Ahead, the hallway comes to an abrupt dead-end, and at its base, sprawled out, is a giant beast. Grace gasps, stifling the scream that tries to worm its way out of her throat. She stumbles a half step back, eyes wide and praying that it didn’t hear her. But, despite her lack of stealth the monster is… still.

Heart thundering in her breast, Grace carefully presses a hand to her mouth to stifle any more sounds as she flicks her eyes over the creature. It’s… massive, serpentine, it’s long body coiled and sprawled out. It resembles a snake, save the legs pressed to its body and the fur Grace can see trailing down its back. And actually, now that she thinks about it, it looks a lot like a…

Dragon. 

It’s a goddamn dragon.

“Holy…” Grace murmurs. A dragon. After the twisted things she’s seen tonight, seeing something like this… sleek and scaled by comparison, hell, beautiful, it’s like a slap to the face. But as she traces the shape of its body, up from its tail, she begins to notice the dragon seems… off, somehow. It might be the lightning surrounding them, but there’s a pallor to its scales, odd patches of mottled black necrosis twisting over its body.

Necrosis that looks a lot like that she saw on the people in Wrenwood and Rhodes Hill… on Leon.

It’s like it's… sick, Grace thinks as she half consciously shuffles closer. But… perhaps it is. The dragon is still, with no sign it’s even breathing. And the mottled patches of black are even more extensive than she realized… They coat its neck, torso and tail. Hell, its entire legs are—

Grace pauses, her eyes settling on the dragon’s fore and hindlimbs. Those… that isn’t right. While black flaking scales do cover its limbs, most of the black isn’t from whatever sickness is afflicting it. No… they’re clothes. Ragged black pants torn apart by the creature’s tail stretch over its hindlimbs and on its front legs… a stretched and torn weave shirt and a familiar set of chest holsters, carrying a set of familiar weapons.

Leon’s weapons.

She… stares. Grace shuffles back, heartbeat climbing her throat as her gaze shifts again to the dragon’s head. A pair of horns crown its skull, furred mane flopping over its muzzle and a long set of tendrils—barbels, Grace’s brain supplies—trailing over the ground. Its teeth are bloodied.

Grace stifles a hysterical laugh. Either the dragon ate Leon, she thinks, her stomach twisting, or the dragon is Leon…

But… she already saw Emily transform into something tonight, why not Leon? 

Though, there’s something fundamentally different about what Emily became and what Leon seems to be. It’s more… coherent. Beautiful, in an odd way. 

Grace swallows, her eyes skimming over the chest holsters and the mottled bruising that twists up Leon’s much longer neck. A thin reedy wheeze makes her startle, as Leon’s chest suddenly stutters in an inhale. He’s still alive! Grace starts forward, even as her animal-hind brain shrieks in protest. RUN, her instincts demand. Shut up, Grace says back, moving closer to Leon’s massive draconic head. 

Oh jeez, he’s got big teeth… But, even if Leon killed Emily, she’s not going to do the same here. She just has to… hope.

Hope he’s okay. Hope he’s still there.

Grace kneels down by Leon’s head, her hands hesitating in the air above his head. What should she do? What can she do? How does one check a dragon for a pulse?! She swallows, anxiety twisting in her gut, and presses a hand to the side of his neck. Come on, come on… Her hands slide over scales, and if Leon wasn’t actively dying Grace would spare a thought for their smooth texture, like smoothed river stones.

“Leon?” Grace asks, gently pressing her hand into his neck and then, after a half second of hesitation, raising the other to his lower jaw. “Oh no, oh no, come on…” She nudges him gently, then when nothing happens, a little harder, as anxiety rapidly spreads its burning tendrils through her veins once again. “Come on, please, please, you don’t get to just turn into a dragon and say nothing… Please, Leon…” 

There’s a soft grunt, barely anything and Grace’s eyes dart to his face (snout?) relief climbing as she sees his eyelids twitch. She quickly scoots over to be in front of him, even as panic fear no no no wrap their hands around her throat, at the sight of bloodied fangs. (At the sight of something so much bigger, something that could swallow her whole.)

“Hey! It’s me, it’s Grace,” she says frantically, one hand migrating to the top of his head. Leon’s breaths are more obvious now, his nostrils flaring in time with soft wheezing breaths. “Please wake up, please wake up.”

She yelps slightly as Leon’s head suddenly shifts under her hand, jerking away. He huffs—a gust of hot air Grace can feel from here—and his eyelids crack open and suddenly, Grace is looking into the slitted eyes of a dragon. They’re the same grey-blue as before, hazily staring at her a few feet away. His nostrils flare, eyes still half-closed, as he peers in her direction.

Grace stays still, keeping her voice soft as she tries for a smile. “Hey,” she whispers, anxiety stealing her breath. She watches Leon’s pupils dilate slightly, and another wheezy huff slips from his jaws. And then…

“Hey… you…” 

It’s Leon’s voice, still his, a low rumble beneath it that wasn’t there before but it’s his and he knows her, recognizes her. 

Leon blinks heavily, seemingly trying to raise his head, but he only manages a couple inches before it falls back to the floor. He grunts and Grace immediately scoots closer, carefully taking his head in her hands and rubbing the scales on the bridge of his snout. Leon hums lowly, the long whisker-like barbels trailing from his upper lip twitching slightly, but still mostly limp against the floor.

“I was just resting my eyes,” Leon murmurs, squinting up at her through tired eyes. He coughs, a heavy thing that has him pulling his head away from Grace. She rubs the back of his neck as more blood slips through his teeth, the force of the cough rippling up and down his now-elongated body. “Eugh.”

Then, he starts shifting, the serpentine body around Grace shifting. She startles, glancing around in confusion before she realizes. He’s trying to stand. 

“Wait, wait, Leon,” Grace darts to his neck, trying to support his head as he struggles to move himself. It’s not much, considering Grace can only balance a small part of the now forty to fifty-foot long DSO agent. “Hold on, let me help—”

Leon coughs again, the sound rattling through him. “Sorry,” Leon mutters, and Grace watches as a forked tongue flicks out to wipe some of the blood from his muzzle. “Put on a little weight… since I saw you…”

Grace flicks her eyes back along Leon. He’s managed to push himself onto his forelimbs, but his back legs and tail are still firmly sat on the ground. But it makes sense… he’s clearly exhausted and dragon or not it would be a lot of energy to try and hold up all fifty-some feet of yourself. Grace glances back to Leon’s face, idly noting that despite the entirely different head structure, he still manages to look firmly exhausted.

“What is…?” Grace trails off. How does one ask about someone’s… dragonness?

Leon huffs. “Curse. Long story but… not as sick like this. Buys me a bit more time.”

Well that explains… a very little and brings up a lot more questions. Grace exhales. “Okay, okay.” She shoves down the bubbling questions (and old half-forgotten reddit conspiracies) to try and get a better grip on Leon’s head. “I’m s-sorry to ask but can you uh… walk? Cause I’m… n-not a lot of help like this.”

The man (dragon?) is silent for a moment but then a sigh ripples through his body. “Check my belt.” Huh?! Leon shifts in place, his head gently gesturing backward. Grace looks to see his tail move a little as he settles more firmly on his hind legs. “There’s a blue pendant in the first pocket, should be a zipper and heavy velcro. Put it on my head.”

Grace blinks but nods. After giving Leon a moment to prepare to bear the load of his neck, she walks back, kneeling by his back legs to dig through his pockets as instructed. Sure enough, inside she finds a circular blue pendant strung on a thick cord. Grace immediately hurries back over to Leon, and he ducks slightly, offering his head. 

With nothing else to go on, Grace obeys.

The instant the cord is over Leon’s head something ripples over his body. Before her eyes, he starts shrinking, scales thinning and muzzle retracting, torso sinking back in on itself. In less than a minute, she’s looking at Leon, fully human, curled on his side on the floor. 

“Leon!” Grace darts forward, immediately kneeling by his side again. Like this, the black skin is all the more obvious, even though most of it is hidden beneath his clothes. His jaw is clenched tight and eyes squeezed shut in obvious pain. “Leon?”

“‘S fine,” Leon says, even though he clearly isn’t. “Just… ow.”

He twists, shoving his hands under him to push himself up and Grace immediately goes to help… only to promptly lift her eyes skyward as she wraps his arm around her shoulders. “Hrk…”

“Grace?” Leon asks, clearly hearing the distress. “What’s…?”

She takes a careful inhale, focusing on getting Leon’s arm secure over her shoulders and keeping him balanced. She can tell he’s trying not to topple them, to bear some of his own weight, but it’s tough. 

“Y-you… think you could keep the t-tail?” she asks conversationally, keeping her gaze fixed forward on the wall. She can feel her cheeks flushing scarlet. “For… balance?”

Leon is silent for a breath then sighs, long and hard. Grace chances a look at his face and it’s that of a man resigned to his fate. “Hah, unfortunately, no. All or nothing. My wallet suffers a lot.” He glances over at her, the ghost of amusement somewhere in the lines of his face. “Well, if I gotta go out, go out in style… mooning the bad guys.”

And, despite everything going on—the facility surrounding them and Death knocking on Leon’s door—Grace can’t help but choke on a hysterical laugh.

“You are terrible,” she mutters and at her side, Leon huffs.