Restless

A.N. This was originally written for a prompt at "springkink" on LiveJournal. The prompt was: Silent Hill, Pyramid Head or Maria/James: genderswitched AU - revisited events. I thought that was the greatest prompt ever, and I only hope I did justice to it.

I decided to do several scenes from the game, basically covering the whole story in an extremely AU way, and throwing in a few of my own ideas just for the sake of gratuitous smut. Plus several endings, since this is Silent Hill. I did switch scenes and timelines around heavily, especially toward the end, and there’s a lot missing as I left out any equivalent of Eddie or Angela. The actual geography of Silent Hill has also been messed with very severely. (It’s also not necessarily set in exactly the same time period as Jenny has a cell phone.) I did riff off the game script for obvious reasons but I tried to create original dialogue. I have posted it here as a series of short chapters with sarcastic titles.

While I hope it will be clear what's going on... for a bit of intro: We have Jenny Sunderland, who is looking for her dead husband Mitchell, and instead finds Mike, who bears a striking resemblance to him. We also have Pyramid Head, who wears the same helmet but has different bits under the apron. There's also a little boy named Ian, who isn't really Laura. As stated, Eddie and Angela have been spared appearances and are off in a better fic somewhere. Pairings include Jenny/Mike, implied Jenny/Mitchell, female!Pyramid Head/Mike, and of course female!Pyramid Head/male!mannequin monster. If AU genderswitch is not your thing, you do not want to read this.


Arriving in Silent Hill: My Baby, He Wrote Me a Letter

Jenny Sunderland drives down the freeway still turning the words of the letter over in her mind.


Jenny,

Do you remember Silent Hill? I always said we should go back, but you kept telling me you were too busy, that we should just forget it. I'm waiting for you there now... I'm sure you know exactly where, that special place. Please come and meet me.

Mitchell


The thing is, Jenny doesn't remember the trip to Silent Hill with Mitchell very well. They had gone there for the weekend, because of some ad on the radio that made it sound romantic. And it was OK: a decent hotel, and a park or something like that, and some bars. Nothing too exciting, but maybe all romantic couples really want is a park to walk through and a hotel room with a big bed. But she doesn't remember anywhere special, so she actually has no idea what he would mean.

The other thing is, Jenny doesn't understand how she could get a letter from Mitchell at all, since he's been dead for three years. But no matter how many times she tells herself that it’s impossible, she can’t just forget about it. What if he is waiting for her somehow, and she could really see him again? In the end she had looked up Silent Hill on the old map in the car and here she is, on the offramp, almost there.

But when she actually drives into town, she realizes why she hasn't heard a radio ad for the place in a while. There’s nobody there anymore – it’s just deserted, with the buildings looking abandoned and the road a broken mess. Everything looks empty, with no people and no other cars but hers. Finally she sees a wall ahead of her that stretches right over the road. Jenny stops the car and gets out. It’s time to turn around, but of course she isn’t going to.

"Is there anybody here?" There isn't, of course. There are stores around her, with faded names promising various ordinary services, but the glass is broken in half the windows and there’s faded yellow grass sprouting in the sidewalks.

Jenny listens to the stock reports, but not much other news unless she really has to. Maybe there's been some kind of accident here, and the whole place has been abandoned. It’s not like she would hear about it; she hasn’t even thought about this place in so long. But who would build a wall over a road… and is it to keep something out or keep something in?

She shakes her head and sighs. Probably the people here all moved out for some reason, like those little towns in the Midwest she had seen movies about that just sort of die and sit there vacant. And the wall is to make sure squatters don’t invade the place or something. But rational explanations aren't helping much as she tries the door of a dirty nameless building and walks in. Something is wrong, even more wrong than a letter from a dead husband. She opens a door with a bathroom symbol on it and stares into the filthy mirror.

"What the hell would you be doing in a place like this, Mitchell? This is even creeping me out; you'd never spend five minutes here."

The wall blocking the street has a door in it, and when Jenny turns the knob it opens. So much for keeping anything out.

"Don't go in there," she says to herself. "Call the police." But you can't report your dead husband as a missing person.

She walks through the door. On the other side are just more abandoned buildings and more broken road. But there are still no people, and definitely no Mitchell. Jenny finally decides this is futile, ridiculous, but when she turns and goes back to the door, it’s locked after all.

“How did that happen? I didn’t even see a lock.” She shakes her head. “You have to keep going, anyway. You have to find Mitchell. He might be stuck in this place wondering why you never came for him.”

Jenny keeps walking down the road, past abandoned storefronts – restaurants, a dress shop, a bar. Now and then she tries a door but none of them open. Then, passing an alley, she sees motion out of the corner of her eye. Against the wall halfway down the alley there’s a dumpster and she is certain she can see a figure sitting behind it. Jenny turns and runs toward it.

“Mitchell?” Nothing moves from behind the dumpster as she approaches. “Is it you, Mitchell? What the hell is going on?”

Then the person runs out and shows themselves. Except it isn’t a person. Whatever it is has gray skin, no arms, and is way too thin to be human. Jenny freezes in place.

“Oh god… what the fuck is that?” She turns to run but the thing is after her, and she feels some kind of gross liquid spray over her back. The smell is horrific. Against the wall of the alley she sees a stick with a nail in it. Desperate, she grabs it as she runs, then turns and hits the thing in its deformed head. It hops backward, and from its mouth it spits out another stream of the disgusting substance. She hits it again, over and over, and finally it slumps to the ground. Jenny approaches it, kicks it to make sure it’s dead. It doesn’t look like anything she’s ever seen before, but she isn’t going to sit there and study it. There could be more of them somewhere.

She runs back to the street before she finally bends over and vomits. Then she grabs her cell phone from her pocket, but there’s no signal. At this point that doesn’t surprise her at all. Putting the phone away, she continues walking down the street. Wherever Mitchell is, did the monsters attack him too? The letter doesn’t sound like he’s afraid, but then the letter doesn’t make sense anyway. Now she knows for certain that she had to find him, and that the police aren’t going to help her. No one is.

When Jenny passes a sporting goods store she decides it is time to break another window. When she gets in she grabs a green jacket and uses it to replace her fouled blouse. Then she gets what she really came in for: a shotgun and as many shells as she can stuff into the pockets of the jacket. Her father had taught her to shoot when she was younger, and even if she is no expert she at least knows how to load and fire the thing without hurting herself. It will be better than nothing.