First Resident Evil fanfic. Gonna be a bit rusty, haven't written in forever xD! So please forgive me for any errors and such! I'm trying! Lots of OCs in this story. But it's not like most are going to live xD! And it's a little AU you could say. This story is taking place in 2002, two or three months, even four possible, after Leon's 'Operation Javier'. Gonna be SLOW romance. Not too slow, some fluff maybe, but it'll probably look more like friendship xD. So yeah.

Pairings: OC x Leon S. Kennedy. And two or three OC x OC. Depends.

Setting: New York City.

ENJOY~

"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."

≡ I ≡

Christian Steele

Status : Wounded

It was scary. So scary, and he couldn't bare it. He wanted to go home. Wanted to just curl up under the covers of his bed and sleep without a care in the world. But that was over, because they were everywhere, and he couldn't move. His feet were glued to the cracked pavement, covered in blood. No matter how hard he tried to move, he couldn't. And they were coming. Gradually making their way towards him, jaws slack, moans echoing off the buildings that surrounded him. Please, he just wanted to go home. Where was Mommy? Where was she? He couldn't bare it. He wanted it all to go away. But there they were, decayed flesh coming towards him. Foul smelling, bloody and rotted. Their arms reached for him in anticipation. He was their lunch. All of him. Theirs. All theirs. He let out a scream—

"Jacob," his mother's voice woke him up in an instant. The sounds of their moans were gone and replaced with loud voices of fellow passengers chatting away and the sound of the subway rocketing through the tunnel. The little boy looked up at his mother, who was sitting beside him, with hot tears in his blue eyes. He found she was scowling, upset beyond belief. "I told you. I told you not to watch those movies, now didn't I? I told your father specifically not to allow you to. I swear, this is exactly why I divorced him. He never listens to a thing I say! It's always about him. I'm going to call him as soon as we're home and give him a piece of my mind." His mother continued on her rant, huffing and puffing, but Jacob's attention was suddenly shifted by a piece of a glazed donut outstretched towards him. His gaze traveled up the arm of the owner. A pretty, red-orange haired female, with light green eyes smiled at him, and moved her hand a little. "Have it. It'll make you feel better," She said, softly and gently.

Jacob looked the donut over, and then looked to his mother, as if asking permission. His mother frowned a little, giving the girl a once over, before nodding at her son. Apparently the woman looked harmless, at least to her. The boy took it, staring at it for a mere moment before shoving it into his mouth, ignoring the groan from his mother about eating like a human being. The woman laughed, covering her mouth slightly. "It's good isn't it," She asked. He nodded furiously, and eyed the rest of the donut in her hand. When she outstretched that to him, he quickly snatched it away, not even waiting for his mother to protest. He ate it as fast as he'd grabbed it, and blushed when the woman patted him on the head saying, "You're just a hungry little boy, huh?"

"I-I'm not little," He spoke up, pouting.

"Oh? You aren't? How old are you?"

"I'm…I'm ten! I'm not little!"

"Oh definitely not little at all! Why, you're a young man! Well young man, do you have a name?"

"Jacob! Jacob is my name," He answered, smiling now. "What's your name?"

The woman sat back in her seat, smirking. "It's Christian."

"L-Like the religion?" Jacob blinked. He and his mother was Catholic, but his father was agnostic.

She nodded, smirk faltering a little. She didn't like her name, but her friend Ellie Harping thought it was pretty. Her father had been a religious man. Even though her mother had had a different name chosen, there had been no changing his mind. He was set on naming his first born 'Christian', and her mother had caved. "Yes. Just like the religion. So…what did you dream about?" She changed the subject so easily; she knew the boy wouldn't realize it. Little kids minds were constantly racing.

Christian watched Jacob's head moved down, and watched him start to pick nervously at his chew up fingernails. "Z-Zombies," he finally replied, and gulped. "I couldn't move and they were coming at me. They really smelled. And they looked really ugly!"

"Just like I said, you shouldn't have watched those movies! I tell you time and time again, Jacob! You and your father never listen. One day I'm just going to stop talking! You guys will miss it," His mother practically growled, then pulled out her phone, hell bent on texting her best friends the news and venting.

Christian rolled her eyes, not caring that the woman probably saw. Like all that would help the poor boy. Moving forward a bit, she leaned towards the boy smiling. "Zombies don't exist, Jacob. Trust me. Those movies are so far fetched and made up. But let me tell you, if it ever did happen, your mother would do anything in her power to help you and protect you. So would I! There's no way a cute boy like you could ever become a zombie," She told him, reaching over to give his cheek a little pinch, and then ruffling his thick, shoulder length black hair.

Jacob blushed, but smiled, happy that someone cared. He loved his mother dearly though, and was glad to hear that someone besides him thought she'd keep him safe. He was also happy to hear that this woman would too. She was like a new friend to him, and he loved making friends.

They sat there smiling at each other for the longest time, before they felt the subway train lurch, sending Christian into the old lady sitting beside her, and Jacob into the black guy next to him. She apologized without hesitation, before standing up and looking down at Jacob, who was now in his mother's arms, wide eyed. He was silently asking her if they we're going to be alright, and where she was going. Sending him a confident smile, Christian replied, "I'm just going to go talk to a friend in the other cart. Don't worry. The operator was probably just getting ready for our stop. It's coming up." Obvious lies, but he wouldn't know it. Or would he?

Subways lurched a lot, that was true, but this didn't feel like a regular lurch. Deep in the pit of her stomach, emotions were threatening to swirl around and churn. Something wasn't right.

Moving through the standing people and heading towards the door to move into the next cart, the woman's eyes narrowed at something she spotted through the window. The people in the cart were moving frantically around. They looked panicked, and in a hurry to escape whatever it was scaring them. Suddenly the lights went out, and yelps of fear erupted in the cart. Only the red lights on the tunnel walls outside the subway train offered light, but only occasionally as the windows passed them.

"What's going on," one female voice asked.

"Black out?"

"I'm scared," Christian made out a little girl's voice through all the loud, frightened sounding voices.

Her chest tightened, and she that gut wrenching feeling in the pit of her stomach grew, a feeling she got only when she knew something bad was about to happen. Turning, Christian tried to make her way through crowd, back to Jacob, knowing he'd need more comfort from someone other than his mother, but the door opening behind her stopped her. It was a male, breathing heavily, as if he'd just run a marathon. "There's…a…subway…—" Before he could even finished the sentence, the subway train lurched, but this time much sharper, like it'd hit a bus.

Christian grabbed onto a handle, feeling like she was being lifted off her feet. She was, everyone was, and the sound of glass shattering and steel being pulled off ripped through her ears. She suddenly lost grip and went flying backwards, her head hitting something metal, and then dropping to the floor, something heavy falling on top of her. Her world went black.

An ear splitting cry jolted the orange haired female awake. Immediately, she knew that something wasn't right. Something heavy was on top of her back, and she felt a hot, sticky substance dripping down her left arm. The pain hit her in a split second, and she gasped. The crying didn't stop, it was directly behind her. She had a sinking feeling she knew who it belonged to, and wanted desperately to be wrong. Groaning, Christian moved, trying to flip whatever was on top of her off, but it was like trying to push a boulder. She tried again, this time raising her whole body up with her elbows, and shaking. It worked, and it fell off, rolling away. When she sat up, Christian blinked, trying to clear her vision. But everything was so dusty. She let out a cough, eyes wandering. The whole subway train was trashed. Broken glass and torn pieces of the train were everywhere; with rocks of what she thought was the same rock that the tunnel was made of. Another cough came. The dust was getting to her, and she needed to get up, needed to find out where the crying was coming from, who's it was, and what the hell had happened.

Turning her head, she looked to the thing that had been on her back. Her eyes widened. Death. It was a dead body of one of the guys in the cart with her, a thick shard of glass protruding from his back. He'd saved her, probably without even meaning too. Crying out from the sudden pain in her left arm, she looked down and found her own piece of glass imbedded in her arm. Shaking, she reached up, grabbing a hold of the blood covered shard and began to pull on it. After what seemed like hours, she finally got it out, and tossed it away, mixing it in with the other shards. She was scared of it getting infected, which it most likely would, but she didn't have time to sit there and wish it wouldn't, her head was pounding and the crying wasn't stopping. Pulling the sleeve of her hoodie down, having had it rolled up earlier because it was so hot, Christian concealed the wound from view, but knew the bleeding wouldn't stop, it'd soak through the sleeves thick fabric soon.

She focused back on the crying, and she found it was just repeating the word 'mother' over and over again. Standing shakily, Christian turned to where she was hearing the voice. Her heart broke.

Jacob was a little ways away, shaking the slack body of his mother. He didn't seem to see the shards littering her back and one directly imbedded in her jugular. Christian hobbled towards him, gritting her teeth. She spoke his name, and watched him look up from his mother to her. His face was caked with her blood, and dirt from the floor. He didn't have many scratches at all. No servere wounds. His mother had protected him, like the guy had done for her, but she had full knowledge of what she'd done. His mother had taken all those shards for him, every last one of them.

"M-Mama won't wake up. S-She told me she loved me and then she…she just stopped breathing. Christian, she's dead isn't she? My mama is dead." Jacob erupted into a fit of hysterical crying, and the orange haired woman fell next to him, holding him close to her. She didn't care about her arm anymore. She didn't care about the pain. This poor little boy was obviously in more pain than she was. Moving her good arm up, she began to smooth his hair, while he cried into her chest.

He fell silent, biting the side of his hand to try and stop his crying.

A sound followed shortly after that, sending chills down Christian's spine and causing Jacob to tense.

It was a moan. A moan only the dying could produce.

Or the already dead.