🔪 <- curse of cut up OC be upon ye
0w0
Ok, this might get long and involves extensive world building and lore that has absolutely nothing to do with resident evil. Anyway enjoy.
Awake Surgery - Red & Alexi
CW: Impromptu surgery, slightly unhealthy relationship dynamic, fantasy bullshit.
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If she didn't find them to be so annoying, Red would have to admit, her mother's disciples were at the very least entertaining.
The inquisitor before her trembled, wide eyed behind his helmet, as he stared into the face of his own death and muttered a prayer in Eden.
"Our mother, the divine eye, blessed be thy watchful gaze,"
Red would have rolled her eyes if she'd had any. Instead, she flipped her knife once in her hand before rushing forward and shoving it deep into the inquisitors throat, cutting off his prayer with a gurgle.
His fear as he died was palpable, but not nearly enough to appease her. In a guttural whisper, she said, simply, "She can't hear you." before ripping the knife from his throat, the blood spraying over the porcelain of her hands. Vaguely, she could feel the warmth of it seeping into the ball joints of her fingers, gumming up the mechanisms. That would be a bother to clean later, but it always was and still always worth it. She shook them out as the body crumpled wetly, joining the rest of the crusade party on the now blood soaked floor of the research center.
Blood lust abating, Red turned, trying to remember why she'd come here. This was the lab of that scientist she'd... Hired seemed to strong a word for their arrangement, but blackmailed seemed too honest. Regardless, as the haze of death lifted, she pulled the pieces back together. He'd called for her, as she'd said he could do when needed. This was the first time he'd done so, though, given his apparent disdain for her. If he'd been desperate enough to have called her, he must have been well and truly fucked. Red looked around the lab, trying to find him. Or his body. Though, she was fairly certain she hadn't accidentally killed him in the frenzy. She probably would have remembered that.
"Are they dead?" Alexi's voice was small and shaken, and sounded entirely wrong, even besides his clumsy pronunciation of Pidgeon.
Red whipped around in the direction of the voice, seeing Alexi's face pear at her from behind an overturned desk. His eyes were wide and hollow, face pale and with a sheen of sweat, as though simply looking at her required more effort than he had to give.
Red rarely paid attention to mortals, but given her particular divinity, she was acutely aware of what a mortal looked like when it was dying.
Red did not hide the urgency of her movements. He started in his shaking as she appeared next to him, gasping like a broken hose, then stifling a scream as she shoved her hands into his wound.
"What--"
"Shut up. You're dying."
"Oh."
Red heard him swallow, but ignored it, instead focusing on the wound. It was small, and not terribly deep on the right side of his abdomen. It looked more like a nick than an actual cut, but was obviously causing extensive damage. Visually, Red couldn't tell what was causing him to die so quickly. It couldn't be infected, it was a fresh wound, but still. Something was wrong. Red pressed her essence into it, trying to find the source of the damage, probably some poison, or curse, or-- Red's magic did not return to her. Instead, the wound and surrounding area registered as a dead limb, pins and needles numb, a black hole of arcane energy.
Alexi swallowed again, some sort of nervous habit. "You can save me though, can't you?"
She couldn't, actually. It was Boneyard magic, something stronger than her, stronger than even her mother. She could pour all the magic she wanted into the wound, it would never heal. The Boneyard would simply swallow it all up and still be hungry for more. And even then, as much as she poured into it, it would still swallow up his soul eventually. He was as good as dead. She should just leave him to die. Or put him out of his misery. Her hand twitched at her knife, though the thought of his death at her hands was not a pleasant one. That surprised her.
"Can't you?" He sounded somehow more pitiful, more desperate the second time asking, like he knew she couldn't and was begging her to lie. So she did.
"Yes." This wasn't the first time she had lied to someone dying of The Boneyard's poison, though she did hope it would be the last. Though, the last time she had lied, she'd actually had an idea to at the least slow the progression of it. Not that she had gotten the chance to try it before they'd succumbed. And that had been a diluted form of the poison. This was the real deal. It probably wouldn't work in this case. She should just kill him so he didn't suffer. And yet, Red found she deeply did not want to see him die.
Without further comment, Red pulled her knife and plunged it into Alexi's abdomen.
Alexi arched his back and screamed, eyes wide as Red began to pull the knife through his abdomen, cutting away the already dead skin, clearing away as much as she could. Alexi shouted something desperately in Eden, something about "How could you?" and "You said you would help." Red supposed this could be seen as a betrayal of sorts, though she hardly had time to explain the proccess. She could explain once he wasn't actively dying. Any second she wasted gave more of his flesh to The Boneyard. And she figured he would prefer to be alive in the end.
Alexi tried to shove her hands away from the knife, tried to pull it out of himself when she didn't respond to his pleas. He hardly had any strength to stop her, the attempts more pitiful than anything. Red grunted in annoyance, shifting to use her feet to keep his arms still as she kept cutting.
Where she cut revealed the true damage hiding, and the extent it had spread. The flesh looked bloated, the color slightly off the more she looked at it, like skin left too long in mud. Instead of blood or bodily fluids, the places she cut through leaked swamp brine and silt, The Boneyard starting the proccess of drowning him from the inside.
Red didn't know if Alexi saw the wound or had simply given up trying to stop her, but he was no longer wiggling underneath her as she continued clearing the wound out. She was not a surgeon, she was a murderer, and her cuts were not clean or exact, but they were the best she could do, cutting away the bloated skin, then clearing out the mud and water that filled the abscess, until what was left was a strange hollow in his flesh much larger than what she had started with.
With that part done, Red glanced to Alexi. He had gone limp, eyes closed, but still breathing shallowly. He probably wasn't fine, but breathing meant alive, as far as she was concerned. And once she gave The Boneyard something else to chew on, she could use her own magic to heal whatever damage she'd done. She just had to get through the next part.
Red hesitated, pulling her knife away from Alexi's skin, running her ceramic fingers along it's edge. She wasn't going to like this next part. She hadn't done this in a very long time.
Red forced the ceramic of her body to soften out, to become malleable and warm. She could feel as the ball joints became bone, the elastic became ligaments, feel the blood thrum under the skin. The knife's edge, which moments ago had been comforting against her fingers, now bit them, sharp and tangy, with the slight sent of cooper in the air. She could smell it.
She took a breath, a real one, and not her normal mimicry, before she placed the edge of the blade against her palm and drew it across. It stung, blood beginning to well almost immediately, and she hurriedly shoved it over the hollow of Alexi's wound. She squeezed her hand, willing more of it to pour out and into his body.
Where her blood hit his wound it darkened, solidifying into a void the same tone of her hair, a reflection of the night sky complete with a spattering of stars. It was her divine essence, a piece of her that would continue to output her magic for as long as it existed. It also tied him to her from now until it was removed, in which case he would begin to die, just as quickly as he had been before.
Once the wound was filled, she pulled her hand back, willing the wound to knit itself closed, then wiped the remaining blood on her shorts. She almost changed back, longing for the comfort of her cold porcelain over the vulnerability of flesh, but looking at Alexi's face stopped her. His eyes were closed, and she didn't think he was entirely aware, but his face was tight, twitching from pain.
With fingers that were still warm and soft for once, she took his hand, which was always warm. With porcelain fingers, Red could only ever feel pressure and the idea of a temperature, like touching a sun warmed window. But she could not feel the texture of things. Now, the ridges of human fingers found the ridges of his, catching on them in a way she might once have found grating, but now found... Interesting. His skin was slightly damp, and almost sticky. She interlocked their fingers, feeling the pressure of his fingers against hers, felt the way it changed the blood pressure of her hand.
With lips she had not used in centuries, and a tongue just as old and clumsy, Red whispered in Eden, "You'll be okay," as she gently fed her magic through their interlocked fingers, easing his pain and starting to heal the damage that had been done. He would be okay. And to Red's surprise, she was glad for it.
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If you read all the way through this and are like. "Wow, this seems so cool and interesting and I'd love to know more about this world building!" You are in luck because I have. A Whole Ass Comic. Alexi isn't in it (Well technically he'll make a very brief cameo in later chapters, where he's a grad student and gets trauma about it <3) but Red is, and I'm going to be making some follow ups that Alexi will appear in lmao. anyway, shameless self promo over, back to Resident Evil.
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Hello! Do you know if the stained glass widnow in the Little Malvern Priory (https://sarahpeverley.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/elizabeth.jpg) depicts Elizabeth Woodville or Elizabeth of York? Every site I'm opening is saying it's EW so I'm pretty sure it's her, but I remember reading somewhere that it was EoY so I'm a little confused
Hi! It's Elizabeth of York! The complete set looks like this:
Speaking in spacial/architectural terms, the queen (Elizabeth Woodville), now represented by the headless figure, always comes first, just like in the Canterbury Window where the king and queen face each other and are followed by their children. Even if the order of the panels were exchanged at a later date and the now complete panel (which I'm telling you is Elizabeth of York) actually came first, it wouldn't make sense for the queen to be represented on a smaller scale than her daughters, as the complete panel evidently is compared to the headless one (look closer here).
In the same vein, it wouldn't make sense either for the queen to be represented without any type of crown on her head or dividing her panel with other figures. Again, compare it with Elizabeth Woodville's panel at Canterbury, where she's represented crowned and alone in her own panel. In contrast, in the Canterbury window, her daughters share the other panels.
Another clue indicating the headless figure is actually Elizabeth Woodville are her clothes. That blue cloak + red gown combination mirrors traditional medieval representations of the Virgin. We also see Elizabeth Woodville doing that in this manuscript illustration. The figure right behind the headless figure, on the other hand, has the colours of the Virgin reversed.
Lynda Pidgeon has the same interpretation as me on this window: 'the window of Edward and his younger son [...] is missing, while the window of Queen Elizabeth only partially survives.' By elimination, the panels that survived can only be Edward V whilst Prince of Wales and his sister, Elizabeth of York.
Hope this helps! 🌹x
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