Chapter Text
The sound of Rose crying was the only thing keeping Ethan's brain in the present. His ears rang from the explosion of the living room wall and his whole body ached from the impact. He thought he could feel the warmth of blood tricking down his neck.
People poured into his house. Umbrella's people making quick work of searching his house and Mia's body who wasn't moving anymore. Through his blurred vision he could see her but something was very wrong. There were black veins appearing on her skin and the tips of her finger were ghost white, which neither should be possible. Ethan and Mia were both cured with the death of Eveline.
Could none of them hear Rose crying upstairs!? Her little lungs were screaming so loud. He had to get to her; Chris would take care of Mia.
Ethan pushed himself off of the ground, and yup, that was definitely blood in the back of his throat. He swallowed it back down with a gag and willed his vision to stop spinning. He felt a hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it off.
"WAAH!" Rose screamed louder than he had ever heard her before. Ethan's head snapped up and he lunged for the kitchen. He heard Chris shout after him (he must have been the one to grab him) but he didn't care. He had to save Rose! There something else here, the tapping of someone else's footsteps upstairs- too light to be Umbrella's soldiers- and no one else seemed to hear it.
Ethan stumbled up the stairwell, his hands knocking down picture frames as he pawed at the walls trying to stay up right. Thankfully his vision was coming back and his ears weren't ringing as fiercely by the time that he had reached the top of the stairs.
Ethan grabbed the statue of some kind of exotic bird that Mia had chosen as hallway decor when they had first moved in. Something about freedom and bright colors making the place more homey. Ethan hadn't have too much of an opinion on it before but now he was going to use it to happily cave in the skull of who ever was hurting his daughter.
Ethan turned the handle into Rose's nursery and threw it open.
Inside was perfectly normal; just how Ethan's had let it when he had put Rose down for the night only ten minutes before. All except for the tall man wrapped in some kind of flowing yellow robe standing over Rose's crib, holding her in his arms. His face was hidden by the moonlight silhouetting his body through the window behind him and a translucent silk hood covered the rest of his head. The stranger was taller than Ethan but not skinny, the robe outlining a strong figure even if no other features were visible. His hands were gently curled around Rose's tiny body and her head in a way that might have been comforting if it hadn't immediately dropped Ethan's heart into his stomach.
"Put her down!" Ethan yelled and rush towards the man. The man barely flinched, turning around in slow motion to face Ethan.
Ethan got a glimpse of what he thought was a calm smile. "It's all going to be okay now, Ethan."
Ethan raised the statue to hit the man and his other hand was outstretched, ready to catch his daughter as he lunged forward. He was just inches away- his fingers even brushed the soft robe but one moment they were there… and the next Ethan's vision was filled with white sunlight as he crashed into Rose's crib.
The crib crumbled under Ethan's weight and his hands reflexively reached out to grab the crib with an iron grip. "No. No no nononono," he said frantically as his eyes darted around the nursery but there was nothing there. No yellow-robed man, no Rose, even Rose's favorite baby blanket that she had been wrapped in was gone.
Ethan still ferreted around the room, ripping open the closet and throwing chairs aside like the man was hiding behind them with his little girl. He felt sick. His vision that had slow been coming back was being invade by black spots again and his hands were trembling uncontrollably.
This can't be happening again. Not again. This was supposed to be it! Their happy ending after everything they'd been through and Umbrella had promised-.
Chris! Chris was here. He said they would be safe, he said he would protect his family.
Ethan ran out of the room and down the stairs. His blood was boiling and luck for him, Chris was already waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Chris looked confused and surprised but Ethan didn't bother to pause to ask why the usually stoic soldier was showing visible emotion.
Ethan used his momentum from his- more or less- falling down the stairs and threw Chris up against the wall, an arm pressed on his throat. "What's happening!? You said it was safe here!" Ethan yelled, spit flying into the other's face.
Chris at least had the good conscience to flinch at his words but not enough to continue letting Ethan pin him to the wall. He pushed Ethan back and the devastated father fell backwards on to the stairs, the uneven wood digging painfully into his back.
"Back off Ethan! You have no idea what is happening here," Chris said.
"No idea?" Ethan said, his eyes darkening. "NO IDEA! My wife is dead and now my daughter is gone! What is going on?"
"Rose is missing?" Chris said. His voice lilted up at the end, making it sound like a question.
Ethan stood up while one of his hands was still supporting him against the wall. "Yes. She's gone and Mia is dead on our living room floor. So what. in the FUCK. is going on?"
Chris did something with his hands that Ethan knew was some kind of military talk but had no idea what he was saying to the other invaders in Ethan's house. The soldiers that Ethan could see nodded to whatever orders Chris had just given them and they started to walk out of his house. Two of them stopped by Mia's corpse and Ethan forced himself to watch as they dragged her away, taking in the details.
Because there wasn't a lot left of her to see.
The lower half of her body was completely crumbled away and the rest of her visible skin was turning black before fading to white. Her eyes were also gone, replaced with burnt holes that definitely weren't there before Ethan had gone up to save Rose.
Chris didn't respond to Ethan and walked back into the living room after his soldiers.
Ethan tensed and followed after him. "Hey! Wait, Chris. Chris! Answer me goddammit," Ethan yelled and he grabbed Chris's wrist, effectively stopping him from walking away any further.
Chris only slightly turned his head to look back at him over his shoulder and he said, "You and Mia have been compromised and I am sorry about that. But Mia isn't dead and Rose is mostly likely safe for now. But in the mean time, I'm gonna need you to come with us."
"What you mean by that? Where is my family Chris?" Ethan said, too focused on him to notice the soldier sneaking up behind him. He only found out when there was a sharp centered pain in his neck. He realized he'd been tranquilized far too late to catch himself and his body landed with a resounding thud. If only to add more insult to injury, the last thing Ethan saw before he passed out was the sight of Chris's boots, covered in the pale white powder of his wife's body.
~~~***~~~
Ethan doesn't fully remember what he was thinking at the time but it's safe to say he hadn't planned on crashing the van. When he woke up from the tranquilizer, he had lashed out. He didn't know how long he was out for or where they were, but he did know that he had to get out. He would be no good to Rose (or Mia. Chris did say she was alive despite what Ethan had seen) in whatever random controlled facility Umbrella was taking him to.
He had knocked out the two guards around him in the back of the van moments after he had woken up, using the element of surprise to take the upper hand. The soldier in the passenger seat managed to get a stun shot in through the viewing window that would have debilitated a normal person but Ethan had experienced far worse than a stun gun in his life. He grabbed the barrel of the gun and shoved it back into the soldier's chest and pulled the trigger.
The man grunted before dropping back on the vehicle's dashboard, their helmet cracking against the windshield. The badge on their chest was large so they were probably the senior agent and the driver must have been new based on his next actions. He clumsily reached towards the gun in his waist holster but had forgotten the weapon was still buckled for safe holding. Ethan seized the opportunity and shoved his arm through the window towards the gun.
However, instead of throwing a punch at Ethan or grabbing his arm like he had excepted a trained Umbrella agent to do, the man jumped away from him with a yelp. The agent's hands followed his movement and before Ethan could register it, the car was jerked off of the road with a loud squeal.
He must have black out again (his head already had too many cracks in it) because he didn't remember being thrown from the truck but the snow under his hands was too cold to be a hallucination.
Winter had only started a few days ago, and Rose had looked so happy during her first snow fall. Mia hadn't stop taking pictures of her every five seconds as their baby had unskillfully tried to grab the snowflakes. Ethan could almost hear the twin sounds of his two girls laughing as he laid there on the ground trying to gain back his wits.
After a few minutes went by with no sign of life around him. Ethan forced himself to stand up and his brows frowned, grunting as his joints cracked in protest. There were most certainly bruises forming all over his body and his left wrist ached with a familiar ebb and flow in response to the pain.
Ethan pulled his coat tighter around him as he looked around. The transport van had flipped and was laying on its side at the bottom of a steep slope. Ethan looked up and saw the broken guard rail about 50 feet above him. The two guards who had been in the back of the van with him weren't too far away from where Ethan had been thrown but based on the dark spots beneath them, the armor hadn't done much to protect them from the fall.
His hands turned white at the knuckles as he approached the crushed front of the vehicle. The driver's side was on the ground so Ethan let go of his jacket to haul himself over the top of the overturned van. He kneeled on the dented roof and confirmed that there was no one in the passenger seat. The agent he had stunned must have fallen out at some point. Hopefully they're not too shaken up, Ethan thought optimistically.
The scared driver hadn't been so lucky and the whole top of vehicle had caved in above them. The metal had been bent to pin their upper body against the shattered window so Ethan was shared the sight of bloody brain cases and cracked chests. Their lower half was mostly intact if you ignored the blood and Ethan eyed the gun still buckled into its holster.
Ethan repositioned himself and hooked a knee under a stray piece of debris to hold himself out of the van as he lowered his arms into the wreck. He stretched out his arms and his fingers grazed the fabric of the deceased agent's shirt just above the gun. Ethan fought his straining muscles as he lowered himself deeper into the cab. "Come on, come on. Just a little more," he mumbled to himself and his fingers finally slipped under the leather band. The satisfying pop of the buckle being undone came with a sigh of relief.
Grabbing the gun was a lot easier after that and Ethan pulled himself up with minimal difficulty. He wasn't overly knowledgeable about guns but he did know the basics so he checked the magazine. Nine bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber. "Not bad," He said to himself and hopped off of the van.
The forest around him was quiet. The lights of the van only illuminated a small section of the woods but Ethan could make out the beginnings of a small path weaving through the brush. If there was a human path all the way out here that meant there must be a town nearby or at least a house.
Ethan felt bad for leaving behind the bodies of the guards but there was nothing he could do for them. They likely had already missed their hourly check-in so there would be a search group looking for them he reasoned with himself as he turned away from the wreck.
Either way he couldn't stay here so Ethan, gun in hand, limped towards the path with only one thought in mind. I'm coming Rose, just hold on a little longer.