Return To Raccoon City | Challenge Entry

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Welcome, darlings~

This is my entry for the challenge , I knew I wanted to explore what it would be like for a character that never experienced Raccoon City ending up there, especially one that is a little more disconnected from this side of the franchise.

So, here’s my interpretation of Ethan Winters in Raccoon City!

When Ethan woke up, the sky was burning.

Bright and violent against the pitch black sky, it seemed the stars themselves were on fire, until his blurry gaze focused and he realised it was simply the buildings towering over him. Buildings that looked far more modern than the decayed village he ed.

How had he gotten here? How had he gone from the snow-covered, crumbling houses of the village to this city on fire? And how was he alive when the last thing he ed was cradling Rose as his body deteriorated like ash before his eyes?

Perhaps this was the afterlife. Or another one of Miranda’s fabrications. And yet, the wet cobble streets below him felt real. The intense heat above him looked real. And the screams that surrounded him sounded irrefutably, unequivocally real.

His body seemed weighed down by boulders as he pushed himself into a seated position, followed by a sudden sting from his palm. Upon closer inspection, Ethan realised he had cut himself on broken glass from the smashed windows in the block of apartments behind him. However, what was more concerning, was the sight of the blood dripping down without falter - his body wasn’t healing itself.

“Rose?! Mia?!” Ethan called out in some feeble attempt for clarity. “Chris?! Is this your doing? Or Miranda’s?”

Of course, he received no verbal answer back, though a sudden gust of wind blew a leaflet free from the trash can beside him. Like a sign from a higher power, it landed by his feet. Scanning the piece of paper quickly, Ethan surmised only two key details: he was in Raccoon City, and it was September 1998.

The gust of wind that ed him took all of the air in his lungs with it, and all Ethan could do was sit with this knowledge - this impossible knowledge. He had already lived through this year. He had been fourteen, safe at home, and blissfully unaware of the disaster that would hit the news a few days later. He hadn’t met Mia yet, Rose didn’t exist, and his life had still been… normal.

This was impossible, and yet Ethan knew better than anyone how little that word actually meant. An infectious, mind-controlling mold was impossible. A woman posing with perfect likeness as his wife was impossible. A walking dean was impossible. But that was his life, and so maybe time-travel or alternative universes or whatever-the-fuck this was wasn’t actually that big of a stretch.

A distant growl caught Ethan’s attention, met with the sight of a stumbling corpse baring its teeth. Instantly, his instincts attuned to danger screamed at him to get up, find a weapon, and fight. After all, how much trouble could this creature be compared to the horrors he had already seen, faced, and killed?

Thus, when Ethan rose to his feet ready to re-enter hell, there was only one thought in his mind…

This was his second chance, and he would do whatever it took to get back to his family.

I hope you enjoyed this little oneshot, and I would love to hear any other interpretations of what Ethan would do if he ended up in Raccoon City. Thank you to the event team for running another fun challenge! And I can’t wait to see how others interpret this prompt…

See you around :kiss:

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