#next chapter so much alcina..... so much unhinged alcina i prommy

[uniquevocashark]

The Forbidden Happy End Fic Part 1

Fifteen years out of service, and ten since the death of her Lady, Igraine is reacquainted with the love of her life.

The happy ending sequel to A Good Servant.

Trigger warnings for mild gore, murder, thoughts of cannibalism, child endangerment, child harm, liberal use of canon information, bodily harm, brief mentions of lady dimitrescu

As always tumblr gets this first <3

Cell decoration wasn’t an art. There was one goal: making it as monotonous as possible. To that end there were grey walls, grey chairs and a grey metal table bolted to the ground, with grey cameras in two corners of the room.

Igraine half expected a two-way mirror to fully throw her back into the 70’s.

Redfield sat with a cigarette on his lips, and Igraine kept her face equally bland. Redfield was unhealthy; there was a pallor to his skin that spoke of long hours and little rest, he wheezed gently with each breath and his shoulders were slack and sunken like a bombed ship. Chris Redfield continued to look like shit.

“What happened.”

Igraine didn’t answer, looking at the blood under her nails instead.

The room reeked of cigarette smoke. Redfield was now, by her count, just starting on his fourth in the time they had spent in the room. He had followed a peculiar pattern in his questioning, only when he reached the butt of each did he ask his question. First, he had raged, the lines of his face had tightened, his expression like twisted branches; the whites of his eyes had bulged bug like out of his skull, and he had sweat that beaded from his hairline down his face and disappearing into his stubble. He had savoured the second and it had turned him mellow and conversational; he had breathed out the last puff of smoke with a long sigh and at the end of that sigh he met her eyes and asked again.

Igraine was aware of his game.

Over the years, Redfield had become more stoic and serious; even his questions had, and now they were coated in an unhealthy addition of accusation. The ends of his words curled like snakes and sang with venom, there was such a baggage attached to them. No matter the sweetness coated around it, Igraine wouldn’t fall for it. Too obvious, she chided herself, far too obvious. And igraine was nothing if not principled; he would learn to ask properly, or he shouldn’t ask at all. He was angry to everyone else, but he could not stink more of worry the longer he dragged the conversation on.

Igraine was fine continuing the conversation for as long as she needed, no matter how sick she was of the smell of smoke and regret.

“Alright,” Redfield said, breaking halfway through his current cigarette, “So at 4:17pm you and Rosemary went from the classroom to the cafeteria and then at 5:03pm both left. Then at 5:14pm Rosemary began expelling mold. Walk me through it from the cafeteria to the hallway.”

“Better,” she set her hands on the table, “Let me think.”

…

On a technicality, they were going for what was supposed to be lunch. It was more like a dinner, as Igraine had forgotten to eat entirely and Rosemary, only ten and desperate to find approval, had said nothing until after their lessons hoping to win some. By then Rosemary had not eaten since ten thirty that morning. Igraine, who had found herself with a Rosemary shaped soft spot, had not reprimanded her and prolonged the punishment, instead stopping their lessons and taking her immediately for food.

“Rose,” she said, returning with another serving of lasagne, “You should learn to communicate your needs better.”

Rosemary stuffed her face with another forkful of pasta before Igraine had even set the plate down, her face covered with cheese sauce, humming happily. Igraine’s own serving lay abandoned by her side, the layers stripped and arranged around the plate neatly. (Her tastes were more inclined to other, more bipedal red meats that the cafeteria would not provide and which would revoke her ability to live relatively alone if she admitted her preference.)

“I am being serious, armillaria.” Igraine said, gently wiping her face with a napkin.

Rosemary spat a bit of burnt cheese into it as she wiped over her mouth, and her tone had taken on the beginnings of a pout, “I know, Iggy.”

Igraine adjusted her sunglasses and scoffed gently, more at the nickname than anything, “I’m just saying.”

“I knoooow, Iggy.” She sing-songed, knocking Igraine’s glasses down her nose again.

Igraine pinched her cheek playfully, and Rose giggled. “Eat, thank you. They already think I’m starving you academically.”

Rosemary was always happy, even when there was no cause for it. Even now, she smiled toothily, proudly showing off the gap in the bottom row of her teeth. She had lost it four days ago and was still grinning about it. She swung her legs, taking a smaller forkful while Igraine dabbed the sauce from her face. “Do you think mom is around?”

“I don’t know, armillaria.”

(“Why do you call her armillaria?” Redfield interrupted.

“Does it matter?” Igraine replied and dragged her nails along the edge of the table, causing a horrible screeek.)

“Can you find out?”

“I can ask,” Igraine said, “Don’t expect an answer, dear.”

“I know,” Rose said, scooping sauce up and eating it slowly, “I just haven’t seen mom in a while.”

The answers that Igraine had to that were unsavoury; she didn’t like Mia on the best of days and seeing the long periods of abandonment Rosemary suffered had made her like her even less. Rather than say anything, she changed the topic, “Would you like to go back to the classroom?”

The fork teetered in her hand, “Yeah.”

Igraine scooped up the dish and picked up her own fork, “Container please, dear.”

Rose took the container out of her backpack, a small pink thing that had one big pocket for her food and one small pocket that held her handkerchiefs of varying colours and patterns. Rose toyed with her zipper, setting her bag in her

“Now, don’t fret, armillaria,” Igraine said as she took the container, “Chris just gets a bit heated over silly things. I’ll hold your leftovers, okay?”

Rose zipped up her bag and nodded, “Because you’re a tutor?”

Igraine smiled thinly, “Among other things.”

“That’s not nice.”

Igraine rubbed Rosemary’s head, feeling a twinge of regret for ruining the poor things mood, “Don’t worry so much, dear.”

“I’ll try,” Rose said, sliding her fork and plate away and then, “Do you miss your parents?”

“Me?” Igraine blinked, and then exhaled so forcefully out of her nose she almost laughed in Rosemary’s face. She said the silliest things sometimes, “No, not my parents but there is someone.”

Rosemary leaned into the table, her interest perked so high she could have sprouted wings in her excitement, with that soft awed expression of a child that had just found their next fun fact to bring into every conversation. “Really?”

“Of course.”

“Who’s yours?”

“Mine?”

“Yeah!”

It took all of three seconds for Igraine to cave; Rose’s smile brightened her entire face into a mask of joy so blinding it felt like the wrong kind of cruel to say no, “There’s my sibling, of course,” Igraine started, resting her head on her palm and looking at the door, “And a very special woman.”

A strand of Rosemary’s hair curled on her cheek, like a pangolins claw grasping a branch, and for a moment all Igraine could see was Alcina, from the curve of the cheek to the set of her shoulders. But there was just Rose, too, with the way she smiled and the way her eyes brightened, and even though Igraine wanted Rose to just be a mirror, she couldn’t deny that she would miss Rosemary. “What is she like?”

“Oh, she’s magnificent,” Igraine said, her eyes catching on the way a soldier’s carotid vein bulged for a moment as they swallowed, “Strong, you know. Witty, but also stoic, and very beautiful.”

“Wow.”

Igraine licked her teeth, the phantom taste of copper clinging in the dips of her molars, “She had excellent taste too.”

But Rose was already moving on from the conversation, her curiosity sated for the moment, “You’ll see her again. I always see mom again, even when I miss her.”

Igraine didn’t have the heart to tell her Alcina was quite dead. “I’m sure.”

The conversation puttered out after that, only Rose’s occasional questions flaring it up again, otherwise she scrolled through her phone. Igraine didn’t understand it, but Rose could occupy herself with just the screen for longer than Igraine could hold a conversation, within the limits the BSAA had given her at least. If she could talk about the dissection of the human spine, she could go on much longer. The cafeteria was the only place this deep in the building that was built for outside internet connection, or something like that.

Igraine kept her eyes on the soldiers around them rather than Rose, who was remarkably immobile while tapping away at her little screen. Igraine also found it upsetting to imagine eating Rosemary, while the bland faced guards that surrounded them were much easier to imagine dead. The line of their clothes was smooth and stiff, and their shirt pulled around the waist. Body armour, she would guess, and a hidden firearm. And underneath that, bunching and pulling and contracting and alive, was fresh meat.

Her vision was turning fuzzy, and she turned her head away when one came within grabbing distance of the table. Rosemary looked up at her, her phone sitting limply in her hands, and gave an awkward half smile. Igraine leaned over and dabbed at the burnt bit of cheese at the corner of her lips, which came away long, stringy and cold.

“That’s curious,” Igraine said mildly, folding the mold string out of Rosemary’s sight, “Finished?”

“Yeah,” Rose looked at her phone, “Chris is picking me up today.”

“I am sorry, dear.”

Rose coughed into her elbow and when she turned to face Igraine there was a long string of black dotted around the corner of her mouth. Igraine got up and stood as to obscure Rose from the soldiers view and, patting her pockets for emphasis, pretended she had run out of napkins. “Hold still.” She said sweetly to Rosemary’s leaning away when Igraine licked her thumb and rubbed at the mold growing on her cheek. Rose protested, and Igraine ignored her.

The string was thick and grimy; defiantly not cheese, as she’d hoped, clinging to her fingers and trying its damnedest to sink into her skin. Despite its location, too, it appeared to be seeping out of her skin rather than coming from her mouth. Igraine readjusted her glasses and took a surreptitious look around, glad to see that no one was close enough.

The ethical, correct thing to do would be to tell one of the soldiers. “Why don’t we go back to the classroom? We can do whatever you like until Redfield shows up.”

Rose wiped her cheek with her sleeve long enough that they skirted past security. The walk was a calm, long one, being four hallways away from the cafeteria and lined with detectors, of which Igraine knew the location of only four. They’re barely in the second hallway when Igraine realises that Rose had disappeared from her side (and that the leftovers have burnt a hole in a few of her fingerprints).

“Rosemary.”

Rose was standing still, in front of a broken door that had come off its hinge slightly and sat awkwardly. Igraine caught up to her and found that she was unblinking in her observation of it. The door, she noted, was not supposed to be open, but had run afoul of a stone that had been shoved into the end of the track. The hall was clear, for now, so Igraine bent the door inwards.

The stone was a crystal, longer than Rosemary’s palm, pointed at one edge and broken on the other, as if it had been snapped off from something much larger. It was large too, as Rose’s fingers couldn’t quite wrap around it fully, a discoloured white colour that was cloudy rather than clear.

“This is like me.” Rose said.

“That is a rock.”

Rose clutched the stone to her chest. The dots on her face and turned into oblong shapes that began to droop, like an egg yolk that hadn’t quite broken.

Igraine opened her mouth, and then the door shuddered and jerked sideways, careening straight into her. She took the brunt of the door to her shoulder, crashing into the wall with a loud crrICK, tearing through her lime green shirt and cutting into the meat of her bicep. It left her pinned between the wall and the door, while Rose, blissfully unaware but for the rock, bullied her way past Igraine’s legs and into the hall beyond.

This hallway was different to their usual commute, lined with several doors rather than two, and each marked with a hammered metal plate that had different names on them. The only open door seemed to beckon Rose and she went in without a second glance at the other rooms.

 (“You don’t have to explain,” Redfield says, “It’s the specimen rooms.”

“I can stop talking, if you’d prefer,” Igraine replied.

Redfield lit another cigarette and went quiet.)

“Rosemary.”

Rose looked at her, popping her head back out of the room. She was wide eyed, and her mouth pursed slightly; she said nothing and when Igraine called her again she slunk slowly back into the room. In the time it would take a pin to drop, Igraine heard shouts, then screams and then silence.

The door that had rammed her had sharpened some point between her awareness of bending it and her mind diverging from the door to Rosemary as she had shouldered her way past; that point had stabbed through her bicep and snuggled close to the bone. The worst part was that she had ruined her last green blouse, which had handily put all her purple jackets lighter than grape out of her clothing rotation. And Rosemary’s new status as murderer was bad too, she supposed.

(Igraine took care to omit little details from her retelling; no use in telling him that she had opened the door, or that Rose had found a stone, or that somehow she had murdered seven humans, that would be implicating. It wasn’t for Redfield to know, nor for her to give away.)

Igraine never did get to the door proper; after she had peeled the door from its hinges and off her arm, she saw it. An imperfect sphere of sinew and muscle dyed tobacco black, crawling forward on ever shifting arms that disappeared into its mass and reformed as it plodded forward. It made a  srrrrrrrrk-k-k-k as it moved, dragging its bone-covered knuckles across the floor and thudding into walls as it scrapped forward unsteadily.

It was new and unrefined and so indicative of Rosemary’s creativity, Igraine couldn’t help but light up as it bundled towards her as mobile as a bloated elephant seal.

It wasn’t smooth but roughly textured; grainy and rough like muscle; sinew piled on sinew, strung together meat and poorly formed skin that rose and faded in patches like the tide. Not perfect but promising, and clearly in need of something fuller bodied than the meal it already had. It was perfect timing, then, when Igraine walked herself into a quartet of clueless soldiers examining her handiwork.

She didn’t recognise any of them, not that she had ever bothered committing any of the faceless minions to memory; they were distinctly different in that their uniforms were attired differently, bearing different marks on their shoulders and helmets that she had not seen before. They did seem to recognise her, though, standing to attention towards her.

But they were inexperienced and really, it was their fault for being so punctual. And Chris didn’t need to know about their deaths; they were just recruits and those died all the time.

The first went done silently; Igraine slid behind them, making all the appropriate noises of a concerned science associate and he, predictably, never saw it coming. Igraine’s best feature, in her opinion, were her claws; which split him throat to belly before he could gather the air to scream. His intestines spilled like freshly made noodles, spraying brightly coloured sauce as they went, and Igraine couldn’t fully suppress her shiver of pleasure.

His companions were busy with the blob as it liquidated, spreading its mass across the available surface, covering the width of the hallway. It wasn’t until they saw him, bleeding into the cracks and feeding the mold as it rushed to cover him, that they even knew he was dead. And there came their inexperience again; one forgot about the mold, the other forgot about her and the last she kicked into the mold.

He fell face first, screaming, his body convulsing and scrambling; Igraine watched as he struggled and failed, his arms reduced to thin sheets of deteriorating bone that melted away. The mold had risen into a wall, spewing mold from the top in thick rivulets that moved like tar. It was, she realised, like watching maggots hatch; squirming and writhing, hundreds of bodies fighting before disappearing into the tar pool that surrounded it.

The last two she took together, stepping into the space of the third before they could fire and grabbing them by the face as she punched directly into the back of the fourth’s neck. Their spine crunched underneath her knuckles and tossed the third in as it hit the floor. Number 3 clawed at her, as if its hands could find her neck just by the sheer force of wanting it. But he was only a human and though it was slower, longer; his screams lasting for fifty seconds longer than his companions, he still died with Igraine’s heel pushing his head into the muck.

Now, she supposed, was a good time to get Rosemary out. She felt the thought like an addiction; the slow pangs at her temple, the itchiness of her teeth, the twitch of her joints. How much of it was her, and how much was Rosemary, was unclear to her; there was just the need, suddenly banking high in urgency.

“I’m coming.” She told the mold, which gurgled in response.

Moving in the mold was like swimming deeper than five hundred meters in the ocean; it pressed in on her closes and skin, melding and fusing to her body to collapse them inwards. It grasped at her ankles, eating through her stockings, and writhing around her skin, leaving of unpleasant sensation of a knife hacking at her skin. Three steps in and the mold reached her knees, and she was unsure of if she was touching the ground or hardened mold.

As the mold touched her hips, and her steps became more like a trek through set molasses, the mold in front of her having to be cracked before she could continue slogging through. And she was sure, if her ears did not deceive her, that more soldiers had appeared and died to the mold, and that Redfield had likely arrive to scowl at her slow moving back.

But that was of little consequence really; all she could think of was Rosemary. Yammering on and on and on inside her head. Rosemary, Rosemary, Rosemary.

The centre of the mold was a long, tall wall that writhed at her touch; it sunk into her nails and her hands and when she pushed, it pushed back. It was hard as set concrete, and wet as fresh glue, and it was acidic enough to eat away at the sleeves of her shirt and the metal of her jewellery. A shame that as well, because this was the only shirt she had of a true lime colour and not faux candy coloured lawn green masquerading as lime.

Finding Rosemary in it was a task better suited for the blind; Igraine dug her arms in to the elbow and flailed until she hit something small and Rosemary-shaped. Once she had her, it was a struggle to keep her grip.

Pulling Rosemary out was akin to a tug of war with a lion; a struggle, even for Igraine. Twice Igraine had fallen over and nearly lost her grip on Rosemary’s small arm, and her only saving grace was that the mold was hard and set and unready to accommodate her body at all. It suckled at her hips, and groped at her waist, but the deeper mold merely slogged out of her way as she reset her stance.

Rosemary was only half out after half an hour of exertion; it was too much for Igraine, who had not eaten since last night and had not taken her dosage of t serum for that day, and who’s attempts to pull Rosemary free had degenerated into limp tugs and clawing at the setting mold that refused to release her. The harder she tried, the more the mold resisted, and the more her beautiful nail polish chipped and suffered.

Between the time that Rosemary’s arm had pulled free, and her shoulder had come loose, a hand had dug into Igraine’s calf. The hand was slimy and made of bone, and it turned its fingerbones into claws, scoring lines of pain on her skin and up her leg like a lightning bolt. Rosemary’s face would not come free, so Igraine wrapped her arms around the girl’s midsection and moved back, yanking as hard as she was able.

She tore skin, and Rosemary’s bag from her back, and hair from her head, but eventually, finally, Rosemary emerged. She was mold covered, slimy and slippery, and Igraine had done more damage to her face and skin than she would have liked, but she was free. Each step away from the centre, which collapsed without Rosemary there to sustain it, she grew more lively. First twitching, then shivering before she gasped herself awake just as Igraine tore her injured leg out of the mold and into the cold air. Rosemary’s arms secreted white sweat, an incomplete replica of hagfish slime and all the more effective for its clumsy earnestness.

She slid Rosemary across the floor to safety, and cradled her close when they were out of range, at the feet of soldiers who had every opportunity to shoot Igraine point blank and live to tell about it. Most of them, anyway.

“It’s me, armillaria,” Igraine said soothingly, throwing her ruined heels back into the mold, “Don’t you worry.”

Rosemary curled into Igraine’s arms, her face streaked with cloudy white tears.

…

“You know the rest.” Igraine finished, tearing off a piece of her fraying shirt.

Redfield sighed long and slow, a puff of corpse coloured smoke trailing out of his mouth like a swarm of pests, “Rosemary almost died. A ten-year-old got hurt because you weren’t prepared.”

“Come off your high horse, Redfield, you look constipated.”

“A child almost died.”

“And so far, you are 0 for 3 in saving her on time, so you needn’t take a snobby tone,” Igraine crossed her arms, “Besides she is a bioweapon. She’ll be fine.”

He clenched his fist, drawing his shoulders up and his chest deepened. But when his mouth opened, Igraine heard nothing but his painful gasps for air and took a mild amusement in watching his face darken into a lush pink. She had heard this lecture many times before, but the answer was always the same to her; Rosemary was a bioweapon, regardless of his thoughts on it.

“Fascinating,” Igraine intoned, cutting into the spot between paragraphs, “But I haven’t eaten all day, so stop talking. It won’t stick.”

He looked plainly at the leftovers she had salvaged, which she had not touched for fear of getting the mold that still clung to her hands on them.

“These are Rosemary’s leftovers.” Igraine said plainly.

Redfield thumped his fist on the table, the chair screeching against the floor as he stood, only for him to deflate and rub the bridge of his nose. That was the most peculiar quirk of Chris Redfield; he could smother his anger immediately after an outburst, as if the small relief was enough for his head to screw on straight and his mind to clear. He turned away and the only thing he said in parting was “Get to decontamination.”

“And then I’m going home.” She called after him. There was no response.

Home was a fifteen-floor building, that doubled as an office block and laboratory for the antiterrorism groupies. The eleventh floor was where her apartment was, barren but for Igraine, and at a height that gave her a brilliant view of the dull main building that stuck out of the ground like a particularly ugly carrot. It was a dull coloured and frumpy building that spider webbed from one corner across the street to the other and back again. Underneath, too, it extended, making most of the leftover facilities from the pharmaceutical company that came before.

Not that it really mattered. All Igraine was doing was taking a long shower and eating a fridge shelf worth of leftovers while she picked at her peeling skin. And then winding down at three in the morning, with a headache pounding between her ears.

#the forbidden happy end fic #the forbidden happy end fic part 1 #lady dimitrescu x oc #igraine wesker chief of castle staff #my writing #lady dimitrescu #rosemary winters #next chapter so much alcina..... so much unhinged alcina i prommy #you can thank lisset108 and delunesnumberonefan for this #literally would not have written it without them #third person perspective #enjoy <3