Chapter Text
Grace is used to being alone. She never made friends as a child, too awkward and too anxious to be more than the new kid every time. The girl and her mother were always traveling, chasing the next big story from one town to the next. Yet Grace wasn't lonely then.
Alyssa might have worked a lot, but she made time for her daughter whenever possible and the shining letters across their hearts proved they both were loved. Grace didn't need more than that to be happy. Her mother was her sanctuary. She always kept her daughter safe, showing her how to breathe when the panic got too sharp and acting as a protective shield against the wider world.
The girl was never lonely until Alyssa died, until her mother was murdered right before her eyes. That's when Grace's heart shattered into pieces and shock tore through her mind. Her grief was so overwhelming that she didn't even notice the pain of her mark burning; she could only hold her mother's corpse and sob. Grace held on until she couldn't, until the police ripped her from the burning hotel and carried her away. They took her to the hospital, treated her burns, and called her lucky for surviving. But Grace didn't feel lucky then.
Instead, she felt adrift and it was a fresh wound when she finally saw her mother's name again. The bright maroon had faded to a pale lifeless gray, proof that she had no one. Grace was truly alone now and this realization left a frozen chill inside her heart, an aching cold that never thawed over the next eight years.
After that, after Wrenwood, her mother's mark stops being comforting. The faded name becomes a reminder of what she's lost, a warning about the danger of letting someone in. How can Grace reach out for love or even friendship with that omen on her skin?
So the young woman narrows her expectations. She shrinks herself down until she barely makes a ripple in the world. Grace gets used to being alone, to not asking or expecting anything from anyone.
That doesn't change when she joins the FBI as an analyst; she just hides in her data to keep the fear at bay. Refuse enough invitations and people will stop asking; soon enough the new recruits don't even know her name. The woman is a ghost in her own life, too scared of pain to risk connection even though she's desperately lonely all the time.
Perhaps that's why Grace falls so hard when she meets Emily. She's been torn from her desk job and thrown into a nightmare, one she doesn't know if she'll survive. Panic and adrenaline have pushed her past her limits and she's never been so terrified. Yet somehow that makes it easier to care for Emily.
The child is alone, locked away in this awful hospital, and Grace can't leave her there. A maternal instinct strikes her out of nowhere and she should be frightened when a child's scrawl appears upon her palm. Grace is frightened, but it's only one more drop in the sea of panic that's already drowning her. The woman's heart can't beat any faster and Emily's existence gives her a reason to keep fighting through the terror. Without that motivation, Grace might have let the monsters kill her when she just couldn't take it anymore.
However, if Emily is her miracle, Agent Leon S. Kennedy is simply baffling. He shows up for the first time to save Grace from the Girl, gives her a gun and then disappears into the hospital. He's a brief ray of hope in her living nightmare, a savior that she can't trust will return.
No one returns for Grace, not anymore.
Except that Leon does. When she finally escapes the hospital with Emily, only to be cornered in a churchyard by a horde of zombies, bullets rain from the rooftops to wipe the monsters out. The DSO agent is just there, standing between Grace and danger like an avenging angel called down from above.
Something about Leon is solid to the core and there's no doubt in the man's voice when he says they'll be okay. Grace wants to believe him. She needs to believe him for her own sanity. His presence feels like hope, like a lighthouse in the dark, and the promise that she still has a chance.
So when he tells her to run, the woman listens. Strong as the agent seems, she'd only be underfoot while he fights more zombies and she won't risk Emily. But knowing that she has support makes all the difference. It helps Grace find her courage when the Girl reappears and she finally kills that creature for the sake of Emily.
She overcomes her nightmare only to discover that false hope is the sharpest cruelty.
Because Grace still failed her child. Her world comes crashing down with Emily's still body; the family that she'd barely dared to dream of turned to ash within her hands. She can only sob like she did for her mother, the force of her grief shaking her apart. She can only scream when Emily transforms into a monster and Leon kills her then.
Grace bleeds with that betrayal, not only because he saves her but because he's still so damn kind to her afterwards. Leon says there was no other choice, that she has to keep going, and his voice is just as soothing as before. The man would probably hug her if she let him, take her somewhere safe and hold her while she mourns.
That's what heroes do and he seems like a hero, the type who always does the right thing no matter what the cost. The type who could kill the daughter of her heart and truly mean it as a kindness because Emily wouldn't have wanted Grace to die for her.
But she can't forgive his choice or accept that absolution. Not when her marks are broken and their deaths are all her fault. If she had just been faster, Emily and her mother would both still be alive.
So Grace throws down Leon's gun to show him that she's finished; she's not his to rescue anymore. Then the woman turns and walks off into the complex, too numb to care where her steps lead. She's been hollowed out by guilt and sorrow, the sudden shock of loss where hope had been.
The agent's protest dissolves into a hacking cough behind her, but any worry she might feel is buried under grief. Grace isn't even scared to leave because the worst has happened, terror and tension muted to an exhausted fog.
She barely has the strength to stagger forward, her feet dragging across the floor as tears slide down her face. She can't look at her hand, can't put a source to the pain inside her chest. Seeing Emily's mark faded like her mother's would break what's left of her, twist the knife within her heart and let her bleed out where she stands.
When Grace stumbles onto Gideon and his boss waiting for her by the exit, she doesn't bother arguing or fighting to escape. Instead, she simply leaves with the men willingly. Even if she had a prayer of fleeing from her captors, what's the point of running if she can't save Emily? Who's she to say they're wrong about her destiny?
Grace is alone again, back to her natural state. She should have known better than to think her life would change.