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mandalhoerian · 10 days

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NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 11

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 1OK warnings: the girls are fightingggggg summary: Tensions arise. Leon thinks it's between him and Vera, but he doesn't expect to find himself out of the picture when Ada comes back into frame. author's note: i thought i was never going to finish this omg... but we're officially done with the sewers! nearly at the end of this work i cant believe it tbh

READ ON AO3 ! ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

“Holy shit…”

“Ada!”

“How the fuck did she get in there—”

“We need to get her out.”

He was lucky Vera didn’t respond with, Yeah dumbass, and instead began circling the monitoring room they were in; bloodshot, yet sharp, intelligent eyes gliding through for anything that could help them out while he paced back and forth in front of the giant, rectangular window overlooking the pit of garbage — thinking, thinking.

Leon’s teeth ached from gritting them, the unconscious attention orbiting around his shoulder making itself scarce and bouncing around in his skull instead when he needed it to focus. Ada was a small blotch of red fabric on a bed of scrap down there, curled on her side with her back to them, a hand outstretched and the other tucked beneath her body. Identifying exactly where she was injured was difficult from the position her body was in. He could only assume she was unconscious from the rise and fall of her ribcage since they couldn’t get her attention from banging on the glass.

This was basically them observing her like she was an animal put on display in one of those glass cages in a zoo.

He rested a fist on the stainless surface, and pressed his forehead to the back of his hand, shutting his eyes. The pulsing, subtle pain wasn’t helping the thinking process, nor the panic chewing away at the back of his mind refusing to let him come down and focus. Chewing the inside of his bottom lip, he turned his head to rest his cheek against his curled knuckles and opened his eyes to glance back at Vera, who had her back to him, standing in front of some kind of control panel fixed to the wall behind him.

The cold chill in the air was sapping his strength as he reached out to her. “Anything?”

The demanding, impatient undertones weren’t supposed to be there, Leon wasn’t even aware some part of him was doing that to hide the frazzled pity party raging inside — at odds with the comfort of her always having some sort of solution no matter the situation, with the expectation she would somehow make the problem of retrieving Ada disappear.

“Map.” Not turning away to face him, she pointed to the wall right next to the window Leon was agonizing on, and then stopped whatever she was examining to walk over there, and ran her fingers across the board, tracing the blueprints. Not dwelling on his lack of environmental awareness, he perked up, lifting himself off to peer at it.

At first glance, it was confusing, but she made it easy to read. Somehow. “Right outside this place is the first floor of the treatment room. We were just on the upper level of it. See?” She jabbed her finger on the title at the top of the poster, and made a line downward. “Ada must have fallen from… there. They’re connected. Looks like they have a system to contain the trash gathered above and treat it before dumping ‘em in the incinerator, or whatever.”

“I don’t get it,” Leon sighed.

“Yeah, well. This isn’t a class. You’re good. Ada on the other hand… She got lucky landing right there so we can see her.” Her fingers dragged over the diagram, the chipped black nail polish contrasting with the white background of the chart. “According to this, we need to pass through that door over there. The U-Area is where the waste disposal opens to. And…”

Leon was already grimacing at the red lights surrounding the very obvious blockade in their path, looking more and more like a bank vault in his eyes. “Fantastic. Code again? Bracelet?”

Vera ripped the map off, hastily folding it while she crossed the path to the terminal, the crimson washing over her silhouette and making it glow around the edges. Leon also followed, with no idea what the neighboring sockets next to it were, trying to make sense of the three vertically paralleling panels side by side with slots in the middle of each one. Some had… chess piece-shaped plugs inserted in them. This designing choice. In a sewer.

He’d blame the hallucinations, except this was reality.

“I had a hunch.”

“A hunch,” he echoed, the insides of his eyebrows pulling together.

“Just, gimme a sec,” she dismissed with a playful clicking sound resonating from the back of her mouth, and pulled out a switchblade from her utility belt, shoving the end of the blade in between the front cover and the case of the biggest of the panels on the very left, just beside the vault door, breaking it open after wiggling the weapon in a circular motion. The metal came away with a soft clatter as it bounced on the concrete floor, other buttons and screws following suit in her careful prying to reach the circuitry.

He watched over her shoulder with great interest, the swiftness of her fingers fumbling around in the electronic guts and maneuvering around the wires. A true professional knowing exactly what to do. “So…?”

“Yep,” was all she said, finding something where he only could see plastic threads of different colors in a metal skeleton. “This is our guy.”

“Okay…?”

Vera did a double take on him, eyes appearing eerily red from the light as she pulled him away and got him to stand in the middle of the area for whatever reason, and he was dumbly obliged. “See those snake-wide wires from one station to another? Don’t they look like they’re connecting everything together?”

“Yeah,” Leon said, following the path she was following with her index finger.

“So like. Think of this as a very complex electric circuit. Maybe you don’t remember, it gets taught early I think? I don’t know which grade. Late elementary?”

Leon was one more outrageous misinformation from sputtering. “Physics. High school.”

“Ah,” she said, in the most monotonous, disinterested way possible, and shook it off, leaving him there to work on the big case again, burying her hands inside the mechanism of the contraption, and a loud pop was heard as a spark came off. Leon flinched at the sudden occurrence, and it didn't go unnoticed, judging by Vera's smug expression as she looked over her shoulder at him. “Anyway. Electric circuit. You know what to do with those. Wire it correct to turn the light on.”

“You make it sound so easy.” Leon would have laughed if it weren't for the current circumstances. “Isn’t that risky? If you fry the entire thing, we’re not getting through that door.”

“Good thing I’m not that much of a mess, right?” Vera replied, and suddenly jerked her hand away, the movement quick as she hissed in pain and stuck her finger in her mouth. "Ow."

"Careful!"

“Just a tiny pinch,” she muttered, sucking on her fingertip to ease the burning sensation, and Leon stood there, not knowing what to do and awkwardly struggling with himself over it. “Easy as I’m making it sound, this is gonna take a while.” She went down on one knee and shrugged off her backpack, searching the contents for something, not sparing a glance at him when saying, “You should do a thorough sweep of this place. We need anything we can get.”

He didn’t know what had him spaced out so much, the painkillers or finally being in a safe space where no need to look out for what lurked just around the corner, so, he only soaked the words in when Vera stopped whatever she was doing and looked as if she was awaiting something.

“You want me to go?”

"Are you sure you're not secretly a child and the sun didn't rise today for you to be able to do such a thing?"

“I—” At a loss for words, all he could do was open his mouth and close it for a comeback that wasn’t there, standing there like a huge idiot. “I mean, yeah, I could do that, it’s just—”

“Ada will be fine,” she interrupted, a tiny smile there as she took out some supplies from the bag: pliers, tape— “I’m on it. One thing at a time, you know? Or rather, many things at once. We gotta pick the speed up. Maybe you could try contacting Claire in the meanwhile? Marş, marş!”

He had a feeling that last part meant ‘Chop, chop,’ or something and not a type of wetlands, nearly offended at being kicked out. This was coming out of nowhere. Nevermind splitting up always causing more trouble than it was worth, leaving Vera with Ada in her condition was out of the question. The uneasy doubt made for an immediate objection and the offer of a better suggestion, but Vera beat him to it once more, “It’ll be fine. I know you don’t have a lot of faith in me at the moment, but—”

“Wait, what? No,” he burst out, the shock of it getting his body to move and stand right next to her, disbelief outweighing the constant, persistently annoying presence in his shoulder, having to look down at the kneeling girl. “That’s not true, this isn’t about that.”

He trusted her with his life, what was she talking about?

“Are you sure? Umbrella and all?”

Leon froze mid-inhale with the accusation, his hackles rising at the momentary pause that made it irrefutable on his tongue like a sweet turning acrid with the mention, and he bit the tip of it to swallow the bile, the saliva leaving a dry trail in its wake. She lightly scoffed as if this was all the confirmation she needed, and he hadn’t even said anything. The gray gaze veiled over with transparent red was steady and patient as she looked up at him under her lashes, the shine of it uncanny against the relaxed stance. The shadows of the room shrouded her, hiding her from the fluorescent glare of the artificial lighting, but Leon could still make out the details of her features, her jaw, the bridge of her nose, the curves and the sharp angles, the gleam in her eyes, all bathed in red, overtaking the pink.

He had to look away to sigh for a second, eyelids fluttering shut, and he scratched above his eyebrows to cover for the fact he was trying to rub the tension away.

The information she revealed had been shelved moving forward. For way too many reasons. One of them being too much to process, all things considered, with everything they’d been through; the near death experiences, the encounters with unholy monsters and zombies alike, and whatever else there was hiding in the dark. It wasn’t a conversation to be had lightly. Choosing to ignore it in the meanwhile was inspired by Marvin’s wisdom — don’t think, thinking slows you down, slow gets you killed. He’d embraced that willingly, because he could at least trust that she wasn’t out to get anyone other than Umbrella, and so far, she hadn’t proved him wrong.

So, it wasn’t about faith. It wasn’t about that at all.

It was about the tangled barn of yarn tied in knots with no hope of unraveling his insides that only a punch to his face would snap him out of. He didn’t know what to feel, but at the same time, things were coming at him with no name attached to them — all of which lacked any form like they’d stopped in the developmental stages.

Resentment was there, for being told half-truth, followed by guilt as an allergic reaction for harboring bitterness towards a friend, elevating sympathy for what she’d been through, a child used as a puppet in a scheme involving human experimentations. Something that cut deep at the knowledge she’d been aware all along. Admiration for her inhuman dedication to keep going. Incomprehensible. Unimaginable. Simply something out of fiction. Vera already had something around her from the start that emanated she was too brilliant to be real like some neon sign, and this had completely broken Leon’s reaction scale.

(Fear of having her run off with the evidence to save her own ass and abandon him. Prove his trust wrong like his superior did.)

And yet, “You saved my life. You’re still here. End of story,” came out of him unblinking, confident as a proven scientist. Three simple sentences sliced that tangled ball of yard in one go. “Page me if anything happens.”

Vera turned her gaze down, just nodding and offering a silent, “Okay,” and Leon started walking away, hand coming up to cradle his shoulder, feeling at the bandages and rotating his arm in small circles. The heat emitting from it was distracting, but he endured and pushed open the door, welcoming the cool draft despite the stink.

“Take the map,” she called out after him.

Leon caught the flying paper thrown at him with the force of a boomerang right in the nick of time, the sound echoing all around him. “Thanks.”

“A cable car?”

Only when his voice bounced back to him from the vast, empty space of the facility that Leon noticed he’d said that out loud, laser-focused on the Umbrella logo staring right back at him on the large vehicle. “Interesting.”

The single vagoned train-like structure was anchored to the platform, suspended in the air by steel cables, the rails above leading to the unknown depths of the underground area obscured by pitch black, intermittently illuminated by a spark of electricity running through damaged circuits where the lights ahead should be hanging from.

Now that he thought about it, metal and steel had replaced cement of the sewers infused with stool and piss the closer they got to this part of the complex, the stench fading and giving way to a more neutral, less offensive copper smell.

He had a feeling about the destination, but it was impossible to determine how long it would take to traverse the entire length, and the last thing he wanted to do was get on it and find out that it was a one-way ride or a trap waiting to spring.

Still, couldn’t hurt to take a peek, right?

“ID wristband required for cable car entry,” a robotic, female voice announced when he got closer to the door with a glowing green screen on it turning red upon his arrival.

Leon stared at his bare wrist, recalling Vera having snatched one from that uninvited zombie only able to have access to the corridor because he had it on him prior to turning. If they had any business with the lab, his instincts were telling him one of those bracelets would grant them the pass needed.

He was hoping it wouldn't come to that.

Digging deeper when you were already in a hole and needed a ladder to climb out was not a good decision.

"Vera, come in," He drummed his fingers on the device as he waited for an answer, walking the short length of the platform, staring at the orange and yellow signs warning about the danger of high voltage in the railways. "Found something interesting.”

“Yeah?”

“Cable car.”

“Uh-huh.”

Something made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he whipped his head around to see nothing, but the feeling of being watched, being followed persisted. He moved further away from the entrance of the car and went to lean against the railing instead, observing the gloomy scenery. “Know what this is?”

“Is that rhetorical or you want me to answer?”

“Vera.”

She was strained from the signal cutting in and out. “It’s a ride to NEST.”

He gave a concentrated puff of air from his nose at the way she said it so casually. At one hand, the no-bullshit attitude was appreciated, at the other, he was caught off guard by the honesty — the normalcy of it.

“Is NEST the secret underground lab Ben Bertolucci was talking about?”

“Yeah.”

He expected more snark and less directness along the lines of, ‘What do you think the word nest implies, dum-dum.’ A headache was coming in.

“Ada’s heading there, then?”

The static on the other side was growing louder, her voice inaudible for a few moments as she fought to get the device to work. “Has to be. Cable car’s the only way to reach it. That I know of… Either that, or she’s looking for another route to get there.”

That’s the most she’d said about the topic. He dragged a palm down his face, fingertips picking up dampness along his brow line. “Got it. Anything else I should know?”

“About?”

He deliberately made what he said next sound dumb. “Well, whatever’s over there. More of those things?”

And he waited for the response as Vera mulled over it for a little. Option one was themed Leon not really needing to know. Option two was a jab about him not needing to since they wouldn’t be going there. Option three varied: duh, obviously, technically yes, or, probably.

Instead, she said, “Worse than that, I imagine.”

No joking around. Yeah. She was simultaneously saying nothing and everything he needed to know. This wasn’t doing any favors to Leon’s already anxious mind. “You could have lied, you know.”

Her chuckle crackled, broken by the bad connection. “Bit busy at the moment.”

The line fell silent afterwards, and Leon decided to not to push it further, leaving Vera to finish her job, closing his eyes as he went to hop on the table adjacent to the cable car with an assortment of papers, a computer monitor, and fliers scattered on the surface. Sitting down and flexing his shoulder helped to ease the tension, but the occasional flickering of the fluorescent lights above that washed over him and stuck a beam of ache right between his eyes definitely didn’t.

He absentmindedly picked one of the notes, expecting it to be about construction or technicalities, and was instead met with: Sally, Dad loves you so much. I’m coming babygirl. Wait for me a little longer.

The words were shaky and the ink had smudged in places, leaving spots, some of the lines so thick that the pen tore into the paper from the pressure. Leon peered at the date in the corner, only a week ago, and the ache in his shoulder and the heaviness in his limbs doubled. He wondered where the father had ended up, imagining him mindlessly wandering this underground maze, chunks of flesh dented in with teeth marks among countless companions who shared the same fate with a loved one's picture tucked in their breast pocket.

"Leon?!"

He whipped his head toward the originator of the shocked call, jumping down from the table and lowering the note gingerly, heartbeat accelerating. "Claire?"

"Oh my god!"

The relief that had him going weak in the knees was short lived, though. Claire was jogging up to him with Sherry cradled like a rag doll in her arms, a bundle of limbs trying to curl up on herself as attempts at soothing her were interrupted, and even from the distance it was uncanny how off her color was. Leon sprinted to meet them halfway there before he was even aware of it, grabbing the girl’s shoulders, checking her over for any bites or scratches.

He was afraid to ask, but did anyway. “What happened?”

The exhaustion weighing Claire down got to Leon’s radar then. “She’s infected with G.”

The tremors he felt underneath his palms transferred over to him as Sherry kept shuddering, breaths coming out in short gasps from cracked lips with barely a splash of color. He could hear her lungs clicking with each exhale.The warmth of her skin was searing to the touch.

He was so lost in the brief memory of little Emma that the click of heels closing in didn’t get through to him until it was too late.

“Step back. Now.”

Not commanding. Definitely not intimidating.

Armored misery was what Annette Birkin had spiraled into, pointing her gun at him with the hammer pulled back to reveal a shell in the chamber, knuckles white from the force of her grip and shoulders taut, a dark burgundy bruise on the left side of her face blooming on her cheekbone, the white of her eyes pinked from having shed tears beforehand.

Claire let out a heated yell, as frantic as Annette looked, half-shielding Leon with her body, Sherry still in her arms. “Stop! He’s with me!”

“He’s with that bitch,” Annette said in a correcting way, low and spiteful. He could only assume she meant Ada. “I’m not letting him anywhere near my daughter.”

“You already shot me once, and here I am.”

The advantage he took in hopes of smoothing down the tension had the opposite effect as the barrel of the gun pointed at him shook with Claire’s outraged, “What?! She shot you?”

Annette shook her head, lips thinning before they parted. “It was a warning shot. Wasn’t meant for him.”

He put his hands up, slowly, practically seeing the bristles raising on Annette’s back like a dog. “Aimed at an FBI agent. Good for you I got in the way.”

He didn’t know if her huffing laugh was genuine surprise or a sarcastic scoff, but it didn’t matter when her hands didn’t move an inch to indicate letting up, the steel of the barrel catching the intermittent spark of light from above like a taunting. “FBI? FBI.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat, the bead of sweat trailing down from the back of his neck to his spine was the drag of the tip of a knife to his senses. “You might want to reconsider your choice of enemies,” he tried, voice coming raspier than he intended. “I understand your reaction. I’m sure in these circumstances, she’s willing to forget about it until we get out of here. We all want the same thing.”

Annette shifted on her feet, briefly glancing at the suffering little girl when he nodded his chin in that direction. The veins in her neck bulged as her jaw clenched, breathing slowing. Unshed tears that would have escaped if she blinked filled her eyes, and she turned her head away, refusing to look any more. She gestured with a cock of her gun for Leon to step away. “Before I change my mind.”

Claire started to protest. “Don’t do this Annette—”

“Please, I’m not the enemy. Listen. Put it down, let me help, and then I’ll do anything I can to put you in the best possible position to—”

“You listen to me, boy. Stop wasting my time. You have no idea what you’re doing, who you’re protecting, or what you’re risking by getting in my way. I’m putting the next shot between your eyes the moment you open your dumb mouth again. I have a child and a city to save. Make your choice now.”

With a deep exhale, he carefully stepped aside with his hands up, clearing the path to the cable car's closed doors, and Annette slid on the floor towards them, not daring to take her eyes off him. The lock glowed green as she came closer, and she didn't need to lower her weapon as she took advantage of it to slip inside the safety of the capsule.

"Get in," she called to Claire.

Claire sent a pleading look to Leon standing a few feet away, and he couldn't do anything but remain there helplessly as she scurried in after bracing Sherry to hold her better, peeking at him over her shoulder in the last second to mutter, "Sorry."

“Not your fault.”

Her eyes shone with sincerity. “She said she can cure Sherry.”

Leon’s lungs were a balloon deflating at that. “She can?—”

“Yeah. So, take Vera and get out of here. Don’t follow us. We’ll be okay.”

And to his sinking horror, Claire wholeheartedly believed what she was saying.

Annette cut in, not caring to elaborate any further on what little context Claire provided. "I'd take her advice if I were you."

The door shut with a muffled hiss, leaving him on his own trapped in a state of shock and confusion, the telltale beeping of the lock mechanism signaling his defeat. Leon was rooted where he stood, in a daze locked on the car disappearing from sight with the speed of a snail, continuing to observe the eerie darkness that slowly swallowed it in pitiful curiosity.

Eventually, he turned around and trudged through the platform, barely aware of his movements, each step that carried him away from the now empty station stretching the fragile string holding him together thinner.

Taking the map in one hand and the radio in the other, he numbly thumbed at the buttons as the map crinkled, the creases fresh and symmetrical. “Vera, come in.”

It was faint, but he heard the radio buzz. “Everything okay?”

Better to rip the bandaid off in one go.

He drew in a ragged breath, his mouth tasting like cotton, his pulse pounding in his ears and he could feel it in his fingertips, could feel the sweat gather on his hairline and his clothes clinging to his hot body. "I..." He croaked and cleared his throat, wincing at the sudden noise and how the sounds clashed in his skull. "Bad news, Sherry got infected. Good news, Annette can apparently fix it. Claire's with them on the way to the NEST right now."

The lack of reply was normal in his opinion, he waited until he heard the crackling of what he assumed was sputtering breaths. “Jesus fuck. What the fuck.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I know.”

“How’s Claire—I mean—”

“Just. Tired.”

“Are you going with them? Did Annette—”

Leon wiped at the dampness on his forehead with the back of his hand. "No, no, I... I wouldn't be able to go along even if I wanted to. Annette didn't want me there."

He was going to add, ‘I wouldn’t leave you two behind like that,’ — but Vera’s immediate, “Because of Ada?” derailed his train of thought.

“Because of Ada.”

“How nice of her to give a fuck about you like that.”

“She didn’t shoot me this time.”

“What a character development,” she said, he could picture the roll of eyes that came with it, but didn’t feel like laughing or bantering at the moment at all.

“Listen, um,” he started, unable to hold back the words anymore, and they came out as a bundle of words that didn’t quite know their turn, spilling from him in an anxious mess. “I… This— cure. It could be cured. G. Do you think… Did you know…”

What he meant was: Did you know we could have saved Marvin if we were faster? Has it been weighing on you all this time? Can Raccoon City be saved after all? Did this many people need to suffer if they had a cure all along? I can’t stop thinking. I can’t stop thinking.

Her, “Fuck off,” made his spine so straight he thought a rod had gone through his esophagus. So sharp and cold it was a slap to the face, heat shot up from his neck all the way to the tip of his ears, the sudden rise in temperature scorching his shoulder. “My dad would still be here if I did.”

Good thing nobody was there to see a grown man go beet red from shame.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek, a metallic tang flooding his mouth as his teeth pierced the flesh. He stared at the tip of his shoes, itching to somehow be able to walk away from the conversation. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he apologized softly. “I’m sorry. I was just. Sharing? I guess…”

Could have worded it better.

“Ah.” The sigh through the receiver was long and spent, the long stretch of silence having him wonder if she cut the line off or not. “My nerves are on fucking pins and needles, I—”

“It’s okay,” The tension in his shoulders and back dissipated, and he took a deep breath to wash out the remains of mortification that settled on his palate. "We’re good—we’re good, right?”

“Yeah,” she sniffled. “Yeah. Of course.”

Eager to change the subject, he rubbed his fingers together, the material of the fingerless glove wrinkling with the motion. “I can’t believe they had a cure for G-virus lying around, everything could have been—”

“They don’t.”

Leon stared ahead, focusing on a random safe sitting on top of a table at the end of a catwalk, and a dead body propped up against the railing beside it. “What do you mean they don’t?”

The bitterness of her laugh cracked into the void of the transmission. "G isn't the strain raising people from the dead, or making those dogs rabid. It's what made William into that thing. You still remember what Claire read to us, right?"

“Yeah..?”

“The… zombie virus is a different thing. Fuck if I remember which letter of the alphabet they named it. But G, it's something else. Something new. It's no wonder people who made it have an antiviral agent lying around. Can't exactly test shit without a control group."

He didn’t get the difference at all. It was all the same in his eyes, the maker of abominations.

"Zombie virus is a different thing," he repeated, ignoring her remark about testing viruses on living subjects, "I thought it was all the same? But Ada said—"

"I know what she said," Vera interrupted him, and Leon had to stop himself from getting on the defensive over the hostility that wasn't even directed at him. "Either the FBI are misinformed or she was just saying things to satiate our curiosity. Classified information, yeah?"

"We should tell her if she doesn't know."

"If," She emphasized. "No point in trying to get more involved otherwise. Not our business."

“You’re still saying that?” It very much was their business. Claire, Annette, and even Ada before told them to walk away, but he wasn’t going to. He couldn’t. Who would after coming this far? “We’re past that point already. We might even be close to ending all of this, and— Jesus, don’t you want definitive, undeniable proof? That’s where we’re going to get it. A lab, Vera. Fingerprints of Umbrella straight from the source. Come on.”

He was tired of playing it logical and safe when it was already obvious they were headed down this rabbit hole. Time to dive in with their eyes open.

"We'll cross that bridge when we get there," was all Vera commented before she dropped the subject, her voice taking on a lighter sheen. "I'm almost done, by the way. Don't go too far."

"Sure," he agreed, easily, the knots in his stomach unwinding. "See you in a bit."

Leon felt like he was caught in a never-ending loop of the same repetitive steps. Discover a new area, open the gate, get swarmed by zombies, lose a bullet, stack up on supplies, get swarmed by zombies, get up, walk forward, find a safe zone, rest a while, find new stuff, set out again, open a door, get swarmed by zombies, press his back to a wall, reload, open a door, walk, get swarmed.

At this point, he wouldn't be surprised to see the exact same room he saw a mile ago with a path leading to another hallway in the same shape. There was no telling where he was going, just blindly trusting the instinct to go and go and go, and when it didn't feel like it was right, his gut screamed at him to turn back and take a different road. The map Vera threw at him for this very reason remained crumpled and useless in the back pocket of his pants, the scribbles and the drawn routes all crossed over each other, the network of routes resembling a child-designed maze as they all somehow led to the waterways waist-deep with sludge and trash and decomposing corpses, and he wasn't about to take a dip with his open gunshot wound anytime soon.

On the brighter side of things, he was now more or less familiar with the layout of the facility thanks to his adventures and Vera's colorful additions, getting better at evading, conserving bullets and the damage to his uniform and equipment. It was the downside of using guns - the ammo consumption being the biggest factor to keep in mind as they kept becoming scarcer and scarcer to find. He needed to be careful with his shots from now on, and only use them on the creatures that were a little more threatening and dangerous than the standard fare, but that didn't mean it was any less frustrating when he still came out of situations with a handful of shallow wounds, especially ones he was supposed to be more skilled at avoiding.

"Status update, Vera, how is it going?" he asked for the second time in the last twenty minutes, the impatience dissipating after he opened a locker to reveal a body that didn't belong in the small space, crouched in all the wrong angles and stuffed in there by someone by the looks of it, the missing flesh of his face rotting with green blotches on the purple skin. He averted his eyes and instead focused on the pallor of the undamaged portions of the cheek and the vacant blue pupils, the corpse's features revealing it belonged to a young man, no older than him.

In one of the earlier conversations, she’d given him the best news he received so far in this shithole: Ada was awake in there, and Vera had gestured to her they were working on a way to get her out.

The last few times, though, with the weight of Ada’s mortality off of their shoulders, she’d gone on technical tangents with all the eloquence of an electrician he was too unfamiliar with engineering to understand that at this point he thought finding the right plugs for the sockets to open the door would be easier instead of trying to rewire the whole thing, resulting in conversations such as: "what's this wire to do?" "pump energy to the relay" "what does it do?" "relays the power to the circuit breaker." "so what's the purpose of that?" "the circuit breaker?" "yeah." "it breaks the circuit so it doesn't blow up and fry the cables when it reaches its max wattage." "great. what is the circuit we're supposed to break then?" "are you being serious?" "...yes."

Which resulted in him receiving a, "Fuck off," in the end.

Not that he minded.

This time around, he expected a barb to deflect his insistent jabs, mock annoyance or a promise of bouncing back faster than lightning, but what he received was the uncomfortable crunch of static followed by silence, the monotonous drone of the open line indicating she was listening.

"Hello?"

He pressed the button of the device in hopes of making the sound clearer, his other hand splaying open in front of him in a confused gesture.

More crackling, a soft hiss, a mumbled curse. "Shhhhit," she hissed, followed by a clatter of metal like she tossed a screwdriver. "You piece of shit, where did you go?"

He checked around the corner he'd previously cleaned up just in case, his shoes squeaking as he rounded the sharp turn and peered into the darkness with his flashlight shining the path ahead, and hurried across the corridor. "Need help?"

"What are you gonna do, hit it with a rock?" The slight amusement in her tone was drowned in more rustling and groaning as she struggled to do something. "It's fine, just—it slipped, gimme a sec. Sorry, I—" Her voice broke off mid-sentence. "Stop distracting me, go away, you're making it worse!"

Was that directed at him or at something else? He stopped at the next turn, a door blocked by a trash container next to a rack of lockers, and was met with nothing but the unappealing, wet squelch of the sole of his boots in the puddle of blood next to an old fire extinguisher. His skin prickled as he leaned closer to check around it, only to be met with an empty hallway, a blackboard fixed on the wall with the letters H E L P emblazoned across it in chipped red paint.

"AAAAAAAA!!!" Vera's screech echoed in his ear. He'd gained the ability to distinguish between serious screams and irritated ones, so it didn't make him jump but he winced from the sheer volume, rubbing his free palm against his aching shoulder as he tuned back into her rambling. "You fucker! No, not the other one, the one— I got it, I got it! Ha, suck it up!"

A puff of air left Leon's nostrils. "Aren't you a ray of sunshine?"

Vera took offense in that, her offended gasp as she scoffed made it more comedic than dramatic. "Says the guy who keeps calling me every ten goddamn seconds like a needy little puppy."

"Oh, sorry for being worried, I guess. It's not like you're wide open for anything that comes through the door or anything."

"Do I look like I'm asking for a rescue party?" she drawled.

A chuckle left him in the form of an amused huff, the tension in his joints easing up. "Like you came across cockroaches."

"I hope you slip on one, asshole."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing to happen to me today."

Her next words came out nasal and muffled from what he assumed was her cupping her nose and mouth with the back of her palm. "Eh. That honor is probably mine." The mood changed like a switch that was flicked on and off again, she coughed a few times, and he heard her pat the front of her shirt and take a deep inhale and a shaky exhale, and then the radio went quiet. The shuffling of clothing rustling through the speaker was the next thing to indicate she was still there. "And on that note, I got the door open. Heading downstairs to get Ada out."

"Huh?" Leon looked at the pink walkie-talkie as if it personally insulted him. "No— wait for me, you can't go on your own. Who knows what's down there?"

"I do. It's fine."

"We've been through this, you know..."

She laughed, a nervous titter. "It's just a door."

And what she didn't say out loud, he heard as an echo. What could go wrong?

The unannounced, jinx-sent Birkin fight left them both traumatized from getting trapped in a burning control room with no other choice than to play whack-a-mole with the giant monster's claw as the hammer, followed by having to strategize like it was a turn-based RPG not to get thrown off the side of the platform while one played the bait and the other handled the crane controls to send container after container hurtling back to knock the mutated William into the abyss — because there was nothing else left to do other than getting him off their back. No fighting this thing.

And get rid of him they did, one crate at a time until the man was completely out of sight, the only remaining evidence of his presence being the last of his shrieks fading to black.

"Just a door, huh," Leon breathed out, panting and staggering forward on wobbly legs to wrap a steadying arm around Vera's middle before she fell over on the side in front of the crane controls.

She pushed him aside and full-on laid down on the ground, belly-down, starfishing under his open-mouthed amusement. "Just a fucking door," she wheezed, the backpack that somehow had survived the whole ordeal made her look like a turtle. "If that son of a bitch pulls a Terminator I'm nuking him. I swear to god. Sorry to Sherry but I can't do this anymore."

He rested his hands on his knees, crouching in the shadows of the massive construction machine, and gazed at the infinite expanse of nothing but a pitch black sky, the stench of sulfur around them filling his lungs. The wooden flooring of the platform creaked beneath him as he shifted his weight to settle on his backside, dropping next to her, a relieved hissing out from his lips.

There was no way for him to even begin to comprehend how Vera was feeling, her hands visibly shaking next to her, her hair an untamed, frizzy mess, the rips on her fishnets tearing apart more with the friction and she was absolutely covered in all sorts of stains from the dark patches of soot to the splatters of blood, her sweat seeping through the fabric.

He rolled over to mess with the outer pockets of the bag, looking for some kind of snack to bring her blood sugar back up, and found a chocolate bar that he guessed was a lucky find. Vera's mane of hair grunted when he handed it over, a deep frown on her face that scrunched her nose, her eyes cracking open enough to show the whites of them as she snatched it from him and wolfed it down.

After swallowing the last bite, she said, "Thanks."

It was funny to see her muching on it with a grimace of pain as she moved her jaw and chewed, and he watched her as she got back on her feet with the grace of a baby deer and extended a helping hand. She ignored it and stood on her own, slapping her palms together to dust the grime off, and he took her example to wipe at his dirty cheeks.

"We're not going back the way we came," Leon pointed out, stepping towards the edge of the platform to look up at the large crane that hung over the gap, Birkin's previous assault knocking down the scaffolding along with the metal walkway and leaving them with nothing to cover the bottomless pit.

"We got that door." Vera sounded drained, the lack of energy in her voice enough of an indicator. He understood her sentiment.

Leon couldn't stop the jab from coming out, taking out the map from the back pocket of his trousers. "Let's hope this door has something better in store than the last one."

"What a thing to say about Ada!"

He had a long way to go before winning a verbal sparring match against her.

"Huh," he hummed, the sizable paper in his hands bending backward and folded in half as he studied it more closely, the creases etched into the lines and contour of the tiny rooms and hallways. He found the right spot and began pointing out the structure with his finger. "This opens straight to the U-Area."

"No way, let me look," Vera squinted as he held it up for her, and he saw her gray irises flicker from the right to the left in a rapid back and forth, a fleeting brush of her shoulder as she got up close to peer at it. "Huh."

"Told you," he said. "Let's go."

"The fair damsel awaits," she sighed, no doubt talking about the agent, and wiped at the sweat dripping into her eyes from her fringe, combing it in place with her fingers. The ends of her hair were burnt and curled inward from the fire they'd narrowly avoided, smelling of smoke, the blackish curls reminding him of the stray cats he often spotted walking down the street next to the cafe where he used to grab a morning coffee from before classes, the thin furry bodies wandering around the alleyways and looking for scraps of food to eat.

A bit too eager, she began marching towards the opposite direction of where they came from, her steps not quite as surefooted as he was used to seeing her stride with such confidence, the exhaustion showing as she hunched over in an attempt to catch her breath. Leon fell into a slower pace next to her, keeping an eye out for anything that could possibly jump out of nowhere as he switched the gun's safety off, ready for combat, and scanned the surroundings with his flashlight to guide them through the narrow stairway going up.

"I can't believe power's still holding up," she observed after seeing the green light blinking above the garbage disposal door while Leon pulled down the lever, the mechanism whirring to life as the shutter lifted upward, revealing piles, no, hoards of trash, cans, broken glass and boxes scattered around with pipes and the walls colored in an assortment of mucky brown. The stench that permeated the air, a combination of rot and dirt and something so pungent his nostrils burned with the smell, made him gag, but he managed to hold it back to spare himself the embarrassment of coughing his lungs out, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve instead — Ada had been stuck here for god knows how long.

Ada.

Forgetting about the odor, Leon rushed in as he pictured the image of her, surrounded by filth, and he was caught up in the whirlwind of relief and panic and urgency of going to get her, the exhaustion forgotten. "Ada? Ada, where are you!"

"Over here!"

He pivoted at the sound of her voice coming from somewhere near, spotting splatters of blood on the floor that was once white and gray and now the color of rust, finding Ada hiding herself between two mountains of garbage leaning to the wall, and didn't recognize her at first glance. Her trenchcoat was gone, leaving her in a short, flimsy cocktail dress, supporting her body weight by her hands on the floor, the leg a metal piece was sticking out of facing up. The put-together, clean appearance of hers was no more, she was covered in grime just like they were, and in the dim lighting her exposed limbs were shimmering with sweat.

He ran to her as fast as he could, squatting to check the extent of the injury. "Ada... I was getting worried there for a sec..."

"Oof," Vera grimaced behind him, hands going to her knees as she bent down by her waist, her hair swinging over her head and pooling in front of her face. "That looks nasty."

"How do you think it feels?" Ada quipped, a bit dry, and gave Vera a tight lipped smile, though Leon wasn't sure if she meant it in an insulting manner or as a joke. "I can't get it out."

Leon looked at her thigh, and back at Ada. "I don't know if we should..."

"Just do it. I can't walk like this."

Vera knelt on one knee next to her and tilted her chin to the side to inspect it from a different angle. Ada didn't seem to appreciate the attention but tolerated it with a quiet acceptance, watching Vera as she continued to look, but Leon was the one who blurted out, "Don't touch it!" when she reached for the metal piece, stopping in her tracks, fingers hovering over it.

"The hell," Vera exclaimed, backing her hand away as if she'd burned it and looking up at Leon standing over them, her eyebrows arching.

"Antiseptic," he explained, positioning himself behind her for better access to her backpack, pulling out the bottle of isopropyl alcohol and the roll of bandages from the bag. Vera stared at him for a couple more seconds before she seemed to finally catch up, then nodded in understanding and took the materials from his open palm as he handed them to her, "I take it out, you disinfect and bandage right after."

"Sure thing, boss."

His cheeks flared up in response to the nickname, his heart jumping up to his throat at the acknowledgment, but it all washed away when Vera nodded at him to go on, the teasing forgotten for a more pressing matter, and he went on to take care of it as gently as possible, all the while being hyper aware of eyes on him as he worked to take the metal out in one go. Ada kept her expression impassive, her back ramrod straight with a fist resting on the knee of the healthy leg, only a hiss of discomfort escaping through her teeth as the shrapnel slid out of her flesh.

Vera's touch was surprisingly gentle despite her usually brash demeanor, cleaning the area with a soaked piece of cotton to get rid of the dried blood and disinfect it, humming under her breath at Ada's reaction letting her pain show more than before. She tied the gauze with a deft knot, sealing it in place, and began packing the things back into her bag.

"Can you walk?" Vera asked, holding up a hand for Ada to take it and pull her up, getting a firm nod in return. Ada brushed herself off, her legs not entirely steady as she took a few experimental steps, the heels of her pumps clicking against the concrete floor.

Leon noticed a few drops of blood sliding down from the piece of metal and dropped it on the floor. "So... what do we do now?"

"We?" Vera paused for a moment, like she hadn't expected him to phrase it like that, and looked back at the other woman.

Ada shook her head. "Get yourself out of here. While you still can."

"I'm — we're not just gonna leave you. Not like this," he protested, gesturing at the bloody rag on her thigh, out of worry and confusion and maybe some lingering sense of responsibility that made him feel like he'd be betraying Ada if he simply up and left, especially after everything that she's done for them. She was a capable person, true, it just didn't feel right.

"You don’t understand. The situation’s worse than I thought."

Vera scoffed, crossing her arms. "Right. How're you going to get out of this shitpit exactly? After we leave?"

"I can take care of myself."

The other girl didn't have to say anything, making a point just by openly staring with eyebrows up all the way to her hairline, making a face that expressed what she thought about that statement.

"I don't know what your objective is, but you need to listen to your own advice," Vera continued, as if Ada had never said anything. "That leg isn't gonna get you far in this condition."

The look she received was one that said they were at an impasse and Ada was considering it, the tilt of her head and the way her mouth parted to say something made Leon think they were actually going to cooperate with each other and make it work, only for her to break her gaze from Vera and fix him with a stare that sent shivers down his spine. "Good thing I have you two, then, huh?"

Leon brightened up, a bit proud and happy to have some sort of resolution, even though he could feel the daggers Vera was trying to drill into the side of his skull without saying anything. He chose to ignore it, thinking that this was a win-win, because really, Ada finally letting them help when they were obviously going in the same direction? Why would that be bad?

Vera was as stiff as a board, but turned to lead the way, taking a step to walk past Ada as she did so, giving her a polite nod and nothing else.

Leon began to follow her, but not before he noticed Ada's eyes following her, a contemplative look in them that disappeared as soon as Ada's focus landed on him, making Leon wonder if he saw it correctly at all. "You still want to help?"

He nodded fervently, spirits soaring. "Of course!"

"We have to get to the NEST. It's—"

"Umbrella's lab, we know." He shared a look with Vera, somewhat content with himself to let it be known they were on the same frequency with Ada. "That's where the G-virus is, right?"

Ada's eyes narrowed, a missed beat in the way she answered. "That was easy to deduce, I suppose."

"Yeah." There was no need for distrust to come between them, so it was an easy confession. "And Vera's a private investigator, she already knew about Umbrella before this started."

He caught the girl in question mouthing his name in anger, teeth clenched shut, looking like she wanted to cave his head in, not understanding where the anger was coming from.

Ada turned her attention to her. "Is that so? What kind of a PI?"

"The kind that gets snitched on, apparently," Vera glared daggers at him, her nose wrinkled, nostrils flaring as she let out a scoff that was aimed at him.

"Come on, she's FBI. No harm in her knowing," he dismissed, hoping she wouldn't press it further and chew his ears off for this. Vera made a noncommittal noise that he didn't know how to interpret, but she didn't voice out any objections, so he thought they were good, at least for now. "We're together in this. So... NEST?"

The agent ignored him, however, "How much do you know?"

"Enough," Vera answered, clearly wanting the subject to be dropped.

"About?"

"Am I being interrogated, Agent?"

"Depends. Is there something you're hiding?"

Vera stepped closer, her demeanor shifting. "There's a lot I'm avoiding, let's leave it at that. It's been like that for a long while, and will continue to be so until I get what I came for. For the greater good."

There was no answer coming. Instead, the silence that followed was so thick with something that it made his hairs stand on end, goosebumps rising on his forearms. Something was happening between them he didn't understand. Ada was scrutinizing her with an intense glare, something fierce and calculating flashing in her eyes, a bit intimidating, but Vera returned the gaze with such a ferocity in her own, challenging Ada to call her bluff and say something else.

And she did. "Okay," Ada agreed, with the hint of a smile in the corner of her lips. "Then, for the greater good, shall we?"

Leon didn't know what he was supposed to be expecting. Maybe a proper introduction, a clear outline of the plan, a friendly chat. Anything, really, but this sudden shift in atmosphere, it was suddenly very hot in the room. Like something else was going on other than getting to NEST, like they had history.

"O...kay," he muttered.

"This tram is bound for NEST. Do not exit until the final destination."

Leon stared at the speaker attached to the ceiling of the vehicle as he pulled down the lever to get it moving, Ada and Vera already inside, the latter of which had her arms crossed and was glaring at the ceiling as if she wished to smite it, not noticing Ada's observing gaze that followed the way she fiddled with the digital camera she'd just used to record the outside of the cable car to catch the Umbrella logo on it, or the way she swayed and pressed herself to the wall as the tram began to move. They were sitting next to each other on the bench, Ada's injured leg stretched out, and she had to be feeling uncomfortable, but didn't let it show.

"You know what I was thinking?" He started, heated as he tried to start a conversation, anything really to get rid of the tension hanging over their heads. "I can’t wait for the FBI to raid Umbrella headquarters and take those bastards to justice."

Vera leaned back after setting down the still recording camera to face the window of the cable car, her hair hitting the metal of the wall with a soft thud, the muscles of her throat straining as she gulped down and closed her eyes.

" I agree… but to be clear, you’re not working in official capacity. This is a federal case." Ada stressed, the sharp tone of her voice making Vera snap her eyes open to look at her from under her eyelashes. "Once we get the G-Virus—"

"We?" asked Vera, for the second time tonight, turning her head to meet Ada's gaze that was unreadable, filled with some emotion that made the space between her eyebrows pinch.

Ada's eyes darted away to stare at the floor, and she sat upright to avoid further eye contact. "Yes," she admitted, a bit strained, but it was genuine. "I thought I might need your help… and I was right. If you can secure the G-Virus, I can make sure what happened in Raccoon City never happens again."

Vera was surprised at the offer, and she gave it some thought before she replied. "I'm not risking any of our lives for that stupid virus. We're not some disposable assets. Finding Claire and Sherry comes first. You can deal with the rest as you wanted from the start. On your own, that is."

"No, wait a minute," Leon objected, shaking his head as he turned to look at Vera. "I want to do something. Umbrella has to pay for what they've done. You heard her, she's with the government, she can take this to the media, the whole country — the world. With what we have, all of this, this is not something they can sweep under the rug. Please, let's help her get the virus. It's important."

She shot up from her seat and grabbed her backpack, going for the camera next to stop the recording. "God, no," she huffed, the calmness breaking to reveal how frustrated she was with everything that happened. "Claire and Sherry are more important than the virus. And you're not putting their lives on the line for something that's not guaranteed—"

"I'm not putting their lives in danger."

"And yours doesn't matter?"

"It does, but," he gestured with his hands in a hopeless motion. "I mean, I signed up for this when I applied to the RPD. If it's for the people, then—"

She scowled at him, and he hated the disappointment on her face, her eyes darting back and forth over his face, as if she was searching for something that wasn't there. "It's not worth it, Leon."

Ada watched their exchange like a tennis match, staying quiet, and he thought she would interject, but she didn't, choosing to see how things played out instead.

"How can you say that?"

Vera clicked her tongue, and his stomach sank, his chest growing cold. "The fucking G-Virus isn't the reason why RC went to shit, I told you already," she said, and something in the way she spoke sent a chill down his spine.

He wondered why she was being so defensive. Was there something she knew that he didn't? Again?

It wasn't the first time.

He shook his head and pursed his lips. "Even if it's not the direct cause, it's definitely a part of it. All that experimenting on people, all that bloodshed. The police, the entire city, my fellow officers died trying to keep everyone safe. The civilians. Us. You saw that little girl," he pleaded, his heart sinking lower when she averted her gaze from him and focused on the screen of the camera, fidgeting with the buttons. "I'm doing this for them. Even if I have to die for it, then so be it."

Vera sucked in a sharp breath and didn't look at him. She didn't agree to anything, or argued, just stayed silent, a hand reaching out to take her headphones out of her bag and slip them around her neck, turning away from him and bringing her legs up to sit on the bench, faint rock music filled the air. He knew there was no use in pushing, and she wouldn't change her mind no matter what, but the cold indifference, the blatant refusal of wanting to do anything that she disagreed with made him mad. He understood where she was coming from, that she was concerned with getting the younger girl to safety and probably wanted to forget about all of this and get as far away from it as possible, but he wanted to fight it. To do something. Make a difference, however small. It was naive and probably short-sighted, but he needed to do it.

With a heavy heart, Leon looked back at Ada and saw the corner of her lip quirk up in the faintest of smiles, her chin in the palm of her hand.

#icymi <3 #misc: self reblog

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