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A man, disheveled and bloody, raises his hands above his face and is surprised to see that, through his fingers, slip splendid rays of white light.
Only then does he find the resolve to hear through the loud ringing in his ear: the incessant whir of an engine soaring through the sky.
Indeed, a helicopter floats idly in the air, its operator in disbelief that, despite all odds, this mere cop stands before him. Alive. But perhaps not alive at all.
He remembers a few minutes ago– the evanescent euphoria that overtook him when he left the underground lab. The relief of survival.
But as he examines his surroundings, the death and the plague, he comprehends his attire. The vest which granted him the responsibility of others’ lives and yet, only he was alive. Not a single soul was spared at his expense. And he can't help but wonder then, was his life worth the price that was the loss of others’?
“Come on, Leon.” Claire says, her voice barely there. A little like a fault amidst the slicing of the wind and roaring engine; he could almost convince himself that he imagined her and Sherry.
A rope ladder is rolled out before him, and Claire is helping Sherry up it. He follows soon after, the rope flailing in the air so erratically that he doesn't realize his own body trembling before the billowing of the wind.
He is all too aware of the grip his palm has on every ledge he hoists himself upwards with. That, just before, this same hand let her slip away and into the abyss below. He remembers the void swallowing her as she receded further, her eyes filled with acquiescence.
He looks down to the mass of the undead, and in the part of his heart where he should feel true fear… is absolutely nothing. He wonders when his hands would betray him and launch him into the horde of death, but they don't, and every little ascension hurts more than the one before.
He considers letting go for a moment, but he doesn't.
Instead, he shuts his eyes, and when they open, he’s in a shitty hotel, six years later.
Leon still hasn't let it go.
He hasn’t let go of anything since he let her go. Not the ideas of anything, anyway. Little hypothetical situations that grow over time to be horrifying in accuracy. The place in which he could imagine happiness had only turned into a factory of nightmares. So he stays alert most times. Tries to will his brain into emptiness.
Sometimes, he doesn't need to try.
He gazes upon himself in the mirror, hair matted with soot and sweat, the previous golden sheen of his blond hair replaced with grime. Murky water which had splattered his face before had evaporated, leaving behind a dry film of dirt.
Barely alive, he thinks. The only thing differentiating himself from the zombies back in Raccoon City is their sickness. Where they were rabid, hungry for slaughter, devoid of consciousness, he was placid, lethargic and too conscious of everything around him. His actions. The life he now leads.
Yes, Leon Kennedy is barely alive, his body now a vessel to carry out missions issued from a higher power, an association. A lot like those bioweapons, he realizes. A rush of devastation runs through him.
He remembers the last time he truly smiled.
The jet ski had just been flung across the air, making an abrupt landing atop the surface and setting off a shower of ocean water. Ashley Graham smiled as she extended her hand out to the wavering droplets.
On one side of him was the remainder of the night, illuminated only by the ongoing explosions of the island. On the other, the sun was just beginning to break out of the horizon, melting golden rivulets into the ocean, the sky bright with promise.
There was death and there was beginning, and he was right in the middle of it. He waited for a moment, feeling the light sway of the waters. Perhaps if a wave were vigorous enough, it would push him closer to either side and determine his fate.
He looked behind his shoulder and Ashley took her hands off his waist, her face softened by the growing light. And she was smiling.
It was only then that he shared the sentiment and smiled back.
“Mission accomplished, right?” She said, with glee. He wondered how she found the resolution to sound so… relieved. Because he wasn't. His heart was pounding and he was beyond exhausted, because he wasn't done. It wasn't over until it was.
In the middle of the ocean overlooking the ruins of his battle, inhaling the fumes, he felt like he was trapped there all over again.
“Mission accomplished when I get you home… safe.” He responded. She nodded gratefully, but to her, the battle was over. Because there was the sun on one side of her and Leon on the other. Because she finally felt safe.
“Thank you for saving me.” The engine gurgled the water around as it revved. “Don't mention it.”
–
The moment he saw Ashley off, ushered by her security guards, was the moment he stopped pretending. The moment he wondered how he managed to do it right this time.
Suddenly his posture wasn't so perfect. Suddenly he was trembling. Suddenly he was on the floor of his shabby motel room gasping out for air. He threw his head back, fingers pulling back the collar of his shirt to loosen it.
His heart, this mortal instrument that had just absorbed far past its capacity, was reminding him of its limitations, pounding against his chest as though it sought a means to escape. He placed his hand to his chest to calm it. To feel something other than his own emotions.
The world was spinning and he could do nothing to steady himself.
Everything felt so out of control, his body closing in on him, threatening detonation. He felt like he was dying.
But it was true, still, that this was the first time Leon had felt alive in a long, long time.
He remembers her again, and amidst the discomfort in his chest, a foreign feeling blooms, no less uncomfortable than everything else, but different.
His heart pounds but flutters all the same.
He wonders if the presence of her made all the ruin better, or if all the ruin made the presence of her horrifying.
—
He lets himself drown, sometimes. A subtle dip into the depths of his bathtub. Everyday, he remains a little longer. Sometimes for a few seconds, at times for a couple minutes.
Sometimes he thinks of never rising at all. He lay there, completely submerged, eyes open. With every part of his lips comes a bubble that emerges to the surface, and he thinks he could stay like this forever, encompassed, and blocked away from everything else. Like the only way to heal the void in his heart was to let himself become one.
But he always comes up, his bronze head surfacing, a loop of water around him flying everywhere as he gasps out for air.
He lets the water strain itself down the sink before he wraps a towel around himself and approaches the bathroom mirror. His hand swipes across its surface, revealing his reflection.
A brief inspection of his face beckons his thumb across his chin. The overgrown stubble pricks at his skin and he remembers himself for a moment.
“Gotta do something about that,” He mutters.
His practiced hands swipe gingerly across his jaw, cheeks, and upper lip with a razor. A simple stroke of his thumb peels away the shaving cream before he washes it off.
In just a few minutes of grooming he is fresh-faced and boyish, but morbid all the same. He remembers her again, and wonders why even the reflection of his face screams her name.
Perhaps it was the unfortunate fact, he regrettably realized, that she had now become a part of him that nothing but his own death could erase.
–
He spends his time writing out paragraphs. Building blocks of parts, and other blocks of parts. Of letters he is meant to send. To Claire. To Sherry.
And in his darkest hours, to her.
Yet he builds nothing.
Questions above admonishes directed towards her that turn themselves against him, above subtle declarations of love, above confessions of insanity.
You know why everything happened, don't you? He writes. If not all, then at least a bit of it.
I think you were the worst thing to happen to me that night. Was I the worst thing to happen to you, too? Sometimes I hope I was. That you cared enough. Because I can't forget you.
He tries. He really does, shifting the sentences into places of others.
Hopes that in chronology, he could find a story.
Or better yet, an answer:
Because I can't forget you, you're the worst thing to happen to me.
–
He didn't investigate the teddy bear by accident. Maybe. That’s what he told himself, anyway. That there was nothing of note hidden inside the cotton innards of that keychain. That, even if something was there, it didn't matter to him.
In his worst days there is barely a modicum of sobriety. He searches his house for another can, but what ends up in his clutches is something else.
That damned key.
He considers tossing it away, but his fingers pry open the zipper instead. It stutters before it finally tugs open and a cloud of cotton bulges outward, bringing to his attention a crumpled paper.
When he reads it, the words doubled and floating across his vision, he regrets it. He clutches the edges of the table and he leans forward.
A place. A date. A time.
All of which he’d missed.
“Fuck.” He cusses. And internally, he’s damning her to hell. For everything she’s done and for everything she hasn't. He is enraged but guilty all the same.
It all fades, though, eventually.
And when it does, he becomes a shell of himself, filled with only regret and the silhouette of her.
–
The sharp snip when she cut slowly and the soft squeak of the metal when she feathered out the edges. The sound of water dripping down the faulty faucet, and the quiet shuffling of hair products.
A melody that puts her mind at ease.
Ada was used to following the whims of every circumstance that hindered her– used to being stripped of control, but one thing she always fell back on to feel steady was the mundane task of grooming her hair.
She completed this routine with a very specific set of instructions and circumstances. She’d be fresh out the shower, her hair more tamed and manageable, the silver scissor placed within reach of the bathroom mirror. And then, she’d get to work.
The scissor slices through the wet bristles of her hair, and they fall haphazardly, in clumps or in straight strands that prick her skin. She keeps her head leveled, her practiced hand trimming down her overgrown mane into an angled bob.
Occasionally, her eyes would lose sight of her hair, when her towel begins to fall lower, the scar on her shoulder like a red herring. She sometimes lets her thumb assess the damage, feeling the thin skin draped over her memories of battle, how it stretches out into something completely unlike the rest of her, grappling with the sense of normalcy.
She would remember, then. Him. The keychain she left him and the message it withheld. A date, a time, and a place.
The cold autumn wind locking her into place as she waited on the park benches. The irritating light flashed into her eyes as the officer spoke softly. “Miss? Miss, are you alright? You can't sleep here.”
The embarrassment she felt when she understood that she’d let her guard down.
The disappointment that dawned on her when she realized that Leon Kennedy had let her go twice. Once, when she fell. Twice, when he never showed.
She remembers the brief boat ride. The humidity that encompassed them made it hard to breathe – or maybe it was just the presence of him that did.
“Maybe I changed too.” He’d said. At first, she laughed. “You? Leon. S. Kennedy? You haven't changed. You just think you have.”
The irony of that moment sinks in now much later. He did change. It was she, who just didn't think he did.
And so, her walk home entailed many what-ifs.
What if she had insisted that he leave with her? What if she had told him that he didn't mean what he said when he decided they'd go their own separate ways? What if she hadn't left?
The answer materializes in her head as a scene of destruction similar to that of Raccoon City. Piles of bodies, dead and recently turned undead, clutter the city. Sinister groans and the explosion of crashing cards turn the sounds of life into a cacophony of doom.
Indeed, the answer to their forevermore together would always be destruction. Perhaps Leon realized this, but she was none the wiser. Until now.
She could never have more than dreaming of him. She wouldn't let herself.
–
It was a simple thing, saving the world.
It’s almost laughable, because it didn't take a hero to do it. All it took was a gun to the head and an order. And east, the helicopter went, away from Wesker’s orders and away from disaster.
She didn't know how she did it. Playing it safe wasn't an option in her line of work. But this? This was suicide.
Maybe it was something of an afterglow, an epiphany that bathed her after she helped Luis make an antidote.
She wondered if that one good deed turned her into something completely different, if the magnitude of the lives she had saved erased the lives she had ended.
No. She would be foolish to think that.
Because it didn't matter how many lives she could save unless she could save Leon Kennedy.
Because how do you save the hero who found himself in the place of a victim, yet the headspace of a savior? How could you convince someone in paradise that they were actually living in hell?
She almost wanted to become that person for him, and only almost because she couldn't let herself want such a thing. Ada Wong never had what constituted a hero.
But she let herself take the role of a guardian angel– something real, and completely unreal all at the same time. Something imagined.
When he leaves his apartment, she escapes the shadows that shroud her and enters his world.
With the practiced flicks of her adept hand, the lock gives in and the door yawns at her.
She takes in the scene.
The studio apartment was small, but it felt spacious and empty— save for a bunch of unopened boxes sparsely spread around the house, a couple of crumpled aluminum cans scattered across the floor, and an overflowing trash can. He’d drawn the blinds open- she had no idea why.
The sun could barely flood past the cotton clouds, trapping the city in a perpetual state of melancholy. She could leave— no, she should leave. He could be back any moment now. And yet, the prospect of getting caught didn’t scare her as much as it should’ve.
She walked around, letting her fingers trace the walls, as though touch alone would morph her into his life. She stopped at his bedroom— this dimly lit crevasse barely touched. His bed was made perfectly, corners tucked and blankets folded. She wondered if he ever slept there at all.
Ada felt as though this room was swallowing her, taking her into a place of imagination. She could see it now: Leon sat by the corner of the bed, washing down the remains of the day with a whole pack of beer of which only some of the crushed cans would end up in the trash, the others, littered around it, his aim distorting gradually due to the alcohol.
She groans away the imagery, picking up one of the crumpled cans.
She looks down at the can in her hands. She probably should’ve left things the way she found them, but this is what she’s always done, in a sense: destroy everything, just to try and pick up the pieces.
She was inside of Leon’s horde of destruction. She walked within it.
She already feels the persona she masquerades as melting into something completely unalike as she pulls out a paper…
One more try. One more try, She thinks, If he doesn't show after this, I won't find him again. She lies.
—
A place. A time. A date. An invitation to a game, one crafted impeccably and superficially. Like always.
Figured I’d make it up to you.
–
He is surprised to find that Ada reached out once more, but relieved.
The trail eventually led him to the beach. During winter time? A bold move, but completely in character.
A secluded body of water overlooked by cliffs. A mesmerizing background lacking its forefront, he realized. The descent down the cliff leads him to the coast of the beach, and unsurprisingly…
“I hope you didn't miss me too much.”
He pretended for a while, after her betrayal, that the presence of her never deterred him. After a while his act proved itself to be a pathetic lie he fed to only himself. The truth of the matter was, his heart fluttered, and he turned to face her with bated breath.
She looks just as beautiful as she was the day he lost her, he thinks.
Ada had a thing about her that made her the most beautiful thing present everywhere possible. Even now, surely, bathed in the remainder of the burning sun that receded into the ocean.
“What now, Ada?” He asks, and he expects the same scene they always shared to ensue. But today, he realizes they’re playing a different movie.
Indeed, Ada had still managed to tie back the ropes he had tethered. She had changed, surely. But did she change enough?
“You never showed.” She said, “Why?”
“I see. Now you’re asking the questions.”
“And now you’re the one avoiding them.”
He scoffed, a part of him relishing the turn in tables. But even though he was playing her part, he felt his own emotions— knew what it was like dealing with such secrecy. He didn’t have it in him to inflict that kind of pain. Not on Ada, anyway.
But maybe she wasn’t the only one who changed.
“I don’t think I’m the one who owes answers.” Leon said, and the conversation was quickly replaced by the sounds of the shore and the birds. She bent down and sat on the sand. He joined her.
When the water stilled and silence took course, he thought of words.
It was words that destroyed them.
The absence of them, and sometimes the presence of them too.
He thought of a world where words never existed. A world where secrets were exchanged only through kisses, where burden was shared, never kept.
—
“Tell me something true. Something real.”
She hesitates, the air whisking her hair into a turbulence obscuring her face. What to say when there was so much to say?
“Every Autumn,” She begins, and he is surprised to see a silly smile softening her features. “A new generation of monarch butterflies take flight to spend their cold winters in Mexico.”
She sinks her feet into the sand, and the granules swallow her. “But this behavior isn't learned. It’s genetic. Every being knows when to run away.”
“So, you're a butterfly, huh?” He smiled, entertaining her sudden philosophy. “Then let me be your Mexico.”
Ada stares. At first, fondly, and then in disbelief, almost as though she could burst out laughing. “Let me be your Mexico?!”
“Hey, you started it. Talking about butterflies.”
“Well. You did say, Tell me something true.”
He says nothing, only smiles at her as she shakes her head. She approaches him. “Fine. Be my Mexico.”
And he seals the deal with a kiss.
–
In Greek Mythology, it was spring only when Persephone came back to the upperlands. In Leon’s home, it was spring only when Ada was in it.
He doesn't remember how he got there, or who initiated the kiss, just the feeling of it. The fire beneath his skin, the sound of his belt on the floor.
Ada leads him to his own bed and almost lays him there, her hand to his chest guiding his movements. Her lips move up his jaw, down his neck.
As his eyes close, he is a shell of himself, filled with pleasure and the scent of jasmine, or in other words– the part of her that makes him stay. “Ada.” He whispers, says her name like it’s true.
She hums, playing with his hair. His hand finds purchase in her loins, caressing her gently before his fingers slip in. She is lost within the blue of his eyes, until she is lost within the pleasure he gives her.
—
He knows she isn't sleeping.
She knows he isn't, either.
“You’re leaving?” He asks.
“I should.” She answers.
“Don't.” He begs.
“I need to.” She reasons.
“But it’s winter.” He persuades.
When Ada looks out to his curtainless window, she is surprised to see, for the first time this season, snow.