Chapter Text
2010
Leon Kennedy
There aren’t many things he claims to be impossible, but taking Ada by surprise is undoubtedly one of them.
“Leon.” But she offers, “I’m impressed you managed to find me so quickly.”
“Well when you play the same game long enough, you either start getting good at it or you run outta quarters,” he says, stepping out from the shadows of the doorway.
He risks only a few feet inside the bedroom of the overly lavish and overly Ada hotel suite.
A tiny laugh, the drag of her heels on the plush carpet as she performs a familiar move set around the room, slipping the thin, lacy jacket from her limbs to leave her shoulders bare in a wrapping of red, pinning him with eyes that command attention.
The song he happily waltzed to for years, echoes of listless want long faded from memory with the brand on his finger, hidden from her beneath his gloves. As hidden as the man it belongs to.
“And which is it for you? Haven’t seen you around.” Her lazy question hangs in the air with the floral stench of the room.
He watches her make a show of adjusting the position of a pale, flickering candle atop the end tables on each side of the large bed—lush, red-velvet sheets spread and waiting.
His flesh shimmies with trained sensations of her extravagance.
“You tell me,” he clips, “I know you were there.”
“Do you, now.”
Her clear disinterest only serves to piss him off more than he was before even setting foot into this room tonight. Even more than when he watched three members of Chris’ squad be hauled away in hazmat carriages—laying now in the throes of agony inside Rebecca’s lab back at HQ, slowly being ravaged by an unknown virus.
“I do...and I know you have a sample,” he growls, eyes tracking her as she moves towards him. “Give it to me, Ada, and we can synthesize a vaccine to help the victims.”
“I see—ever the hero.” She laughs, limbs like willow bending and weaving about him in a circle, a spider observing her favorite fly. “And what’s it worth to you?”
He snarls—the question he’d expected the moment he knew he’d have to come here. He fumes the longer he looks at her, anger he once draped himself in just to smother and ignore the painful realities of Ada Wong—the fact that she can and will barter with lives like they were nothing more than currency whenever she wants something bad enough.
With Ada, it’s easier, always easier just to give her what she wants, because she has a nasty way of making you regret otherwise. And once upon a time he found himself desperate to give her whatever the hell she wanted.
Deluded romantic moron that he was.
“How much money is this going to take?” A pointless question, an even poorer attempt at freedom, already feeling the stabs of her poison along his spine. “Or maybe I should just arrest you.”
His silver band burns hot on his finger like a threat—a warning—wanting that agreement when he let Chris put it on him. Wanting that once thought impossible loyalty despite everything he knows he’s incapable of giving the man.
She softly snickers. “Oh, please try, and then nobody wins—nothing’s free, Leon.” She presses against his back, fingertips caressing up and down the arms of his jacket. “But you know your money’s no good here.” Her whisper puffs into his ear, gentle as a butterfly but experience affords him the knowledge of the deadly and venomous cobra.
Nothing’s free.
He clenches his fists against the shivers at his back. “I told you we’re not doing this anymore.”
“It wouldn’t take long.” Her nails tickle at the sides of his neck in the way he used to dream about, but wants to rip her hands away. “And I can guarantee you'll get what you want before the sun rises. You always do.”
Used to be an easy trade. More than easy. But those days are over for him. For her. “Are you really going to let men, good men, Ada, suffer and die?” His anger flares. “Because of this?!” He knows the second the words fly from his mouth that he just leaped like a fool into the center of her web.
Her tiny laugh confirms it.
“How cute,” she murmurs, coming around to face him now. It’s everything he can do not to flinch under those hands on his jaw, hands that once brought him despicable levels of pleasure and ruin. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
Guess he’s out of fucking quarters.
Her smile remains an illusion of sweet, the heavy victory coloring and seeping into every shade, every curve of her face.
Her hands smooth like a gentle wave into his jacket to push the garment off his body and he does nothing. Her mouth sears the skin of his neck with kisses, hands tugging him to bed and he does nothing.
He allows silent begging—forgiveness, even selfish with the wish of its whispers in his ear, “I forgive you, bunny.”
“Clothes stay on, let’s just get this over with,” he spits fire as he lets her shove him to the plush sheets.
Her weight is soft like her tiny laughs, crawling atop his body like she still has a fucking claim.
“My, how romantic,” she purrs, fondling along his left hand. Her eyes glint with amusement. “Wish I could say all that rage and sentiment was meant for me.”
He tenses with the threat of her knowledge—a trace of fear stinging through his chest he’s not proud of.
“Ada,” he warns and hisses but she merely shoves up on his shirt, spreading warm, nearly hot lips to the skin and he does nothing but let himself burn.
~*~
2010
BSAA HQ
Jill Valentine
When someone is forced to do nothing, be nothing but a watcher in the night for years of their life, the ability to notice things, changes, no matter how small becomes enhanced to the point of uncanny.
Reclaiming her life after Wesker hasn’t been a picnic, still isn’t a lot of days. Sometimes getting out of bed amounts to a feat of Herculean strength. And sometimes the mere thought of surviving another day, facing down another night of screams and blood and death is almost enough to have her throwing in the towel. On everything.
But she finally found comfort in falling back on the one thing she’d been allowed to do during her time in captivity.
Observe.
Everyone.
Everything.
Like Joy, she’s a stout, middle-aged blonde with no-nonsense eyes who mans the front desk with an iron fist. An impeccably manicured fist, but an iron one all the same. Nothing happens at HQ that she doesn’t usually know about. Every morning that woman has a whipped caramel frappuccino on her desk. But there are rare days when it’s a double latte express.
She’s silently figured out that those days are the ones Joy’s been fighting with that cheating husband of hers again.
Or there’s Brent’s superstition of keeping the shell casing from the last fired round on every mission. Or even Rebecca’s habit of fiddling with her name badge when she’s craving sugar.
Boring? Sure, but observing the little things in the lives of others makes her own feel worth living again somehow. Little reminders of why they all chose to sacrifice their own normal for the normal of the good people left in the world.
It makes nightmares and sweaty sheets in the mornings easier to get through, if only so she can find some new little treasure in someone else’s life that she can mull over.
So when she discovered that her partner—the man who’s shared it all with her, even since their S.T.A.R.S. days—was in a relationship, well she’s not too proud to say it came as a surprise, laughable even, to consider who he was with. At first. She was mainly pissed that it’d slipped under her impeccable radar.
And that Chris hadn’t told her. Doesn’t tell her.
She’s always known that Chris was gay—he’d revealed it to her one night at J’s Bar once upon a time in Raccoon. Not that he’d had to tell her, she knew—useless efforts at getting his attention on some bored evenings after work. But still, being confided in that night had solidified an already growing bond between them.
She’s got his back through anything, and he has hers.
They’re partners.
Now, to call Leon Kennedy a bed-hopping flight risk would be pointing out that the Earth is round. A fact. The truth. The end. Everyone knows that he’s the one you go to for a night of toe-curling mattress tango, long as you’re out the door afterwards, the earlier the better.
So it’s no surprise that he’s sampled most of the available menu within the BSAA, men and women alike. Anything with two legs, really. He’s garnered a reputation to the envy and disgust of some, but to the sexual relief and entertaining gossip of the more lonely souls.
Nothing wrong with a night of comfort. Sometimes that’s all you have and can get—want—when your life is made up of one nightmare and sacrifice after the next. She herself spent a cold, snowy night in his bed this winter. Not even long ago. She’d come for a night of brain numbing sex but got something else she thought lost in the sea of Wesker’s imprisonment—her self-worth.
Leon has the ability to somehow know what you need—and don’t need—even when you don’t. She needs to remember to thank him for not sleeping with her that night, beyond laying next to her and listening to the laments of a twisted, listless soul as scarred as his own.
Maybe someday she’ll be able to repay him for it. And it’s only now that she guesses if Chris had something to do with Leon’s virtuous actions that night.
But Chris, he’s the opposite of Leon. Her partner’s picky to the point of near-abstinence. Something that’s become more of a locker room joke around HQ more than anything. He’s a man who knows what he wants and accepts nothing less—staunch in everything he does and expects. Whether it be his own ridiculous work standards, or the stupid little mental checklist for potential partners he’s kept in his head as long as she’s known him.
A checklist that Leon fails to earn even one checkmark on.
And so, a match made in Hell, right?
Two stubborn men forged from the same fire, each walking a mostly-separate but similar path with only one truth—it’s their way or the highway. Missions with the two of them always devolve into tactical arguments and fury from the steadfast Chris, and the insults, the jabs in Leon’s refusal to follow any lead but his own.
But it always ends with a silent compromise, like two instruments begrudgingly sliding into harmony, leading to yet another successful mission. But it’s at the cost of everyone else’s sanity—one can only listen to them go at it with their bickering rivalry for so long before wanting to shove the two of them out of the transport to drown in the ocean below.
She’s been guilty of those daydreams, herself.
So the reality of these two bull-headed juggernauts coming together for anything other than professional necessity or the only other thing that connects them—Claire—makes zero sense to her on the surface.
But there are sounds in this world that the human ear will always recognize, whether through a door or behind a wall...or in her case, from within the helicopter on the agency’s rooftop after the latest mission. The frantic, heavy breaths, smacks and moans of two frenzied pairs of lips stealing a moment in time is a sound she can’t dispute.
Because the thing about Hell is its honesty in laying out everything you are and not giving a flying wad about what you think you are and what you think you want.
And that should have been the end of it. She’d merely almost wandered in on something she never dreamed would ever happen. File it away. Case closed, and that’s all folks. Maybe even tease them about it later to see their embarrassment.
But the hushed words nobody was obviously ever meant to hear had drifted into her ears as she went for a stealthy escape. It tickled her enhanced radar with...something.
“I’ve gotta go—someone’ll be coming to unload the equipment soon.”
“Sure. Can’t have that.”
Now being that that person was her, and that she has always been notorious for doing things ahead of schedule—she hadn’t been surprised that they wouldn’t want to be intruded on. They’d all still been on duty, after all.
But it was the gentle current against her eardrums, the spark of near-imperceivable contempt with which the lines were fed to each other in the dark of the helicopter that night…
It had the sickening tinge of something dirty and secret, and had left her spine colder than she ever remembers feeling.
That troubling knot in her gut had led her to spend the next few days observing the two of them. It wasn’t easy, given the heightened state of tension within HQ. Branton, Ellis and Johnson were still confined within Rebecca's lab, suffering the effects of a viral exposure from a recent mission.
To say everyone was on edge would be more than apt, and part of her had wondered if the tension between Leon and Chris was merely the product of guilt—the two men had a tendency to take full responsibility for anything going wrong on a mission.
Members of the fireteam were suffering and there didn’t seem to be anything anyone could do despite Rebecca’s best efforts at coming up with a vaccine, or even ease their pain somehow.
She’s not even sure the woman’s taken a moment to rest ever since the three men were rushed to her lab.
And throughout her self-appointed mission, it became clear the two men were feeling guilty about the mission, like she already suspected—anyone who remotely knew the two wouldn’t be surprised at that. But even clearer to her now is that it has nothing to do with what she heard that night on the rooftop.
After many hours studying her partner and Leon the last few days whenever the agent’s around, the petty insults, the sarcastic jokes...and every heated glance stolen when no one thought to be looking, the lingering body language and vocal tones conveying comfort and something else beneath the barbed banter and tactical debates.
She finally glimpsed the finished puzzle—the big picture buried behind the fractured pieces.
Somehow, against all foreseeable logic the two had fallen in love right under everyone’s nose, and keep it buried from the world as if it were a dangerous weapon of mass destruction. Something shameful and to be feared—locked away.
It doesn’t make sense, and she knows she owes them both her life in more ways than one, and so whether it’s pity, friendship or a sense of debt...she can’t let it go.
That Old, Familiar Friday Sting
2010
BSAA HQ
Jill Valentine
“Anything?” Chris asks her the moment she steps into their shared office at HQ.
“No change,” she’s forced to report, images of their team’s ravaged bodies flickering in and out of her mind’s eye. “Rebecca’s doing what she can—” She moves over to her desk and sits on the corner nearest his.
She can’t even finish the sentence—doesn’t need to be said.
“Yeah…” Chris sighs, lighting a smoke despite the no smoking rule, never giving a flying wad about it. He goes back to pouring over his computer screen, clearly uninterested in further conversation.
She watches him, pulling some of her own reports to her lap for cover.
Extra lines crease his brow, brown eyes heavy with the weight of care and concern, unkempt hair fringing down around his forehead in limp strands. His cigarette, which was so desperately needed now burns idle between fingers too occupied with self-loathing.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know that,” she offers, knowing it’s pointless, but needing him to know anyway. She’s learned that sometimes you just need to hear it, whether you believe it or not.
A bit of dull laughter behind his tiny smile. “I appreciate the thought, Jill, but Squad Leads are responsible for ensuring the safety of procedures and operations—”
“You and him are just alike in some ways, you know,” she interrupts, segueing toward her next line of questions. “Leon likes to hold onto blame just as much as you do.”
If he’s taken off guard, he does a good job of hiding it. “He’s been in this about as long as we have. He knows the score better than most.”
“What score would that be, who can beat himself up the most?”
His loud laughter looks good on his face, but the sound rings hollow and stiff. Chris suddenly seems to remember his cigarette, taking a drag before blowing the smoke to curl and fan about the sunbeams shooting in from the window.
“Well, you’d know about that,” he finally mutters.
She bristles with the unexpected blow, dropping her gaze to burn into the front of her shirt, immediately smoothing her fingers into lines of habit along the soft material of her white-camo pants—the cotton feels amazing and helps to keep her centered against the memories.
She recognizes that Chris is trying to piss her off, get rid of her, because he’s obviously more interested in ignoring her now.
Too bad.
“I’ve noticed the government taking a bigger interest in joint-missions—seems like Leon’s here more often than not anymore.”
A near inaudible sigh, but he eventually indulges her, probably sensing she isn’t going anywhere. “About time. Finally we’re not fighting Uncle Sam at every turn, every mission.”
“Can’t say it hasn’t been nice finally having their cooperation.” She hums, crossing her knees to let one of her feet roll in a lazy circle. “And despite you two butting heads all the time, Leon seems like he’s happy around here.”
“Hm.”
“And you seem happy, too. More relaxed.” And it’s true, throughout their bickering, she’s been hard-pressed to remember seeing Chris so laid back overall. Not since Raccoon….
He snorts. “If I’m more relaxed, I can guarantee it has nothing to do with his damn attitude. We can count on him to know what he’s doing on the field, that’s all.”
She smiles as he falls into laughter—if it were anyone else he’d said that to, they’d definitely believe him, the unapologetic workaholic that he is. But she knows the man better than most, and already knows his secret. She can see the subtle smoothing of his face, the loosening of tension around his eyes at just the thought.
How the hell did she miss this?
“I think we both know how he keeps you relaxed,” she hedges, noting the pause in his hands before he starts chuckling at her.
“What you mean is how he keeps nearly everyone in the damn building relaxed.” He keeps laughing, flicking the ash from his cigarette. “I hear he’s quite the expert, and a pretty good masseuse, too.”
His clear dodging pisses her off, but the flatness, practice in his voice speaks volumes to her investigation. She doesn’t want to say it, but it flies from her mouth straight from her loyal heart.
“You’re ashamed of him.”
Her stomach curdles at the flash on his face quickly hidden behind his cigarette.
“That’s not true, Jill.” Smoke seeps from his lips as he stares at his monitor. “As long as nothing interferes with BSAA work, I couldn’t care less what our people get up to in their own time.”
She studies him, letting his words settle. She can feel some truth beneath the resentful flavor they were served in. It makes her wonder then, if their tension springs from jealousy, if Leon still remains as promiscuous as ever despite what he and Chris clearly have.
Interesting, but the rumor mill’s been kind of quiet in that regard.
“Have you asked him to stop?”
He shoots her an incredulous look. “It’s none of my business. And why is Leon’s sex life suddenly an important topic today?”
She watches his thumb curve and pet across his gloved fingers.
Almost like a nervous habit she never remembered him having.
He laughs at her then, low and dangerous, crushing his cigarette butt against the surface of his desk. “Trying to tell me you’re looking to chase after the notorious bed-warmer himself? Don’t need my permission for that, and good luck—if you want him to stop fucking around, ask him yourself instead of wanting me to do it for you.”
Heat blasts across her face and neck from his attack, the disrespect, her body moving before she can think, reports falling to the carpet. She slams her hands on his desk, shoving right into his space.
“All the things I thought you were, a coward was never one of them.” She ignores the tightening in his jaw, her anger swelling at his continued silence. “Don’t use me to hide your own bullshit. Stop lying to me, you know how I feel about lies. We’re supposed to be partners.”
She holds his glare, watching a myriad of words dancing behind the brown of his eyes.
Finally he deflates, breaking the stare and quietly lighting another smoke. “He told you?”
“No.” Her hands still slightly tremble from her earlier rage, though hearing him finally admit the truth sets her on a calming come-down. “I can see it, Chris.”
“Hm.” His lips pull into a smile as he studies the smoke swirling from the orange tip. “Can’t be too surprised—not much escapes your notice—and he doesn’t, by the way.”
She pushes from his desk, leaning against hers with a drained sigh. “Doesn’t what?”
“See anyone else anymore.”
“Really.”
“A few years…actually.”
A lot longer than she’d have gambled, but she hasn’t…hasn’t been back for barely a year.
“But reputations linger,” she guesses at his thoughts. His shame, maybe.
He drums his fingers along the desk, looking anywhere but at her. “I’m sorry, I should’ve told you.”
He doesn’t sound like it.
“Sure,” she clips. “Why the secrecy? Last I checked, neither one of you really live in the closet.”
“Hah!” He leans back in his chair, seeming more relaxed as he leisurely enjoys his cigarette. “No, nothing like that—it’s professional courtesy more than anything. A clear chain of command keeps things running smooth on the field, with no questions about entanglements or special treatment.”
“What?” she drones. If there’s one thing she knows, it’s when she’s being fed a party line. Especially a familiar party line—she can almost hear his words in Wesker’s voice and it makes her skin shiver.
“Chris, what the hell are you talking about? You can’t really think any of us care whether or not you and Leon are together...that I’d care? I’m your partner, of course I want you to be happy...why couldn’t you tell me?”
But her partner seems intent on studying the end of his cigarette like it’s the most fascinating thing in the room. Heaviness takes over his posture, weighing him with a tension she keeps trying to guess at, to soothe and comfort it from him.
The same way he soothed and comforted her after Wesker.
So, not shame, then what?
She sighs against his silence. “The squads follow you and will follow your lead whether or not—”
“Look,” he suddenly snaps, snuffing his smoke against his boot, “Leon suggested it and I happen to agree with him. There’s no place in the office and especially on the field for the messiness of personal entanglements.”
Chris shoves up from his chair which slams against the wall. He snatches his empty coffee cup and stomps around the desk.
“Case in point we’re sitting here wasting time talking about it when three damn good men are waiting for us to find a way to help them—in case you forgot.”
His explosion leaves her a bit stunned and she lets him go, ears popping from the slamming of the door.
She sits in the now quiet office, nose burning a bit from the hovering smoke as she mulls.
Chris’ attitude has her worried—he’s unsteady and building like a bubbling volcano ready to erupt given the right trigger. She’s seen it before. Back in S.T.A.R.S. underneath Wesker’s iron thumb of forbidding any personal attachments within the teams and the station.
Chris had hated it, spending many nights regaling the rest of them over beers about how bullshit it was and detrimental to morale in the long run. She remembers him quoting Star Wars on nights when he was really hammered. Something about Jedi and...something.
She can’t remember, giving up after a bit and sliding into her seat, adjusting the reports on her desk and getting lost in them.
It’s clear she’ll probably need to try getting answers from Leon instead. The man’s a wildcard, always has been, and she can’t see why he of all people would give a flying brick about professional courtesy...he never has before.
It sounds like bullshit.
And she can’t stand bullshit.
It’s almost an hour before Chris comes back. Quietly, almost gingerly shutting the door behind him, steam rolling from the top of his mug.
She wonders how many he’s downed in his absence.
“Sorry for back there, Jill,” he says, heading straight back to his desk for work.
Or escape, as she’s noticed of him over time. Work is something that’s always there to hide in.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, clears her throat for clarity. “But you’re not alone, Chris, so don’t act like it.”
A gentle smile is all she receives before he’s pulling his laptop closer and getting to work.
She lets him go for now, but keeps her focus split between him and her papers.
Like a lazy river he flows idly now, occasionally sipping his coffee and drawing his signature on reports. Answering emails with efficiency after every little notification chirping into their silence.
As relaxed as can be expected given everything happening.
It’s almost abrupt, then, a silent distortion to his features. His gaze stays glued to the screen of his laptop, fingers almost squeaking against the pencil in his grasp.
She taps her own pencil against the desk, watching destruction slowly etch into every line of his face in subtle strikes.
“Chris?” she finally asks after her ears pick up the tiny, faint sounds of what can only be described as porn, maybe, coming from the laptop speakers.
A woman having the time of her life.
What the—
She wants to question further when the door to their office swings open.
Chris snaps the pencil between his thumb and palm.
“Hey, there’s the Wonder Twins.” Leon sweeps into the room with his usual pleasantries, a smile within every relaxed curve of his face in a polarizing opposite of the storm he just walked into. “Just the people I wanted to see. Valentine—” His grin brightens to her, hands tucking into the pockets of his jeans. “—Always a pleasure.”
“Leon,” she blurts, watching his eyes flicker to the volcano sitting to her left and she follows suit, extensive training the only thing saving a flinch as Chris swipes his arm across his desk to launch the laptop clattering into the wall.
“Chris!” She stands with the explosion.
“One chance.” Chris spits low and furious, “What the hell did I just watch, Leon?”
Leon adjusts eerily quick to the eruption, eyes shading down into an edge.
“Guess you’ll have to be more specific,” he husks, but his jaw tightens like he knows something. Like he’s about to burn.
She fumbles for questions as Chris storms around the desk and stomps right into Leon’s face.
“Ada Wong,” Chris growls. “Of course.”
Ada Wong.
The name sparks immediate knowledge—Chinese, Black Market dealer. Not exactly friends with Wesker, but they weren’t exactly enemies.
Her breath muffles against the mask she once wore.
“The sample.”
“You can tell Wesker I’ll deal—” a smooth breath, “—if and when I’m ready to deal.”
“Hell of a show, asshole,” Chris adds.
His fist collides against the wall next to Leon’s head like a crack of gunshot when there’s no answer.
“Chris, enough!” She shouts him down.
Leon chuckles, low and seemingly unbothered, hands not even leaving his pockets. “Aim’s a little off.” He tilts his head closer to the crack in the wall. “Not really like you.”
Chris snarls and she hurries to their side before things can get further out of hand.
“Tell me what’s going on.” Her demands are again met with silence even as she starts to piece that Wong was most likely the woman she was hearing in the speakers.
Oh god. Was it Leon then, in the footage with her? Why—
“It was the cost,” Leon says simply, hand coming up and holding out a purple vial to the raging storm in his face. “Cost of doing business, Chris.” His eyes dull with destruction against his cool, non-plussed exterior. “You need to get that—to Rebecca.”
Chris ignores it. “Was it?” he spits.
“Yeah…it was.”
She eyes the sample in Leon’s grasp, a sickening ghost crawling up her spine as she tries to piece it together. Like some kind of transaction, maybe, and the cruelty stiffens in her heart, having witnessed and handed out too much of the worst humanity offers during her imprisonment.
Chris takes the vial from him. “Were you gonna tell me?” He’s quiet now, but no less thunder given.
Leon never blinks in the face of it. “…No.”
She flinches this time with his immediate re-eruption, Chris punching the same spot on the wall.
“I don’t accept that, you bendy little fucking nightmare!” Chris moves to the door, slinging it open. “You don’t go making deals with the fucking devil behind my back!”
“There’s only one currency she takes from me,” Leon says to the floor. “I never wanted to get you involved with her bullshit.”
So this has happened with Wong before.
“Well good fucking job!” Chris slams the door with his exit and her ears ring with it for the second time today.
The secrecy around them, the tension might be making a little more sense and she’d like to deck Leon in the mouth for not asking for backup. For putting Chris through secrets and bullshit. For putting himself through—
Her tongue itches with vile.
“You’ve been hiding Chris from her,” she softly accuses to the heavy silence clouding his features. She heads off any denial, “I know he’s special to you.”
Confirmation ripples in the tiny lines gathered around his eyes, the loaded sigh as he pushes off from the wall. “Guess I was never as subtle as I should’ve been. And I guess Ada’s decided I’m gonna pay for that.”
He’s scared of her somehow—it seeps through his tone in ways she wants to rip from Ada’s teeth.
“She sounds like a rapist to me,” she says and he huffs.
“I made a choice. It’s always been a choice.”
“Some choice.”
He moves to the door. “And I can live with it, because those guys down there? They might get to live with it, too. I’d do it again. Probably will do it again.” She catches the small clench of his fingers, thumb running across his glove in a similar manner she witnessed her partner do. “If I have to.”
“You don’t have to,” she argues to his back. “You’re not alone.”
“But she’s never—she will never have a goddamn ounce—of what he had.”
It’s like he didn’t even hear her and he echoes with quiet fury, an absolution of demise.
Leon reaches for the door handle and it slings her into orbit.
She slams her palm against the door. “I am not something to be shoved aside and ignored. Silenced and useless,” she snarls with the rage never too deep within anymore.
His face smooths into placating poise in such a practiced way that only flames her further.
“Hey, you’re anything but useless,” he offers.
“Don’t—try to patronize me right now.”
He swings his gaze to the side, pretense abandoned. “What the hell—do you want from me, Valentine? I know what I did to Chris, believe me, I know—take your pound of flesh if you want.”
He really believes that.
“It’s Jill,” she spits. “We’re allies, and I thought—friends.”
He wavers like it’s a foreign concept somehow, breath evening out and he leans against the wall, arms crossed over his black t-shirt, weapons harness squeaking with the move.
A semblance of acceptance, maybe. Or God help her, defeat.
“She wanted Chris to see,” she pushes. “Why? Petty jealousy?”
A tiny, sharp curve lifts the side of his lips.
“Hardly,” he scoffs. “But maybe, in her own way.” He tilts his gaze to her, eyes closed off but still open to her and she relaxes against the door, matching his blasé. “She uses people, Jill, always wants the upper hand and all the leverage. That’s probably easier with less competition. Less will to fight when you have nothing left.”
It reeks of control and misery—of Wesker. He loved toying with people, forcing them to destroy everything about themselves to the point of wishing and begging for a death denied until he was done with them.
“Chris will understand.” She defends her partner. “When he’s calmer.”
A wry laugh. “Yeah, don’t think he’s too thrilled with his first taste of Ada’s bullshit.” Leon slowly pushes off the wall and she feels the flight. “And he doesn’t have to understand—Chris knew I was a fucking nightmare from the beginning and maybe he just needed to really burn to believe it.”
He reaches for the handle and it’s not a suggestion.
She lets him pass, stepping to the side. “You really think so little of yourself? Of Chris?”
“Nope,” he pops like a chirping canary but pauses in the doorway.
A heavy sigh, propping his arm up against the frame.
“Never been able to nail her,” he says, hot and tense now. “Not completely and not in any way that matters. Not one shred of evidence exists on her—I’d bet a life that Ada Wong isn’t even her real name. It didn’t take me long to realize underestimating her never ends well. For me, or anyone in her way.”
She’s fully aware of Wong’s spectral existence, the businesswoman with a cold stare of efficiency and prowess.
Arrogance.
Cowing and playing the people around her into a state of perceived helplessness.
But no one is untouchable. Not even Wesker was.
“She’s making a mistake, flaunting herself into Chris’ crosshairs like this.”
“And that’s—” Leon whispers, chuckles a bit, “—kind of what I’m afraid of. I know what she’s capable of. But more importantly, I know what Chris could be capable of when he’s pissed off enough.”
She can’t—won’t argue with that. A bull headed juggernaut who could rip through rock if he wanted badly enough.
“It’s why we don’t do things alone,” she realizes. “I know exactly how easy the path of self appointed justice is and how much it would break him into something terrible if he had to carry that.”
“...Yeah.”
It’s a nasty pill of slime—helplessness—sharing the feeling, the reasons with Leon in ways she refuses to accept.
She refuses to be helpless again.
She’ll never let Chris fall.