Chapter Text
Rain seeped down the window.
Leon sat up in bed. In a city like this, the room never got fully dark. It turned a kind of brown color, the streetlights just enough to keep everything dim, but not dark. The light wasn't why he couldn't sleep. Not by a long shot. He rubbed his eyes. Most mornings he woke up, they were bloodshot. Most nights before bed, same thing. All the time, these days, he was just so fucking tired. Tired like he had just gotten back from a mission, but all the time. The kind of tired he couldn't cure with sleep because now, sleep was hard.
There was no ambient city noise to lull him. The rain didn't do much either. He stared at the television in the corner. When was the last time he'd watched some TV? Done some good old channel surfing?
Tch.
Leon yawned. He got up and went to a travel bag with clothes spilling out of it, and dug around for a pill bottle. Xanax. He shook out four of the 1 milligram bars, then paused and put one back.
Most days when he tired to sleep now, his heart would hammer. Sweat would form on his brow. He'd be ready for something to burst in the door or drop from the ceiling, ready to move on to some next leg of a mission that just wasn't there. His heart would hammer and he'd be taking the short breaths of fear, or maybe just adrenaline. And he'd lay there awake. Sometimes until dawn crept into the sky. Sometimes longer.
The Xanax didn't fail, most times. His script was for sixty a month. There were months when that script was wearing thin before the end, and when that happened, he bought his government approved liquor and slept that way. Either way, he got to sleep. Either way, no dreams. Not even good ones.
It's not every night yet.
But one day it would be. One day it would be every night with the Xanax, and maybe then, he'd start mixing liquor too. Then he'd start with the Xanax during the day. Maybe wash it down with something from a flask, or maybe just a nip. And then his cushy government job would give him the boot and he'd be shit out of luck.
Not that he wasn't already.
He laid back down and rolled onto his side.
Leon jolted awake sometime four hours later. He showered. He shoved his clothes into his travel bag. He swiped the stupid hotel card key, and he checked out. They asked if he enjoyed his stay and maybe some other things, but the morning fog, it didn't allow for that kind of casual brisk conversation. Not at seven in the morning. Not ever, really.
The military police had lined sandbags against fences and made two more checkpoints. Civilians passed through, the occasional one pulled aside. Flashlights shone inside eyes. Identification was produced. Leon breathed the air and no part of it was refreshing. He showed his military ID and walked around the checkpoint.
He felt the stares of people in line on his back. Or maybe he just thought he did.
"Here's your ID, Mr. Kennedy."
"Thanks." Leon slid the ID into his wallet blindly.
The crowd clogged up the other end of the checkpoint, everyone ready to begin their day, to disperse and do whatever it was they did with their lives. Leon looked over his shoulder as he walked through the gate.
Eyes locked before he realized who he was looking at. Then he took in the features of the guy's face. It didn't take the scars for him to know who it was. And by then, he was already slipping into the crowd, being carried off by the swarm of commuters.
Maxwell Brant, Max, for short, woke up slumped against a table. Drool on his sleeve. A bartender shaking his shoulder.
"Hey, man, curfews done, you gotta get the fuck out of here."
"Mmmm." He squinted up at the bartender.
Something that felt an awful lot like puke made the trip halfway up, but decided last minute to turn around.
"I'm serious, you gotta fucking go."
He somehow sat up, bracing on arm against the table. And then, despite the odds, he stood. Took a step, and then more confidently, another, and soon he was striding out of the bar.
"Fucking alkie," the bartender muttered.
The name was fucking dumb. Max. Like he was some kind of dog. Like whoever had picked it had some fucked up sense of humor. Like maybe Wesker picked it. Except he was supposed to be dead. Umbrella, fucked. All these other companies doing what they did so much better that Al might be jealous if he was still around.
Still, giving him a dog name, it was kind of a Wesker joke.
Krauser blinked in the hazy daylight. The rain, it had let up a little. An ugly sprinkle from a gray sky.
He'd given up trying to piece together how he'd gotten here, who the money in his account every month was from, where his name came from, all that shit. The last thing he'd seen was Ada Wong's bitchy little smirk, and then he'd woken up with time lost.
The worst part was the arm.
He drifted into the checkpoint line.
At first, he waited. He waited for Wesker to come in those stupid sunglasses and then for an Umbrella agent, and then just for signs, and mostly, he didn't get any of those. He waited for almost a year and a half before the cold steely truth came sinking down: no one was coming for him. No one was gonna come and fix his arm and inject some crazy virus shit and get him back in action.
But no one arrested him either.
Mechanically, he pulled out his civilian ID, and showed it while the checkpoint guy raked a flashlight across his eyes. He blinked away the black dots in his vision.
Wait, no.
Not after all this time, this wasn't happening.
Leon?
Krauser watched him slip into the crowd and followed in hot pursuit.
"Move, fuck, I said move," he said through gritted teeth. Crowd was too packed to move fast in.
"You move, ugly!" A voice from the back.
"Fuck you!" Krauser pushed forward, but extended his middle finger toward the rear.
"Shut the fuck up!" This from a third party.
He gave up on the conflict and pushed forward, and then finally, out of the pack of people. No sign of Leon.
If he was real. He shook the thought away.
Jack Krauser was supposed to be dead. Leon slipped into an alley and pressed himself against the wall. What was he doing here? Running some T-Virus racket? Playing armed guard to some new guy promising power? Maybe even planning some large scale attack. Who knew what he'd been up to since he'd fallen off the map?
How many people could successfully fake their death twice?
The gun was pressing against the small of his back. He gripped it.
And then, there was Krauser. He looked rushed. He turned his head to the side, and the to the side again.
Looking for me.
Leon let him pass, and then counted to eight. He took his hand off his gun, and slid out of the alley. Picking Krauser out of the foot traffic wasn't hard. Guy stood out like a sore thumb.
Why was he bothering with this? Jack Krauser fell into the list of things that were strictly not Leon's problem anymore.
He picked up the pace to close the gap, and then let off.
Krauser looked shabby. His clothes wrinkled, like he'd either slept in them or yanked them out of the dirty laundry.
He moved slower than Leon remembered, too.
That only meant he was easy to tail.
Krauser's pursuit of no one went on for another forty minutes before Leon followed him down a side street and to a dingy apartment building. The rain had picked up again. Krauser ducked into the building and then Leon was alone.
Maybe he should walk away. Just fade back into his own life, forget that he'd seen this particularly raw part of his past. Krauser didn't seem particularly villainous or up to no good.
Leon dropped his travel bag on the sidewalk and pressed his palm to his temple. So many fucked up memories. His face grew hot.
If he waited too long, he wouldn't be able to tail Krauser.
He picked up his travel bag and caught the door to the complex as someone was leaving, just in time to see Krauser disappear into a stairwell. Stairs? Hmm. Maybe Krauser needed his exercise. Leon waited four seconds and opened the door to the stairwell and the footsteps coming from a flight below stopped.
"Hello?" The voice was unmistakably Krauser's.
He thought of descending before he could reply, but then thought better of it. Getting shot in the face in a stairwell wasn't his idea of fun.
"I saw you at the checkpoint." If Leon could recognize Krauser's voice, surely Krauser could recognize his.
Silence from below. The air grew thick with something almost like awkwardness.
"Again, the hunter becomes the hunted."
It was the same brand of tough guy cliche that Krauser had always subscribed to.
"Can I come down without you shooting me?" Leon was tightening his grip on his pistol.
"Civilians can't own guns," said Krauser.
Another beat of silence.
Leon took a step and then another and before he knew it he was in the red light of an EXIT sign, in front of the door to what was clearly some shitty basement apartment. In front of Krauser.
Krauser let his face twist into a sardonic smile, like this was all just ducky, some kind of irony that they could look back on and laugh about later. Somewhere beneath that, though, there was panic. He'd stopped waiting and this is what had happened. Someone surfaced and he wasn't ready anymore. Hadn't shaven in a week, hadn't bothered working out in twice as long. And now here was little Leon S. Kennedy. The Boy-scout.
Except not so little anymore. Worn out, more like.
He watched Leon flick his eyes around the arm and take the rest of him in and he did the same.
"You here to arrest me, boyo?"
Leon opened his mouth, then closed it again.
"I'm here to make sure you're not up to anything."
So Kennedy didn't know anything either. Figures. Here he was expecting some revelation, something, some sign that he'd been brought back for a reason.
He put on one of those sardonic type faces again. It was easier the second time. "Making sure I'm not up to anything, comrade?"
Something flickered in Leon's face. Maybe annoyance. Maybe something else. Krauser jammed his key into his door, turned the lock, and opened it.
"You know what I mean, Krauser."
He hadn't heard his name, even just his last name, in so long.
"Tch. Going by something else these days?" Leon must've seen something in his face.
"Max Brant. This is my house. This," he waved the piece of plastic in Leon's face, "is my ID. Now get the fuck out."
Krauser slammed the door. Then watched Leon walk away through the peephole.
Huh. Gave up without a fight.