nearly went down. Wesker, who still appeared to be doing nothing but a purposeful walk, picked her up clear off the ground and a moment later they were back in the driveway, next to the jeep.
“Wha…?” Sherry looked around, dazed. It wasn’t possible.
Wesker released her roughly after making sure her feet were back on the pavement, making no indication that anything strange had occurred. “Get in, we’re leaving.”
Numb and confused, Sherry obeyed, slipping into the passenger seat and tossing her backpack into the backseat. Wesker got behind the wheel, turned on the engine and threw the jeep into reverse. Sherry stayed turned around in her seat, watching her house until it disappeared around a corner.
Wesker drove fast but with precision, and given that there were no other cars on the road the speed limit didn’t really matter. He did not speak and Sherry was too afraid to. Maybe she just hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going. That’s why it seemed like they had practically flown.
“I’m sorry,” she said after nearly five minutes of palpable tension.
“For?” he asked, as if he’d already forgotten about it.
“Going into the garden without telling you,” Sherry said, although she was still glad she’d gotten Annette’s journal without his knowing. “You were just trying to look out for me. Because of the bombs they’re setting off. You were worried.”
Wesker smirked when she said worried. “Oh, yes,” he said with a throaty chuckle. “Very worried. Can’t have those dear Birkin genes damaged, can we?”
Sherry didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but it gave her the chills.
This stuff happens immediately after the events of RE2.
In the cold light of morning, the Birkin house was quiet. Much too quiet.
Wesker had begrudgingly returned her here, a modest two-story colonial in the suburbs of Raccoon City, to fetch her belongings. He told her to take only what she needed most. Clothes, her toothbrush, that sort of thing. They couldn’t stay long; the army had the area locked down but they wanted everyone out. Wesker stared down at her, face completely expressionless, and asked if she understood. She said she did.
“I’m waiting here,” he said, crossing his arms and looking about the foyer. He said he had no intention of helping her. She was old enough.
Sherry climbed the stairs, slowly, bogged down by a sick stomach. She still couldn’t tell if it was from the effects of the monster attack or just from grief.
“And make it quick!” Wesker called after her.
She went into her room. She had helped her mother decorate not long before with a theme of lime green and pink, grabbed her school backpack out from under her canopy bed. Dumped out her textbooks and notebooks onto the floor and replaced it with some clothes. She had no idea how much to bring and had a feeling Wesker wasn’t going to give her a good estimate. He hadn’t even said where they were going after this.
She packed her Barbie and Ken, the only two dolls her father had allowed her to have. She took toiletries from the adjacent bathroom. She tried not to think about what Wesker had said. That all of this, every last bit, was her dad’s fault. Even if he was turned into some giant monster, then he had called out her name to warn her. He must have.
He’d never want to hurt her.
Without realizing it, Sherry was crying again.
She tiptoed across the hall, into her parents’ bedroom. Everything was how it should be. Neutral tones of cool teal and mahogany brown, in direct contrast with her bedroom, which her father said hurt his eyes to look at.
The bed neatly made. The ironing board was still out; her mother always ironed her father’s shirts in the morning before he wore them to work. She opened the closet where his clothes still hung. She took her favorite tie of his, the light blue one that matched his eyes. She wanted to take a shirt but it would be so big on her, and get so wrinkled if she stuffed it in her backpack. She didn’t know how to iron; her mother had never taught her how.
Dropping her backpack to the floor, Sherry crawled onto the bed, hugged a pillow, and sobbed. For the first time, she realized she would never be seeing them again. She cried and cried and thought she’d never be able to stop.
Downstairs, Wesker pounded on the wall and yelled at her to hurry up. She could feel the vibration surge through her chest; it was like the whole second floor shook. She was confused how one person banging on a wall could cause something so powerful, but her thoughts were interrupted by a crash. She looked up and saw that her mother’s jewelry box had fallen off the bureau.
Sherry scrambled over to it, hoping it was okay. It had been a Christmas gift from her father to her mother when she was very little, but she could still see the thrilled look on Annette’s face when she saw the dark polished wood, the engraving on top that spelled her initials, AB. She sniffled, but the box seemed to be intact, although on its side with the contents splayed out on the carpet.
She started to put the jewelry back inside, knowing there were a few valuable pieces her mother had owned - namely a diamond bracelet from her father, pearls from her grandmother, whom Sherry hadn’t seen in years. But when she realized she could not fit the entire box inside her backpack, she decided to just take the jewelry. She noticed an envelope, lying flap up, and decided this would be the best place to put the jewelry.
However, when she picked it up, she noticed two things: one, there was already something weighty inside, and two, that the back of the envelope had her name on it, written in her mother’s handwriting.
Sherry’s throat constricted as she opened it and pulled out a small note.
Sherry -
In case of an emergency, take the key to the garden. Tell no one.
Love,
Mom
Inside was an old skeleton key, tied with a red ribbon.
Sherry stood and ran to the window beside her parents’ bed, the one that looked out on their backyard. Years ago, when her mother had more spare time away from work, Annette had planted a garden. The back corner of the yard already had an old brick patio and stone walls, left over from a previous owner, although in Sherry’s early life she remembered it was choked with weeds and unsafe for her to play in. Then her mother had began working in there, taking out the dead plants and planting rose bushes, climbing ivy, and other things. Sherry remembered playing there as Annette worked, both mother and daughter completely content with the world.
That had been years ago. An increasingly demanding work schedule had forced her mother to abandon the project, and now that area was wild and overgrown, and she still wasn’t allowed in, given what kind of wildlife might be lurking there.
But she remembered finding the door. In the back wall, a small wooden door, locked. Her mother had said it was probably once used as a garden shed. But there had been no key. How had her mother found the key? How long had she been planning to hide something out there for her daughter to find?
Sherry would never know.
What she did know was that there would be no way to sneak back there past Wesker, since he was in the foyer, right at the base of the stairs. And her mother had said not to tell anyone, even the most trusted family friend.
Sherry realized, with sudden clarity, she would have to go out the window.
She replaced the jewelry box, the pieces she had wanted safe in the envelope with her name on it, took her backpack, and opened the window by her parents’ bed. She removed the screen, and crawled out onto the roof below, so that now she was on top of the breakfast nook in the kitchen. A tree extended its branches to her like the arms of a welcoming friend. Sherry pulled herself onto a branch that seemed sturdy, shimmed inward. When she reached the trunk, she climbed, slowly and meticulously, to the ground. She reached the grass sweaty with scratched palms, but intact. If her father had seen her up in a tree like that, he would have had a panic attack.
Without knowing why, she broke into a run, all the way to the corner of the lot with where the garden walls rushed up to meet her. She pushed past the gate, tromped through the cracked stone path, ignoring thorny branches that scratched at her face, flies buzzing in her ear, a water fixture Annette had never gotten fixed featuring a cherub boy pouring invisible water from a pot, broken forever. She had to find the door.
It was not where she remembered it. Instead, the ivy dominated the walls, covering the surface entirely. Undeterred, she pressed her hands through the tangles of plant, trying to find where the concrete wall gave way to a small, wooden door. Still, as she worked, she feared some sort of dark magic had befallen the door, and it was gone forever. At the same time, she feverishly hoped she would find both her parents beyond the door when she found it, and they would take her away from this hellish place. She could see them so clearly in her mind, her mother’s elegant smile coupled with her father’s more reluctant grin, as if enjoying himself was somehow a crime when there was still so much work to be done…
One palm found wood, the other the wrought iron knob.
Sherry, unable to breathe, tried to pull away the curtain of ivy, only to find that it had already been displaced not long before, coming away easily from the door, and just as effortlessly replaced. She slipped behind it, dug the key out of her pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned.
The lock clicked, the door opened. Her parents were not inside. Just darkness. She tried to pull the door open further to cast light on the small space. Her mother had been right; it was a small storage area with a few shelves. In one corner was a shovel and a rake; on the shelves only dust.
Except not quite.
Sherry stepped closer and realized, on the middle shelf in front of her, directly at her height, lay a black leather-bound book. She reached in and snatched it, pulling it to her like a newborn kitten. On the front, the word Diary was etched into the leather. Not daring to breathe, she opened to the first page.
9/12
My Dearest Sherry,
I write this with a heavy heart, knowing that if you are reading it, I am likely dead, as is your father. I am so, so sorry. I am writing this diary to you in the hopes that you will never have to see it, but if you do, so that you can understand the actions of your parents and why we never told you the nature of our work. Please, show this to no one; it is very difficult to know who to trust these days. Just know, that despite whatever is revealed to you in these pages, your father and I still love you with all our hearts. It was you who was our best accomplishment, not any amount of scientific research, even if it doesn’t feel that way. My biggest regret is that I could not spend as much time with you as I wanted.
Anything beyond that became difficult to read, not just because of the dim lighting but because everything was blurred by her tears.
“Sherry!”
Wesker’s angry voice shattered the reverie. He was somewhere in the garden, and his very presence seemed like an invasion. Suddenly panicked, Sherry shrugged off her backpack and shoved the journal inside, hidden by her clothes. She zipped it and replaced it on her back before exiting the shed and emerging from behind the shield of ivy, sniffling and wiping her face. She walked back toward the entrance and Wesker’s voice.
He was standing by the cherub fountain, scowling. He turned, saw her approaching, and stormed toward her. “Insolent girl! Trying to give me the slip?”
He grabbed her arm above the elbow, much harder than when they were at the camp, and yanked her toward the garden’s exit.
“Ow! You’re hurting me!” Sherry protested.
“Good. You should know what it feels like when you disobey,” Wesker growled.
She had never seen him this mad. At family dinners and birthday parties he had always regarded her with disinterest, waiting until she was distracted to discuss business with her father in hushed tones, but he had never been openly hostile to her. All the chivalry he showed at the army camp had dissolved.
Sherry began to cry again. “I just wanted a few minutes to myself! I swear! I wasn’t trying to run away. I just wanted to remember my parents, okay? They’re not getting a funeral, are they?”
By now they were out of the garden and marching around the side of the house to Wesker’s jeep that waited for them in the driveway. “No, they are not,” he confirmed, although her explanation did not soften him at all. “But try disappearing on me like that again and you’ll regret it. What I neglected to tell you because it was likely to upset you was that in about an hour, the government plans to wipe Raccoon City off the map. This whole place will be cinders. And if I hadn’t been able to find you, you would have gone up with it.”
They were going faster than Sherry could keep up with. She tried to run and even that didn’t work; she stumbled and nearly went down. Wesker, who still appeared to be doing nothing but a purposeful walk, picked her up clear off the ground and a moment later they were back in the driveway, next to the jeep.
“Wha…?” Sherry looked around, dazed. It wasn’t possible.
Wesker released her roughly after making sure her feet were back on the pavement, making no indication that anything strange had occurred. “Get in, we’re leaving.”
Numb and confused, Sherry obeyed, slipping into the passenger seat and tossing her backpack into the backseat. Wesker got behind the wheel, turned on the engine and threw the jeep into reverse. Sherry stayed turned around in her seat, watching her house until it disappeared around a corner.
Wesker drove fast but with precision, and given that there were no other cars on the road the speed limit didn’t really matter. He did not speak and Sherry was too afraid to. Maybe she just hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going. That’s why it seemed like they had practically flown.
“I’m sorry,” she said after nearly five minutes of palpable tension.
“For?” he asked, as if he’d already forgotten about it.
“Going into the garden without telling you,” Sherry said, although she was still glad she’d gotten Annette’s journal without his knowing. “You were just trying to look out for me. Because of the bombs they’re setting off. You were worried.”
Wesker smirked when she said worried. “Oh, yes,” he said with a throaty chuckle. “Very worried. Can’t have those dear Birkin genes damaged, can we?”
Sherry didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but it gave her the chills.