trans_9 | Find Us Down on Memory Street. [Closed]

Entry tags:

Find Us Down on Memory Street. [Closed]

It felt great to not feel any muscle in her stomach anymore. Well on her way to being completely recovered (even if she sometimes felt the need to poke her scar), Sherry had scurried into the sensoriums, right out from under the noses of her otherwise occupied parents. Call it habit, but she found herself again in the Raccoon City part, dressed in a blue shirt, denim coveralls and a red jacket, watching the red-and-gold colored leaves sway in the breeze. Her pink and white sneakers bore grass stains, just like the knees of her coveralls.

No ducks, this time, but a blue kite lay on the ground beside her. She had thought about flying it, but when she realized that she didn’t have the foggiest idea how, gave up and decided to lie on the ground, instead. After thinking for a while about nothing, her thoughts turned to heavier subject matter: If she had really been Claire and Leon’s daughter, Sherry wondered and chewed her thumbnail, would she have known how to fly a kite? Maybe not, they didn’t seem like kite-flying people. It was hard to pretend when a lot of things were still new experiences. Was she acting right? Would they tell her if she was?

“Well, of course they would,” Sherry told no one in particular. “They like making sense.” Usually. She sighed and looked at the kite. It was hard to get used to, really, this business of them showing affection and wanting to see her. Sometimes, she wanted to tell them to stop, but couldn't bring herself to. Sherry wasn’t used to it, but she’d do her best. She was doing her best…

She wanted them to want her, after all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Claire hadn't been too surprised to return to the room she shared with Sherry to find the little girl absent, she had been spending a lot of time resting lately, so it was understandable with the more strength she had the less she'd be around. Still, she was curious as to her daughter's location and had some time to kill, so she asked Stacy to locate her, and set out to the Sensoriums.

When she stepped into the room Sherry was inhabiting she was surprised to find herself in a park, while plantsuit quickly gave way to jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt. No point in being uncomfortable when the place could make you think you were dressed differently.

She was also a little surprised she vaguely recognized the park as she set out for the familiar blonde head she could see lying in the grass nearby.

"Hi, sweetie," she smiled as she came to a stop by the little girl, leaning over. "Have you been kite flying?" It was funny, Claire wouldn't have put Sherry down as the kind of kid who would run around flying a kite for fun.

Sherry's eyes went to her mother's face, back to the kite, and back to Claire before she responded. "No, not really. I mean, I tried... but," she shrugged and sat up, then smoothed her hair out where it had been mussed from the grass.

"I never learned, so I thought I'd try." Clearly, this did not work out well for her.

"Really?" Claire was suddenly a lot less surprised. She smiled a little at Sherry, crouching down to pick the kite up and examine it. "Do you want me to show you how?"

"Yeah... Mo-- The Birkins didn't do things like that," she replied, catching herself in the middle. This was still such a minefield. The kite had seen better days, considering Sherry had run it into the ground about a half dozen times before giving up. "If you want, but, I really don't think those things actually work."

"Sure they do!" she smiled a little at Sherry, smoothing out the edges of the kite before straightening up again and taking a couple steps forward while unwinding the string enough for her to get a good couple of feet free.

"It's been at least ten years since I've done this, so bear with me a little, okay?" Claire grinned down at Sherry, before turning her head skyward. "Can we get a bit of a breeze, Stacy?" It was weird, asking for wind and having it be delivered, but well. That was the Sensoriums.

"Alright," Sherry replied, her expression rather skeptical for a twelve-year-old. She stood up and dusted her grass-stained knees off. At least she'd dressed practically for this occasion. The wind pushed her bangs up off her forehead.

Wind, rope, kite, Mom.

Claire stood for a moment, getting a feeling of which way the wind was blowing, before holding the kite up above her head and pointing it towards the direction the wind was coming from. She then took off at a slow run, angling the kite back when she'd picked up enough speed and letting it loose, turning around while still moving and letting the kite gain some air, feeding the string out as she moved backwards, keeping her eye on the kite as it rose higher into the air. She was grinning as she looked back at Sherry, and motioned at her.

"C'mere and take over!"

...It was official.

Kites were the most ridiculous thing Sherry had ever seen. That said, she didn't hate them (though how her mother could do it and she couldn't ~~was she too short to get the wind under the kite?~~ was sort of annoying), and hurried to join her mom and the kite.

The spool of string was taken over, and Sherry's lips lifted in a little smile, even as it sort of jerked on her arms. Quietly, she murmured, "Thank you."

Claire leaned down again so she could lean her chin on Sherry's shoulder and keep a light hold on the little girl's upper arms, just to make sure she didn't get carried off. The kite wasn't really big enough, but if the wind were a little stronger it could still probably drag her.

"Keep a good hold on it, you don't want it to get away."

"Yeah..." Sherry agreed a little uncertainly. She leaned her head against Claire's and watched the kite. "It isn't so hard, I guess. If you're tall enough."

The kite was a little on the pully side, and dipped a few times as she watched, before catching another breeze and pulling upward. "I keep trying to think of another place to go to, but, I can only remember the park. And the clock tower. We went there once on a field trip." It had been a stupid field trip. And who decorated a clock tower so creepily anyway?

"This is Raccoon City Park?" she asked curiously, leaning her head away from Sherry's enough to get a look around the place. "I knew I recognized it." She sighed a little, leaning her head back again. "I used to hang out here sometimes, the year I was living with Chris before I went off to school." Her eyes returned to the kite in the sky.

"Did you used to come here a lot?"

"No, not really," she admitted. "'Straight to school, and straight home'," Sherry quoted. "But, if there was no one at home," and there never was, "I'd just... take the train and walk through here some times." It wasn't bad to want to see something other than the same four walls.

"That stopped after people started being killed in the mountains, though." Sherry shrugged a little and sighed through her nose. "I don't miss it, but..." she shrugged again and fed the kite a little more string. "It was a nice park."

Claire nodded her head a little, having been quiet while Sherry talked. It was still heartbreaking to her that such a wonderful little girl had had such an isolated childhood.

"How come you decided to make it in here?" if she didn't miss it, it seemed like her imagination could easily be used for other things. Claire knew Sherry was a very bright girl.

"Because it's where I remember people flying kites." She could've recreated a lot of places, but where 'parks' were concerned, it was the only one she really knew well enough. "That's all."

Out in the distance, bells chimed the hour from the clock tower. "It's really nice, where there aren't monsters involved, huh?" She grinned a little sheepishly, and looked up at the kite.

She looked up at the sound of the bells and frowned a little, considering the last time she'd heard the bells from that tower. She had a few good memories of Raccoon, but that final night was a lot more memorable than most things that had happened in Raccoon.

"I think I much prefer it this way, yes. No more monsters, hm?"

"No more," Sherry assured. She'd had her fill of them. But then, not knowing if something else was going to happen, could they really say that there wouldn't be any more monsters?

"Hey, Mom," Sherry hesitated and the rest of her sentence fell into a mumble. "I want to know about your family. And Uncle Chris, but... I don't want to ask him, because he's...kinda scary."

"Scary? Chris?" Claire smiled at that, sliding away from Sherry so she could shift around and sit down next to the little girl, backwards so she could still see Sherry's face.

"He's a big guy, but he's a teddy bear. Only people who have a reason to be afraid of him are bad guys."

Chris had happened onto the rather familiar setting as he attempted to get some exercise, being bored out of his mind in Medbay. He had stopped and listened to the two converse a bit, a smile full of pride plastered on his face. Damn Claire was a good mom.

"Heh... maybe I should start wearing tights and a cape in that case," he said as he hobbled over, winking at the pair.

Sherry jumped about a foot, and let go of her kite string, "Oh no!"

The kite, however, totally ignored it's young controller and flew off into the air. She watched it go up, get caught in a breeze higher up and fly further away. It didn't occur to her to tell Stacy to bring it back, though. Sherry sighed and turned her attention back to Chris. "I'm sure one of the superheroes running around would lend you something, Uncle Chris."

Claire was caught a little off guard by Chris's appearance too, and while she tried to lunge for the kite when it slipped from Sherry's fingers, it made a clean getaway. Frowning after it, she turned her gaze to Chris, tilting her head.

"Do you really think you've got the legs to pull off tights?"

Chris cringed as he too, lunged, and missed, putting a bit too much weight on his injured leg than intended, but he quickly recovered. "Sorry... didn't mean to scare you like that, kiddo."

Chris decided to move so that he was sitting on Sherry's other side, one arm around both his niece and sister.

"Jill seems to think so," he said with a wry smirk. He sighed slightly as he took in the surroundings, the home he had known for several years, and had come to love before Hell came to Earth. "Ah... I remember this park... I remember coming here on my days off..."

"Ugh," Claire wrinkled her nose at Chris as he mentioned Jill thinking he had legs for tights, although she was smiling a second later and tugging Sherry down into her lap so Chris wouldn't crush the both of them together in his death grip.

"How long have you been lurking in here?"

Sherry went willingly down with Claire and lay her head against her mother's shoulder (Sorry, Chris, she still entertained the squeezed like a tube of toothpaste idea).

"It's okay," she murmured. A big teddy bear, huh? Sherry wasn't so sure about that. Teddy bears didn't have arms like watermelons.

Chris noticed the gesture, and in the back of his mind, his inner eye was rollingg to keep his other eyes from doing the same. He knew how to keep his strength in check. ...Mostly. Regardless, he made himself comfortable with an arm around Claire's shoulders and ruffling Sherry's hair slightly.

"Not too long," Chris 'lied' to Claire. He'd been there longer than he really realized, but didn't want to come off as too creepy. "It's nice here... the park was always one of my favorite places... always felt a connection to the land..."

Chris had to stop himself there, before he rambled in on how Umbrella had befouled the land and murdered the innocent people living in his home.

Claire smiled a little and leaned against Chris, shifting one arm up around Sherry to absently brush her fingers over the little girl's hair.

"Uncle Chris is a very outdoorsy guy," she explained, tilting her head a little and glancing down at Sherry.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject