take a gamble that love exists

It was hard for him to process it, standing on the edge of the sparking crater that used to be ARK, chopper blades stirring up dust and the floodlights of the BSAA’s forensic division illuminating the rubble. It was all so orderly, so predictable, so simple — he’d done it a million times in his career, debriefing after an operation, letting the scientists and analysts get to their work of organizing the aftermath. Communications here, field medics there, an orchestrated dance of inter-agency cooperation to sift through the wreckage and condense the smoking battlefield into a neatly typed file on some bureaucrat’s desk. He’d come in, stirred up some trouble, and cracked the thing open; cleaning the wound and stitching it back together was somebody else’s job, and he should be glad that his part was over. 

But despite his usual relief at this hand-off of the anti-bioterrorism relay race, he found himself stalled with an uncharacteristic anxiety. The satisfaction of wrapping up the combat and handing things over to the analysts was entirely absent, replaced by a strange urge to look over his shoulder, check his pulse, wake up from the dream of being alive. He’d gotten what he hadn’t even dared to hope for, and he had no idea what to do with himself. The most he could make himself do for a long moment was simply take everything in.

The self-destruct sequence Gideon had put into place wasn’t just for the central refinery - it had destroyed the whole lab, setting fire to miles of underground networking that now blazed orange like a gash cut to the molten center of the earth. Over the sound of helicopter blades, gunshots rang out every once in a while: soldiers taking out the bioweapons that attempted to climb out of the rubble, their dying shrieks swallowed up by the roar of the fire and occasional explosions as the flames reached further down the winding tunnels. Aerial firefighters dropped thousands of gallons of water on the inferno, sending up great clouds of black chemical smoke, a backdrop to the mangled remains of Raccoon City’s center. It was unrecognizable, a desolate hell where nothing could survive, and yet he and Grace had been plucked from the heart of the destruction and set on their own two feet. Alive.

Staring blankly at the mountains and valleys of this grey, gutted wasteland, Leon tasted the metallic tinge of lingering fear and found himself, of all things, desperately thirsty. Though cured of the hemorrhaging in his lungs, his throat was still thick with blood and smoke, his mouth dry with the last of the adrenaline from his fight with Victor. Every breath brought a lungful of ash with it too, and though he could have asked for water and surely would have been given some, he could do nothing but stand on the edge of the crater and try to convince himself he wasn’t still down there in the belly of it.

He couldn’t believe it. After resigning himself to death on this mission over and over, the reality of having survived it left him listless, adrift, uncomfortable. He wasn’t sick; he wasn’t trapped; he wasn’t even inconveniently hemmed in by red tape for longer than the space of a mission debrief. He was free to go, in better shape than he’d been after plenty of other operations, his rogue assault on Umbrella’s ghosts approved and underwritten by the BSAA itself. Water under the bridge, and in fact a choice that would be praised and celebrated as it all came out just how deep of an underbelly he’d exposed and struck the final blow to.

Taking off his gloves and putting them in his pocket, he looked over his hands marveled at how normal they looked. No hint of bruising or disease marked them now, their sensation and capability fully restored, months of decay and pain and weakness as if they had never existed. They were scarred and callused, yes, but his. He’d spent so long not being able to trust that his hands would do what he needed them to do, not knowing if they’d stay steady, not knowing if they’d pull a trigger too quickly or grip a hatchet too weakly. Now that they were his again, he felt acutely what a loss of confidence in his own ability their weakening had brought with it. How he’d managed the last twenty-four hours without being able to trust the weapon of his body was really a miracle when it was all said and done.

“Agent Kennedy.”

Quelling the urge to hide the nonexistent evidence of a disease he’d been cured of, he let his hands drop to his sides and turned to see a BSAA soldier walking through the ash towards him. It wasn’t one of the Hound Wolf Squad who’d rescued them - there was some internal dispute between the BSAA proper and Chris’ guys, and they evidently didn’t want to stick around to meet the rest of the agency, pulling out as soon as they’d gotten him and Grace topside. He wished he’d gotten a chance to ask them about Chris or even thank them properly, but he was grateful they’d risked their necks to pull him out of the rubble and wouldn’t begrudge them a quick exit.

The soldier’s face was unreadable, masked in his tactical helmet and night-vision googles. Briefly Leon’s mind flashed to Gideon’s metal mask, and he shook his head to rid himself of the memory. Making himself into the steady, stone-cold Agent Kennedy again and shoving the tired, disbelieving, uncomfortable Leon down somewhere deep under the armor, he straightened his posture and faced the solider head-on.

“The DSO’s sending in a team to help secure the site,” the soldier said. “They’re also requesting you hitch a ride back to the field office in Wrenwood for a debrief.”

He’d known that would be coming, but he’d hoped it would keep until after he’d gotten a few hours’ sleep or at least a shower. But there were stiff bunks and locker rooms at the office, and maybe he could finagle a minute to himself before he got dragged into a meeting where he’d be asked to account for every bullet he’d fired the entire mission.

“Do you know if Grace is being called in?” he asked.

“Agent Ashcroft?” The soldier glanced over his shoulder to the medivac chopper where Grace sat in the doorway. “The FBI’s already called jurisdiction on that. I’d talk to them.”

Leon nodded. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

As the solider went back to his work, Leon made his way through the barren grey crater to Grace. A flight nurse was checking her vitals, and he was surprised to see a familiar winged logo on the navy jumpsuit he wore.

“You’re with the DSO?” he asked.

The flight nurse nodded, taking the pulse ox reader from Grace’s finger and wrapping a blood pressure cuff around her arm.

“Yes sir,” he said, not even sparing Leon a glance as he tended to Grace. “We were called in for an immediate evacuation from Raccoon City.”

Either Sherry’s call-in to Chris had been flagged by the DSO, or she’d just sent out an evac request to every agency she could reach in the hopes that one of them would get to him in time. Whichever one it was, Leon knew her quick response had saved his hide and Grace’s too.

“Can I get a ride back with you to the field office?” he asked.

“Sure.” The nurse finished with Grace’s vitals and turned to him. “I just gotta...”

He trailed off, an expression of recognition and surprising relief crossing his face. Leon didn’t know the kid, but he evidently knew Leon, or at least knew of him.

“You’re Agent Kennedy, right?”

Leon nodded.

“One of the patients in the medical wing knew we’d be coming to get you,” he explained. “I didn’t catch her name, but she’s really worried about you.”

Sunny. The thought of you hit him like a lightning bolt, waking up his every nerve that had been dulled by a shocky kind of numbness. He was alive, and you were alive, and there was a cure for T-Virus, and... oh, boy. It hadn’t crossed his mind until that very moment that living meant more than just figuring out what to do with himself post-ARK. It meant seeing you, explaining everything, begging you to forgive him for that kiss and secretly, desperately hoping you’d let him kiss you again.

Feeling a little like he’d taken a blow to the head, Leon scuffed a hand over his face and tried to find his internal balance again. Agent Kennedy was slipping, leaving a much more nervous and eager Leon to take the wheel and gun that beat-up engine straight back to you.

“I know who you’re talking about,” he said, his voice a little raspier than it had been before. He cleared his throat. “I’ll talk to her when we get back. Thanks for letting me know.”

The flight nurse nodded. “Let me just get Agent Ashcroft’s chart to the guys from the FBI. As soon as that’s done, we’re wheels up.”

As the nurse left to talk to the FBI liaison coordinating that agency’s on-site operations, Leon turned to Grace and saw her huddled in a blanket with a steam-wreathed cup of coffee in hand. She was looking a little better, though she was still pale and drawn, and her shoulders slumped as if the weight of the entire world rested on them. He understood that feeling, and even if he was a little off-kilter himself, he tried to see if he could help.

“You alright?” he asked. “I heard the FBI called dibs on you.”

She nodded, a faint, wan smile crossing her face. “I guess. They got me into this mess, so I supposed they want credit for getting me out.”

He sat next to her in the door of the chopper. “Is somebody coming to get you? I mean... you got somebody to look after you when you get home?”

“I think they’re taking me to the hospital for a while to be monitored. After that... I guess my cat can look after me.”

He gave a doubtful hum. There were plenty of missions where he’d gone home to an empty house, and he supposed a cat was better than being completely alone, but it wasn’t the kind of life he’d wish on anybody.

“Well, if the cat ends up being less of a conversationalist than you hoped for,” he said, “you know you can call me any time. Really, Grace.”

Her smile was more genuine then. “Thanks, Leon. For that, and... for everything else.” 

Running the pad of her thumb over the side of her cup, she looked out towards the organized chaos of agents and soldiers and scientists working over the mess they’d left them.

“I just wish we could have saved Emily,” she said softly.

He thought back to the dark, frigid storage bay, the tightly disciplined guilt of taking down a threat no matter what it had once been, the feel of Grace’s hands tugging at his arm to keep him from hurting the one good thing she’d found in the horrors of Rhodes Hill.

“I didn’t hit any of her vitals,” he said, and it was the truth. As much as it had been drilled into him to target weak spots, even he hadn’t been able to overcome the knowledge that whatever that monster became, the last time he’d seen Emily, she’d been nothing more than a hurt little girl.

Grace looked over at him. “What are you saying?”

He shrugged, unwilling to give false hope, unable to keep from wondering himself. 

“I don’t know, exactly. But... there might be a chance she’s alive.” He met her eyes. “I’ll keep an ear out. Somebody - the DSO, the BSAA - they’re probably already at Rhodes Hill doing a sweep. If they find anything, I’ll let you know.”

She put her hand over his and gripped it tightly. “Thank you.”

He squeezed her hand back. “Of course.”

The flight nurse was making his way back to the chopper, and Grace stood to join the cohort of FBI agents across the way.

“Hey, Leon...” She turned to him for a moment. “That girl the nurse mentioned. Is she the same one from the clinic?”

He couldn’t help a smile, lopsided and slightly embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“I’m glad she got out,” she said. “Are you going to see her when you get to the office?”

“If she’ll let me.”

A flicker of amusement and curiosity lit her expression then. “Well that’s... cryptic. Good luck, I guess.”

He breathed a laugh. “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

Getting into the chopper after the flight nurse, he made sure Grace was with someone familiar to her before he pulled the door closed. Settling back into the seat as the blades began their deafening rotation, he realized his hands were shaking a little; not from pain or fear or exhaustion, but from some strange, giddy nervousness. He had a lot of explaining to do, he knew - but with Elpis in the right hands to be widely produced and a newfound desire and ability to live longer than the next few hours, he felt some bright hope that he could mend things between you. Even if he couldn’t, if you really didn’t want to see him again, he’d at least have the chance to tell you how sorry he was for hurting you. But some part of him - some boyish, eager part of him he hadn’t felt this strongly in a long, long time - was almost confident that as soon as you were together again, things would just... fall into place. Whatever that looked like.

He felt himself smile when he thought of you. The exhilaration of not only surviving but being given a chance to actually live suddenly hit him full force, a flood of nervous energy that made him bounce his leg and crack his knuckles over and over as the chopper flew closer to Wrenwood. If the fight nurse noticed these unusually agitated tells in the DSO’s top operative, he didn’t say so; maybe he thought it was shock, the last burn of adrenaline after hours of unbroken fighting. He couldn’t have guessed the cause was a girl with a sunny personality who needed a second kiss, one Leon very much hoped you would share with him.

He looked at his hands again, thinking of how you’d held them when they were weak and sick and broken. If he’d felt so you so strongly then, what would it be like to hold your hand now? 

Still smiling, grateful for the darkness of the chopper’s cabin that concealed the goofy, dopey grin that seemed entirely out of place for what he’d been through, he felt sure that holding your hand again would be a miracle all of its own.

-

“So... you got any plans tonight? There’s a new bar downtown we could check out.”

You watched one of the medical students twirl her ponytail in a coy, absent movement, looking oh-so-subtly from under her lashes at the tall flight nurse who stood closer to her than was strictly necessary. You could see why she was so taken with him, all broad and trim as he was in his navy jumpsuit; he seemed plenty interested in her too, angling himself to almost bracket her in against the desk she leaned on. The sliding glass doors of the patient rooms didn’t afford them much privacy for their tryst at the nursing station, but they didn’t seem to mind; he leaned in and whispered something that made her blush and bubble with laughter, and he gave her a satisfied grin in response.

Feeling some dull little twinge of jealousy and loneliness, you turned back to the map of Rhodes Hill on the tablet you held. An agent had brought it to you a few minutes ago and politely asked you to look over it - the DSO was sending in a team to the clinic, and any insight you could give about what you and Leon had experienced there would be helpful. That’s what he’d said, anyway; and, not for nothing, he’d been decidedly more considerate than the agent who’d driven you to a medical crisis in interrogation. You didn’t know how it would help them, but you also figured it couldn’t really hurt Leon to do it; so, in the interest of not appearing to aid and abet a rogue government operative, you agreed to mark up the blueprint with whatever bits of information you could remember. 

The map was probably the same exact one Leon had gotten from Sherry, and you started with the Rehabilitation Ward on the first floor. Four dead zombies, you wrote in that square. Chainsaw. In the rectangle of the Director’s Office you wrote secret door lever behind painting and blister head zombies, thinking it was an appropriate name for whatever mutation you’d encountered there. 

Not knowing exactly what kind of information their were looking for, you kept your observations strictly in the realm of detailing the infected and whatever security measures you could recall. Surely they weren’t interested in everything that had happened, as you couldn’t imagine this is where I first saw a dead body and this is where Leon and I talked about waffles being very useful in a tactical sweep of the premises. And there were plenty of places you had no knowledge of at all, dozens of rooms and corridors that probably held unimaginable horrors of which you were lucky to have no experience.

You didn’t feel very lucky. Your head was starting to hurt again, but you weren’t due for another round of painkillers just yet; the clock in the corner of the screen showed it was just past five, so you’d managed to get a few hours of sleep, but you remembered the nurse saying you could have toradol every six hours. The combination of the tablet’s bluelight glow and the effort of intentionally recalling your brutal experience at Rhodes Hill probably wasn’t helping, and you noticed your handwriting get messier as your hands started to shake.

Emily, you wrote in the storage bay of the water treatment plant. Little girl → monster. Dead.

Shoving the tablet off your lap and drawing your knees to your chest, you cradled your pounding head and tried to take deep, steady breaths. Nausea made your headache worse, and each breath was a thin, shaky attempt at getting oxygen into your body that seemed battered and bruised beyond repair. Everything was sore, though whether that was physical trauma or something inside, some permanent damage on the tender animal of your heart, you didn’t know and couldn’t separate. Whatever it was, it hurt - and you were frightened by the idea that there was nothing to be done for it, no medicine in the world that could make it any better. 

On the other side of the door, the med student and flight nurse were still talking in amorous tones when the sound of an alarm cut into their conversation. You startled a little, even though the sound was muffled through the glass, and glanced over to see the nurse pull his phone from his pocket.

“Danny, that’s the most obnoxious ringtone in the world,” the med student said. “You have to change it. I think somebody’s about to code every time I hear it.”

“Maybe you should make it your ringtone,” he teased. “That way you wouldn’t keep missing my calls.”

“I never miss them,” she said tartly. “Sometimes I just choose not to answer for the sake of my sanity.”

His smile was cheeky as he put the phone to his ear, but after a few seconds of listening to whoever was on the other end of the line, his expression sobered and his posture straightened.

“Yes sir, I’m on my way. Copy ten minutes until flight.”

When he pocketed his phone again, the med student gave him a pat on his chest.

“Off to save lives?” she asked.

“Probably not,” he said wryly. “Somebody called in for immediate evac from Raccoon City, so maybe I’m bringing in a shipment of zombies for you to cut up in the cadaver lab.”

Her expression scrunched, and though she said something in response to that, you couldn’t hear it over the sudden ringing in your ears. Only one person would have called in for evacuation from Raccoon City, and if he couldn’t get out himself, that meant he was in trouble.

Stumbling out of bed, wrestling with entangling monitor leads and IV lines, you jammed your palm against the button that opened the door and practically ran out to the nursing station. The med student’s expression was one of surprise and concern as she took in your ragged state and the rolling IV stand you were dragging behind you, but you wanted to talk to her paramour.

“You said someone called for evac from Raccoon City?” you asked, your voice hoarse and determined. 

“Uh...” He looked at the med student. “Kate, you wanna...?”

“You really shouldn’t be out of bed,” she said soothingly, taking the lead like you were some kind of unstable person who needed to be sheepdogged back the safety of your room. “Did you need something, or - ?”

“I need to know who you’re going to get from the city,” you said, ignoring her and looking up at the flight nurse.

He raised a brow at your insistence. “I’m not allowed to disclose that to you.”

“I know you’re not,” you said, frustrated and impatient, trying to think past the throbbing in your head and the knot of grief and fear in your chest. “But I just want to know if he’s alive.”

“Who?”

“Leon,” you said, as if it were obvious, as if everyone in the world was as worried about him as you were. “Please, I know you’re not supposed to say, but - ”

“Wait, Leon Kennedy?” His brow shot up when you nodded. “The guy everyone’s looking for is in Raccoon City?”

“Yes,” you said desperately, wishing he’d get it through his head and stop wasting time and just answer you. “He’s trying to find the Umbrella researcher who almost killed both of us last night. He’s the only person who would be calling in from the city.”

The med student had brought your IV closer so you wouldn’t rip it out of your arm, and she hesitated with her hand on the line and exchanged a look with the nurse. It made you angry for some reason, their shared look of pity and surprise - you didn’t need their sympathy, and surely two people working for the DSO were no strangers to bizarre, life-threatening sob stories.

“Listen, I know this sounds crazy, and I know I’m not allowed to know,” you said, each world tumbling over the other as you tried to get them to listen. “But he’s my - ” 

You cut yourself off, not knowing what he was, thinking again of the fact that he wasn’t your anything. You swallowed thickly, trying not to burst into tears.

“He saved my life,” you said, your voice wobbly. “I just want to know if he’s alive.”

“If they’re sending in an evac team,” the med student said kindly, “he must be alive. They wouldn’t send a flight nurse if they thought they couldn’t help.”

“That’s not... universally true,” he said under his breath, and he earned an elbow in his ribs from his girl.

“Not helping,” she warned in an undertone. She nodded towards the door. “You’d better get going anyway.”

He started to leave, and in a last, frantic attempt to get something useful out of him, you took his hand in a tight grip. His poker face was decent enough, but you could tell he hadn’t expected you to grab at him.

“Wait, please,” you said, begging him to understand. “I get it. It goes against protocol, and I don’t want you to get in trouble. But I went through hell with Leon, and if... if you could just let me know if he’s alive when you come back...”

He seemed to debate within himself and finally sighed. 

“If he’s alive, we’ll bring him here for a full medical. We’ll come right past here to get to the trauma room, so you should be able to see us bringing him in. That’s all I can tell you.”

So you’d watch through your door until you saw them bring him in. Then you would know for sure. You didn’t care how long it would take.

You squeezed his hand. “Thank you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sure. I really gotta get going, though.”

Letting him leave then, you allowed the med student to take you back to your room, and you sat on the edge of the bed like a dedicated, high-strung watch dog as the minutes ticked by like they were each an hour apiece. You wished you’d asked how long it would take to get him from the city, wondering if Grace would be with him, worried he’d be hurt when they brought him in. The pain in your head was mere background noise to the tight, panicked crush of your lungs as you waited and waited and waited. Surely they should be back by now. If they weren’t, something had gone wrong. What if they couldn’t find him? What if he was in trouble? What if he was already -

“Code orange. Code orange.”

You nearly jumped out of your skin at the loud, metallic voice that came through the speakers. The white fluorescents switched without warning to a slow, pulsing amber, your room and the corridor outside suddenly washed in a dark, eerie glow that made your heart rate skyrocket. The already-closed door of your hospital room locked with a jarring clank and a sealing, pressurized hiss.

“What the fuck?” You stood up too quickly and gave yourself a swing of dizziness so bad you had to grip the guardrail to stay upright.

“Confirmed biological threat. Level A protection required. Code orange.”

The robotic female voice seemed to come from everywhere, reverberating loud enough to rattle your teeth, and you broke out in a cold sweat as you remembered the code call in Rhodes Hill when everything went to hell. Wasted bodies animated by disease, blood and viscera pooling on the white floor, darkness and hunger and death. Pressing the button by the door hard enough to break it, you felt the first flush of panic grow almost overwhelming when you couldn’t get it to open. 

“Let me out!” you yelled in a weak, rusty voice, slamming your palms against the glass as you tried to remember how to breathe. You couldn’t go through it again. Not without him. But no one was in the hallway or in any of the patient rooms - no nurses, no doctors, no anyone. It was only you and the urgent, repeating code in the strange amber darkness, and the same icy hand that had grabbed hold of you in interrogation started to tighten around your throat again.

Then, from the red-washed hallway across from you, three large, misshapen figures walked out of the darkness. Stumbling backwards against the bed, you were frozen in horror as they came straight to your door, your chest rising and falling rapidly with each panting breath. At first you didn’t know what they were, but the closer they came, you thought they were people - if they were human, they were made unrecognizable by the masks and goggles they wore under their thick plastic suits.

“Code orange. Confirmed biological threat. Level A protection required.”

Everything came into focus then with a sudden, deadly clarity. They weren’t zombies. You were the zombie.

The door to your room hissed open, letting the faceless figures in with hands already raised to subdue you. One of them said something, his voice thin and muffled through the mask; you didn’t hear it, too busy backing away to the other side of the bed and finding yourself hemmed in by monitors that gave off shrill alarms in response to your racing pulse.

“Wait, wait, wait!” you gasped, panic making you insensible, backing further against the monitors as they created a wall in front of you. They blurred in a rush of frightened tears. “I - I’m not going to turn! It’s not like that!”

One of them grabbed your arm, and as you tried to break free of the grip, you watched with wide-blown eyes as another one raised a syringe that shone dully in the red light.

“No, no, please!” you screamed, tears rushing down your face, struggling against the iron grip that held you captive. “I’m not a zombie! You don’t have to - !”

The hand with the syringe came down in slow motion in your swimming vision, and in an explosive burst of adrenaline, you yanked yourself free of the hand that held you and scrambled over the bed. The IV ripped out of your arm, monitor stands crashing behind you, harsh curses and orders overlapping under the blaring alarm repeating that you were a threat, you were something to be contained and neutralized, you were a biological weapon. Racing through the open door in a blind panic, swallowed by the dark amber maze of unfamiliar corridors and hounded by the faceless figures who wanted to trap and kill you like an animal, you sprinted in some unknown direction and knew you weren’t going to make it out no matter how fast you ran. Your head was screaming, your sock-padded feet hitting hard against the white vinyl floor, every nerve in your body like a live wire under your skin as you gasped and sobbed and looked wildly around for any means of escape. Left, right, another left, down a dark hallway, bursting through a set of doors, another right, please let this be the way out - 

You smacked into someone hard enough give yourself a bloody nose, stumbling back in a daze for a moment, completely blindsided and reeling with the impact. Then you felt strong hands grip your arms, and terror eclipsed everything else, and you were screaming and thrashing, begging, pleading, fighting with every ounce of strength you had left - 

“Sunny!” 

The entire world ground to a sudden, screeching halt.

“Sunny, it’s me! What the hell’s going on?”

Breath catching in your throat, shaking so hard you thought you’d break apart, you looked up at the tall, dark figure in front of you and saw in the pulse of red light that it was him.

Leon. 

With an anguished cry, you threw your arms around his waist and pressed yourself as close as possible to him, wanting to be inside him somehow, tucked under his ribs where no one could hurt you.

“Don’t let them take me!” you sobbed, desperate and frantic. “Don’t let them take me!”

“Okay, easy,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over your pleading and the blaring alarm. He wrapped his arms around you on instinct, one hand splayed over your back, the other cradling the back of your head. “Don’t let who take you?”

You couldn’t answer, barely able to draw breath around groaning, agonized sobs, a wave of relief at his presence crashing over you so strongly you were lightheaded with it. He wouldn’t let them hurt you. You knew he wouldn’t. The fact that he was here, that he was alive, didn’t even register as you thought only of being protected from those looming, faceless creatures with their groping hands and shining syringes.

He pulled back for a moment, and you made some sort of pitiful sound of fear and alarm at the thought that he was going to leave you, trying to grab at him to keep him close, but he only held your face in his hands and made you look at him. His expression was a mask of concern and determination, the steadiness you’d come to rely on crystal clear in his morning-blue eyes and the feel of his hands on your skin.

“Take a deep breath,” he said, in that same voice you’d always obey. You tried to do as he said, but it was hitching and ragged as you struggled against the panic that loomed like a living thing.

“Easy now,” he said, firm and calm despite the flashing red lights, the robotic alarm, the reality of you falling to pieces in his hands. “I’m right here. Tell me what’s going on.”

“They know I have T-Virus,” you said, voice catching on sobs you couldn’t stop. “I t-tried to explain, but - they’re trying to t-take me away. They wanted to inject me with s-something. I ran, but I didn’t know w-where I was going, and - Leon, they - they think I’m - ”

“Okay, okay,” he soothed. “I hear you. I understand.”

Your expression crumpled, and you pressed your hands over his to keep him close to you, your tears running hot over his fingers.

“Please don’t let them take me, Leon.”

“I won’t. I promise.” He studied your face. “You’re bleeding. Was that from before, or - ?”

His keen gaze caught on something behind you, and before you could react, he’d pushed you behind him and put himself between you and the three hazmat-suited scientists that had finally caught up to you. With a shuddering sob of fear, you trembled violently as they came closer and closer down the dark hall, and he took your hand and hooked your fingers in the loop of his belt.

“Agent Kennedy,” one of them said, angry and cutting. “Hand over the subject.”

“Subject?” he growled. His demeanor was completely transformed, the patience with which he’d comforted you replaced with a bristling, aggressive resolve. “You’re out of your fuckin’ mind, pal. She’s not a science experiment, and I’ll be damned if I let you chase her around like she’s a lab rat that got out of one of your tests.”

“She’s infected with T-Virus,” another said forcefully, as if that made you less of a person and more of a test subject, a biological abnormality, a thing. “We’re taking her to isolation. She’ll infect the whole building if we don’t get it contained.”

“It’s not like that,” he said, his tone clear and icy, trying very hard to stay calm. “It’s a different strain of the virus. She’s not going to turn.”

A scoff of contempt came from behind one of their masks. “How would you know?”

“Because I’ve had it for months,” he sharply. “And it doesn’t act like the regular strain.”

One of them almost laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have T-Virus.”

“Why, because I’m not trying to eat you?” he snapped. “She’s not either, but you’ve got the whole building on lockdown for one girl who couldn’t hurt you if she tried. Why didn’t you bring in a tactical squad if you think she’s that much of a threat?”

“We’ll call one if we need to, Agent Kennedy,” the syringe-wielder sneered. “Just because you’re the class pet of the DSO doesn’t mean you can go against operational protocol. Step aside.”

Leon fairly snarled as the scientist stepped closer, his entire body radiating tension, strong and powerful and furious in the glare of the pulsing red light.

“Take one more step and I’ll knock your teeth out,” he spat. “Don’t try me.”

“Either you hand her over,” the scientist barked, “or we’re calling in a containment unit.”

“Go ahead and call them,” he said coldly. “I guarantee I can get her out of here before they even get boots on the ground.”

One of the scientists, the only woman among them, stepped forward with her hands up in a placating gesture.

“Mr. Kennedy, she has to be put in isolation. Nobody wants to call in a containment unit, but - ”

“You sure about that?” he said, his tone less openly hostile towards her but by no means trusting. “Your partner seems pretty eager to.”

“We’re just following protocol,” she maintained. “Think of this from a contagion standpoint. All of her panels came back positive for T-Virus. We ran them multiple times. She’s not showing the symptoms we would expect, but that doesn’t mean we can throw caution to the wind and disregard standard operating procedure to prevent another outbreak. And you know better than anyone how much of a disaster that would be if it happened.”

With a shaking hand, you scuffed the sleeve of your borrowed sweatshirt under your nose, finding it still bleeding from running into Leon. The dark color of your blood on the fabric was visible even in the half-darkness, and you knew that these scientists saw you as a walking, talking ground zero waiting to happen, every tear and every drop of blood a biological minefield. The woman’s reasoning was sound, but Leon was so far beyond the end of his rope that it barely made a dent in his anger.

“So you put her in isolation, and then what?” he demanded. “You’ll run tests on her, get as much scientific value out of her as you can before she turns, and then you’ll kill her?”

“Your whole job is terminating biological weapons, Kennedy,” the one with the syringe spat. “Just because she hasn’t turned yet doesn’t mean she’s not just like every other freak you deal with on a daily basis.”

That was like a lit match in a powder keg, and before anyone could try and stop him, Leon hauled the scientist up by the front of his hazmat suit and pinned him to the wall. The scientist caved immediately, blubbering and holding his hands up in surrender, and Leon hadn’t done anything but put his forearm against his throat and glared at him through the sheen of the plastic mask between them.

“Don’t kill me!” the scientist whimpered.

Leon’s expression was little more than a snarl. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t kill people without good reason, and even though you’re an irritating little fucker, it’d be a waste of my time to kill you when I know this is enough to get you to shut your mouth.” He put a little more pressure against the man’s throat. “It is enough, right?”

“Yes, yes, it’s enough!” he wailed. “Let me go!”

He did, letting the scientist collapse to the floor where the syringe fell from his grip and rolled across the tile. Leon crushed it with the heel of his boot.

“Call your superior,” he said, directing the order to the woman scientist. “There’s a team already out in Raccoon City securing the site of an underground Umbrella lab, and they’ll tell you we found a new anti-viral. One she gets that, she’ll be cured.”

“A new anti-viral?”

Both you and the scientist spoke at the same time, disbelief ringing in your voices, but he evidently had neither the patience nor the inclination to explain any further.

“You can take her to isolation if you want until you get that information,” he said. “But I’m going with her.”

“Absolutely not,” she said firmly. “A non-infected person will not under any circumstances be put in quarantine with a T-Virus host. Even if that wasn’t standard protocol, and even if there’s some magical cure you just pulled out of thin air, I couldn’t in good conscience do that in a million years.”

A tense, heavy silence hung between her and Leon for a moment, the scientist crumpled on the floor and the other one trying to help him up completely ignored by both of them as they stared each other down. For the first time, you realized he wasn’t wearing his tactical gloves, and the dark bruising you’d seen on his hand this morning was completely gone. Dazed, unable to process what exactly that meant, you were lost in a sea of confusion and uncertainty with Leon as the only thing in the whole world you were sure of.

“If I was infected, would you put me in isolation with her?” he asked.

“Well I - ” She seemed at a bit of a loss. “That would be standard procedure, yes. But you’re not infected, and - ”

Before she could say anything else, he turned to you and took your chin in a light grip.

“Don’t freak out,” he said, and kissed you right there in front of God and everybody.

Despite his instruction, you did freak out briefly, your eyes widening and a squeak of fear escaping you - for a horrifying moment, it was just like that nightmare, tears and blood and sweat and a kiss you hadn’t asked for. But it was quick and almost clinical, and he wasn’t hurting you, and he pulled back before you’d even had a chance to really register it.

“There,” he said, glaring at the scientist as he swiped a rough hand over his face, smearing your blood over his mouth. “Now I’m infected.”

“Mr. Kennedy,” she said, aghast. “What the hell are you doing? This isn’t a joke!”

“And I’m not laughing,” he said flatly. “Take us to isolation. Call your superior and let them tell you about the anti-viral. And I promise you that if anybody tries anything with her, they won’t be answering to anybody but me.”

She was frozen in indecision and complete shock for a long moment. Leon allowed her a few seconds to figure out what she wanted to do, and his hand found yours in a silent promise that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to you no matter what she decided.

“Call Scott,” she said finally, turning to the scientist who propped up his completely undone partner. “I want to know everything that’s going on with this supposed anti-viral. And I want a guard posted outside of their isolation room around the clock.”

She looked back at Leon, scowling at him from behind her face shield. “Is that going to be a problem, agent?”

“No problem at all,” he said coolly. He watched the other two scientists leave down the hall with a dark look etched into his features. “You can send the entire tactical reserve so long as they know she’s not to be taken out of my sight.”

She drew a deep breath, straightening her posture. “And you’ll need to leave your weapons here. You can’t have them in quarantine with you.”

Some part of you admired her bravery; you really did think she was just trying to do her job, and standing up to Leon would have been an intimidating prospect even if he wasn’t as tense and angry as he was now.

He raised a brow. “That’s fine, but let’s not be under any delusion that I’d need a gun to keep her safe if you send someone in to experiment on her.”

“Don’t get fresh with me, Mr. Kennedy,” she said tersely. “It would be well within protocol for me to have you detained by whatever means necessary. But I’m trusting you to behave like a reasonable person despite clear evidence that you're completely out of your mind, and I’d appreciate it if you extended the same courtesy to me.”

“Fair enough,” he said evenly. “Just so long as we’re all aware of the situation.”

“Leave your weapons on the floor,” she said. “I’ll have someone collect them and keep them in lockup until we get all of this sorted.”

Leon did as she said, unholstering his huge revolver and pistol and setting them on the tile at his feet. She eyed him warily, but he seemed conscious of that and took pains to be as straightforward and obvious as possible as he followed her instructions.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“You’ll follow me to isolation,” she said. “Unless I should be worried you’re going to throw me against the wall too, in which case I’ll go last while we make our way to that wing. Should I be worried, Mr. Kennedy?”

“No ma’am,” he said. “I understand you’re just doing your job, and as long as everyone keeps their heads, I won’t cause any trouble.”

He looked over his shoulder at you. “You ready?”

“Y-yes,” you managed. “As long as you’ll stay with me.”

He gave your hand a reassuring squeeze, his eyes meeting yours; and despite everything, you saw the faintest smile touching the corners of them.

“Always, sunny. You're stuck with me now.”

Your hands shook as you tugged at the slick grooves of the sash, trying to get it to close before any more rain could come in. Each breath swirled in a little silver cloud in front of you, and when the window finally gave way to your efforts, it jerked into place with the dull crack of wood on wood. You jumped and looked over your shoulder. Even with the thunder, that could have been heard, and you had the distinct sense that you should be trying to keep as quiet as possible.

The sound of the storm was almost entirely muffled now that the window was closed, the thunder and rain giving way to a lifeless silence that somehow seemed heavy, a suffocating kind of darkness and quiet where something could hide. From somewhere deep in the murky darkness, the faint sound of a chain could be heard - a slow, dragging rattle, distant enough to be missed unless you held your breath and strained to listen.

Sunny.

With a squeak of fear, you whirled around to face whoever had called you. No one was there, but a pale silver light had flickered on around the corner, giving a mix of comfort and wariness as you wondered who’d turned it on. Pressing a hand to your racing heart, you tried to get yourself to settle; the storm was making you jumpy, and the darkness behind you wasn’t helping as it seemed to inch closer and closer towards the little pool of light from the window. The rattling chain sounded nearer now, coming from the direction of the still-dark corridor, and you ventured away from the rain-pattered window to try to come into the light.

Breathing a sigh of relief as you rounded the corner, you finally recognized where you were. The quiet, empty expanse of Rhodes Hill’s entrance hall was hardly cozy, but at least it was sort of familiar; you’d only stepped away from your desk to close the window and must have gotten turned around in the place you were still getting used to. Under the pallid overhead light, you came to the desk and took up your post again, watching the door and waiting for... someone.

You couldn’t remember his name exactly. Something soft and short, something that rolled off the tongue; indistinct images came to mind as you tried to recall it, frosty blonde hair and big, gentle hands. You remembered his eyes, the keen, lonely, wintery blue of them that seemed to soften when framed by delicate crow’s feet or lit by some wry, irrepressible curve of his mouth. You would always remember their color, you were sure. If only you could remember his name.

From the top of the stairs, breaking into the silence so deep it was almost loud, came the sound of a soft, irregular crunching. Your features scrunched in unease as you listened to it for a moment longer, trying to place it - it seemed almost wet, like the sound you’d expect a honeycomb to make if it was split apart, thick and sticky and brittle. What on earth could be making it you had no idea, but you supposed you ought to check it out; minding the entrance hall was your job, as delightful a task as it was, and you knew you couldn’t afford to be remiss in your duties. 

Slowly making your way up the stairs, afraid it was some kind of animal, you stopped in surprise when you saw it was a man hunched over on all fours. His back was to you, but his navy shirt and the gun belt at his waist struck you as familiar, and you hurried to his side to see if you could help.

“Are you alright?” you said, kneeling beside him, the floor cold and unforgiving through the fabric of your tights. “Are you hurt? I can get a doctor if - ”

With a sudden lurch, his right shoulder jerked and bent inward at an unnatural angle, the movement making a noxious crunching noise like the one you’d heard before. You shrank back in fear.

“What are you doing?” Your voice wavered and cracked. “What’s the matter with you?”

He said nothing, his muscles starting to writhe grotesquely under the fabric of his shirt, each twist and jerk accompanied by a dull, wet crack. Jagged, bony ridges appeared under the skin along the place where joints should be; his arms were covered in textured bruises, ash colored spirals crawling up the flexing sinews under his skin. With a nauseating pop, his jaw unhinged at an angle, viscous strings of blood and saliva dripping onto the white floor from his blackened teeth.

“Sun...ny...”

You cried out in horror and grief when he slowly turned his head and looked at you, the bones of his neck and shoulders wrenching and crunching under pale skin webbed with dark, pulsating veins. His eyes were a deep, luminous yellow, sunk deeply into dark sockets, and you were frozen in abject terror as his hollow, lifeless gaze raked over you.

They should be blue, you thought hazily. His eyes should be blue.

He lunged at you, his lean muscle pinning you to the floor before you could scramble back from him, your skull bouncing off the marble with a sickening crack. Stars exploded across your vision, your eyes rolling back in your head as the pain of it registered; he clawed at your wrists, dragging them above your head, trapping you with the weight of his jerking, writhing body. One his his hands found your throat, squeezing until you could barely draw breath; each inhale rattled and wheezed as he loomed over you, the blood from his mouth dripping into yours.

“Please,” you gasped, watching the spread of that dark, ugly bruise as it crept up his neck and spread over his face. The yellow of his irises shone against the spidering tendrils of the bruise, dark, syrupy fluid dripping from his eyes, his nose, his ears, his mouth; he seemed to be trying to speak, but all that came from his throat was a thick welling of blood and a hungry, deadened moan.

His name, what was his name? Somehow, you knew if you could only remember what it was and call him by it, he wouldn’t hurt you - but you couldn’t breathe, and his hand closed tighter around your throat, and you knew you were going to die.

Then, to your complete surprise and absolute horror, he kissed you. 

An agonized groan tore itself from your chest and was swallowed by him, blood and sweat and black fluid smearing in the hot press of his mouth against yours. You thrashed under him, trying to fight him, but you were so tired and he was so big, and there was nothing you could do but let him rake his tongue over your teeth and force his humid, decaying breath into your lungs in an obscene parody of intimacy that seemed like it would never be finished.

“Stop... fighting,” he rasped, his voice multiplied into a jagged, ghoulish harmony that vibrated through your whole body. The scruff on his jaw scraped against your skin, burning it raw. “Say... my name.”

You couldn’t remember it. Maybe you’d chosen to forget it. It was tucked too deeply in some corner of your heart, somewhere you’d locked it away to try and ease the pain of it, and you cried and screamed and begged him to let you go as he squeezed harder against your throat.

“Please - don’t - kill me,” you sobbed, each word a gush of exertion and anguish as tears ran down your face to pool on the icy floor. “I don’t want to die.”

He dragged your limp, heavy arm into your line of vision, and when he pressed his mouth to your palm, the bruise that was spreading over him bloomed on your skin too. When he spoke, his voice was a cold, hollow gasp, meant only for you - 

“Too late.”

-

You came to consciousness with a ragged, choking inhale, your entire body wreathed in pain and the world a wash of blinding light and piercing sound. Someone was pinning you down, their hands on your wrists as you strained and twisted and fought against them. Voices overlapped around you, a bevy of sharp commands and questions, orders to push medication and check metabolic panels and put on hard restraints. The pain in your head was excruciating, some shrill metallic alarm racing in time with your thundering heartbeat, and someone was screaming the name you’d forgotten.

“Leon!”

You only knew it was your own voice because it hurt when you heard it, the syllables of his name like bits of jagged glass as they came from your raw throat. Too late. Too late. You hadn’t remembered. The sickness was killing you too, and wherever you were was a punishment, the end of all things where there was nothing but pain and loss and your heart being ripped from your chest, the soft innards of you squeezed in some merciless hand until you burst like the splatters of blood on the walls.

Something jabbed into your arm, quickly followed by a flood of ice in your veins that suddenly dulled all sensation until you could finally drew a real, gasping breath. Sobbing and groaning, your sweat-drenched body collapsing against the surface beneath you, you watched vague shapes of sterile white and lifeless grey swim before you and felt a leaden weight begin to eat away at every part of you until you were completely numb. You couldn’t stop crying, but reality slowly started to take shape, and your breath shuddered and caught as the out-of-focus face of the doctor from earlier appeared in front of you.

“Okay, kid.” His voice was calm and concerned. “You’re alright.”

He shined a small, bright light into your eyes, and you couldn’t even wince away from it. Hospital. Real one. Not Rhodes Hill. A small armory of facts came under the fog and built a protective wall around whatever shred of sanity you had left. Doctor. Medicine. Still alive. For now.

“Pupils are equal, round, and reactive,” he said. He held a finger up in front of you. “Can you follow my finger with your eyes? Don’t try and turn your head.”

You couldn’t have moved if you’d wanted to, the deadened weight of your limbs a strange, entrapping reprieve from the blinding pain that seemed to sink you ever deeper below some dark, murky surface. With much more effort than you thought it should take, you made your eyes follow the slow back-and-forth movement of his finger.

“Where am I?” you rasped.

“You’re in the medical wing,” he said. “DSO field office. We gave you a sedative, but I’d like to do some checks before I give you anything else. Can you tell me your name?”

“Sunny,” you said without thinking. 

“Is that a nickname?”

Your face was wet, but you didn’t know if it was from sweat or tears. Maybe both. “Yes.”

He hummed in agreement when you told him your given name. “Can you remember what you were doing before you lost consciousness?”

Vaguely, you recalled the agent, the endless questions, the file with Leon’s name on it. Mostly it was lost against the vivid images that flashed through your mind - Rhodes Hill, a rainy window, yellow eyes and dripping blood. Panic almost spiked again at the thought of it, but whatever they’d given you made you feel like you were miles underwater.

He’d asked you a question, and you tried to answer, reviewing the facts you’d gathered. Hospital. Doctor. Still alive. What else?

“Interrogation.” Your voice grated and creaked like something rusty. “That agent was mad at me.”

“She pushed you too hard,” the doctor said, and his tone was frustrated under the clinical calm. “I never would have cleared you if I thought they were planning to treat you like that.”

Kindness. Okay, that one was good. Somebody who cares whether you live or die. It made you think of something else, another thing in your small arsenal that also cared whether you lived or died.

Leon.

You swallowed, your mouth dry and your throat tender. “Where’s Leon?”

“Agent Kennedy hasn’t been brought in, as far as I know.” He took your hands in his, and you could barely feel his grip. “I’d like to do a few motor function tests. Squeeze my hands, please.”

Trying to do as he instructed, you looked at the panels in the ceiling and watched them blur with tears. Hospital. Kindness. Leon. Still alive?

“Do you know if...” You couldn’t quite bring yourself to ask what you wanted to, the hellish vision of his decayed, hungry body transformed with the virus burned into your memory. “If they found him yet?”

“I don’t know, but I can try and find out for you.” He held up his hands. “Push against my hands, please.”

You did as he said, feeling that it took far too much focus to do something so simple. Next he had you hold your hands out in front of you for a few seconds, and though your hands were shaking, it seemed you passed whatever test that had been too.

“GCS 14 after lorazepam,” he said to the nurse who jotted it down on your chart. “Good motor function. Hang another liter of saline, and let’s go ahead and push the toradol.”

You watched the nurse inject something into your IV and glanced back at the doctor. “What’s that?”

“Just pain relief. Does your head hurt?”

“Like a bitch.”

His smile was a touch wry. “Well, we should get that under control pretty soon. Look at the wall, please.”

You did as he said, and he shined the light into your eyes again. Your armory of facts got tucked away for when you needed them, building their stores up in case you lost touch with reality again. You could breathe now, though your throat was still sore, and you didn’t feel that weird, icy grip you’d felt in the interrogation room; with the meds kicking in, you didn’t feel much of anything besides a hollow, carved-out feeling of grief right in the middle of your chest.

“Your CT scan is clear,” he said. “You have a hairline fracture where you hit your head, but there’s minimal bleeding, and you’re alert and oriented.” He glanced at the monitors. “Your sats are fine on room air now that we’ve got you calmed down a bit. Managing your pain is what I’m concerned with right now, but I’m not worried about any neuro deficits or underlying problems. You just gave us a bit of a scare in interrogation.”

“So... what happened?”

“My guess? Panic attack.” He clicked off the penlight and put it in his pocket. “Very common after acute trauma like what you went through last night, and especially in a high-pressure environment like interrogation.”

All that had been a panic attack? Surely not. 

“But I couldn’t breathe,” you said hoarsely. “I thought... something would be wrong with my throat.”

“You do have some swelling, but medically, your airway was clear. That doesn’t mean you didn’t feel like you couldn’t breathe, though.”

A little embarrassed that you’d managed to give yourself a skull fracture because of a panic attack, you touched a hand to your head and winced.

“Are you sure it doesn’t have anything to do with...” You glanced at the nurse, not sure who was privy to your exact medical situation. “That other thing we talked about?”

“We’re still waiting on some tests to come back about that,” he said calmly. “As you can imagine, it’s not a diagnosis we see very often in patients of your... level of awareness.”

No kidding. You’d never even heard of a T-Virus infection that didn’t turn someone into a flesh-eating monster within a few hours. Too late. The words in that voice that wasn’t his crept into your mind again, and you felt the awful press of his bloody mouth against your palm as vividly as if it had actually happened. Glancing at your hand, you saw that the bruise hadn’t spread any further up your fingers, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t on your wrist or arm where you couldn’t see it under the brace.

“We’ll keep you on the monitor for a while,” the doctor said, stripping off his gloves and giving your knee a fatherly pat. “Once the toradol kicks in, you should be able to get some rest. I’ll try and find out about Agent Kennedy’s status for you.”

“Thank you,” you croaked. You weren’t sure what news you hoped for, but if you could only know that he was alive, that he hadn’t turned into that... thing like he had in your nightmarish imaginings, that would be enough.

The nurse worked around you for a while, putting the room back to rights after the drama of getting you stable, checking your vitals again and turning down the lights when she left. The dim glow, the silence broken only by the low beep of the monitors, the drugs working their way through your system - all of them left you in a weird half-light of consciousness where the vision or nightmare or whatever it was seemed merely to loom at the edges of your mind. But a dull blade worked as well as a sharp one if it was persistent enough, and this one was digging into you with a slow, inexorable weight that felt like it might kill you before the T-Virus got a chance to.

Leon. His name was a mantra, a warding spell, a sacramental liturgy that kept the darkness at bay. Whatever had gotten a hold of you in the realm of your unconscious mind, you knew it wasn’t him. Part of your certainty came from a logical assumption that it was unlikely he’d turn like that; he’d had it for years, this lingering, dormant strain, and if it was going to do that it would have happened already. It would kill him, you had no doubt, just like you knew it would kill you too eventually - but not like that. 

The other part of your certainty, though, came from a source entirely devoid of logic, maybe even detached from reality entirely. Something in you - be it that daydreaming, romantic nature or a naive, girlish hope that still remembered how warm and sweet that kiss had been before everything else - something in you was sure nothing like that would happen. No virus could change him into something that wanted to hurt you. Nothing could change your Leon like that.

Your Leon. You almost rolled your eyes at yourself with a rueful scoff at such nonsense. But what happened instead was that you started to cry, curled up in a hospital bed miles from home, completely alone in the world with a death sentence written on the palm of your hand. You knew he wasn’t your anything. In the grand total of your experiences together, there was nothing that made Leon and sunny belong to each other, not really. 

But beneath that, beneath the logic and the realism and the certainty that you’d both be dead before long, there was a small, tender place in your heart that wished that he was yours. You’d said you hadn’t wanted to see him again, that it would be for the best if your paths didn’t cross; but that ship had sailed, had left the port as soon as he’d taken your hand in his that first time. Your paths weren’t so much crossed as entirely knit together, at least for you, and you didn’t think you could manage to unwind them now. 

Trust me, sunny.

You wanted to. But you didn't know how, and it didn’t matter anyway. He could be yours for right now, a secret between you and your heart, the last scrap of play-pretend comfort your mind could come up with. Sleep claimed you with tears still wet on your face, a weariness beyond exhaustion and a medicated heaviness dragging you deeply under; you hoped you would dream of him, and if the dream was nice enough, part of you wondered if you wanted to wake back up at all.

-

Wake up.

Leon grimaced as he turned his head towards the sound of your voice, unable to open his eyes just yet. He couldn’t remember ever being this tired, even after back-to-back training exercises or countless hours in the field on some mission or living with a hypervigilance that sapped his battery before he’d even gotten out of bed in the morning. There was something different about this kind of tired, and it hurt - he had nothing left to give, really nothing, and he wondered why you didn’t know that. But maybe something was wrong, and even if he had nothing left to give, he’d find enough to help you if you needed him.

Please wake up.

“I’m trying,” he said. Or wanted to say. All that came out was a groan, thick and clogged with the blood in his mouth.

Oh, he thought. Right.

But that didn’t explain why you were here. Images fit themselves together in his mind - blindingly white epoxy floors, grenade smoke and gigantic cryo-chambers, mountains of biological sludge, those sharp-tongued, raw-bodied fuckers that unnerved him now as bad as they had when he was a kid in his uniform blues. Grace, shaking and determined. Himself, staggering and choking on blood as his one connection to the outside world crackled and gave out the further he went underground.

But why were you here? He’d made sure you were safe. As safe as you could be with that bruise on your hand, he guessed, but certainly not here. Not in the place he’d chosen to die.

He was surprised to still be alive, truth be told. Sherry was right: his body couldn’t take much more. But if you were here, it would have to. He’d figure it out. He wouldn’t fail you this time.

Rousing himself, scraping the bottom of the barrel for the strength just to open his eyes, he saw a wavering, golden glow like rippling water cast on the towering walls. He wondered absently what the real name for that color was. You’d probably know. You seemed like the kind of girl who paid attention to that kind of thing. He knew military colors - army green, ballistic black, oh shit that bastard’s got a laser sight on me red. But things like periwinkle and carmine and chartreuse made no sense to him. He wasn’t even sure why those were in his vocabulary, because, gun to his head, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you what color they were.

Boy, he was losing it. Daydreaming about color names when he was one foot in the grave and you needed him.

Leon, wake up. He was trying.

The floor beside him was spattered with dark blood, all of it from his hemorrhaging lungs that seemed overly keen to come up his throat and flop out onto the floor. That’d be a hell of a thing. He needed them to stay put, though, just long enough to get you and Grace out and blow this place sky high. He took a cautious breath, seeing what they would do with that - they protested angrily, flooding with fluid and screaming with pain, but they stayed in his chest for now.

Okay, he thought, gearing himself up. Lungs work. Sort of. For the moment. Now what?

“Come on, Leon, wake up.”

Grace’s voice startled him enough to make him swing his gaze over to her, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of the fact that it was her and not you kneeling beside him. He’d heard you clear as day, but you were nowhere to be found. By degrees he figured it out, and though he was relieved you weren’t really here, the pain in his chest suddenly had nothing to do with his lungs and everything to do with the fact that the comfort of your company was nothing more than a dying hallucination.

Oh well. There was nothing for it, and he knew by now that a lifetime of failure and violence tended to earn little in the way of comfort when it was all said and done.

“Hey you,” he grunted, trying to prop himself up straighter, feeling Grace’s hand on his knee as she tried somewhat futilely to coax him back to the land of the living. “I was just resting my eyes.”

If she knew that resting my eyes was code for very nearly dead and going insane to boot, she didn’t say so. She helped him to his feet, and he didn’t have the strength or the pride to protest when she slung his arm over her shoulders and helped bear his weight. 

For a moment, watching the dance of the light on the walls and feeling his own weakness more acutely than he ever had, he was strangely at peace with death. Elpis was just on the other side of the door, and as long as he could buy Grace enough time to destroy it, he’d be alright. The litany of failures that would come with that victory - not getting Grace out, leaving you to a slow death that he was helpless to stop, not preventing any of this in the first place - those were rough, but God or the universe or whatever was waiting for him would get their pound of flesh before too much longer. Whatever happened, he’d accomplish at least one of the things he came to do and hope it left the world a little safer than it had ever been in his care.

He looked over at Grace. “Let’s do this.”

Her face was pale and strained, but she nodded. “Okay.”

-

Leon, wake up.

Again? He’d thought that was it. That one last barrel-run right at that pretentious bastard hadn’t been his best work, admittedly, but he’d hoped maybe it had given Grace time to get away. He’d figured on trying for that checklist item instead, seeing as she’d blown the other one completely to hell by putting in the right password and putting the virus directly into Zeno’s fancy gloved hand. He wasn’t super excited she’d done it, was in fact very confused and angry that she’d promised to end it and had actually started it all over again, but hey. She didn’t deserve to die for a lapse in judgement, even if the fate of the entire world seemed to hang in the balance.

So, he’d run at Zeno and been tossed to the floor for his trouble, and there he lay gasping and bleeding out for who even knew how long. It had been incredibly long to his body that was ready to be done, blindingly short to his brain that had decided he actually wasn’t at peace with death quite yet. Zeno and Grace and somebody else - fuck, was it Victor? Was he ever going to be shot of that freak? - had argued and threatened and pleaded in turn, and Leon had sunk into whatever was waiting for him on the other side.

But now here you were again, telling him to wake up, and he wanted to say he didn’t know what the hell good it would do. 

Please, Leon. For me. 

Well, how could he argue with that?

Cracking open his eyes, he saw Grace pull the needle-ended vial of Elpis out of his arm. His eyes widened. The last fucking thing he’d needed was another bioengineered virus eating him alive, and he was just about to politely ask Grace why she’d injected him with it when he felt an overwhelming wave of pure relief. All the T-Virus noise in his body was suddenly, mercifully silent. He felt cracked ribs and a concussion and various gashes and bruises, sure, but when had he not? The insatiable depth of that wasting, festering pain was completely gone, replaced with a confidence in the weapon of his body that hadn’t felt in months.

He got to his knees, bracing his forearms against the floor to let this new virus, he guessed, finish getting rid of the T-Virus. With a swift mental calculus born of years of training, he took in Zeno’s headless body, Grace’s pained, protective posture over a wound in her side, Victor’s triumphant stance with a vial of Elpis in hand. The bastard had also found the time to grow a gigantic tentacle arm since Leon had seen him last. Wonderful.

He looked back to Grace as the floor started to rumble beneath them and chunks of debris fell from the ceiling. 

“Grace, what happened?”

She didn’t answer, clutching her side as blood seeped between her fingers; and when the platform started to give way, he figured there’d be time for questions later. 

“Grab something!” he ordered, digging his boots into the smooth floor and finding no purchase. The platform listed violently with the screech and groan of weakened metal, crashing against the hundreds of globes on the wall, sending glass and sparks flying. His stomach dropped when it fell without warning, plummeting towards the bottom of the silo at an ever-increasing vertical angle. Shit.

They slid across the polished surface, scrabbling for something to hang on to, and he couldn’t grab Grace in time. The guardrail was as flimsy as paper beneath his downward momentum, and he kicked through it to land with a practiced agility at the bottom of the vault, instantly scanning his surroundings like he’d been drilled to do. Every nerve was on high-alert, years of training finally of some use in a body that worked: with pain set aside for the mission, a cool, keen vigilance came over him with the same ease it always had, and it didn’t have to fight against the T-Virus to do it this time. 

“Grace!” he called, his voice a strong, rough baritone of tactical clarity and personal fear. The remnants of the platform were halted in their freefall with a billow of smoke and debris. “Grace, where are you?”

No answer. Cataloguing every inch of the wreckage for any sign of her, he came around a pile of sparking rubble and found himself face to face with Victor in all his tentacled glory. Pulling his magnum from its holster, confident that the bastard would stay dead after he’d finished with him this time, he faced down this last bio-engineered nightmare with a scowl and a bright spark of defiance.

“Time to bury Umbrella’s last skeleton.”

-

He buried Victor, just like he’d said he would, and ended up burying himself too. 

The darkness was thick, alive with the last, desperate attempt of the lab not to crumble with a stubbornness that seemed learned from its makers. Concrete and metal and glass settled with the creaking, weighty finality of death, the last sparks of some dying wires popping and flashing in the dark. He and Grace would be underneath it soon enough, two more broken pieces left in the grave they’d fashioned themselves.

He felt the way Grace trembled beside him, heard the shallow intake of her breath and the shuddering release of it. She wasn’t used to this kind of darkness like he was, and neither of them were ready to die just yet. But for all the hope Elpis had given him that he might still make it out, there was nothing to be done for the fact that they would die here. 

Reaching out in the darkness to put his hand over hers, he figured he could try to ease these last moments with a compassion he was still trying to get the hang of after nearly thirty years of shutting it out. His line of work didn’t lend itself to that kind of thing, and as quick on the uptake as he was with military training, police investigation, killing monsters, using any weapon he could get his hands on - gentleness was something he’d had to work long and hard to unearth from how deeply he’d buried it after Raccoon City. When he’d kissed you, he’d done it with that same clumsy kind of tenderness, and he hoped merely putting his hand over Grace’s wouldn’t hurt her like he’d hurt you.

She flinched for a moment, a gasp of surprise and fear escaping her; but then she realized it was only him, and her jittery fingers settled under his as she remembered there was nothing left to get her in this lonely, hollow wreck of former glory.

“L-leon?” she asked, that stumbling in her weak voice making his name sound like something hopeful and fragile all at once.

He pressed his hand closer. “Grace.”

Their names hung in the close-pressing darkness for a while. Her fingers moved under his, not to pull away, but maybe nervous to say something he could practically hear her working up the courage to give voice to.

“Can we talk?” she finally asked. “If... if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t. Not that he’d ever been a great conversationalist - his penchant for sarcasm and little quips didn’t exactly invite intimacy and warmth in return - but he’d do what he could to make it easier for her.

“Sure,” he said. His voice was rough and hoarse. “What do you want to talk about?”

She said nothing for a moment, then gave a bleak laugh. 

“I don’t know,” she said. “Kind of hard to think of what you should say right at the end, I guess.”

He’d never imagined himself saying much, truth be told. Staring down the barrel at death tended to make words feel useless, and he’d done it enough times to know.

“I know you said to end it,” she said after a few long seconds. “And I promised I would. But I - ”

“You did end it, Grace.” He turned towards her in the dark. “Just because it wasn’t the way I would have done it doesn’t mean it didn’t work. And you saved my life.”

“It didn’t do much good,” she said softly. “You’re gonna die anyway.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “But that’s not your fault. And because you didn’t destroy Elpis like I told you to, you bought us enough time to kill Victor and get rid of this lab. That’s more than I was hoping for coming into all this.”

“That’s... kind of depressing,” she said, a wavering note of humor in her voice before it shuttered back into something hopeless. “And humbling, because I was hoping to get out alive on top of that.”

“Well, I figured it was a sure thing I wouldn’t,” he said soberly. “I was hoping you’d get out alive too, but...”

He swallowed against the taste of ever-present guilt. “I’m sorry you won’t, Grace.”

She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry you won’t either, Leon.”

They lapsed into silence then, and Leon had nothing to distract him from thoughts of a life that felt littered with efforts that were too little, too late. The relative successes were outweighed by the overwhelming amount of failure, and even now when he’d finished this thing with Victor and ARK, there would still be those that he’d fail to rescue. Grace, Sherry, you. Any of those with the virus who wouldn’t get Elpis, and he felt responsible for every single one of them whether he knew them or not. The last little vial of it was tucked in Grace’s pocket, and he would have been satisfied - happy, even - if she’d been able to get out herself and give it to someone who would know how to make more of it. If he could be sure that Umbrella’s curse wouldn’t cost any more lives besides his own. But he couldn’t, and he’d go to his grave with the same guilt that had steadily eaten away at him since the first time he opened the RPD’s doors. 

He thought of you in those dark, lonely minutes counting down to his death - his real one, this time, one he didn’t think even you would be able to wake him back up from. The sound of your laugh. The soft feel of your hand. The bright flame of something - innocence, hope, impossibly shy desire - you’d shown him when he kissed you. What would he do if he wasn’t hundreds of feet underground in a tomb of his own making? If he knew the thing he’d thought would kill both of you could be erased, if he knew both of you would live long enough for him to make amends? You’d said you hadn’t wanted to see him again, but maybe it would be different - maybe he could apologize and explain, and maybe you would let him kiss you again, and he’d do it another way entirely. Pull you close, kiss you deeper, not fearing that death would take both of you before he’d even had the chance to know you. 

But it would. 

He looked unseeingly into the darkness, feeling the suffocating weight of every last failure even now that it was finished; and he heard your voice, fragile and sweet.

It meant something to me, Leon. 

It meant something to him too, more than he could tell you. He wished he could, but he knew better than anyone that wishing for things didn’t make them come true.

Leon looked at the scrap of notebook paper for a long moment, his heart in his throat a familiar, numb defeat coiling somewhere deep under his ribs. The faded banner with his name on it stirred slightly in the breeze that sifted through what remained of the RPD’s roof, sun-bleached blue and gold that someone had laid out on the desk just to taunt him. He didn’t need the reminder, not of his short-lived acceptance into something worth fighting for nor of his continued failure to make a difference when he tried. Crumpling the paper and letting it fall at his boots, he tried to get his hands to stop shaking and swallow his heart back down where it belonged.

The last six hours had been something out of a nightmare. Leaving you in pieces, already all but unraveled by the self-hatred that colored his every waking moment, he’d come into the shell of Raccoon City’s outskirts and been mercilessly dragged through wave after wave of ruin, devastation, and death. A thick film of ash and memories clung to every inch of him, brittle skulls and ribs crunching underfoot with every step he took, the rubble of the miles-long graveyard still restless and hungry as it fought to drag him down into it. The dead had hounded him as much as the living, reanimated bodies wasted by years in their shallow graves and grotesquely mutated animals both doing their level best to cut the already too-short thread of fate he balanced on. The city itself festered like an open wound, dredging up unrelenting horrors from the tangle of steel and concrete and glass that was all that remained of it. 

The bike ride into the city center had been a heady jolt of adrenaline, just enough to dull the edges of the gash that was being torn through him, reckless instinct taking the reins of his worn-out body. Watching the dust settle on Gideon’s plunge into a grave of his own making had been a grim satisfaction, slaking his thirst to see at least some measure of justice, but it hadn’t lasted; Gideon was only one piece of the puzzle, and the picture was growing clearer the more he found out. Grace, Elpis, a slew of decimated agents from the BSAA, something called ARK - it was forming itself into something coherent in the back of his mind, but tackling one part of it only seemed to trigger several more to take its place.

Now, in the ruins of the Raccoon City Police Department, he was faced with more than just some masterminded plan to keep the art of bioterrorism alive and well. Pushing the doors open onto the shattered stage of his own ground zero, he’d been assaulted by memories so vivid he could barely keep his wits about him. The nauseating smell of rot and ragged flesh, the acrid taste of desperation and fear, the clinging feel of blood and gunpowder seeping through the brand-new uniform he’d been so proud to wear - it had all but knocked the breath out of him, and he’d heard Lieutenant Branagh’s gasping voice ringing through the empty halls like a death knell.

It’s all on you now, rookie.

Trying to take a steadying breath, he choked on a welling of blood and spat the dark red fluid into the dust at his feet. It was getting more frequent, exacerbated by the haze of concrete dust and thick-lying ash; the rest of the symptoms, the numbness and pain and marrow-deep exhaustion, were no small worry either. It didn’t matter. He’d finish what he started, hoping only to get Grace to safety before the guttering flame of his existence went out entirely.

The laptop on the desk blinked to life, a remnant of the BSAA camp that showed live security footage of three spots in the RPD’s layout. In one of them, he saw two figures, both of which he recognized.

“That fucking guy,” he growled, remembering the man’s distinct look from the footage he’d found on a BSAA bodycam. Tall, sleek, dressed in a white suit and sunglasses like he was expecting a modelling agency to scout him while he was busy blowing people’s heads off. The pretentiousness of him was annoying, but when he saw Grace walking meekly behind him into frame, Leon felt the pit of his stomach turn to ice.

He clicked onto his comms. “Sherry, I found Grace.”

Her voice was unsure. “At... RPD?”

“Yeah.” He glanced at the banner again, allowing himself to track his fingers through the dust on the first letter of his name. “And someone’s been expecting us.”

After a quick check of the security cam’s location, he began to make his way through the rubble towards the office Grace and her well-dressed handler were in. With a numb kind of muscle memory, he performed an unnervingly similar dance to the one he’d stumbled his way through his first time here - scouting the shadowed corridors, searching for ammo, stomach in knots as he took out a few wasted bodies staggering around in their tattered uniform blues. Finding the jack in the library where he’d left it almost thirty years ago, he was struck with a feeling almost comforting in its mundanity - damn, he was old. The decades had been as kind to him as they’d been to this poor old building, both of them grey and empty and lifeless, both of them one wrong move away from crumbling altogether.

You’d asked him, before, how he’d gotten out of Raccoon City. The truth of it was that he never really had, some part of him ripped out of his chest that night and left to wander the halls of this building like the ghost of boyish naivety. He’d been so sure, so confident, so honored to be someone that people would trust and rely on - but that bright spark had been smothered in ash and blood from the very first moment he walked through these doors, and it was too late now to coax any life back into the flame.

He’d felt it, almost, when you came to him in the office. Frightened and confused and needing him so desperately, your trust absolute that he would know what to do and how to keep you safe. For a moment, he’d been as proud and pleased and confident as that bright-eyed rookie had been, determined to prove that your choice to trust him was the right one. And he had, in a way - he’d been honed as a weapon for long enough that getting you out was something he could do without really worrying. But the other part of him, the part that had inevitably driven the knife into that softness you’d shown him while he kept you physically safe, was a reminder that you ought not to have trusted him as much as you had.

I’m sure you did all you could, Leon. Again Branagh’s voice cut like a blade through the silence of the room - a curse, a warning, a final judgement. Even back then, all he’d been able to do was let down everyone around him, and now you were one more bit of collateral damage in the unrelenting failure that hounded him like a wolf at his door.

He shook his head to clear it. Right now, despite the difficulty of the task, the long, merciless plains of memory had to be put aside for him to dwell on later. Prying open the grate on the east side corridor, slipping with practiced ease into the cool, steady, slightly snarky attitude of a soldier who had to be rock-solid or else just let himself be killed, he walked through the inky blackness with a silent tread and his handgun raised in low ready position. A man’s voice, muffled and low, drifted through the debris-cluttered hall.

“I’ll explain everything,” he said, his voice a coaxing murmur. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

Leon raised a brow. Whoever this guy was, he’d bet good money that Grace did have to be afraid, and he wasn’t all that eager to meet him himself. Still, ducking carefully beside the doorway of the office, he listened to the explanation the man gave her and readied himself to put a bullet in his head as soon as he’d heard what he needed to.

“Covert military units from every country on earth come to Raccoon City for one purpose,” the man continued, smooth and slick as snake oil. “To find Elpis.”

There it was again, that name that meant nothing to Leon but was awfully important to Gideon and this manicured henchman. Sherry had found nothing about it on any server she’d dug through, and she’d probably been flagged in the system for her trouble; checking the magazine of his pistol, he strained to listen and pick up every last detail of whatever this Elpis thing was.

“W-what is Elpis?” Grace asked, her wavering voice determined even in her unease.

“The power to upset the military balance of the world,” the man said coolly. “The last virus created by Spencer. Designed to control human consciousness.”

Leon rolled his eyes. It was always the same old story, the same attempt at playing god with a virus or a parasite or whatever else they cooked up in those labs of theirs. He should have guessed. He racked his brain for any memory of someone named Spencer and came up empty, but bioterrorist wack jobs were a dime a dozen in his line of work, and he didn’t need to know anything more about him that what he could piece together from that information alone. 

“Mind control?” Grace asked, aghast.

The man pressed a few digits into the keyboard. “They couldn’t let it be stolen, so they launched the missile strike to hide it.”

Yeah, that tracked. He remembered how surprised he’d been when you’d told him you knew there was more to Raccoon City’s destruction than what was said in the party line, and he wondered what you’d say to the twist that it was the protection of another virus entirely that was the real reason for the missile strike. Not that he’d ever get the chance to talk to you again, about that or anything else.

“You are the key to retrieving Elpis,” the man said, drawing Leon’s attention back to the matter at hand. He clicked in another set of keystrokes, and Leon heard Grace gasp.

“Emily?”

“In a way.” The man seemed entirely unfazed by the quavering emotion in Grace’s voice. “But not the girl you met. So many attempts. So many failures. Such a waste.”

The metallic click of a lighter at the smell of cigarette smoke attested to the man’s casual indifference to Grace’s next question.

“W-what do you mean?”

“Copies,” he said, taking a drag. “Crafted to duplicate you.”

That actually did surprise Leon, and he took a second to fit cloning into the as-yet unfinished puzzle in his brain. But why Grace? And for what purpose?

“All useless,” the man continued in a low snarl, disgust and contempt lacing his tone. “All scrapped. They weren’t able to recreate Spencer’s key, but now we have the original. We have you.”

Leon pinched the bridge of his nose, warding off a headache that was coming on stronger with each new piece of information. This poor kid. Whatever her story was, he was sure she’d never known it was as fucked up as all this.

“You can unlock Elpis at ARK,” the man said, his voice moving towards a tone fairly vibrating with lust for power or money or immortality, whatever it was he wanted from all this. “That’s where we’ll go.”

Grace didn’t share his enthusiasm, still stuck on the revelations he’d foisted on her and expected her to take in her stride.

“So... what, I was m-made?” she stammered.

“Correct.”

Some pitiful noise of disbelief escaped her then. “S-so it really w-was all my fault.”

Impatience crept into his voice. “What was?”

She sucked in a gasping breath, her teeth chattering with a shocky chill Leon clocked without even having to see her. “That m-mom was murdered, and... oh, god, that Emily - that she turned into that thing, and - ”

“What’s done is done,” the man snapped, irritated with her anguish and guilt, two emotions he’d likely never felt in his life. “You need to focus on the future.”

Grace’s voice was a heartrending whimper. “Was she even really my mother?”

“It’s time to embrace your destiny!” the man pressed, off in his own psychotic world by now, getting himself started on one of those mad scientist monologues Leon had heard one too many times to give a shit about any more. Deciding enough was enough, he whipped into the doorway and aimed his pistol right between the lenses of that asshole’s egotistically stupid sunglasses. 

“Grace!” he called, rough and urgent, never taking his eyes off his target.

She wavered on her feet, completely dragged under in the tide of memory, eyes glassy and unfocused.

“Mom...”

She dropped unconscious, hitting hard on the dusty floorboards, and Leon didn’t hesitate. Squeezing off three shots in rapid succession, sure that at least one would have hit its mark, he was completely floored by the superhuman speed with which the man dodged every bullet he fired.

What the fuck?

“Mr. Kennedy,” the man crooned, a wolfish snarl curling his mouth. “I had a feeling you’d make an appearance. Sorry, but I don’t have time to spare.”

Before Leon could even react, the ceiling burst in a deluge of concrete and dead wires, cutting him off from Grace and the bullet-dodging menswear model who’d gathered her limp body in his arms. Something huge emerged from the rubble, cloaked in a haze of dust and ash, and Leon’s eyes widened as he froze with that same numbing terror he’d felt as a rookie cop under the dead, hollow gaze of a Tyrant mutation.

“Have fun,” Grace’s captor said, a cool glee spilling into his voice. That was enough to snap Leon back to the present, and though he would have preferred to go after Grace, he had his hands full with the ugly-ass freakshow that had haunted his nightmares for years and now just made him mad.

“Yeah, I remember you,” he growled.

The bullets he fired into the center mass of the thing’s barrel chest did absolutely nothing, an unfortunate confirmation of what he’d already guessed would happen - it had taken a rocket launcher to kill it last time, and Leon was a bit short on those at the moment. Blocking its swing with his hatchet, he wasn’t quick enough to dodge a titanic fist directly to his ribcage and was knocked off his feet into the wall behind him before he could register what happened.

“I remember that too,” he groaned. The Tyrant stalked towards him with that freakishly blank stare, each footstep rattling Leon’s skull, and he almost panicked - it would be a hell of a way to die, smashed to death by this fucker’s unerring, million-ton fists in the same building where they’d so delightfully met the first time. Pulling his magnum revolver from its holster, sinkingly sure that even a whole round’s worth of bullets wouldn’t kill this thing, he shot at the cracked ceiling above the Tyrant’s head and brought a shower of rubble down on top of it. The Tyrant staggered robotically under the weight, quickly buried under the wreckage; Leon was certain he hadn’t killed it, but he’d at least bought himself enough time for the agonizing effort of getting to his feet.

“Fuck,” he managed, pressing a hand to the familiar crunching ache of broken ribs. He’d had worse, but he hadn’t needed one more part of his body to give out right now. Even if he wasn’t being steadily eaten alive by T-Virus, he was already too close death by a set of undead teeth at his throat or a shard of bone in his lung or something else equally unremarkable. Then again, he’d always known he’d go out with little to show for it - and as long as he lived long enough to get Grace to safety and destroy this new engineered virus, he’d be fine if he died without any fanfare.

A spare med injector from his belt did well enough taking the edge off, and he shook his head like a dog as he felt the welcome rush of energy and nervy euphoria flood his system. He almost grinned, thinking of you with your pupils blown wide and your face all pink as you looked at him like he was your last meal - it was a hell of a drug, and now that he was riding it, he caught himself tracing the curves and soft lines of you in his imagination. Broken ribs be damned, he’d like to make you blush on purpose and let you do whatever it was you’d been thinking about when you looked at him like that.

“Alright, Kennedy,” he grumbled to himself, cutting short the blissful high and focusing back on the very real danger of failure that loomed ever more tangibly. “You’re gonna be stone dead before long, and even if you weren’t, she’d just as soon shoot you as look at you.”

It was strange to think of his inevitable death so casually, especially when it seemed a more acute misery now that he’d met you, but years of practice in disassociation and whatever the hell was in those med injectors made it frighteningly easy. He’d also deftly chosen to forget the fact that you were dying too, because he would lose his nerve completely if he thought about that for even a moment, and he had too much to do to crumble like that just yet.

“Sherry,” he said over the comms. “Wasn’t there an orphanage around here?”

“Yes, there was. Why?”

“I’m gonna do some digging.”

All this talk about lab-grown children had tugged at something in his memory, an association between Umbrella and the Raccoon City Orphanage. And if the Elpis research had to do with cloning, the best place to hide it would be somewhere no one would think twice about a bunch of kids that seemingly dropped out of the clear blue sky. The thought of creating children in a lab just to experiment on them was as nauseating now as it had been when he’d figured out why Emily was at Rhodes Hill, and it gave him the clarity of mind and iron-clad determination he needed to put an end to whatever plans were being made for Elpis.

Holstering the magnum and taking out his pistol, he touched a hand to the keychain you’d put on its barrel. A good luck charm, you’d called it, along with that other funny word he couldn’t quite remember but had liked when you’d said it. He missed you, wished almost for the feel of your fingers in his belt loop even if it meant you being dragged back into hell right alongside him.

Some tight, painful something closed its hand around his heart, whatever was left of it. He was glad you were safe, wouldn't have brought you here for all the world even as much as he missed you. Still, it was a comfort to have something you’d given him to take with him into the dark, and he’d certainly need all the luck he could get.