You were trying to choose between two pairs of earrings when Robb walked into your bedchambers, and you had to do a double-take to realize it was not a stranger who barged in, but your husband. You gasped, your hands shooting up to cover your mouth.

“What happened to your beard?!”

“My mother made me shave it,” he grumbled while you gawked at him. “For the king’s arrival.”

You had never seen Robb without a beard; he always had either a stubble or a very short beard, so this was the first time you were seeing him clean-shaven. Though he was handsome as always with his sharp jawline which was even more prominent without a beard, the sight felt rather strange to you, and it took you a couple of seconds to understand the reason. A huff of laughter escaped you, muffled by your hands before you lowered them.

“You look like a Reach knight!”

The way his expression turned from annoyed to complete and utter betrayal could’ve made a simple observer think you had just insulted him. He let out a displeased exhale through his nose, then strode past you to approach your mirror like it could magically grow his beard back if he glared at his reflection hard enough.

“I do not understand why she insists so much,” he mumbled while you tilted your head, watching him in the mirror with your arms crossed. “A northman cannot be without his beard, it’s just not right.” 

You covered your laughter by clearing your throat and plopped down on the bed, a grin curling your lips.

“Recite me a poem,” you demanded, and he turned around to scowl at you.

“I don’t know any.”

“You look like you do,” you said airily. “Can you sing, at least? Play any instruments? Almost every knight in the Reach can.”

“I’m no Reach knight,” he grumbled. “And it’ll grow back.”

“Are you saying that to me or yourself?”

He took another look at his reflection, running a hand over his face.

“I look like a boy.”

“A handsome Reach boy,” you chirped, earning an annoyed glare in return.  

“Don’t.”

You held up your hands in a mock of surrender before you pushed yourself off the bed.

“Well, I must go,” you said. “Lady Stark needed me today, so I’ll leave you and my mirror alone.”

“Wait—” He caught up with you to grab your wrist so that he could pull you closer, drawing a giggle out of you. You playfully slipped your wrist out of his grasp with a gasp, feigning shock.

“I’m very offended by you daring to believe I’d kiss you,” you said with a hand on your chest. “As handsome as you are, I’ll have you know I’m very loyal to my husband.”

“I am your husband!”

You made a noise of disagreement.

“My husband has a beard,” you pointed out, taking a step back. “You appear to be one of the knights who used to follow me around in the ballroom begging for a dance.”

Well, that wasn’t entirely true; none of those knights were as handsome as Robb was, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Learn a poem in the meantime,” you told him, walking backwards to the door. “Or grow your beard back. Whichever is faster.”

With that, you walked out of the room and left him there, your laughter echoing in the hallway.

Though you both had very different trainings, it was times like these you could see that Lady Stark was in fact raised in the south.

Being the lady of the castle—especially when the said castle was Winterfell—came with so many responsibilities. Hosting guests was not only duty but also an art, which she pulled off flawlessly, even before the guests were there. The bedchambers, the feast, the entertainment, it was all ready the moment you got the news that the king would be arriving today. There were direwolf banners hanging in and outside the castle as well as the yard, and by the time you and the Starks gathered in the yard, you could already hear the sound of the horses approaching.

You had picked a pearly gray silk gown for the day, to blend in with the rest of the family, with your pelt thrown over your shoulders. Jon wasn’t allowed to stand with the family per Lady Stark’s orders, and it had put Robb in a rather sullen mood that he only snapped out of at the sight of Arya rushing to cross the yard with a helmet on her head. Lord Stark quickly pulled it off of her head and sent her to go stand between Sansa and Bran. You were right beside Robb, your hand in his while he caressed the back of your hand with his thumb almost absentmindedly, making you bite back a smile before you looked over your shoulder to steal a glance at your ladies-in-waiting in the crowd.

You hadn’t met the king or the queen before, and it had been on purpose, thanks to Silas and your father. The king’s many affairs with other women was not unheard of throughout the realm, and two years ago, around the time that title of yours started being thrown around, he and the queen had visited the Reach. A week before that, per Silas’ counsel and your father’s orders, you weren’t allowed to go outside so that when you missed the feast in King’s honor, the whole Reach thought you had been too sick to join any feast the whole week. The reason was simple; neither your father nor Silas wanted to risk the possibility of you catching the king’s interest, seeing that if you did, there would be so little that they could do except send you to Dorne to keep you safe and away from the most powerful man of the realm.

Though many families in the Reach would be delighted at the idea of their daughter catching the king’s eye and elevating their status, your family loved you way too much to put you in a situation where you would be forced to be a mistress.

But thankfully, you were safe now.

Not that the married women were safe in the southern court, especially from the king. However, you were Robb’s wife now, the future Lady of Winterfell, and nobody, not even the king, could risk the wrath of House Stark and the North by crossing a line.

You were probably the safest lady in the whole realm.

You snapped out of your thoughts when the horsemen passed the gates and entered the yard, a young boy that could only be a couple years older than Sansa—the prince, if you had to guess— at the front. Sansa sighed beside you, making Robb turn to her and then frown at the boy who gave Sansa a smirk, and you had to bite back your smile.

Of course Sansa would admire the prince.

The queen’s carriage entered the yard as well, followed by the Kingsguard and the king, whom you only recognized because of the crown. He was a heavy man with a serious look on his face, his eyes darting around the yard as his horse stopped and his squire rushed to help him dismount. Lord Stark bent a knee, the rest of the family and the whole yard following him suit, and it was only when the king motioned at him to rise that he stood up, all of you doing the same.

The king held Lord Stark’s gaze. “You got fat.”

You blinked a couple of times, holding your breath to see what Lord Stark would say, but he only lowered his gaze to the king’s stomach before raising his brows at him, as if returning the statement without so much as a word. The king burst into laughter, making Lord Stark smile as well before he pulled him into a hug.

…Gods, you were never going to understand men’s humor or their idea of friendship.

“Cat!” he greeted Lady Stark with a happy smile, hugging her as well. Sansa was still gazing at the prince, and you leaned closer to her so that Robb couldn’t hear your whisper.

“You might want to pretend to be a little more nonchalant, my sweet.”

Sansa gave you an abashed smile while the king and Lord Stark exchanged words.

“Do you think he finds me beautiful?”

“Of course he does,” you whispered back, watching the queen step out of the carriage. She was beautiful, even the displeased look on her face wasn’t enough to take away from it, and her gaze went around the yard before it stopped on you.

“You must be Robb.” The king shook Robb’s hand before his eyes found you. “And the newest member of the family, I assume. The tales of your beauty weren’t lying, my lady.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” you accepted the compliment with a well-practiced graceful smile. The queen approached Lord Stark who kissed her hand, but everyone’s attention turned to the king in a second when he spoke:

“Take me to your crypt, I want to pay my respects.”

“We’ve been riding for a month, my love,” the queen said kindly, and you had to wonder for a second whether everyone else could hear just how forced it sounded or just you. “Surely the dead can wait.”

The king didn’t even spare her a glance.

“Ned,” he said curtly before he walked away, and Lord Stark followed him into the Keep.

…Ah.

The crypt.

Where Lord Stark’s sister who was also the king’s alleged true love laid in her eternal sleep.

The Queen looked like she wanted to argue, but her brother touched her arm as if signaling her to stop talking, and you averted your eyes, making yourself busy with your bracelet.

It was one of the many things you and Margaery were taught when you were little.

If someone above your rank was insulted or ignored in front of you, you never saw it.

Lord Stark and the king spent almost an hour in the crypts while the queen retired to her bedchambers to rest. It seemed that Lord Stark had much to speak with the king, because Robb had come to find you in the yard around an hour before the feast, clearly released from his father’s solar. You quickly dismissed your ladies-in-waiting so that you could speak freely at the far corner of the yard, and to be completely honest, the way you two sat was not appropriate at all; rather than sitting across from one another, you had your back against his chest, his arms wrapped around you while he nuzzled to your hair.

It had been rather peaceful, at least until a moment ago.

“A betrothal?” you repeated, craning your neck to look up at him. “Between Sansa and…”

“Prince Joffrey,” Robb finished your sentence for you, letting out a displeased noise as you pulled out of his arms to turn to see him better. “Don’t—”

“And Lord Stark said yes?”

“Sansa would cry for the rest of her life if he did not,” Robb said with a grimace. “She is in love already, and they haven’t even talked to each other yet. My mother talked my father into it, he will take the girls with him when he goes to King’s Landing to be the Hand.”

A frown pinched your forehead while Robb’s fingers drew shapes in your palm absentmindedly.

“Robb, I don’t think…”

Gods, how were you going to approach this?

You had to walk a very thin line here. You couldn’t risk anyone think you were trying to sabotage Sansa’s future, especially when the root of your worries was her future. Sansa was the sweetest girl ever, and you were certain she would grow up to be the loveliest lady and queen, but it was because of that you weren’t as excited as Lady Stark about this union.

Sansa was too sweet and naive for King’s Landing.

Not to mention, you knew nearly nothing about Prince Joffrey. There was a reason why it had taken Silas so much time to make a decision about your husband, marriage couldn’t be decided in a haste. Granted the king and Lord Stark were friends, but it didn’t mean their children would form a good union, and the moment they wed, Sansa would be bound to Prince Joffrey forever, regardless of how strong her house was.

And this was yet another time you were thankful to the gods for Silas and the rest of your family.

Those rules didn’t apply to you.

“What is it?” Robb asked, pulling you out of your thoughts. You opened your mouth and closed it again, then took a deep breath.

“Sansa is very young still.”

“Oh they won’t wed right away,” Robb said. “They’ll wait until my father deems it the right time. Sansa will just be in King’s Landing in the meantime, with Arya.”

You stole a look at the rest of the yard, deep in thought.

“Well, perhaps…” You paused. “Perhaps if they won’t wed right away, Sansa could stay here a bit longer so that I can teach her things.”

“Like what?”

“Like how to survive in the southern court.”

He huffed a laugh. “Oh come on.”

“Robb, I’m serious.”

“My father will be with her, she’ll be fine.”

“Your father cannot save her from everything,” you said. “Nor can he help her in everything, especially when it comes to the south. It’s a different world than here, and please don’t get me wrong, but Sansa still believes in fairytales. She must learn know how to—”

You stopped yourself and Robb pulled his brows together.

“How to what?”

Manipulate people.

It was beyond you how no one had given her the necessary training, especially if the southern court had been a possibility all along. You were rather sheltered and very much aware of it, but when it came to southern court games and wielding power, you and Margaery were given a very strict education.

Although you falling in love was unexpected, your husband falling in love with you had always been the plan.

“The southern court is an incredibly dangerous place,” you told him. “I fear she might not be ready for it just yet. If she stays here a little longer—”

“Nothing bad will happen to her in the southern court,” he assured you. “My father and the king are close as brothers.”

“Which is wonderful, but think about it,” you insisted. “Silas didn’t make our union happen because of my father and yours. He made it, because he approved you above all that. Does your father know Prince Joffrey? Do you? Beyond the fact that he will sit the Iron Throne once his father passes?”

“He can’t do anything to Sansa,” Robb brushed you off. “Sansa is a Stark.”

You caught the sight of the queen’s brother Jaime Lannister and Prince Joffrey stepping out of the keep into the yard, then huffed out.

“Can you please ask your father either way?” you asked. “If she can stay here for a moon or two?”

His eyes softened as he cupped your cheek gently, then dipped his head to give you the sweetest kiss, making your heart skip a beat. A giggle escaped you, your cheeks growing hot.

“We’re in public!”

“And we’re on our honeymoon,” he defended himself while you dragged your fingertip over the snarling wolf clasps on his doublet before you buried your face to his chest where his laugh rumbled deep. He pressed a kiss on top of your head, his hand still cradling your cheek.

“But you’ll ask?” you insisted and he heaved a sigh.

“I’ll ask,” he said. “Happy?”

“Very,” you chirped as you lifted your head to beam at him. “Thank you!”

He held your gaze in his, stroking your cheekbone with his thumb.

“I’ll never be able to tell you no, will I?” he asked and you scrunched up your nose, then grinned.

“Probably not,” you said airily. “But then again, why would you want to?”

That drew a chuckle out of him, and he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe himself.

“Aye,” he murmured, leaning in to kiss you again. “Why would I want to indeed?”

Thanks to Lady Stark, the feast was going perfectly.

And everyone was having fun. Sansa was over the moon with the news, and she had made you promise that you would lend her one of your gowns for her to wear in the King’s Landing, so that she could impress the ladies there. Though you wanted to say it would take more than a gown, you decided not to say anything until Robb asked Lord Stark, so instead you assured her that you would help her with choosing the perfect gown and jewelry so that she would make an impeccable first impression on the southern court. Just until a moment ago that you and Robb were sitting at one of the tables among your peers, drinking and laughing, but when Arya threw food at Sansa’s dress, Lady Stark had shot him a look that clearly said to step in, so that the royal family wouldn’t notice the chaos that was about to erupt. Robb heaved a sigh and kissed your temple before he made his way to Arya and lifted her out of her seat, telling her it was time for bed. Arya pouted, but one gentle push from Robb made her start walking, and they both left the Great Hall so that he could tuck her in.

Watching Robb take care of his siblings never failed to make your chest all warm. He knew how to handle all of them, adapting a softer approach with Sansa and Bran while roughhousing Arya and Rickon who loved it. For a moment, you couldn’t stop your mind from wandering off, so you found yourself imagining what a great father he would make one day, to your own kids.

You knew it was too early, you still couldn’t tell whether you were ready, especially with your mother’s fate, yet the simple image of him with a baby made you smile.

You wondered whether they would take after him or you. Or perhaps they would be the perfect combination of you both—

“My lady.” Alys’ voice snapped you out of your thoughts. “Lady Stark and the queen ask for you, I think.”

You turned your head to take a look at the High Table where only Lady Stark and the queen sat—everyone else had scattered around the Great Hall. Lady Stark nodded at you and you pushed your chair back.

“Thank you Alys,” you whispered and stood up, then made your way to the High Table. You swept a well-trained curtsy, then straightened up and smiled at them, clasping your hands in front of you.

“Your Grace,” you said. “Lady Stark.”

“Hello my dear.”

“I wanted to see the infamous Blossom of the Reach,” the queen said, making your smile wider. “Everyone sings your praises, even miles away.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” 

“Including your best friend,” she said, making your head whip up. “Margaery Tyrell. She is dazzling the capital as we speak.”

And judging by the tone of her voice, she was not happy about that.

You would’ve been lying if you said it was unexpected. Margaery never feared anyone, no matter their social standing.

“As she dazzled the Reach,” you said. “I’m sure she flourishes in King’s Landing.”

“Do remind me, who had more admirers in the Reach? You or her?”

The attempt was nearly pitiful, and you had to hold back your laughter. This wasn’t new, the way people would try to sow discord between you and Margaery so that you would turn against each other and become rivals for—

For what?

Attention?

The queen wasn’t the first, nor would she be the last to find out your and Margaery’s bond ran too deep to get harmed by such comments. Margaery could be crowned the most beautiful girl in the realm tomorrow—in your opinion, she deserved it—, and you would be cheering her at the top of your lungs. She could be the queen, and you would be the first to bow down; there was no possibility of you turning bitter for her accomplishments and happiness, you loved her way too much for that.

And it was mutual too. Margaery never held contempt for you even when that title started being thrown around in the Reach, instead she fueled it, so that even more people would talk about it.

There was nothing anyone could do to make you and Margaery turn into enemies, no matter how much they tried.

“Oh, one stops counting after a while,” you said with a laugh. “It was rather hard for us to keep track of it, but the last I remember she had poems and I had songs. You would have to ask her though.”

“The Reach does love its songs, does it not?” the queen asked. “Just as singers love their embellishments, I’d say.”

…Ah.

Well, alright then.

There were only three people in this hall who could tell what that veiled comment really meant; the queen herself, Lady Stark, and you, seeing that you were all quite fluent in the language of the southern court and how it held insults behind compliments, or simple statements.

Like that one.

“Such admirers can affect a lady in a certain way,” the queen added. “Like excess pride. You and your friend should be careful.”

So now not only were your looks exaggerated, but you and Margaery were both arrogant.

Very well.

If she came all this way to your home to insult you and your best friend, you could play the game.

“Both my best friend and I look up to you as the pinnacle of humility, we grew up with the tales of your beauty, Your Grace,” you said airily. “Back when we were little girls, that was all we would hear from King’s Landing. To this day, I still remember how many admirers you used to have back in the day. I’m sure you’re delighted that his majesty relieved you of them, even after so many years!”

The tiny twitch of her lips reminded you of a snarl, but it was gone as fast as it came.

“Well,” she said after a beat. “I hope that you and your husband will be as happy as me and the king have been.”

The same king who had spent the majority of the feast drunk with another woman in his lap.

Sure.

She could keep hoping, Robb would never do that to you.

“I’m sure it would please you, Your Grace,” you said with a bright smile and she held your gaze in hers, then gave you a curt nod, signaling you could leave. You dropped a curtsy straight down with your head held high, then walked away from the High Table to join your ladies-in-waiting.

“The queen does not look happy,” Lyra murmured and Jorelle raised her brows, stealing a look at the table.

“Would you be?” she asked. “If my husband humiliated me like that…”

“I will never wed.”

“You might have to,” Barbrey said and Lyra shrugged her shoulders.

“Not really. I’m not the heir, I have no such responsibilities. One of my sisters has two children, she was never wed.”

“Bear Island has different customs than the rest of the North,” Wylla said. “If my father tried to wed me to someone like the king, I’d run away.”

“She’s still the queen,” Barbrey said and Wylla shook her head.

“I’m too northern to accept such disrespect.”

“By the way, have any of you talked to her ladies-in-waiting?”

“I’ve been avoiding them like the plague.”

“Well, I’ve talked to them, and…”

The rest of Alys’ words disappeared into a buzz when the familiar feeling hit you, making you frown slightly. Your theory was that it was instinct for ladies of the court, you just learned to notice when men were looking at you even without a glance in their direction. Perhaps it was habit, perhaps it was a way to survive, but you knew when they were watching.

And sure enough, when you turned your head, you found Robb, Lord Stark, the king and Prince Joffrey all looking in your direction. Robb did not look happy for some reason, he had his jaw clenched while he listened to the king, and Prince Joffrey scowled before his eyes found mother and his frown deepened, as if she had done something of great offense. You let a lovesick smile light up your face as you waved at Robb without sparing the rest of them a glance, and that seemed to snap him out of his mood, that familiar soft light appearing in his gaze as he lifted his cup a little to greet you. The king said something and smacked him on the back, letting out a boisterous laugh and you lingered there for a moment, then rolled your shoulders back.

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” you said and walked away from your ladies to approach the men on the other side of the hall.

“Your Graces, my lord,” you greeted the king, the prince and Lord Stark, then beamed at Robb and turned to them. “May I please borrow my lord husband for a minute if you don’t mind?”

The king laughed.

“Oh he stopped listening to us the moment you looked his way,” he said. “But that’s how a newlywed must be, huh Robb? Your father used to have the same look on his face whenever you looked at your mother.”

“Robert, come on now,” Lord Stark said and the king grinned.

“You did,” he insisted while you laced your fingers through Robb’s. “The same tortured look, even when I dragged you to hunts! That’s how you know it’s a good match.”

 “Speaking of matches, I’ve heard the happy news,” you told Prince Joffrey with a smile. “I’m certain you and our beautiful Sansa will be as happy as we are, Your Grace.”

Prince Joffrey didn’t seem delighted at all, his eyes finding his mother again before forcing himself to smile.

 “Thank you, my lady.”

“Anyway, as I was saying, the whole North is talking of that duel! The future Warden of the North is a great fighter just like his father!”

A shadow crossed Prince Joffrey’s face but you paid him no mind.

“I’m glad the whole North is entertained, but I was rather terrified,” you said, leaning sideways to Robb’s arm and he pressed a kiss on top of your head as if trying to soothe you at the mention of the duel.

“You had nothing to worry about, I told you that,” Robb muttered into your hair and you shot him a mischievous look.

“The love of my life putting himself in danger scares me, that’s no crime,” you said, earning a chuckle from the king. “Is it, Your Grace?”

“Not at all,” the king said. “Even the strongest men are defeated by love more than sword, my boy. Great warrior or not, you might want to keep that in mind.”  

“I will, Your Grace.”

“If you’ll excuse us please.”

Robb followed you as you both crossed the Great Hall, still holding your hand tight until you stopped and turned to him. He seemed rather tense, frowning at Prince Joffrey who had just approached the queen to mutter something to her ear with a sour expression. You raised your brows, watching Robb grab a cup from one of the servants before he took a sip, still glaring at the High Table.

“Is everything alright?”

His attention snapped back to you. “Mm hm.”

“Are you certain?” you asked. “What were you all talking about before I approached?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Though you wanted to insist, you decided otherwise. “Have you had the chance to talk to your father yet?”

“About?”

“About Sansa!” you whispered. “If she can stay a bit longer.”

“I mentioned it, he said no.” Robb shrugged his shoulders. “And I’ve told you, he’ll keep an eye on her. She’ll be safe.”

You pursed your lips before taking a deep breath.

“Alright, then I’ll send a letter to Margaery first thing in the morning,” you said. “She’s in King’s Landing, she should be able to help Sansa.”

He tilted his head.

“Margaery Tyrell?”

“Do you know another Margaery?”

“Your best friend whom you’re angry at?”

“It doesn’t matter whether I’m angry at her or not,” you said. “At the end of the day, I trust her with my life. We both know what’s important and when to put aside disagreements, she’s never going to deny me if I ask her for a favor.”

“Even after what happened?”

“Don’t underestimate her loyalty to me, or mine to her,” you said. “Trust me. If I need help, she’ll help.”

“I’ll never understand you two,” he muttered. “And I still think you’re worrying for nothing and Sansa will be fine, but very well. Write to her if it’ll put your heart at ease.”

“Hey.” Jon’s voice reached you and you looked over your shoulder to find him smiling. The sight seemed to have taken Robb by surprise as much as you, because he scoffed a laugh.

“Did Theon get maimed?” he asked. “How come you’re smiling?”

“Uncle Benjen is here.”

Robb’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Wait, Benjen Stark does exist?” you asked, looking between him and Jon, and Robb nodded fervently.

“Our uncle. He’s the First Ranger of the Night’s Watch.”

You were guessing that was an impressive title in the North, from the proud tone of Robb’s voice.

“Come,” Robb added. “I must introduce you to him, he’s amazing.”

“I mean to be honest, I doubt introductions are needed,” you pointed out, drawing chuckles out of both brothers. “I feel like I know him already.”

“Yeah, maybe—” Robb paused. “Maybe don’t mention the…”

“Name issue?” you asked and exchanged glances with Jon who all but read your mind, because you both shook your heads at the same time.

“No way.”

“Aye, he’s gonna hear it. If not from her, then from me.”

She started screaming but then covered her mouth. She covered her hand with her sleeve, knocked the hand off of the knob, and twisted the key until she heard it click open. For better or worse she was going in and she did so, locking the door behind her and then just cowering against the wall, silent as she could be, trying to breathe quietly. 

She heard the rampage of the creature outside. It paused as if it was listening for something. After a minute it stomped off in the opposite direction until she didn’t hear it anymore and only then did Cait feel around on the wall. Her hand found a switch and when she flicked it on there was a small pause before some lights came on.

“Hmm, might be on a different breaker….” She looked around and found she was in a janitor’s closet. On the wall immediately in front of her was a calendar with a group of men and women holding a baseball trophy. Pinned to it was a note:

We have a title to defend, make sure everyone has their gear for the weekend! I want three practices in before the big game and I don’t care about Hurricane Josephine– she’s not messing up our plans! Oh and they said something about being quieter on the floor. Asked the staff to stop playing radios. They’re locking them up. That’s personal property so feel free to take it back, just don’t play it. Something about the patients. 

Underneath that was a baseball bag with two bats– both made of wood and very sturdy. There were also six baseballs. On the shelf next to that was a small portable radio. A quick review of the rest of the room was not as promising– a broom and an empty bucket. Stained coveralls and a stack of clean ones. Various bottles of cleaning supplies. Then…

“Yes!”

A map of the staff and patient floor was on the wall but there was blood spattered on part of it. From what she could tell she was in the same hall as the Staff Dormitories, the Nurse’s Station, the Doctor’s Office, Breaker Box, and a bathroom. Patients were in the hall she’d woken up in. On the floor beneath was security, ground staff, the kitchens, and the Rec Room. 

Upstairs was hard to read. There was also a basement and a sub-floor. Again, though, she had a hard time deciphering what they were labeled as. The only real thing she saw was Monorail Stop on the subfloor. 

Alarmingly she did see something on the title of the map: MARCUS ISLAND GROUNDS AND FACILITIES MAP.

She was on a fucking island and she had no idea what the note was talking about but it had mentioned a hurricane. 

She rubbed her temples, “I’m not in Colorado anymore.” 

She eyed the door.

A severed hand.

That monster.

“What’s going on here?” She asked herself and then looked at her choices again. If it was an island she needed a way fully off not just running around. A car, keys, something. She felt better with one key now but didn’t know how far it would take her. They had killed Jan and taken her, dug up work she had personally seen destroyed, so maybe it would be in her interest to get some answers.

The Nurse’s Station was the closest to her and she knew they frequently had information of all kinds. Then staff dorms. As a last resort she’d go to the doctor’s office because she was worried someone may have sheltered in there and she’d be unable to fight them off. 

Slowly, she opened the Janitor’s door and looked around— empty halls. 

She took the baseball bats and balls and the radio– if that thing went to noise maybe she could distract it. One bat she put in the bag, the other she carried. One baseball fit in each of her pockets, the others she stored in her backpack.

It’s something, at least.

She had the key in her pants and as close to ready as she could be– and so she made her way to the Nurse’s station which was down the hall, through swinging doors, and down at the end of another small hall. As far as she could see none of those lights were on. There was a bathroom next to the janitor’s room and she saw lights under it, which hopefully meant that the Staff Dorms also had power. The Doctor’s office, which appeared to be down another bank of halls and doors from the Nurse’s station, was a mystery.

These walls and corridors do not seem like they were designed with a hospital in mind. 

She took a breath. 

Let’s go.

It was one shaky step at a time and as she pushed the doors open she heard a hissing, gargling, choked sound. She was instantly worried– that wasn’t a healthy noise and she suspected someone was choking. She did not have a flashlight and she was at the mercy of the periodic emergency lights. 

“Hello? Is anyone there? Do you need help?”

“GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” 

Should she have screamed? No. Absolutely not.

But something that was gray and had peeling flesh and an open mouth was lunging and it was trying to bite and grab her. She swung the bat. At least she connected with the thing’s head but it didn’t stop it– it reached out for her again and she swatted and it’s arm, and then pulled back and went once more for its head, this time cracking it on the jaw and sending it crashing into a line of IV drips and wheelchairs that made a loud noise.

“NOISE!” She heard and the crashing footfalls began and Cait hissed, “Fuck!”

As quick as she could she dove under the Nurse’s Station desk and hid there until the monster’s footfalls quieted. There was then the shuffling of more of the creatures like the one that attacked her. Her baseball bat was made of wood– if she wasn’t careful she could crack it and lose what she had for protection. She wondered if the things would find her under the desk or if, like the big monster, they had some sort of sense of their own. If she was quiet would they keep reaching for her?

No time like now to test it. 

The feet were coming towards her– scuffling, bent at an angle no living person would tolerate– and she stayed still. 

What are they?

Everyone in her line of work had heard about BOWs gone wrong and there was a lot of whispers and rumors about what they would look like. She still had memories of a BSAA agent putting pictures in her face and asking what she knew about them.

This can’t be what they meant…these aren’t weapons, they are tragedies.

The broken and twisted feet continued to limp towards her and they did stop by her and a hand came down to pull her out of her position, mouth just behind. She took the end of the bat and shoved them away– they weren’t as strong as the big monster, though they were not stopped by a pain threshold. She swung and swung at the head and managed to collapse the thing’s skull enough that it dropped to the ground. There were three more down the hall and they were slow, but steadily coming by her.

Those ones can see me and hear me and they will come no matter what, but they are slow and not as strong.

She looked around– there was a gurney and a stairwell at the end of the hall. Cait took the gurney and started pushing it towards them longways, using it to push them and push them and push them until they fell down the stairs. Then she blocked the stairs with the gurney and hoped it slowed them enough— she turned and ran back to the Nurse’s Station to look around. 

There were charts:

G.S.

Overriding Alvarez’s orders to delay testing until Cuba, there is no need the serum is harmless in stages one and two. Please give out to the patients in the following doses:

Round 1: 50 mg on day 1, 50 mg on day 2 

Round 2: Injection of Control, use the epidural insertion

The charts marked changes– round 1 caused fevers in patients, caused one to vomit, and some seemed fine. 

Unsure of why this is happening, possible contamination with other vaccines. Ignore and proceed to next step. - G.S.

The charts were scribbled, frantic, with one post-it note on them saying GET THE VIDEO.

“Video?”

Cait looked at the nurse’s computers and they were password blocked. She turned over framed photos, opened drawers looking for something with the password on it, but didn’t strike gold until she turned over a desk calendar and saw a note:

New Password: TOMSELLECKWON

“Weird but who am I? Every one of my passwords involves Linkin Park lyrics.” Cait said as she typed in the password and went hunting for a Nurse’s ID. One was hanging off of the back of a chair and she was able to put in DWONGALTMAN after trying several methods of username. 

As soon as she was in the video was waiting there, as if it was the last thing someone had accessed.

Cait pressed play and watched as an older Asian woman recorded.

“This is Nurse Altman, we were advised to give out the first two rounds of the procedure to the patients here before transport. This was insisted upon against Dr. Alvarez’s wishes that we wait for the Cuban facility. It was not expected that patients exhibited reactions to the first step of the procedure. We were told that the modified viral strain had been de-clawed. We were told that patients would accept it like a vaccine. We did not see that they accepted it well. Yesterday despite our concerns we were instructed to give the second step. Patients showed almost immediate reactions–” The woman pushed a button and it went to operating room footage. They walked in a middle aged man who was sweating and shivering at the same time and saying My head hurts, are you going to give me any medicine? I’ve been asking all night. A doctor placated him and had him lay face down on a table before taking out a long epidural needle. This was pushed into the man’s upper back and almost immediately he began convulsing. When he stopped he was making a horrible labored breathing sound and groaning, a deep groan the human voice didn’t make on its own. The nurses were tapping the man’s back but he suddenly lunged at them and bit the arm of one. The video cut back to Nurse Altman, “We were told they would not be aggressive. We have sent three staff to quarantine in the dormitories with bites, and I am not sure we can avoid more incidents. Mr. Marrs was the first to bite, but not the last. After bites, staff exhibit fevers, lethargy, and a growing black infection. It is unclear why but we suspect that the modified viral strain we received was not as mollified as originally thought. We were told this is not the T virus, not the G virus, but another strain sampled by Dr. Alvarez from Dr. Marcus’ research. We were lied to, I think. I don’t know if even Doctor Marcus expected thi–” 

Nurse Altman was pulled down to the floor by something and she screamed, a bloody hand flailing and slamming on the keyboard before the screen went blank.

Cait took a breath in and out and looked down the hall where the Doctor’s Office was. She didn’t recognize those names. She knew, though, that nurses often had boots on the ground and saw the most of any given situation but didn’t always have the background information. She saw the Nurse’s station looked ravaged. Papers were everywhere, mostly destroyed. Two computers and a small radio were broken, smashed as though in a rage. There was not a clear patient list anymore. There was a rotting sandwich but a sealed bag of chips which Cait took and opened, popping them into her mouth with zeal. She wanted water but didn’t trust anything from a tap around here. Instead she rifled through cabinets until she found someone’s stash of midday Diet Coke and took one for now and one for later. With chips and soda in her she felt mildly restored. The stairwell was noisy, the gurney squeaking against the floor.

The Doctor’s Office was around the corner, in darkness. She took one look around and saw someone’s purse. There was a bottle of chemical mace on a keychain which she pocketed and then a schedule for the monorail.

LEAVING FOR LAB:

0700

0800

0900

1000

1030

1100

1130

1200

1230

1330

1430

1530

RETURNS FROM LAB:

0715

0815

0915

1015

1045

1115

1145

1215

1245

1315

1345

1415

1445

1515

1545

1600

1630

Unscheduled monorail use requires Director’s Override Card

On a Post-It next to that schedule said: It’s in the Director’s Office in the safe. He said the code was his birthday, so someone needs to go to HR for that…

Cait put that Post-It in her pocket.

All answers are in the Doctor’s Office, it seems. 

So she steeled herself and went down the dark hallway.

A/N: Length on these will vary! But I am hoping to get through some standard RE conventions with it. We get ourselves a stalker. We find fun toys. There's a mansion. It all circles back to Umbrella somehow. Unnecessary security measures. Underground escapades. Secret laboratories. Maybe zombie clowns.

Resident Evil regulars, I'm new here! I don't know your tags well, help a girl out and RB please. I see several RE communities but have no idea who takes fanfiction-- help a girl out.

So I updated with speed like I was being stalked by Mr. X and have done nearly 100k on Leon in a month. I don't know. There's an entire completed Leon x Reader/Wife story on the Masterlist. My goal is to finish this DLC before Capcom finishes theirs.

“Thanks Leon.” 

Leon ducked out of the helicopter and made his way through the airport. Absolutely everyone was trying to get out and he was the only dumb bastard coming in.

“Hunnigan?”

“I know, I know, less than ideal. But the good news is that nobody besides you and Mr. Bad are going to Miami right now, everyone else is leaving.”

“Does that mean you have an ID?”

“I do– Raul Alvarez. Check your phone.”

Leon looked down, “Looks charming.”

In the photo Raul Alvarez was scowling heavily– it was a government ID that expired several years ago but he looked like a bulldog in the middle of a rainstorm and asked to smile. 

“Alvarez has a long sordid history working with the DI in Cuba. He was assigned to their R&D with special priority on—three guesses?”

“Bioweapons?”

“Give the man a prize.”

“Where was he trained?”

“Formally? All over. Switzerland, Prague, Spain…lots of locations where we see established Umbrella bases.”

“We think the Cubans were wrapped up in Umbrella?”

“Well…interesting thing about Alvarez, his birth certificate doesn’t appear in databases. It was really hard to find. When he was really little there was Xerox made and it was still in Havanna. Did you know I took five years of college Spanish?”

“Why were you in college for five years?”

“I did the extra year to get my Master’s, now focus– it took a while but I was able to get someone to dig through the hard copies and did send me a photo of it. Click the link.”

Leon pulled up a really hard to read certificate, “Now, assuming I don’t speak Spanish….”

“His mother was Eliana Alvarez. She was perhaps the number two at DI for the last forty years. She died in a skirmish in Spain. In 2004.”

“That’s funny because I was in Spain in 2004. Surely you won’t tell me something fun like she was there.”

“She was there just before you. She was running Lab Six.”

Leon’s fist clenched, “Running? I thought this was all Saddler?”

“I don’t get the impression from her other connections that she was there to be a cooperative business partner. Confirmed death, about a month before you arrived. Looks like Saddler might have realized she was trying to double-time him.”

There was a photograph of her funeral in Cuba with Raul at the head of her coffin.

“Leon, that paternity line on the certificate? Did you see what was written down?”

“Raul Alejandro Marcus Alvarez….Marcus?” He squinted at the document, “James Marcus? You aren’t saying—”

“Oh I very much am. James Marcus had a son. Illegitimate, kept secret from Umbrella, but I mean he is there. Mom raised him in Cuba in the DI since he was a baby.”

“What does Cuban Intelligence want with Umbrella tech?”

“Marcus wanted to put different research in different places. Before his death he was paranoid Umbrella was turning on him, and with good reason. He had Wesker, sure, but he didn’t trust anything that was big enough to fall under the Umbrella. I have two recon photographs linking him and Eliana and I only see things with call sign Project Aguacero.”

“And if I learned my Spanish from the Terminator movies?”

“Project Heavy Rain.” 

He eyed the sky, “Did you do that on purpose?”

“No, but it feels like it’s meant to be the anti-Umbrella agenda. Raul Alvarez doesn’t appear to be a fan of Wesker’s. Pre-mansion Wesker was sent to an Umbrella testing facility in the Caribbean and while there we have evidence Raul took whatever was there before Wesker could arrive and went after him on site. Wesker got out, obviously, but there’s no love lost between Marcus’ experiment and his progeny.” Ingrid sent photos to Leon’s phone.

“Enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something, right? So why take the doctor?”

“Aguacera appears to still be developing in Cuba. This is hard to get information from, I hit a lot of walls. This is their answer to BOWs and all I can say is that it appears they love a parasitic base a la Plagas.” 

“Great. I had such fun with that one.” He deadpanned, “Is there any information on where in Miami Raul is?”

“He got diverted from his connecting flight to Cuba– with the weather his connections don’t matter. Here’s the rub though– if you don’t get to the doctor before the storm clears? He’s going to be gone and getting you into Cuba in this climate?”

“Oh come on, I’ve crossed borders before.”

“Not like this– there’s an Embargo and after Cuba refused to sign any sort of letter declaring they would not host human testing? We have been incredibly distanced. Current leadership has said that BOWs represent the next great step in a communist worldscape. The great leveler. Eliana Alvarez was mostly in intelligence but we have records of her suggesting that viruses would be a test of greater faith and greater control. We believe she was instrumental in developing Marcus’ research to be more aligned with the Plaga. Right now? It’s unclear how. We don’t believe they have an actual sample of the Plaga. We have no evidence but it might be a good idea for you to keep that in mind. We never developed a fully precise model of Luis’ Plaga knife and it does not appear our doctors would be as helpful. If only someone hadn’t blown it up.”

“I mean, it was worth blowing up the rest of it.” He grumbled, “But I get it. Don’t bring home a parasite.”

“Raul inherited his father’s beach mansion in Miami– designed by Umbrella’s favorite architect. This is a real Trevor original. The plans I have are chaotic and make almost no sense, and there’s an underground transportation system to what appears to be an underwater, offshore lab.”

“During a hurricane. Great.” 

“Well we like to keep you on your toes.”

“I’ll take playing on Easy Mode once in a while. Just for the sights.” 

“Sorry, but you are the best choice to get this handled before the downpour. This is very much a precarious situation with the weather. I have sent you the directions for the mansion and I got you a rental that I think you will really enjoy.”

He walked outside and flashed his ID to the attendant who handed him a set of keys. Leon pressed the unlock button and heard the beep-beep just off to his right.

It was an absolutely gorgeous souped up Charger.

“Oh Ingrid. You shouldn’t have.”

She smiled to herself— she hoped it did something to pull him out of his funk. 

___________________________________________________________________________

LOCATION: MIAMI, entrance to MARCUS ISLAND

LEON S. KENNEDY

Leon pulled up to the entrance for the house. Well. The bridge.

It was somehow quite isolated for this being Miami. Off of Fisher island was an even smaller island that may have once been little more than a foot off of one of the ones closer to shore. However it was even more isolated and it consisted of only one real visible entity: a giant looming mansion. 

Getting there from Fisher was annoying. Fisher was in the middle of a Carnival de Sol or some such nonsense. There were flyers for a fundraising carnival though fundraising for what he couldn’t tell.

“Rich and bored.” He snorted. 

There was nobody on Fisher except workers and those who couldn’t afford to get out via their private helicopters hours and hours ago. It wasn’t a bad drive in terms of distance but there were bridges and some were not his favorite type– narrow and shaky. The lack of pedestrians at least meant he could stretch the Charger’s engine out a bit and he was pissed to get to the bridge to Marcus Island was accessible only by key card.

“Truly private island, huh? Any chance you can hack it?”

“No, but I can see that there’s jetski rentals about a block from your current location.” 

He snickered, “Motorcycles of the sea.”

“See? I have your interests at heart.”

“How’s security looking?”

“You’re armed, right?”

He left the car by the bridge. He would probably want it there later and if it got damaged? It was a rental anyway. He had a date with a Skeedo and a missing doctor, and he was starting to feel like he was running late.

__________________________________________________________________________

LOCATION: MIAMI, MARCUS ISLAND

LEON S. KENNEDY

He didn’t think Spain had been optimal conditions for a Jet Ski but he had managed, somehow, to make the conditions worse. 

“I don’t think that hurricane waves are considered safe for Jet Skis, Ing.”

The white caps were getting really choppy and as he got close to the island there was debris– pieces of palms, something that seemed suspiciously like a broken boat. Then the dock– which was beginning to chip and break, seemingly snuck up on him and he crashed the Jet Ski into it.

He was thrown through the air and landed on a pile of crates, they smashed under his weight but revealed nothing. 

“So much for the element of surprise.”

He got to his feet because he heard footfalls coming his way but he couldn’t tell yet if they were the regular weighted falls of soldiers or the sloppy off-center canter of the undead. He raised his gun and waited and when he saw the undead with glazed over eyes  and gaping maws he just aimed at their foreheads and took a breath before squeezing the trigger. 

It was just a small clutch of five, all dressed in security gear from what remained of it. When they were down he patted down their pockets and found a bridge access keycard. 

He tucked that away. 

As he rifled through their bodies he found a pump action shotgun with some extra packages of ammunition on one of the guards.

“It’s like Christmas came early.” 

The Mansion was expansive and from what he could see there was a front door, a gated area to the back, a cellar door that was chained and padlocked, and many many windows. 

From inside the mansion he heard a terrible crashing and a roar and he took a breath. The front door was the closest thing so he ran towards it. When he got there he tried the knob but it was locked so he pulled out a shotgun and aimed for the door handle, blowing it off, and entered the mansion with a snide, “Knock knock, singing telegram.”

There were at least three floors and when Leon knocked in the door he heard the roar again, “NOISE! LOUD!”

He pumped the shotgun and waited as the ground shook and something large started barreling towards him, “Well don’t shoot the messenger.”

A/N: Length on these will vary! But I am hoping to get through some standard RE conventions with it. We get ourselves a stalker. We find fun toys. There's a mansion. It all circles back to Umbrella somehow. Unnecessary security measures. Underground escapades. Secret laboratories. Maybe zombie clowns.

Resident Evil regulars, I'm new here! I don't know your tags well, help a girl out and RB please.

So I updated with speed like I was being stalked by Mr. X and have done nearly 100k on Leon in a month. I don't know. There's an entire completed Leon x Reader/Wife story on the Masterlist. My goal is to finish this DLC before Capcom finishes theirs.

She tugged on them again but it was a futile gesture– she couldn’t yank that metal frame open. She had one free arm and could move her body so she tried to see if she could get to the floor and pull her wrist out of the cuffs but only succeeded in digging the metal into the soft skin and threatening to cut it. 

I do not need to start bleeding here. 

She tried to look around and took a breath, “Ok, ok…so you do not know where you are but let’s assume these people are not your friends. You cannot stay here and wait for them to Buffalo Bill you, or whatever, so think think think. Think. Need out of the handcuffs.” 

Cait bent to study the actual space between her wrist and the cuff and eyed the water. It wasn’t a big glass and she wasn’t sure if it was laced. She did not intend to drink anything if she could help it, but there simply wasn’t enough wiggle room on the cuff for the water to be an effective lubricant. Pulling didn’t work.

She felt something itch her scalp and when she reached her free hand to scratch it she realized her bun had been messed– half of it was falling out, but the other half was tangled in the metal pen she had used in the lab. She pulled the pen out and let her hair down, “Well you’re not a key and I’m not a Boy Scout but let’s see how this goes…it’s just a simple lock.”

Cait tried to force the pen into the lock hole as it was but it was too big, so she took a second and un-screwed it, breaking it into smaller sections, and using a long thin flat metal bar to slide into the cuff.

“Ok that feels better….come on, come on….”

Scritch…scritch….POP.

“Yes!” She hurriedly took off the cuffs and first looked around– bag or pen reassembly, door check–there were a lot of options. First she ran to the door and tried to open it but she was unsurprised to find that it was locked. When she took her metal piece to pick the lock she knelt down to get eyelevel with the knob, “Hmm, well that’s fancy. That’s an electrical lock. Who puts on of those in a door like this? Whatever, I can’t pick it….maybe I can short circuit it. Let’s see if there’s anything else that’s easier first because if I die electrocuting myself before trying the rest of the room I will feel really stupid.”

Cait turned to go to the window but the bars were thick– maybe three inches each and from the floor to the ceiling. She pulled lamely on them and sighed, “Well nothing out and nothing in.”

It was tropical looking outside. 

Figures I’m in the bad part of paradise.

She walked the whole room and tapped periodically on the walls, “Are any of you fake doors? Seems like the sort of murder-house with fake doors in the walls.”

But she had no luck.

She even went to the fireplace and looked up it but groaned, “There’s no way I can Santa Claus that.” 

She kicked the stone face of the fireplace, “Fuck!”

“OK, the door’s the answer…” She rubbed her face and studied what she had. She saw her old backpack on a peg and looked into it but expected exactly what she found: nothing. She had an empty bag, a sweatshirt, the remains of a pen, and a very expensive education that didn’t actually include much about electricity. 

It’s move or wait for someone to come cut me into pieces.

First she pulled the mattress and pillow off the bed, then she used all her strength to pull the metal bed frame against the door where the electric mechanism must’ve been. Then she threw the ceramic lamp against the floor and when it shattered there was barely a second before she heard some manner of roar. Cait tensed, “What was that?” 

After a moment it didn’t happen again and she took a small breath, “Not finding out.”

She looked a the plug and the sharp pieces of ceramic and used the sharpest one to begin stripped the rubber casing off of the plug. It was dark in the room without the lamp but while the window was barred it was still a window and there was a sunset happening in the distance. 

“Sunset…palm trees…a beach….” She scoffed, “None of that looks like my luck. But the storm clouds? Those…those look like my luck.”

She just hoped the storm held long enough for the light to be there as she worked. 

It took a little while but she stripped the rubber off of the wires and was able to wrap and tie them around the knob and the bedframe. She looked down at the pen and put it mostly back together to make a half-broken pen. 

“Ok, ok…we are going to plug this in. It will hopefully overload the door, then we are going to make a map as we leave so we don’t get lost.” She rolled up her left sleeve to use it as her paper. Cait was incredibly nervous– she didn’t know where she was or what was happening she just knew that she felt she was in danger, and anyone who had that old research was bad news. Getting out was her concern.

It’ll be ok if I can get out.

She felt horrifically alone. True horror in the alone of it all– she had no one to call for help, nobody who would likely notice she was missing at all though she did at least hope they noticed poor Jan and eventually figured she was gone. She had nobody who would put a wellness check in on her, not after the stunts she pulled. 

If I die here, nobody will know or care.

She steeled herself, “Ok let’s get to work then…”

She plugged in the wires and there was a loud surge– all the lights started flickering like a thunderstorm and there was a bad smell of burning. The door and the walls were wood in part and she noticed that there was a bit of smoke. She kept it plugged in though– the door was still closed. She heard an alarm go off and a red light that had been hidden against the wallpaper started going blinking and it had a whining type of alarm.

It reminded her of patient rooms– lights and alarms.

“Fuck.” 

Amid the nose and the grotesque red light, she noticed that the electric surge appeared to have stopped. She unplugged it and reached over the bed to check on the door knob but it wouldn’t budge, “FUCK!”

But at that moment a huge roar echoed and a SLAM SLAM SLAM like an elephant running down the hall– the room was shaking and then the same force was against the door. Someone was pounding on it making wordless growls and moans.

Cait screamed but that made the thing roar and she thought she heard, “LOUD!”

Maybe she was making it up, but whatever was moving that heavy door and bed like that was not her friend. She had limited options to hide– curtains and fireplace. She decided since the fireplace was empty and darker that rolling into a ball and putting up the hood of her black sweatshirt was the best move. 

She tried to stop whimpering and making noise so she covered her own mouth with her hands.

The thing, whatever it was, kept knocking into the door with a garbled cry that was clearer now, “NOISE!”

Her eyes were fixed on the door— and something cracked through the door and wall, moving the metal bed. It was not human, but it was vaguely humanoid. It reminded her of quasimodo but as if he had severe burns and boils. There was a meaty fist that was the size of half her body and nearly as thick. There was one big eye she could see as it roared and raged and it reached into the room, moving the bed, to get at the red light that was making the sound. That huge fist eventually grabbed it and ripped it entirely out of the wall, throwing it across the room, where it landed just a foot from her and a squeak escaped her muffled mouth.

When it did, the creature paused.

Don’t make noise, don’t die. Don’t make noise, don’t die. 

After a second the creature seemed satisfied and began shuffling off. She could hear his heavy footfalls on the floor and eventually when they faded into nothing she let herself, shaking, get out of the fireplace, “What the actual fuck?”

It was really dark now, with only the fading glow from the window. Even though she was alone, Cait whispered, “I guess it doesn’t like noise, whatever it is. Gotta be quiet.”

Talking to yourself is the first sign, Barrow. It might also be the second, third, and last signs.

Still shaking, Cait walked across the room and looked at the hole in the door.

Well…I can leave now…

The way the creature had bent and broken the bed frame and wall made it impossible for Cait to move it so she started to climb up— causing the metal springs on the bottom of the bed to creak. When it creaked there was a monstrous cry from down the hall and she immediately hopped off the bed. 

Fuck.

She looked around the room and eventually saw the mattress. 

She knew from cheap dorm room beds that springs would squeak no matter what, but the mattress could deaden the sound. 

That fucking thing can’t come back…

She brought the mattress over and tried to make it so she could get over the broken bed and through the hole in the door with limited sound, but every step she took was terrifying. The wood would begin to complain and she would pause and feel her heart rate spike. 

When she was at the top of the little mound, body halfway through the hole in the door, she heard the bed and wood groan and then before she could move out of the way her body weight broke the door and she was thrown unceremoniously onto the ground. 

FUCK!

“Noooooooooooooise!” 

She heard the thumps behind her so she got up and just ran in the other direction, praying something was fucking there.

A/N: Chunk-adjacent but I want you to think more pustules, one big eye that's open and can't blink, and bigger ears.

Next section: Leon lands in Miami.

Resident Evil regulars, I'm new here! I don't know your tags well, help a girl out and RB please.

So I updated with speed like I was being stalked by Mr. X and have done nearly 100k on Leon in a month. I don't know. There's an entire completed Leon x Reader/Wife story on the Masterlist. My goal is to finish this DLC before Capcom finishes theirs.

“Brass put a massive lid on a big crime. That’s the most violent crime to happen in that part of Colorado in twenty years, I think they are upset we made them button it up.” 

“They already removed the body for the deceased. Fill me in.”

“For shame, makes me feel like you didn’t read the whole file. I made that file special for you.” Ingrid took in a breath, “Dr. Jan Keller. Swiss virologist. He did a lot of work with Terra Save, looking at antivirals for BOW recovery sites. Broadened his work to more than just BOWs. Moderate resume. He has this little blip on his timeline where it looks like he was doing work for someone that got blacklisted. He’s related to Hans Brunner– Brunner was his great-uncle, a Swiss banker who did a lot of deals with the Spencer family.”

Leon breathed slowly in and out, “Well that’s charming. Wonder if they ever had barbeques and talked about world-ending zombie viruses, money laundering…soccer.”

“Definitely soccer.” Hunnigan agreed, “But Keller was a conscientious objector. He provided evidence against TriCell in the UN Trials about the war crimes in the Slav Republic. He claimed to know about several Swiss operations that were using and shipping Plagas in virus research. Didn’t do him any favors, professionally.”

“They moved the body already– do you have the crime scene photos?”

“8 ball, corner pocket.” Hunnigan chirped and Leon looked down at his phone.

He whistled long and low through his teeth, “Execution. Clean, between the eyes. But there’s no alarm raised? Used a silencer. Not exactly someone rifling around for pocket change. This was planned, definitely a hit. Now Keller and Barrow, was that working relationship good?”

“After Barrow was released by BSAA she kept herself very low profile. Keller was the one doing all the legwork for their current project, meeting with the nonprofits. Terra Save is on that list…”

“Claire know her?”

“I have a call out but I see no reason why. They weren’t in the same region.” 

“Do we have security footage?”

“Someone shot the camera and it damaged the feed and the on-site storage, I’ve been trying to access it remotely.”

“It’s do or do not, there is no try.”

“Let me clarify: I can hack it but sometimes I just want people to be cooperative. Why do I always have to bust through the digital doors? They should just be nice.”

“Well I can’t help you there.” 

“All I can say is that as far as we go– Keller wasn’t a suspect for us or any of our allies. Barrow, yes, was questioned but both were released.”

“Do we find it suspicious that they found one another?”

“I mean…” Ingrid took a measured breath, “Once DSO or BSAA burn you, from a research standpoint? You’re poison. It takes someone special to overlook that.” 

“So they both got blackballed and now he’s dead and she’s missing.” There was a work station that looked lived in– a massive desktop computer with a Walkman and some CDs beside it. An errant pencil with bite marks on it. His fingers swept over the Walkman, the stack of CDs, “Good taste in music.”

“Is this a job or a date?”

“Depends– is she single?” He joked but felt hollow inside. There were no pictures of her in the lab. Nothing personable except this Walkman and the CDs, at this computer station. 

“Appears married to the job, so you two have that in common.”

Ingrid flinched after she said it wondering if it would hit far too close to home. Leon clearly wanted something– he was clearly throwing a bit of a tantrum because he felt the lack in his life of something he didn’t know how to talk about. If she had to guess she would guess that Jill and Chris deciding to forego their plus ones and come to the wedding had been a kick to his nuts. They both refused to say it was a date. 

Hell–been partners since the S.T.A.R.S years!

But it was obvious that there was something bubbling, brewing. And Claire? She had RSVP-ed yes but been pulled away from the wedding at the last minute by work. Ingrid was married. Leon was starting to feel like there were camps being formed– those who decided to go home to work every night and those who went home to something else. If Chris Redfield could dig deep enough to sit next to Jill Valentine and put an arm behind her chair, to eye her, and make sure she had a drink. If he could find the place in his chest where care for someone lived behind glass, untouched by the rest of the world, than Leon could. He could. But for the first time he found himself thinking Jill Valentine was softer than Ada Wong– but maybe Ada had been a hallucination, a mirage. He thought he saw water there, but it was more and more sand. Maybe Ada liked things just as they were, and maybe that was the answer. 

Maybe.

He could be frustrated with it.

He didn’t know how to ask for something, how to find it, how to put his hands on it. Maybe Leon Kennedy wouldn’t know happiness in front of him if it broke his arm. 

“Leon?”

He’d gotten quiet and Ingrid mentally tracked what she would have to do to make it up to him. Maybe a Sunday dinner– he loved getting those invites. He’d bring a bottle of wine she couldn’t afford and insist on buying baked goods because he couldn’t, himself, cook. He ate whatever Tricia made with compliments even though Tricia was not known for every element of her meals coming out without incident. He had once said, quietly, to Ingrid that his dad, growing up, was big at sitting at a table and talking at the end of a day. 

“He was a cop, so end of day came at end of shift and sometimes he was all messed up so it was burgers for breakfast, but he always sat so he could talk to me. Always.”

Ingrid’s whole heart had knotted up and twisted for him– she was one of the very few who had access to Leon’s whole file. Most of the people on his teams were privy to only a few details.  Raccoon City had grown legs and walked around without his consent, so that he knew preceded him, but other details– the ones about when he was a kid– were not publicly known.

But Ingrid knew there was a kid in Leon, a kid worried the house would always be empty, and just in case someone came home hungry that kid would skip dinner and wait up for dad. Just in case dad came home hungry. Just in case. 

Just in case.

“Hmm?…Computer is locked without keycard access from the verified users.” He grumbled, “Can you hack it?”

“Not with the current security wall. It’s a kamikaze wall– I hack it and it deletes what’s behind it. You get beyond that one and yeah, sure.” 

“Are those…good walls?”

“If I was working on something that I really wanted kept safe? I’d use it.” 

He looked up from the computer and just tried to observe. To his right was an overturned chair, and the keyboard and mouse were very askew. He made a sweeping motion with his hand, “Signs of a struggle, seems.”

He looked over his shoulder, “So I’m struggling with something, someone…I don’t run there, it’s a dead end. The door is keycard protected.” He mimed putting a key in his hand, then he turned to observe how to get to the door, the fastest way. As he looked he noticed the tables were pushed a bit as though someone had barreled into them. He walked the path, eyes focused, “Did you make it to the door?”

By the door he looked up, down and saw a trash can that was knocked over and had a series of latex gloves in it from the police. He squinted and reached down, pulling off the gloves, “Gotcha.”

He found a keycard for Dr. Cait Barrow. The picture on this card was a bit older than the one he had in the file, she had her hair down here too. It was longer than it had appeared and she had hopeful eyes but a straight line to her mouth. The hair was murky blonde, nearly brown, and he said, “Hello Doc….Ingrid, I got Dr. Barrow’s keycard, I can get the computer through the wall. You ready for me?”

“Ready and waiting.” 

“Careful, you’ll make Tricia jealous.” 

“Tricia believes she could defeat you in open combat because you wouldn’t hit her back.”

“She’s right.” He swiped the card, “Ok, do you see it?”

“I do–” She cracked her fingers, “Let me dive in.”

The screen in front of him came to life and he shook his head, “This doesn’t mean anything to me…”

“I know this could shock you but none of my searches are coming back with obvious red flags. No bioweapons. This is vaccine research– and I am no expert but it seems like pretty advanced vaccine research. Makes sense. Her background and Dr. Keller’s both have virology and she had a round with contagious diseases.” 

“Guess it didn’t catch on?”

“Hardy har.”

“Seriously, if this is normal research and this is good research— why is she missing? Why did BSAA interrogate her? The file said threat assessment but Chris says that about looking out the window before taking a pizza in. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think here…”

“Hang on, they just cleared me the security footage– watch your screen.”

There were two angles– one from the elevator to the front locked door, and one from the locked keycard door in the lab out at the whole lab. He tapped on the elevator hall first. A tall blonde man came out of the lab and went into the hall, taking out a cell phone and starting a video call– holding up the phone and talking animatedly into it. 

“No sound?”

“I’m not magical, Leon.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” 

Jan was talking on the phone and Ingrid sighed, “Wife is back in Switzerland. Phone records show a nightly check in. She’s pregnant. They already have four, seems like a late in life oopsie-daisy.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

The elevator opened and Jan noticed, seemingly hopped off the phone with his wife, blowing a kiss, and then pocketed the phone and reached a hand out to shake the stranger’s but instead of extending a hand the stranger pulled a gun out with a silencer on the muzzle and shot Jan right in the head.

“Jesus, that’s cold.” Ingrid shivered as she watched the man take his guest keycard and swipe the door, stepping over Jan’s body.

“Do we have an ID on this guy?”

“Not yet.”

“Did he have to provide ID to get the guest card?”

“I am running that and facial recognition but his glasses are slowing me. Same with the beard. Facial scans can get tripped on those details.”

“Ok let’s see what travel-sized evil does inside–” Leon was watching, closely. Cait was working intently. For a moment he ran that camera back to see if anything had happened earlier. Aside from changing her CDs, ordering noodles, and getting up to stretch her back she was basically plugged in to her desk, “She certainly loves the work.”

There was something about her that struck him as very normal. He liked to think he had a gut about people, though his trials with Ada and Jack had, perhaps, offered a counter argument there. He wasn’t quite as bad as Chris, eyeing every barista with superstition, but he was someone who believed you could sort of smell bad intent. This woman was just working. She was chewing on a pencil and when he looked down it was still there. She would sometimes pop in a brick of bubblegum and gnaw on it. She drank a lot of coffee and he looked across the room where there was just a plain table with a drip coffee machine there. Mr. Coffee, 16 cups, with a warmer that was stained from someone pulling out the carafe before the drip was done. He watched that coffee pot in the video and it started full, but was empty now. Nobody had been in to clean on the grounds and refill it. There was a massive ceramic jar marked Coffee and in the little shelf by it were several bags of discounted grounds.

Breakfast Blend

Dark Roast

Cinnamon Vanilla

She wasn’t particular about brands, she just stacked them. He assumed it was her, anyway, as in the video Jan was drinking tea and juices. His work station was on the other side of the room from hers, separated by tables. That made Leon suspicious– why? Every time they spoke she was smiling, pleasant, but seemed cautious. The line appeared to be drawn by her, not Jan, who frequently walked over to talk to her or share pages from what he was working on. She would talk to him, then get back to work. Then the timestamp was getting to where Jan seemed to indicate he was going to talk on the phone and Leon sighed, it was a good man dying needlessly for something. Kids without a dad. Wife widowed.

It’s bullshit.

Cait was working. Headphones on. Leon again looked at the stack of music. She had enough here to work for hours without having to repeat anything. It was all loud too– angry. Nirvana. System of a Down. Green Day. 

Your soul has to hear the screaming and see it as music, or you don’t keep listening. 

He understood. 

He had blown out the speakers on his Camaro once after a bad mission. 

She was just typing and even though he could guess how this would go he still found himself going, “Come on, look up.”

The little man in the suit, his glasses, walked in like a mountain lion. He was observing her. Circling. Trying to see over her shoulder, see the work. 

“Turn around, turn around.” Leon whispered.

Ingrid smiled to herself– he still cared. It was so important to her that they hadn’t hit the line where Leon didn’t care anymore. If he ever got there she had a feeling she’d curl up and throw away her hope too. 

When Cait jumped in the footage Leon tensed. The man knew he’d scare her, he thought it was fun.

Prick.

He had caught her off guard and she looked around, looking lost, eyeing the door where Jan was totally unaware that he was already gone. He saw her use a pen to hold up her hair, throw on a sweatshirt, and seemingly start a sales pitch. Whenever the man tried to spy on her work, her notes, she moved to sort of block him and finally she pretended she was clearing up the workspace by dumping her notes in a backpack. Leon looked around the room for the backpack but didn’t see it. 

“What’s he handing her, Ingrid?”

“Looks like a bound report, can’t tell what it says.”

“She looks surprised…even scared of it.”

The man was making a motion, and Leon mimicked the hand gesture and the motion of the lips, “This.”

“Pardon, Le?”

“He’s saying he wants that, whatever he threw at her. He wants that. She certainly doesn’t seem to.”

Leon focused on her and she started to look scared indeed– scared but aware the situation was fucked up and she needed to leave. She threw the book at him. Leon smirked, “Atta girl. Run.”

She grabbed the bag and got to the door before tripping over Jan, and that’s when the man in white produced a needle and down she went. He threw her over his shoulder like the weight didn’t bother him, and he sauntered down the elevator and out the front door like he did not care who saw. He had his gun in his hand, prepared to take out any errant security guards, but the timestamp showed they had turned the corner on the main room not a minute before he came. He walked out of the front with the doctor, and that was that. 

“He wants whatevers on that thing, and he killed one doctor and took the other. Seems like she has a specialty he needs consulting on.”

“My guess would be whatever the BSAA interrogated her on.”

“Can you try your BSAA contacts and I’ll try mine? See who gets further faster?”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath…lot of red tape coming out of there these days.”

“I get it.”

On Ingrid’s end something dinged and she pulled up the screen, “Partial facial hit going into a private airstrip about forty miles from your location. Looks like your guy. He took his sunglasses off inside this time– let me do a quick sweep of the—”

She stopped and it made Leon stop, “Hunnigan?”

“Well good news I have a flight plan.”

“Where’s it going?”

“Miami.”

“I know I asked for something tropical but I didn’t expect you to deliver.”

“About that…”

“Uh oh.”

“Uh, yeah– Miami’s on lockdown. There’s a massive storm coming in, storm of the century type deal if the projections hold, and I don’t know if even I have the clearance to get you in there.”

“That sounds like my luck…Well if you don’t get me close, my legs work fine. Refine the location for Miami and I’ll head back to the plane.” Before he left he ran his fingers over the stack of CDs, “Call you on the plane.”

He tapped the comms off and looked at her keycard, placed it next to her CDs and her Walkman, “He didn’t want what was on this computer. He could’ve taken your card and gotten all of it. He wanted you, doc…but I’m going to get you out of there. Just hang on.”

He let his thumb rub over the little face on the card with the sad eyes, who stocked coffee to work all night and was afraid to sit to close to her lab partner as if she was contagious and trying to keep him safe. She had failed to do that, but it wasn’t her fault.

I’m coming. Don’t do anything too dangerous until I get there.

A/N: Next-- whatever did happen to Doctor Barrow?

Note: does anyone know how to get a table to format on this hellsite? I literally made a case for him using a table and GAH.

Resident Evil regulars, I'm new here! I don't know your tags well, help a girl out and RB please.

So I updated with speed like I was being stalked by Mr. X and have done nearly 100k on Leon in a month. I don't know. There's an entire completed Leon x Reader/Wife story on the Masterlist. My goal is to finish this DLC before Capcom finishes theirs.

In, and out.

Repeat.

In, out.

You count them.

One, two, three…

Eyes falling to your lap where your fingers anxiously pick at the other, you find you’d picked completely through the skin by the side of your thumbnail. Blood builds and smears along your nail fold where the skin had given in to the small assault, but you can’t stop. Your other thumb still picks at it, its blunt nail scratching through the sticky warmth and spreading the blood further. 

Breathe.

In, out.

It’ll be okay.

It’ll—

You grind your teeth as tears begin to sting behind your eyes. You don’t think you’ve ever felt this shaken, this terrified, in your entire life. Not when you’d been a part of this world all that time ago—you were on a different side back then. Not when you’d been arrested—you’d been scared, sure, but at least they were the so-called ‘good guys’.

They wouldn’t kill you just because you were an inconvenience to business.

You’re going to die.

It sinks into you, heavy and relentless. You wonder if what they say about a warm bright light is true, if you do get a few moments of reliving memories before falling into the inevitable abyss. Would it hurt? Be quick? The fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not knowing all that could happen before the end. Maybe they’ll drag it out, make it a punishment for getting in their way before showing some mercy with a bullet. 

No. No crying, you tell yourself. 

This is it, and whatever happens… well, there’s no changing it.

A voice echoes in your ears—warm, familiar, stubborn. 

I won’t let anything happen to you.

You can’t be mad at him for breaking his promise. It was your own stupid self that got you into this position. If you had just waited at his apartment, endured the safe walls of his home and the waft of his cologne after he left… if you had just listened, you wouldn’t be here. 

It was heartache that had you all but running out of that door. You needed air, needed something to clear the sudden onslaught of memories and the way his voice swirled in your mind. It was always real to me.

It had been real.

The soft spoken words, the gentle touches, the way he had looked at you, the way he had made you feel, the way he said those three little words that had been your ultimate undoing…

It wasn’t all a lie.

At least if you die, when you die, you’ll know that. You’ll have that to reflect on. You’ll go knowing the love you had felt had been accepted, and returned. It still hurts, the scarring left from how everything had changed permanent and lasting deep in the very core of you, but at least, while it was happening back then, it had been real. 

The car rolls to a stop, and your heart briefly along with it. You don’t know where you are, where you’re being taken to next. You don’t move until they gesture you to. The hand that curls around your arm when you awkwardly make your way out of the backseat is tight, an unspoken promise that there was no easy way out of this.

There was no running.

In, out.

Maybe he’d find you in time. Maybe he was already close.

You comfort yourself with that as you’re moved into a new vehicle, the sound of liquid being thrown about and splashing behind you. You look back out the open door in time to watch one of the men throw a small lit match into the now vacant backseat, eyeing the flames that engulf the interior of the car you had been in, thankful they didn’t decide to just leave you in it.

For now, there was still a bit of time. 

—

His heart still beats thickly in his throat. Sweat had gathered on his palms as soon as he saw you exit the elevator, and had slowly built along the back of his neck with every moment in your presence. He's surprised he's been able to keep control over his voice so far, a barely there tremble threatening to break free in his words and cause him to stutter under your attention.

You were hard, and completely closed off. You listened throughout his little debriefing, and understandably been pissed when he told you just exactly what they were asking of you. It was hypocritical, even he had to admit.

Even with your evident and spoken anger and borderline disgust, a part of him still warms at the sight of you. He doubts that will ever fade. 

“Are we done here?”

He sees how you struggle to look at him, feels the hollow echo of what once was before getting hit with harsh reality.

“Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

He feels weak as you move to leave the room, you couldn’t move quick enough.

It all hits him like a punch to the stomach and he folds from it, bracing his hands on the cool top of the conference room table and letting his head hang low. He drags in a breath, catching the smell of your perfume as you pass. It’s new, so different from your old one.

A reminder of how everything had changed, of what he did to you.

He exhales quietly, eyes slipping shut and seeing the hatred that had swam in your eyes behind his lids. The door slams shut behind him.

—

He gets it over a call.

The car was found, torched and completely destroyed, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that any potential evidence has been destroyed, doesn’t care they weren’t quick enough to intercept before whoever took you fled again. He doesn’t care because he’s relieved at the following information provided to him.

No body was found within the vehicle.

The immediate thoughts that had assaulted him of seeing your body, twisted, unmoving and burnt beyond recognition, vacate to the depths of his mind, and he finds he can breathe a little easier. His tie sits a little more comfortably around his throat, and he’s able to focus a little better on the road as he drives to the office.

You’re okay. For now, you’re okay.

They still want you alive, and that’s good. That means he has time.

“There’s a security camera around the corner from the lot,” Wilson’s voice continues to fill the car.

Marcus didn’t comment on it at the time, too busy swimming in his own thoughts and the sheer relief flooding his system, but he had heard the edge in the young agent's tone when he had answered the call. He’s thankful Wilson wouldn’t be forever haunted by the sick images his mind had conjured. 

“It's old, but we’ve been able to get a rough image of the vehicle. Black SUV, tinted windows so we weren’t able to get a look at the occupants. Also got a slight partial plate, but it’s barely readable. I’ve sent it through to forensics to see if they can do anything with it.”

“Good. I’m sending a team your way, make your way back to the office once they arrive. I want you with me.”

If anyone on his team would understand the depth to this, it’s Wilson.

“Yes, sir.”

Marcus knows the agent has some experience at this kind of shit, having previously read over his history within his file before confirming his success at getting the position he was so eager for, but this time it was a little more personal.

You two had spent quite a bit of time together during the start of this case, would go as far as to call you two somewhat friends, and so the softer, less Special Agent Pike, more Marcus side of him feels the need to ask, to focus on something other than his own emotions.

“How’re you doing?”

The line falls silent, before the younger agent clears his throat quietly. “Can I speak freely, sir?”

“Always.”

It comes out in a quiet rush. “I’m so fucking relieved she’s not in that car.”

Marcus makes a low noise of agreement. “You and me both.”

—

“0800, on the dot. Not a second after, understood?”

The young agent before him nods, his enthusiasm evident. Marcus remembers that enthusiasm, the excitement at finally being where he wanted to be, where he worked so hard to get to.

This new guy… Marcus liked him. He knew watching over his interview that he’d be a good fit within his team. The kid was eager for an opportunity, had gall, and Marcus knew you’d be safe in his agent’s hands.

“Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“I don’t expect trouble along the way, but I’ll note it now that her safety is paramount. She’s—” he stops, looking down at an older photograph of you sitting amongst the various bits of paper pulled from the file and feeling the familiar ache creep around his heart. 

She’s important to me.

The words had almost slipped free, danced so easily, so naturally, on the tip of his tongue it had taken his mind a moment to catch up and stop them from leaving his mouth. He clears his throat softly, tucking the image back into the manilla folder so he doesn’t have you smiling up at him.

He didn’t want to use your mugshot for the file made for Wilson. He didn’t want the agent to go into this with a preconceived idea of who and what he would assume you are. After everything, the least he could do was give you a chance to be known as you are, not what they made you to be.

“She’s integral to the case. Should anything arise, her safety is your highest priority.”

Agent Wilson straightens in his seat, a cool wash of determination settling into his features. Yeah, Marcus thinks to himself, he’s a good fit.

“Understood, sir. She’ll be in good hands.”

Marcus nods.

He thinks you’ll like him the most out of his team. His other agents are great, but you’ll be on your guard. The others will be quiet, and will keep to themselves more often than not. That wouldn’t help you. Wilson’s a talker, though. Sometimes, relentlessly so. It might help you find some comfort in this shitshow, might make things a little easier for you, a little less lonely. 

—

He studies your photo where it’s pinned on the board, only a little ways away from one of the murder victims' post mortem images. The images are a stark contrast from each other, one warm in hues, brightness swimming throughout the image and bursting from the wide spread of your smile. The other is cold, clinical. Void of life.

The more he looks, the more his mind twists and runs, swapping the features of the two women until it’s painted a version of your own post-mortem photograph. Skin sunken beneath your open eyes, pupils fixed, unseeing. A cold measuring tape held next to the gaping hole in your skull.

He blinks, and the images are as they were.

Jane is damn near adamant they want you alive, but without definitive proof that you’ll be okay, it does little to settle his mind.

Marcus turns away from the board with a new wash of nausea he swallows down, flicking through the notes provided to him by Lisbon’s team from the interrogation and marking the noted locations of addresses on the map spread out before him. 

He can hear the work beyond the conference room, a part of him comforted by the sheer amount of effort put in by both his own and Teresa's agents.

They’re close.

That familiar feeling swirls in the pit of his stomach, knowing that with every new bit of information that comes through by the hour, they’re closing that gap between them and you. It overrides the worry, pushes his anxiety to the side until all he feels is brute determination, the urge to get the job done and retrieve you swiftly and safely.

You’ll be okay.

He’ll make sure of it.

Marcus feels the presence of someone hovering just inside the door of the conference room, and fights the sigh of annoyance threatening to break free from his lungs. He doesn’t want to entertain niceties, doesn’t have time for idle chit chat and useless empty conversation, so he cuts straight to the chase with a sharp edge in his tone that says just that.

He’d feel ashamed by the bluntness of it if his mind wasn’t working so damn hard to absorb every possible bit of information given to him in an effort to get any closer to you.

“Can I help you with something, Agent Van Pelt?”

He sees her move in his peripheral as he shuffles through more notes, more paper, more satellite images of warehouses and shop fronts and galleries. She shifts slightly, almost unsure as her eyes glance back to the open door to the conference room before they roll back to settle on him.

“I just wanted to say that it’ll be okay,” she says finally. “We’ll find her.”

It’s spoken so surely, so warmly sincere, it completely cuts through the icyness that had settled in his chest and worked its way through his nervous system. He feels his shoulders slacken slightly when he eventually meets her eyes, the tightness of his features softening when she gives a small reassuring smile.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, giving his head a little shake to settle the mess of emotions swirling through him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be—”

“It’s okay,” Grace’s smile widens . Her eyes fix on the board behind him in open interest, but it doesn’t hit him like it did with Jane and Lisbon. It doesn’t get his hackles up in defence with a need to shield you from potential judgement.

“Seems like she’s really something.”

He looks over his shoulder, gaze swiping one more time over your image. “She is.”

—

It’s a warehouse, empty save for the leftover pallets, a few odd pieces of old machinery from previous companies and the van you had been driven in.

You’d lost track of the route they had taken you, not wanting to risk anything by making it obvious you were trying to decipher your location by looking out of the windows. There was no point. You doubt you’d make it very far if you chose to run.

Playing along, doing what these people ask when they ask it, it’d hopefully buy you some time. Hopefully the time Marcus and his team needs if they were looking. No, you know he is. You can feel it.

Before all the recent developments, you probably would’ve resigned yourself to your uncertain fate, and accepted that you were just another pawn for the FBI. A nobody, just mere collateral damage in the wider grand scheme of things.

You lost track of how long you’d been standing in the one spot, almost scared to move. The small group of men had shown you out of the van and onto the main floor of the warehouse, and then moved to the sides. They stayed quiet, sometimes talking quietly amongst themselves, but otherwise leaving you alone.

A welcome relief.

“You’ve certainly been working away, haven’t you? Piece after piece. Surely you’re tired.”

The men take their cue and start their exit, leaving you alone with the newcomer. The one pulling the strings and keeping them in line, if their quick and quiet departure was anything to go by. They clearly deem you no threat whatsoever.

You turn to the voice, eyes sweeping over the familiar face of Edward Thomas. You recoil a little in surprise, almost expecting someone else to be with him because of how out of character something like this was for the older man, but he remains alone, and you are left standing corrected.

“Didn’t really have much of a choice,” you murmur.

You don’t think openly admitting you had readily agreed to helping the FBI wouldn’t work well in your favour.

“How’d you know it was my work?”

“I didn’t,” he admits quietly, “in the beginning. We actually thought you were still in prison.”

“We?”

Edward smiles, though it lacks any warmth or sincerity. He looks tired, older. “Asking for yourself, or your FBI boyfriend?”

You ignore the goad, glancing carefully around the vacant space with a barely concealed shiver down your spine. Now what?

“What am I doing here?”

He sighs, rubbing a tired hand across his weathered features.

“This whole thing, it’s—it’s turned ugly, and quite frankly I’m tired of it. I had no intention of being this involved. I needed something to offer in return for my… retirement, let’s call it. After all, after a few of your pieces had been discovered by myself, interest has grown in your particular… area of expertise. You have a few curious in what you can offer.”

A sick feeling turns your stomach, but you keep a hold of your expression.  “So you’re not auctioning off my pieces anymore, you’re just auctioning off me.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Throwing me to the highest bidder so you can, what, run away to a sunny beach somewhere? That’s not like you, Edward.”

“Yes well, as I said, it’s turned ugly.”

“By ugly, you mean the people that have been killed.”

“You’re quite naive if you didn’t think that was happening before your arrest. People died then, and people will die now. It’s simply a part of the world you so readily jumped into.”

“Can’t really blame the girl.”

A calm and collected voice takes you off guard, and you quickly school your stunned expression into something a little less obvious as the one and only Patrick fucking Jane all but waltzes into the room, looking completely at ease as he slides his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

“She wasn’t exactly given a brochure on the workings of an underground art ring upon her application.”

If he’s here, then his team isn’t too far behind.

And if his team isn’t too far behind, surely that means Marcus would be with them, too? A slight twinge of hopes grows to life in your chest, your heart picking up with the possibility you’d be walking free from this.

Edward frowns at him in confusion, eyes darting to the direction of the van and where the three men that had bought you in had disappeared to.

“How the hell did you get in here?”

“The door,” Jane comments as if it were obvious, and you can’t help the eye roll, pinning him with such a look of disdain it makes his lips twitch.

“And what are you doing here?”

He has the nerve to look bored, eyes observing the empty warehouse in false interest. The sheer ease he remains in has Edward’s frown deepening with every step he takes further into the room.

“Checking out industrial real estate. What’s the going rate for one of these?” His hand leaves his pockets to gesture vaguely about the open room. 

“Mr Jane, I must admit I do tire of your little games.”

You startle, eyes widening as you glance between them.

“You two know each other?”

“We met at the museum,” Jane shrugs. “When I said I was following my own leads, I was. It just wasn’t you. I did have to get you out of the way, though. Sorry about that.”

He doesn’t sound sorry in the slightest. You stare at him, at a complete and utter loss, your mind struggling to piece together all of the events that had led you here. Did he intentionally upset you at the museum? To get you to leave?

It’s all a big fucking game to this man.

“You knew,” you realise slowly, your brows coming together, “you knew I’d leave the investigation.”

“I expected. Just like I expected Mr Thomas here to make a move as soon as he knew you weren’t being monitored anymore,” Jane explains easily, unbothered by the way your face twists with his little reveal.

You had been a pawn.

Just not the FBI’s pawn.

You were Patrick fucking Jane’s pawn.

“What I didn’t expect, was you running off, and.. you know, all that happened after,” he trails off with a slight wince. “That was inconvenient, I’ll admit.”

He, at the very least, has the grace to look apologetic at that. So he didn’t mean for it to work out like this. He knew Marcus would flip and put you into protective custody. He counted on Marcus getting you out of town and finding you somewhere safe to lay low while they worked out the rest of the case.

What he didn’t count on, however, was the mountain of emotional baggage he was undoing and letting loose during his little playtime pretending to be an FBI agent.

“Inconventient?” You grind out, anger simmering beneath your skin. “I got fucking kidnapped, Jane!”

“Like I said—inconvenient.”

“Enough.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe you. Marcus was right, you really are a fucking dick.”

“Things could’ve gone smoother, yes—”

You jump at the sudden firing of a gun, wide eyes immediately flying to Edward where he stands unimpressed, holding the weapon towards the ceiling. He then levels it between you, your undeniable anger at the consultant melting steadily into fear.

Jane takes a step towards you automatically, his arm outstretched as if he could reach you despite the distance between you, but he stills when the gun is aimed for him.

“I said enough.” 

—

“North entrance is covered,” Rigsby reports as Marcus arrives on scene mere moments after them. “South’s free—they’re not expecting company.”

“Good,” Marcus nods, eyes scouting the area around the warehouse and the flashy expensive car Thomas had left parked along the side. Might as well be a flashing neon sign in an area like this. “How many on the north?”

“Three,” Cho replies plainly, checking over his weapon.

“You certainly work quick. We’ll send a small team to cover both exits for now, when—”

“We need to wait for back up, we don’t know how many are inside yet.”

He fights the frown threatening to dig between his brows as he looks at Lisbon, her expectant gaze already fixed tightly on him. He knows that. He doesn’t need to be told that like he’s some freshly graduated baby agent, let alone by someone who’s not even on his team. He bites back the sarcastic words building on his tongue.

“When SWAT arrives,” Marcus continues as if she didn’t interrupt him, “we make the call to move in. How far out are they?”

“Four minutes,” Cho provides again, looking between the two superior agents with a look he couldn’t quite decipher, but otherwise keeping quiet.

Anything could happen in four minutes.

Marcus presses his lips together, eyes raking over the structure they suspect you’ve been taken to and its wider surroundings. His hands find his hips as he studies the high windows, wondering if Wilson would be able to find anything to climb up on to find a point to look in to until backup arrives.

“Uh, where’s Jane?”

Rigsby’s carefully posed question pulls Marcus's attention from the building, his teeth quickly mashing together as he attempts to reign in the hot flood of irritation that sweeps over him. Sure enough, the consultant is nowhere to be found when the team looks, and the irritation morphs into something a little stronger, something with a bit more of a kick.

He can’t help it.

Marcus smiles at Lisbon, stiff and sarcastic. “I see that tight leash is working well.”

She sighs, barely sparing him a glance. “Don’t.”

“If he does anything to—”

A single shot echoes from the warehouse and he jolts as if it had come straight for him and pierced right through his chest. Seconds of silence pass, and with each slowed tick of time in his mind, there you are. On the autopsy table, a bullet through the head. Cold. Lifeless.

Someone speaks, reporting to the incoming team that shots have been fired and he doesn’t care to look at who calls it in. His eyes dart over the building, waiting for movement, a yell, a scream, anything—

He doesn’t, he can’t, wait any longer. Logic, strategy, training—it all blends and settles at the sound of nothing. It’s instinct, it's pure adrenaline. Marcus takes off towards the building while reaching for his weapon, the thought of you bleeding out on the filthy floor, losing precious time with every moment he wastes standing around, pushing his legs harder as he comes up upon the back entrance.

“Marcus!” Teresa shouts after him, already following. “Cho, on me. Rigsby, Van Pelt, you’re on the north entrance. Wilson, wait for SWAT and direct on their arrival!”

—

Your ears ring from the gunshot. The piercing echo of it threatens to stop your heart then and there, the tremble in your hands obvious as you quickly and carefully raise your hands in an effort to show you’re of no threat. Jane mirrors you, studying the way the gun ever so slight shake in Edward’s hand as the barrel of it bounces between the both of you.

“FBI, put your weapon down.”

You almost choke on a sob at the familiar voice.

He’s here. 

You feel Marcus move step up and next to you, his own weapon held steady and pointed directly at Edward . You watch the recognition, the panic, the indecision, the urge to flee play out on the older man’s face, the shake in his hand increasing under the presence of Marcus. 

“You’re surrounded. Don’t go doing anything stupid. This is your one and only chance to walk out of here, so put it down, and we’ll talk. We can figure something out.”

“I just want this to be over,” Edward mutters with a distinct tone of irritation, flustered by the sudden presence of an actual FBI agent and having their weapon pointed at him, “it wasn’t meant to go this far… I didn’t want any part of this.”

“I know,” Marcus soothes carefully, his voice smooth and calm. “Put the gun down, and we’ll talk about it.”

“You know, it’s your fault,” Edward continues, completely absorbed in the stress of his thoughts, and the gun changes direction to land directly on you, “if you had just stayed aw—”

“Hey,” Marcus snaps immediately, “if you’re going to point that at anyone, you point it at me. She got dragged into this because of me. All of this? It’s on me, do you hear me?”

You jump in fright at the echo of two gunshots towards the front of the warehouse, and in a split second, you watch Edward jump in surprise too, and give way to the panic that overrides the logic of a negotiation.

It all happens so quickly. You feel a shove from the right, the direct force of a body moving and colliding with you just as more shots ring out throughout the warehouse and you stumble back and away from where you had just been standing.

Edward falls back from the shots Teresa and another agent direct at him, the pair suddenly appearing from behind you and quickly advancing towards him, while Jane jumps forward to kick the gun away from the hand that weakly reaches for it.

The body that had collided with you is sprawled on the ground and your heart drops to the pit of your stomach at the familiar hand swept dark hair of Marcus. He doesn't get up. He doesn't move.

Bile builds in your throat as you drop to your knees, uncaring as the rough floor scuffs the skin of your knees through the thin material of your dress. You tug desperately at his jacket, rolling him over and clawing at his body until he sprawls over your lap, heavy and unmoving.

“Marcus? Marcus, look at me,” you beg softly, a strangled sob falling from your throat when his eyes eventually flutter open languidly and focus tiredly on yours. “What did you do? God, what did you do?”

His lips part, words building on his tongue, but before they can fall from his mouth he jolts in your arms, heaving and coughing and sputtering. It sounds fucking horrible.

You watch the blood ooze from his lips, creating a stark trail of bright red that melts into his faded stubble and slides down along his jaw. You push at his jacket and feel your heart plummet to the floor at the deep maroon patches outwardly soaking the crisp white shift from the holes in his torso.

“It’s okay,” you soothe shakily, wiping the blood away from his lips with your thumb and feeling your stomach jolt with the wet sticky feel of it. “It’s okay. Keep looking at me, okay? I’m here. Somebody help me! Marcus, please—hold on, please—”

“Pike!”

Someone takes him from your arms, lays him on the ground and covers the bullet wounds with their hands. Teresa is yelling out orders, something about getting medics in and SWAT and soon more people swarm the warehouse. You sit on your knees, hands warm, and when you look numbly down at them, you see the glisten of his blood coating your skin.

There's so much blood.

“Marcus?” You whimper quietly, his name sticking to the inside of your throat.

“Hey, come on,” a female voice speaks from the side of you, her hands winding around your arms and pulling you from the ground. Your widened eyes find hers as you stumble to stand on two feet, her red hair previously pulled into a ponytail slightly ruffled and out of place as strands fall across her face.

“Let’s give them some space, let them help him. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” you reply hoarsely, eyes falling back to where Marcus lay on the ground as even more people surround him.

“Look at me,” the redhead speaks, a gentle smile pulling at her lips as you do as she says. “Good. Do you feel any pain?”

“Uh, I don’t… I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” she says softly, winding an arm around your back and gently leading you from the warehouse. “We have people out here that are going to help you—”

Why are you shaking so much? So damn hard?

Your breath gets stuck in your throat, and your hand moves to cover the length of it in confusion, hoping the press of your fingers would help the oxygen move more freely into your lungs.

Instead of helping you find your breath, you feel the smear of blood along your skin and the heady metallic ring of it sinks into your senses, the urge to vomit suddenly curdling your stomach.

The shaking increases as you jerk your hand away from your neck as if it had cut you. You make a noise, something small and choked, and your knees weaken from the spin of your head. 

“Hey, I need you to take a deep breath for me, can you do that? I’m here, I’ve got you.”

“I-I’m trying,” you choke out, suddenly aware of the hot tears spilling down your cheeks as the wind hits with a sharp bite as soon as you step out of the building. “Is—is he going to be okay?”

The redhead briefly glances back at the warehouse, and you think you find a small edge of uncertainty shine in her eyes, but it’s gone within a blink. She gives you another small, reassuring smile though it does little to steady the tremble sitting within your limbs.

“The medics are onsite, he’s in good hands.”

—

The plastic chair is uncomfortable beneath you, the thin scratchy blanket wrapped around your body doing very little to cushion the solid surface of it, yet you don’t move. You don’t think you could if you tried. You hate hospitals. You hate the sterile smell, the cold white walls, the rush of staff and the endless ring of alarms and codes.

This room isn’t too bad, though.

It’s a smaller waiting room, away from the hustle and bustle of the main hospital corridors, and away from the half dozen pairs of eyes that seemed focused on studying your every move. It’s nicer in here, both in style and temperature. The walls are a softer, more welcoming cream colour and a little wall mounted heater keeps the space filled with a nice warmth, but it does very little to calm you.

Your tea had long gone cold next to you, delivered by a startlingly quiet member of Lisbon’s team, Rigsby was it?, before he left you to your thoughts again. You didn’t reach for it once.

Instead, you stare blankly ahead, mind turning over with worry as Marcus is off somewhere in the hospital, somewhere bleeding and hurt and possibly dying. No one comes to talk to you. No one had come to comfort you since Grace had found this room and put you in here, and you think you prefer it that way.

You think she knows you would prefer it that way.

He’s hurt. Severely so.

He’s hurt because he pushed you out of the way, because he took the bullets that had been meant for you, whether they were accidental or not. He had moved with very little regard for himself, instinctively putting himself between you and potential death.

You should be the one in theatre. You should be the one broken and bleeding on an operating table. And yet, you’re not. Here you are, with nothing but bruised, scraped knees and a shot to shit nervous system on the brink of collapsing in on itself.

“Hey Picasso,” Jacob murmurs softly, his face appearing in your view as he crouches down before you, “I think we should get you home—”

Your head is already shaking before he can even finish. Leave? No. No, you can’t do that. What if something happens during surgery? What if he deteriorates and he has no one here to beg them to keep trying? What if—what if he dies on the table and you’re not here for it? 

His face creases in sympathy, his hand warm as it comes to rest over your knee. 

“Listen to me, alright? You with me?”

His head tilts, waiting until he’s sure you’re fully locked in and focused on him.

“He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s got a collapsed lung, and quite extensive internal bleeding. They said he’s gonna be in there for a while—hey, look at me.”

He ducks his head to help your eyes meet his, and you do your best to swallow down the lump quickly building thickly in the base of your throat.

“While he’s in there, getting the help he needs, I’d like to get you home so you can shower, and get into something more comfortable. Lisbon’s under strict instructions to call me if anything changes, and we’ll come right back once you’re done, alright? How does that sound?”

“Sounds like he could die,” you mutter, voice rough and hollow. “Is he going to die?”

His thumb softly swipes at the stray tear on your cheek.

“I have been assured they are doing everything in their power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“It should’ve been me. It should be me.”

He gives a small, sad smile. “I may not have been a part of this team for very long and know him very well, but I think we both know that was never an option for him.”

“Is it my fault?”

“Absolutely not,” he says firmly, shaking his head, “and you know damn well he wouldn’t want you thinking like that. Now come on, the quicker we go and do this, the quicker we can get back.”

“You promise we’ll come straight back if… if he—”

“If I happen to get a call to say he…” he trails off, eyes dropping to where his hand rests on your knee before he gathers the strength to meet your eyes again. “If I get that call, we’ll come straight back, alright? Even if you’re all shampooed up and half naked. I swear.”

Your eyes dart between his, searching the soft forest green depths for any trace of a lie. You find nothing but sincerity. Your fingers wrap around his hand, briefly comforted by the steady warmth of it as he turns it in your hold and interlocks your fingers carefully.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He helps you stand, releasing your hand in an effort to keep the blanket wrapped around your frame. He tucks it back under your chin, giving you a little grin.

“Hell, you being here half naked would probably bring him back before any crash cart could—”

“Jacob,” you half sob in surprise, unsure whether to be horrified or angry. Your face must display it all openly.

He flinches, face creasing from shame. “I know, I know. I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I get weird with this kind of shit, let’s just go.”

She was tracking the equations as they sprang up on the bottom and at one point shook her head and pressed pause, then began typing feverishly again. 

Someone waved in her periphery and she took down the headphones, “Jan! Hi, sorry, were you saying something?” 

“Just to remind you I am making my call home so I am not here and we have the donor coming in two hours. Try to stop with enough time to get ready.” Jan was a tall strapping Swiss man who was in his fifties now and Cait nodded.

“I will… tell Ana hi for me, will you?” She didn’t hear his response as she put her headphones back up and resumed typing, running the simulation, then pausing to edit. 

Time passed, though she could’ve sworn not that much. A figure approached her again, a looming shadow, and she didn’t notice. They reached out a hand and she jumped, screaming a little, and pulled down the headphones saying, “Jan I thought–Oh! Hello!”

It was someone else. They were in a suit and where Jan was six feet tall and white-blonde this person was short, dark, and bearded. His hair was slicked back and he put on a wide smile, “My apologies.”

Like Jan he had an accent but a different one entirely and Cait stood, “Uh, who are–”

“Raul Alvarez. I believe we have an appointment. I am early, but your associate met me at the door. He seemed…occupied. Sent me in. I did not mean to startle you.”

Cait’s eyes widened, “Oh! Oh yes – I am— I apologize. I must have lost track of time.”

He peeped over her shoulder, “New research?”

“Yes! Yes, well–” She looked down at her outfit– jeans and a tee-shirt and a zippered sweatshirt on the back of her chair. She closed her eyes, “Jan told me to make time to get my jacket. I did not. I am–”

“I am not interested in your appearance, but in your work.” Raul nodded his head, “Please. Take a moment to compose yourself before we speak.” 

She did take a breath and looked around, took her sweatshirt and put it on, then took a simple metal pen and used it to twist her hair up into a bun and hold it in place, “Thank you for that…well I am Dr. Barrow and my associate, Dr. Keller–” 

She craned her neck around but the man clicked his tongue, “Yes, yes, yes, Dr. Keller– he was occupied with his phone. Perhaps you can start without him?”

The man’s smile was tight and something about it sent a chill up Cait’s spine, “Uh, sure, well we are happy to have you here today to talk about your interest in aerosolized vaccine dispersal methodology–”

Raul clicked his tongue again. It felt metallic. Like he had something in his mouth. Maybe he was clicking something somewhere she couldn’t see– he did have a long coat draped over his shoulders and his hands were gloved, “Oh that’s not why I’m here.”

Cait’s brows furrowed, “Well that’s odd. That was our research proposal. We were working with Doctors Without Borders and TerraSave but we were limited in our funding and they were unable to secure more for us from larger trusts. I know you may look at this lab and see a run down exterior but the equipment here– computer programs especially– we have some of the best written development code in the business. Really fast and accurate AI models of both efficacy of the vaccine and efficacy of the dispersal method. Great mapping. I was under the impression our meeting today was directly linked to that…”

She looked around, wondering what was taking Jan so long. She eyed her backpack, her Walkman, her messy pile of papers stacked on her notebook. Something was making her skin prickle.

“All very impressive sounding but this is for things like measles and swine flu, yes?”

“We’ve been running pretty impressive figures on Ebola, though that paper’s still in the early draft phase so that’s on the hush hush.” 

Something inside her was knotted up.

She realized that maybe she didn’t like that the man didn’t take off his sunglasses, didn’t attempt to shake her hand.

Rich people can be pricks. They can be weird. Remember that when you ask for the silly figure you’re going to ask for.

He sniffed the air, “Why do you need private funding? Seems like many places would provide you with ample supplies….”

He reached out to touch her notebook and she turned to sweep it into her backpack, papers and all. She tucked that into her chair and pushed it under the desk, “Well yes for the vaccines, sure. But medical testing is very expensive and the traditional route has animal testing and then human trials. Jan and I are staunchly anti-live tests and we have one of the world’s foremost AI testing algorithms.”

“Why no people?”

“We just–” She swallowed hard, uncomfortable, “we do not believe in live testing. It’s morally gray and often provides no greater dataset than a well-made algorithm. The data simply doesn’t support giving humans and animals side effects needlessly.”

Raul shifted his weight, “What number do you need?”

“Uh see well that algorithm is incredibly advanced and it needs significant housing and just getting the necessary solar for housing its electrical needs? Recycling the water? I mean it’s truly a grant for the AI moreso than the—”

“Number?”

“Uh, forty-two…million. To start. Upfront.” She swallowed, “Which sounds extreme but your hands would be clean of any immoral testing apparatus and the vaccine research would continue.”

Raul smiled and again she had the impression of a dog bearing its teeth, “I would give you twice that, but not for this research.”

“I don’t understand.” Cait shook her head, “That’s the research….maybe I should get Jan in here to help–”

“I want this research portfolio.” He took a rolled up paper from a pocket of his coat and tossed it at her with a dismissive air, “And I will double your fee, bring you to a state of the art facility. As long as it is that research.”

Caitlin looked down at the rolled up booklet and as she unfurled it she stopped cold, sucked in a breath, “Where– where did you get this?”

“I am making you an offer, Dr. Barrow. And a good one. Listen to it– I will offer you ninety million and a facility that makes this look like Barbie’s science lab, yes? I will give you all that– if you help me finish that research.”

She rolled the booklet back up, her knuckles turning white, “This research was burned.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“If you know about this you know the BSAA already raided my lab–”

“Yes, of course, this was all that was found. But surely someone with your attention to detail kept more? Where is it? Is it here? Is it in your new work? What about your home?”

She shook her head, “It’s gone, there’s nothing left of that but what’s in my head.”

He sighed, “As I feared…and you? What do you think about my proposal?”

Caitlin took a breath and looked around. For a moment she considered her options then she chucked the booklet right at Raul’s head, grabbed her backpack with her notes, and fucking ran, screaming, “JAN! JAN! HELP!”

She had her keycard in her pocket and she struggled to get it out and lift it to the door to the elevator. She was running and behind her Raul sighed again, muttering, “This proposal, too, is acceptable. Though, I think you will like it less.”

She swiped her keycard and felt it fall – where? She had no idea, because at that moment she tripped over the body of Jan Keller, who had been shot right in the head. She didn’t realize that until she looked up, to get her bearings, and then she screamed as loud as she could but by that moment Raul was on her and she felt a sting in her neck before the darkness descended.

_________________________________________________________

LOCATION: Washington DC, a bar

LEON S. KENNEDY

His head was on the table when his phone rang and he briefly checked the number before answering, “Hunnigan, are you mad at me?” 

“Why do you ask?” 

“I’m not on duty for another nine hours, the game’s on, and–” 

“Oooh. What game?” She smiled to herself knowing damn well Leon was there drinking alone, “Give you fifty bucks if you can name a single team actively playing.” 

He groaned, “Well I walked into that. What can I do for you Ingrid?” 

“I sent a car. You have a flight so you can get your bearings on it.” 

“Is it somewhere nice at least?” 

“Depends on how you rank Colorado?” 

“Cold.” 

“Yeah, well…I’ll keep you on your feet, should warm you up.” 

Leon sat up in the chair and stretched his back, “And why am I going to Colorado?”

His phone gave a cheerful ting as Ingrid sent a file, “Missing person. Give you a little time to read up before the pop quiz. Check in with you in the air…and I’m not mad at you.” 

“Really? Because you didn’t let me catch the bouquet at the wedding.” 

Ingrid laughed and then sighed, “You’ll have to jump higher to beat my cousin. She’s been with her man ten years. No ring.” 

“She should reassess that situation.” 

“If I tell her you’re interested she will leave him before sunrise.” 

He smirked, “For the man that couldn’t get his own date to show? She could do better.” 

Ingrid knew this was all connected, “It’s been a month. I’ve had a wedding, a honeymoon, and a closing on my house since then. You aren’t still hung on it, are you?” 

Leon looked at his watch– the face had gold and titanium, the band was crafted leather, and he took it off because there was an inscription on the back— tempus fugit- AW

“Course not, I’m just heartbroken over you, Ing. Who’s going to be my girl-in-the-chair when you get promoted?” 

Ingrid’s mouth tightened, on her screen was a last known picture of Ada Wong with a banner across it– whereabouts unknown. She hadn’t flinched when Leon asked her if he could bring Ada to the wedding but she had feared that this is precisely what would happen. 

“Will she want to come to something like this?” 

“Loves getting dolled up.” Leon had offered and waved it, “Jill’s bringing Chris, Ada can’t cause less of a stir than that.” 

But Ingrid had feared then that Ada simply wouldn’t come. There was no intrigue, no drama, nothing to steal except the very expensive espresso machine Leon had gotten off the registry. It was just a wedding, where friends and loved ones came to feel happy together. Despite being alone, and having half the bridal parties throw themselves at him, Leon had kept a happy face on for Ingrid and Tricia. It wasn’t until she returned she saw that he’d thrown himself into training, was so drunk he’d been turned away from a mission by Chris Redfield, and was now moping about. Ingrid had made a plea that Leon was the best man for this particular job but she had traded in some credit to get the approvals. As beloved as Leon was, nobody liked dealing with him when he was brooding and hungover. 

He’s better than this. 

She believed that.

So she put him on this job. 

But there was a saying about a stubborn horse and water and she sighed, “Leon? I need to know if you’re green for the job because it’s a bit time sensitive. There’s a crime scene and the locals were told to cool off but you know how the locals get with their toys.”

“Yeah, slow to share.” He was staring at the back of the watch, looking around the bar, “Tell the truth, who did you have to bribe to get me on it?”

“You’re the golden boy, Kennedy. Nobody needs to be persuaded where you’re concerned.”

“We both know that recently that’s not true.”

“Ok, but imagine that you really are the prodigal son and I really just pointed to your resume but even so– if you fuck up this job you might take my looming promotion down with you and you’ll be the one has to explain that shit to Tricia.”

“Tricia likes me.”

“She will like you less if I miss my promotion to get you back in the saddle.” 

He stared at the watch and took a breath, “Ingrid? I don’t say it enough, but you’re a real friend. I appreciate you.”

“Does that mean you’ll get moving to the airstrip?”

He stood up from his table, didn’t wobble though he wanted to, and produced his wallet. He threw down more bills than he owed and then he looked at the watch and tossed it on top of them, “Yeah…yeah I’m coming, hold your horses.”

________________________________________________________________

Leon Kennedy was leaving the bar and a woman who had been sitting in a darkened corner got up from her perch and slinked over to his table, “Leon S. Kennedy…I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.”

She reached down and took the watch, tucking it into the top of her thigh high boot with a smirk.

________________________________________________________________

LOCATION: DSO private aircraft

LEON S. KENNEDY

He was on the plane reviewing the file and sipping on ginger ale.

He heard the beep in his ear, “Please say you’re on the plane?”

“And doing my homework, mom.”

“What a good boy.” She snorted, “Do you have questions?”

“Is this a mad lib? There’s a ton of redaction.”

“Unclear why, we had an open file on her a few years ago but instead of getting more information we just received this file from BSAA.”

“Chris on it?”

“Unclear, but I can attempt to get that information.” 

“Why was BSAA on her tail?”

“You have a file.”

“Did you get more from it than me? This is half missing.”

“All I know is that this came over my desk marked High Priority. They wanted someone on it ASAP. The lab she was working at was hit and the scientist she was partnered with was killed. Her previous partner went missing and is still MIA. We are unclear what her involvement with this is, though BSAA did release her after they had her in custody. I don’t know them to un-black-bag someone with ease. They must have believed she was clean because they let her go, and now this. We know the lab was hit, and we know she’s gone but I need experienced eyes. Do you want to guess what she was working on?”

“Says here vaccine research but whatever that means. Could be real, could be a front. Better question– is it something someone can do bad things with?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. That part is definitely redacted but how many scientists do our higher ups take an interest in and what are they good at?”

He sighed as he looked at the redacted file, “I could use a vacation, Hunnigan.”

“Maybe I’ll find you some place tropical next.”

“I don’t look good in shorts.”

“I find that hard to believe….oh, the custom items you requested were delivered. I took the liberty of having them stashed in the overhead for you.”

“Have I told you lately that I love you?”

“A girl can never hear it too much.”

_____________________________________________________________

A/N: These will be shorter updates! Think of them like cut scenes? Vaguely a game script.

Resident Evil regulars, I'm new here! I don't know your tags well, help a girl out and RB please.

So I updated with speed like I was being stalked by Mr. X and have done nearly 100k on Leon in a month. I don't know. There's an entire completed Leon x Reader/Wife story on the Masterlist. My goal is to finish this DLC before Capcom finishes theirs.

He wondered if it would sound better to say: Her name is Ada to me, even though she lied about other things.

  He left the first line even if he had to dig out his Grammar and Style Guide from a box in his dad’s basement to check if the first comma was right. 

Comma Splice – when two independent clauses are joined by a comma instead of a conjunction or semi colon. 

        He didn’t think he wrote a comma splice, though on reflection he felt a comma splice suited Ada. 

Comma– indicating either a pause or a separation of structures

Yeah, Ada was a comma splice, she was just fucking around his mission and Claire and Sherry’s nightmare and pausing to help or use as it suited her. 

His mouth tingled sometimes when he thought about that kiss. Ada was by far the most beautiful woman that had ever touched him and he didn’t think that was post break up malaise rounding her up. Ivy had a vague resemblance to Claire, if Claire was warmer. Ivy had been one of the prettiest girls in his hometown and getting her had been an accomplishment, one he hadn’t believed he was capable of. He had lucked into her when her tire popped and her jock boyfriend couldn’t change a tire so he was walking back to a gas station and left her scared and alone on the side of a very neglected road. She had kissed Leon when he gave her his coat, changed the tire, and then drove her home. 

Ivy was what happened when you were a gentleman and not a moron, so I don’t know what it means that she left me as soon as she had a way to leave home. 

Maybe it’s why I wanted Claire to be ok, to help her, to prove the helping still meant something. 

She had left too, though. 

And Ada….

Had me pegged for a sucker, I guess. Maybe pretty girls see me and think that and maybe they’re right.

The journal was meant to walk him and the therapist through the events of Raccoon City. The therapist was required to clear him for active duty, though his physical trainer hadn’t done that yet.

You haven’t remotely begun to learn how to survive, kid. 

Jack was a hell of a teacher, maybe in the very literal sense of being a bit of a demon on the field, but Leon knew those were tests he could pass. 

It’s like how Pop made me run my first mile and I puked. He said ‘Boy you’ll get better if you keep doing it’ and he was right. That part’s easy. The nightmares though? I wasn’t expecting this sort of nightmare.

Becoming a cop had been a calling, or a debt. He didn’t really remember his folks, but he did remember a living room that didn’t belong to his dad. His dad had scooped him up out of a crime scene and saw that he’d just be dumped in a group home “and God only knows who could’ve gotten their hands on you there”. As a kid Leon had imagined masked bad guys, like Batman villains, sneaking into orphanages to prevent some intrepid kid from becoming a hero. As it turned out Bill handed Leon the files when he turned 18 and kept insisting he was going to be a cop, dad.

“Well then, it’s time you knew things.”

The file had been the case about Leon’s family– a father from the IRA and a mother from the Italian mob, or one of the nieces of the family at any rate. Had it been a love story? Hard to say. There’d been a marriage. And a Leon. And then a bad falling out, and his parents had both been shot while Leon had been in his high chair, in the other room, watching television. 

“Christmas Eve?”

“Yeah well, call me Santa Claus.” Bill had rubbed his eyes, “I just…I kept you because I didn’t want any of them coming for you, like a soldier. I didn’t mean to make it sound like you needed to be a soldier for me or something, kid. I want you to know– there’s no strings here. You do whatever you want, won’t change anything between you and me if you aren’t a cop.”

But it had only strengthened Leon’s resolve.

I thought because I read that file, because I survived that as a kid, because I had survived getting shit from the Football Captain for stealing his girlfriend, that I survived the academy…I thought that meant I was a survivor. But I wasn’t shit until Raccoon City. I was scared. I thought a dozen times that dying was easier.

And then there she was.

Cool, calm, and collected.

She looked like none of this fazed her. She shrugged and pointed a gun at me as easily as the dog, she could’ve saved me or killed me and she saved me in measure. Like saved me enough that I didn’t die, but not that I was guaranteed to make it. Like it was a test. 

He looked up the rules about run-ons and fragments but they didn’t make him change what he wrote. 

Run-ons for long, complicated thoughts that struggled to be broken into simpler terms.

Fragments for unfinished or overly short structures.

Oh she’s unfinished.

Was she ever.

She kissed me and it choked me, I forgot everything I should have known to do or say. I guess the rules all felt like they didn’t matter that day– when zombies attack who cares if you’ve crossed a professional line? And when it’s her? Like if James Bond was a woman and suddenly wanted me.

Or pretended to.

I still don’t know if that was real, but on days where I need it to be real it can be. She wanted me. I kept her safe. She put her jacket on me and dressed my wound and kissed me and said “I want to see you again”.

And I didn’t want to drop her.

I’d have saved her if I could.

I see her falling all the time, when I close my eyes. I see her and the little girl with zombie eyes, and Marvin finally cracking and coming for me. And the horrible things with the long tongues, and whatever that fucking thing was in the goddamn coat. 

I see her all the time because she’s the nicest part of that whole day. 

Even if it was a lie.

A lie, and a fragment.

On review Leon was cleared for active duty.

___________________________________________________________________

Cool, calm, and collected.

He’d written that about her once.

Cool, calm, and collected.

He looked at that sentence and thought it was something. A rhyme scheme, maybe, but without rhymes. He looked it up— alliteration, where all the starting sounds were the same even if the words were different.

Boy howdy.

It was the same– same dress. Same woman. Same eyes. Same gun and a fucking smirk. Same tone in her voice.

Cool, calm, and fucking collected. 

But he wasn’t the same anymore.

He was also cool, calm, and collected.

Maybe not calm.

I thought she was dead that whole time. Not a single fucking indication that she had made it and then she shows up like that, kicking up her skirt and batting her eyelashes and making it sound like she wanted to see me again, like it was a pleasure.

It was enraging.

And invigorating.

It was downright sexy.

She did remember me.

It was always nice to know you left some sort of mark on someone and she had put some sort of asterisks next to his name.

I need to get some sort of system for her, for her name, so I know what she means. 

He had been shaking after Spain.

He’d never been infected quite like that. 

He had gotten out of Raccoon City safe and then someone puts a fucking bug in his head. He had never felt like that. He felt violated, out of control, and then she just waltzed up to him with that damn smile and the wiggle in her hips like she would love it if we could just do this her way.

She tells me to leave but acts like she wants me to stay, but she wants me to stay on her terms. If I leave or stay I disappoint her and turn her on, she has no clear set of directions, she doesn’t answer questions she just…

He looked up the punctuation. He had a suspicion it was right but he wasn’t sure. He could handle the DSO mandated therapist hearing about his love life but not thinking he couldn’t string a sentence together. 

The punctuation had a name: ellipsis. 

Signifying omitted words, a pause, or a trailed off thought without conclusion. Can indicate skipped time.

The guide was interesting, offering an opinion: should be used sparingly.

It made him laugh.

Maybe that was her problem: should be used sparingly. In greater quantity she would be overwhelming. 

Still…

The ellipsis of it all called to him. He sat there tapping the page, rubbing his chest where the phantom feel of the plaga still echoed, and he finally jotted down:

I think I love her. Really love her. But I don’t know how I could, I just know that I should edit her out but I can’t seem to…

The therapist seemed more relieved that he hadn’t fucked Ashley or come back infected. 

He was, again, cleared for duty.

___________________________________________________________________

She’s like a bad omen. Still makes my heart go to my throat.

She wasn’t supposed to be in the Slav and she didn’t stay. I don’t know whether it hurt more that she left than if she had stayed. 

___________________________________________________________________

Ada’s not hard to find but it is impossible to get her to come on command.

Her fingerprints are all over certain jobs– not literally, of course, but you can smell her on something like a perfume. I knew she’d been there. I knew. But then, oddly, some of it didn’t make sense. It was like she wasn’t herself and, of course, she wasn’t. 

And when it was her turn to be down, hurt, and need me?

Fuck.

I couldn’t run fast enough.

I wanted her to see me coming for her.

I wanted it to mean something.

I wanted it to be important. 

And to hear him? How much he wanted her?

I could feel it– jealousy. Fuck off, buddy, she is not for you. Not at all.

I didn’t even care if she wasn’t for me either.

And I got to be honest here, if nowhere else— I thought, maybe, this time, it would finally be enough for her to stay. To be a completed thought. To come with me. I thought, maybe, it would be enough to persuade her that I was a good idea. 

But maybe that doesn’t stop her from being a bad one…

Or maybe she just doesn’t come on command?

I can’t tell. I don’t know how to put her down in the records, I don’t know how to finalize the report, I don’t know what to say except that there’s something about it that only fits one thing. She’s not a run-on or a fragment, she’s not an appositive, she’s not a list or a command. She’s unfinished, a pause if I’m lucky, but a trailed off desire for sure. She just is…

She just is.

And I can’t do a damn thing about it…

______________________________________________________________

Of all the things she had hacked into in her life, Leon’s therapist’s notes were fairly easy. She was nosy, in her soul. 

When are you not lying?

When it doesn’t matter.

She had to tell him to leave, to not care, to move on– the other answers were too serious to actually walk out in the daylight hours. She couldn’t engage with them, so she just didn’t. She had tried really hard to cut him out but then her fingers danced over the keys, went into the system, and spied on him.

Emotionally closed off to healthy relationships.

Struggles to understand his role with Ada Wong.

Toxic pattern is apparent to him in his writings, but he is unable to let it go.

Shows ability to soldier on without it impacting performance.

Will recommend him for active duty again.

Ada ticked her tongue against his lips, “Now now now, that’s harsh. I like to think I have a little impact, at least, on that performance of his…”

She typed something in another box and a second screen pulled up– security footage outside of Leon’s apartment building. She moved the camera to face his balcony. He went out there sometimes, after sessions.

He would be drinking if he was sad, smoking if he was mad. 

Tonight he was smoking, and chaining them together, and as he did he kept dancing her compact between his fingers and sometimes bringing it up to his mouth. It wasn’t a kiss, not a completed thought, but an idea that he had.

I could show up and surprise you…

But that?

That was an ellipsis too.

A/N: I am not an Ada Wong hater but if anyone expects me to vote for her as the wife I need an ENTIRE DLC to convince me she actually would. Not her thing.

Resident Evil regulars, I'm new here! I don't know your tags well, help a girl out and RB please.

So I updated with speed like I was being stalked by Mr. X and have done nearly 100k on Leon in a month. I don't know. There's an entire completed Leon x Reader/Wife story on the Masterlist and another one in development.

Then one night, after he had just come home only an hour before, he pulled on some gloves and grabbed his thicker coat and said, “Sorry, work.”

You leaned in to kiss him but he dodged you, blowing a kiss as he walked out of the door, “Be back when I can.”

And now?

Silence.

He was acting odd and you were worried. He wasn’t answering his fucking phone for you.

Fuck it, you pulled his records.

You won’t talk to me? Fine. Talk to HR. File a complaint, because I am violating some fucking terms and conditions.

But what you pulled didn’t make sense.

On paper Leon wasn’t actively working.

No cases.

Nada.

Nothing that the DSO, in official capacity, was going over.

Now he’d gone rogue before and decided he was working and the government later altered the paperwork. Usually it was a case of if you made good choices while disobeying us you are forgiven. 

But this?

Classified. 

Not by the director but by someone you knew. By someone who had given Leon cop themed Christmas presents until she hit college. 

By the only person outside of Ingrid who you figured would have the skillset to track Leon and keep it off the books.

You went to Sherry, but she shook her head, “Sorry…I don’t want to get in the middle of you two.”

“Then tell me something I need to know.” 

Sherry wrung her hands and you noticed a glove.

Only one glove.

“Sherry?” You reached for it but she pulled her hand back from you, sharply.

In this building that sort of reaction meant contagion or at least a fear of it. You sucked in a breath, “Then tell me his location.” 

She sighed and reached over, pressing a button, “It’ll drop on your phone.”

“Thank you Sherry.”

_________

He was man enough to admit he was avoiding you, but not man enough to go face you. Not yet. 

Not fucking yet.

There were too many unanswered things, too much uncertainty.

The only thing he knew for certain was that the fucking infection was spreading and no amount of boosters was fighting it totally back now. If not for Sherry he would’ve assumed he ran out of luck at last, but no. Something different was happening. Something more nefarious, and nefarious meant planning, and planning was worse. 

It meant someone knew he’d be fucking taken from her.

It meant someone knew he had a chance to infect her.

Without Sherry coming to find him and awkwardly asking if he had bruises he couldn’t explain he’d have ignored them and who fucking knew. He was dosing the shit out of himself with meds in the hope it was helping slow it, but fuck. It kept deepening. 

Someone somewhere knew he could’ve been sleeping in his bed, turned into a fucking monster, and murdered his fucking family.

He’d kill them for it.

He didn’t think of himself as a murderer but this was as cold-blooded as he would get. 

He was in an older building. He’d worked here in the early 00s, but the building had moved to the one you worked in now. He thought that was too close so he came here. Sure the systems were a bit older but he brought all the toys with him, linked up to it, and was synced with Sherry to do all the background he could before he got in the car and drove.

I’m running out of time,Sher. We need me to get to work, I want to be prepped before nightfall. Tick tick tick. 

She had agreed but got quiet for a bit. He hoped because she got really busy. He had put out some texts.

Chris– need to talk to you and Claire about Raccoon City. Urgent. I need friends.

Claire– call me when you get this, if you can. Need you and your brother on board with something.

Neither had gotten back to him and he was soon to just move on to the next step without them. 

Both are smarter than me, I’m probably the last dumb bastard to realize this was happening. 

He didn’t know where Claire was, Chris’ defection had put her in difficult spots with work but she technically still worked for Terra Save. Chris, on the other hand, well…Chris had come to Leon and confessed that it was time to leave the BSAA. Time to do his own thing. Time to make it fucking happen. 

And Leon had started the bankroll before hooking Chris up with a nest egg and a financial guy who could keep that money making money. 

Chris Redfield would be his wingman if he could get a hold of him, but getting a hold of someone that the BSAA wanted for treason was sometimes difficult. 

He imagined Claire was out figuring out who was behind this and that’s why she wasn’t answering the phone and Chris probably had teams air dropped to a dozen locations— different methods, same Redfield dog with a bone mentality. 

Whatever. If they’re working it too we will crack it. I’ll find them eventually.

He wondered who else.

He didn’t text Ada, but that was because he didn’t know where to send the message. Communication with her was always a one way street. 

Wherever you are, hope your hands are clean. 

He didn’t wish her ill. He didn’t envy her. 

He didn’t miss her, not the way he used to.

Not my job to change you or fix you. You like the life you made. 

Still he wasn’t cold hearted – if he could warn her about the virus and share a cure? He would. 

And now?

There was only one person left to talk to before he went to work, potentially for the last time. 

He had been putting it off. The calls stopped getting answered or returned, and he knew that would set you off. He knew it was upsetting you but selfishly he didn’t know what to say. 

I ruined it all and I never should have taken you down with me.

Fuck, but he saw the conversation play a thousand ways in his head, each a variant. You laughed. You cried. You turned to black before him and he had to fucking put the gun up, but because he couldn’t shoot you, not you, it just meant that he died at the hands of a monster he loved. 

He’d had that nightmare before.

That’s why when you showed up he didn’t know, for a whole minute, if you were real. 

In my dreams she’s never so red-eyed. He reasoned, but then a voice creeped in, Only in my nightmares.

And this was, after all, a nightmare.

When the door opened and it was you he eyed his jacket, where his keys were, and you saw him do it so you dashed over and grabbed the jacket, hugging it against yourself.

Even that made him flinch.

Hope the jacket’s not contagious. Which, objectively, was ridiculous but he didn’t feel particularly rational. He was developing an infection he’d contracted in 1998. It wasn’t the time for fully rational feelings. 

“How’d you find me?”

“Sherry.” You spoke it into the jacket. The set up you found here was evidence enough– he had a jacket, a pillow, and a futon littered with take out coffee and the odd ramen cup. He had been camping out here. 

“Figures.” He took a breath, “I’ve got to go soon–”

“Why?” You even stomped your foot for effect.

“I guess that is the question….” He stood up and held out his hand for his jacket but you stepped back, digging in.

“You won’t call me back. You won’t text me. You aren’t coming home– the fuck did you think I was going to do? Knit socks and wait?”

“No. You can’t knit for shit.” The joke didn’t land.

“Well we’re going to play 20 questions if you don’t start explaining yourself.” You steeled your spine to prepare for whatever bullshit he was going to launch at you. 

“Alright. What do you want to know?”

“Are you having an affair?”

“That’s not a serious question.” He scoffed.

“No, but it’s almost better than the next one.” Your eyes narrowed, “So you won’t come home, or around anyone. You’re hiding in an abandoned building and Sherry is the only one who seems to know about it and she’s working out of a fucking closet wearing some sort of Michael Jackson tribute on her hand…. That sounds like infection, Leon. What happened? Tell me.”

“I…” He shook his head, “We don’t know how it happened. It’s not new. It’s old. It started with bodies– anything with the marks should come across my desk. This wasn’t new, it was…all the people with it? All the people who died? They’d survived Raccoon City, and it looked like classic T virus. Raccoon City survivors– one by one, ending up dead, with an infection the government bombed out of existence twenty years ago.”

“So you think Umbrella is back?”

“I think…I think whatever was there, whoever got out…. I think it stayed with us.” He was keeping the right side of his neck turned from you but his skin was getting pale and his eyes were purple and puffy– he wasn’t sleeping and he looked like he was getting sick. 

“That doesn’t make sense. I’ve been doing your med checks for twenty fucking years– if there was a virus, I’d have seen it.”

“If it was active.” He admitted, “But what if it was just taking a nap? Hibernating? Now it’s up and it’s starting to get hungry.”

“That’s not– we’ve never seen….” You tried to collect yourself. I mean that’s not true, we have certainly seen viruses sleep. Hadn’t you called it his super shingles before? That there were parts of Leon that didn’t obey the normal rules of medicine, so you chalked it up to extra resilience after exposure. But this? “Le, you aren’t a doctor. Let me take a loo–”

You reached out for him and he backed up until he hit a table, nearly upsetting it.

“No.”

“You’re being ridicu–”

“I already did enough fucking damage to you, you aren’t going to come over here and fucking touch it. You aren’t getting a sample. You aren’t running a test. You aren’t coming any closer. I have fucked you up enough, goddammit, you’re going to stay over there.” 

“What the fuck are you even saying?”

“Don’t you get it? You’ve been out here running a hundred tests on yourself, kicking yourself, feeling fucking responsible, looking so goddamn sad about it all and it’s me. T virus, sitting here and wrecking things for us. Killing every chance we had at a kid.” 

“We don’t know tha–” 

“You ain’t stupid so don’t go stealing her lines.” He scoffed, shaking his head, “Honey… look at me.”

It was stupid because he took off the glove and his hand was going black but you noticed something else. 

“You… took off your ring?” 

“Don’t fuck around right now–” He reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled it out to show you, “It doesn’t touch this shit. You don’t touch this shit.”

“You’re being–”

He knew you were going to say paranoid but he wasn’t taking that as an answer.

“It doesn’t get to touch you. It. Does not. Touch you. Do you hear?” His voice was a knife. He meant it. He twisted the blade to prove a point. 

He’d die before he infected you.

That you knew. Leon would die before turning, die before spreading. He knew what the shit was and he would never try to barter or reason with it, he would burn it out and himself with it.

He left because he didn’t want to write a suicide note to you.

He was weirdly considerate.

He’d never be the sort to blow out his brains at home so you’d be left with cleaning it up– he’d die out here, boots on, so you still had the house to retreat to.

So you knew what it all meant. 

Going to work was a euphemism, it was as good as put to sleep. 

“So you aren’t…coming home?”

He sucked in a slow breath, “Not until it’s over, one way or another.” 

You felt the tears well up, “Leon–”

“Not until it’s over.” He repeated and took a steady look at you, “And I need you to listen to this next part.”

You looked up.

“There’s every chance I come back in a bag–”

You choked on that and held his jacket tighter against your chest.

“And if I do–” he reached out to touch your face before remembering himself, balling his fists, and sticking them in his pockets, “promise me you aren’t going to look inside. I want you remembering me this way. Not…not like that. Not how they look.”

“Leon–”

“Promise me–”

“I don’t want you to leave! Just stay! Stay here!”

“No!” He barked, and he never really barked at you like that, it did make you take a step back, “No. No. You’ve never had to do it so take it from me because this? This is something I know a lot better than you. You’ve never had to see someone turn, never had to shoot someone you love to save yourself, never had to. It’s not kind. It’s shit. It’s the worst kind of shit. And I’m not going to put you through it.” 

“But I–”

“No.” He shook his head again, “You wouldn’t do it. You don’t have the heart for it– you’d see me like that and think I can help or he wouldn’t hurt me. You know we don’t know how much of them is left behind. We hope it’s nothing. That’s why we say they’re gone. But I am very afraid some part of me would be left, and the last thing I’d see is me ending you. I can’t. Do you understand me? There’s not a way to play this where you’re safe from me without me being far far away, so I’m going. There’s no vaccine we have that’s helping, no booster, no shot, that’s clearing it. It’s coming on slow, but it’s coming–” He pulled back his shirt and turned so you saw his neck, “And because I know you can’t help, I’m going to go see if I can, and I’m keeping you here where you’re safe.”

It didn’t help to see the blackened veins, the creeping death. It was coming for him, it was already at his throat.

You knew what stage it was.

You knew what that meant about the time he had left.

You hugged his jacket to you and cried into it, “I don’t want you to go–”

For the first time his voice softened, “Honey?”

You didn’t look up.

“Honey…give me my jacket. Let me work. And if there’s a cure, if there’s a way out? The first place I’m going is home. I promise.”

Leon was many things, but he never broke a promise on purpose. 

You looked up.

He was exhausted and the job hadn’t started. He was already tired.

“Let me say one thing? Before you go?” 

His face looked lined and heavy but he nodded, so you took a breath, “Even if it’s there, it’s not the reason we’ve had trouble. Even if it was there the whole time. You didn’t ever hurt me, and you certainly didn’t fuck up anything. I know you think this is kind, but this is the most cruel you’ve ever been and I already forgave you. I love you. And you’re not fucking dying yet so go do whatever thing you’re going to do and come the fuck home.”

“I love you too.” He promised and kissed the ring in his clean hand before putting it back in his pocket, “Like I said– first place I go if there’s an other side. And if there’s not? You don’t go moping around because of me. I…I can’t be the reason you don’t live your life.”

“Then don’t die.” You kissed the neck of the jacket and held it out to him, he touched the furthest part from you and his phone beeped– it was Sherry.

Body at the old Wrenwood Hotel.

You stared at the phone in his hand and nodded, “Work?”

“Work.” He confirmed and let himself look at you. Really look at you. In case it was the last time.

“See you back at home.” You said as he left, but he didn’t say it back. He didn’t like to lie.

_________________________________________________

You were in a house that you’d bought with the idea of filling it with a small family. Nothing too big, too crazy, but something. You didn’t want fuss but you didn’t want to be alone either. 

The cat was on the porch. Never one for being an indoor animal she was curled up on the rocking chair that was out there and sometimes came, stretched in front of the window just to tease the dog. 

The dog looked at the door sometimes, hopeful, and you didn’t want to tell her that it wasn’t going to change anything. 

He won’t come back if he thinks there’s a risk, girl.

Then the dog whined and sat up, staring at the door, wagging her tail steadily back and forth. 

She gave one bark.

It was her Daddy’s home dance– she tried hard to stay in her sit but she was dancing on her toes in excitement.

The door opened and he was there– there, on his feet, not in a bag, and you didn’t give a flying fuck if he was still infected you launched yourself at him. If he got you? What a way to go. You didn’t care. 

But he didn’t try to bite you.

You felt him take a step back when you made contact with him and then his arms snaked around you, his chest rumbled with a laugh, “Missed you too.”

“Is it over?”

He held up his left hand– intact, clear of infection, and with his ring on, “Yeah, this part anyway…now, something I’ve gotta do.”

“What?”

He just kissed you and picked you up and marched into bed like he was on orders, “I gotta apologize for scaring you. I’m sorry– there wasn’t another way.”

You pulled him closer to you and made him shut the fuck up. You didn’t want to hear the monologue of the martyr that was Leon Kennedy on this particular day. Today? Your husband came back alive from the wars and it was time to be quiet and stripped and focused. It was time to feel that special thing the two of you had behind a door with no witnesses, the sort of connection that builds a whole life around it. 

He made love to you like he had been dying and this was a hall pass from hell. He was sharp, he was so fucking relieved he was here and it was fine and it was all going to be fine. He was back.

He didn’t, honestly, want to leave again. He knew that feeling would likely fade and he would feel ready for work again but he felt like maybe this time his recovery period would be longer.

Better than I have felt in ages – it was true, but fuck. The fear of the before? Staring it down like that? He had never been that close to gone before. 

And now that he felt well again? He just wanted to stay here. He wanted to be quiet and surrounded by the soft things. He wanted to tinker on your old Jeep and take the dog on a walk. 

In bed he let his forehead rest against your back, “How long was I gone?”

“Three days?”

“Feels like I didn’t sleep the whole time.”

“Because you probably didn’t.” You snorted, “Unless you were unconscious.”

“Think I was for a bit…” He shook his head, “Doesn’t matter. Three days out? Three days in. Let’s just call out, order in, and that’s the plan.”

You’d never call him fussy.

“Doctor has ordered bedrest for you. Week minimum. Two preferred.” You purred against him. 

“Doctor’s a real hard ass but I guess she knows what she’s talking about.” He turned you on your back and kissed you, long and slow. There wasn’t a rush now, and nothing would make him do that to you again.

In the morning you’d let him sleep. Make him breakfast. He would start feeling safe and his nervous system would stop overreacting and you would ask him where he’d gone, what he did.

Nothing prepared you for the answers.

“Not curious about Raccoon City again?”

“Nope.” You shook your head, “Fuck Raccoon City. Curious about Elpis though…you give this to Sherry?”

“Mmhmm. And surrendered the rest, though I’m thinking Chris got his hands on some.”

“Good. Well. All very capable people.”

“Not chomping at the bit to go in and study it?”

“Nope. I’m staying here with you– doctor’s orders.”

A/N: ONE MORE CHAPTER ONE MORE CHAPTER

So I truly had no interest in the whole thing before the game but HELL. It was an amazing game. Thank you Requiem. Are there enough gifs? I could add more.

Hey Resident Evil fandom regulars-- I am new here! I like to think this is a good contribution, but I don't know your tags. Please RB to help this get to the right place.

OK in truly uncharacterist fashion this is ALL only a month old-- here's the recommended progression if you're looking to catch up!

First Days (new! March 2026)

"We Usually Ask If You've Been Out of the Country" (new! March 2026)

"I Don't Have a Shot for That" (new! March 2026)

Registry (new! March 2026)

Someone Who Doesn't Leave (new! March 2026)

Ruin the Friendship (new! March 2026) *Mature

Appearances (new! March 2026)

The Nightmare (new! March 2026)

Fuss (new! March 2026)

Hard Day (new! March 2026)

Space (new! March 2026)

A Stray (new! April 2026)

DIsappointment (new! April 2026)

Somewhere To Go Home To (new! April 2026)