#i just think about her so much | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nightsprung · 2 months

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jill has seen a lot in her 24 years of life leading up to the mansion incident; she absolutely saw death in combat firsthand while in the army, and with her employment in the raccoon police department, has been part of countless dangerous operations, from drug raids to murder investigations and everything in-between. she’s seen so much violence and while she’s not desensitized to it, she knows how to not let it inhibit her or interfere with her work.

none of that even remotely holds a candle to the events at the spencer mansion in july 1998.

note: do not read further if mentions of cannibalism, dismemberment, animal death, murder, child death, etc. trigger you in any way.

shortly after S.T.A.R.S. alpha team sets foot into the territory of the arklay mountains where the bravo team has disappeared, joseph frost is mauled by a cerberus pack — doberman pinschers specifically engineered with a beta strain of the t-virus, crafted by umbrella. the sight of this leaves jill shell-shocked, arguably because she is both a known dog-lover and because she has never seen anything specifically like that in her life.

keep in mind, she’s taken the investigation into the murders in the arklay mountains seriously and personally, given that the first two victims were two little girls she knew, aged nine and seven. seeing one of her fellow teammates getting mauled and eaten is jarring because of how unexpected and new and disturbing it is, but also because in that moment, she’s thinking of becky and priscilla mcgee. she’s so shell-shocked that she can’t move, let alone fire her weapon — wesker shoots a dog before it can attack her and she, chris, barry and wesker high-tail it toward the mansion.

in the mansion, her first encounter with a zombie is when she comes across it clamoring toward her; she shoots it twice before barry steps in and shoots it once in the head. they discover that it’s bravo team member ken sullivan, and after grimly ransacking his hip pouches for ammo and returning to the main hall to meet up with wesker, who has since disappeared.

she and barry agree that splitting up is their best option to locate chris, potential surviving bravo team members, and wesker, as they’ll be able to cover more ground. while jill traverses the mansion she encounters more zombies, violent crows, and a trap room that almost crushes her to death. once out of the mansion and into the courtyard, she finds a secret underground passageway and follows it, to where she finds enrico marini, injured and warning herself and barry that the entire operation is a set-up and umbrella knew about this all along. wesker, hidden by shadows and quick to retreat, kills enrico before he can say any more. jill stays behind and holds enrico’s hand in his dying moments while barry attempts to locate wesker.

jill has no doubt, by that point, that umbrella has a member of S.T.A.R.S. in their pocket, and ventures into the tunnels to find more answers. she encounters a hunter alpha and is able to put it down with several shots from her baretta and shotgun. it’s her first proper encounter with a bioweapon and the first time it really hits her that umbrella is up to worse things than she originally thought.

this only pushes her further.

after almost being crushed to death raiders of the lost ark style by a giant boulder, she finds her way back to the courtyard and uncovers the entrance to the secret underground lab beneath the estate. she uncovers documentation regarding research and development of bioweapons and is ecstatic to bring the information back to the raccoon police department when barry leads her to wesker before being ordered to leave. wesker takes jill’s weapons and intends to throw her into a fight against a tyrant, which would ultimately lead to her death, but barry incapacitates him temporarily so he and jill can escape.

jill and barry reunite with chris and rebecca chambers on a helipad, with brad vickers circling above them in the alpha team’s chopper. before he can land, the tyrant that had escaped his stasis chamber emerges and engages the four in a fight. they keep him distracted by splitting rapid, aggressive gunfire, until brad tosses down a rocket launcher and chris kills the tyrant in one shot. they all escape, watching the spencer estate and all secrets and answers within it self-destruct as they fly back to the station.

jill’s encounters with zombies, the cerberus pack and various bioweapons in the mansion and secret lab shook her up considerably during the time. at points, she’s fully convinced she’s never going to get out of the mansion. she’s separated from most of the team early on and keeps mentally preparing herself to find chris dead, or worse. even when they escape, she doesn’t feel triumphant. the crash from the adrenaline high is hard as she stares out the hatch window, watching the spencer estate and every piece of evidence that could bury umbrella for causing countless deaths to innocent raccoon city citizens — to becky and priscilla — get destroyed.

following the mansion incident, the surviving S.T.A.R.S. team goes to chief irons, demanding a full investigation into umbrella regarding their involvement in the murders, as well as their illegal development of bioweaponry. irons shuts this down immediately, disbanding S.T.A.R.S. under the guise of them being too small to effectively carry out operations. jill is promptly suspended due to her insistence on an investigation into umbrella, and put under house arrest to hinder any attempts to investigate umbrella on her own.

this hardly stops her. despite all the medication she’s taking for her insomnia, she’s still barely sleeping and has a distinct loss of appetite — added on top of her lack of a job schedule, she has ample amounts of free time to dig into the investigation remotely. within a week, she has a board mounted on her wall, and with each passing day, more and more files are being added to it.

with help from a personal data assistant she was given by a mysterious stranger ahead of the mansion incident, she compiles a list of names affiliated with umbrella’s bioweapons research: the only one that gets her very far, given that he’s still alive at the time of her investigation, is william birkin. she accurately profiles the t-virus. she has suspicions about other bioweaponry in development, such as the g-virus, but is unable to pinpoint the exact name of the g-virus and what it’s designed to do.

[ it’s also worth noting that she has a photo of an ne-alpha parasite on her board, which is the parasite umbrella implanted into a tyrant to create nemesis. ]

in addition to having an investigation board set up, jill has written a letter to chris, detailing that she’s being watched 24/7 by umbrella and she suspects that they will move in to kill her at any point. with the letter, she plans to send all of her files so that they’ll both be in safe hands, and be with someone she knows will continue the investigation if and when she is killed.

on sept. 28, 1998 at 8 p.m., she receives a phone call from brad vickers. it’s a split-second warning before nemesis crashes into her apartment through the wall and attacks her. she reacts quickly and is able to shake off the creature, at least temporarily.

while attempting to flee a horde of zombies, brad is bitten and infected — a sacrifice he makes so that jill can escape to the roof of a parking garage and hitch a ride on a rescue helicopter. before she can reach the helicopter, nemesis blows it up. jill attempts to incapacitate the creature with a vehicle and is unsuccessful; she is rescued on the streets below by carlos oliveira and taken to a temporary shelter, where she agrees to help his squad restore power to the subway station to get survivors out of the city.

throughout her venture through downtown raccoon city, she encounters throngs of infected citizens and is more than prepared to deal with it. she aims to conserve ammo when she can, shoots only when necessary, and has taken a habit of taking any useful supplies off of those who are dead and unanimated. she’s even able to hold her own against new mutations she encounters both in the city and the sewers.

in the hospital, she encounters hunter betas, which resemble the hunter alphas she encountered in the underground tunnels of spencer mansion. she has no issues dealing with them, as a result; even as she encounters more undead in NEST 2, including regenerative zombies known as pale heads, she’s able to keep a cool head and handle things on her own, following her method of shooting when necessary and thoroughly staying aware of her surroundings.

where nemesis is concerned, she learned it best in the mansion: don’t assume anything. she recognizes nemesis immediately as a bioweapon, though she can’t say what it is, exactly. she knows in her gut that the creature is a creation of umbrella and was without a doubt sent into the raccoon city incident to hunt her down and kill her; this is only confirmed when she finds nikolai’s activity log. after the second time she thinks she’s killed nemesis and is proven unsuccessful, he’s mutated into something three times his former size and exhibits distinctly more animalistic behaviors in movement and pathing. after this point, she stops assuming she’s killed the creature and sets her entire focus on both her and the city’s survival. whenever nemesis pops up, she relies on every aspect of her S.T.A.R.S. training, and falls back on basics: deal as much damage as possible when possible, but prioritize finding cover and regrouping.

while jill never expected a full-scale t-virus outbreak and couldn’t have predicted nemesis, her prior encounter with both zombies and aggressive bioweapons at the spencer mansion gave her the knowledge and preparation she needed to survive. she knows being bitten is a death sentence at best and she knows better than to assume the vulnerabilities of anything umbrella has created.

#` * ✧. jill valentine — headcanon.#i just think about her so much

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