#era: no time to die | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mandalhoerian · 2 months

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NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 9

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 13K~ warnings: desth of a child, suggested suicide off-screen, sewers summary: In trying to make up for a previous mistake, Vera digs herself into a deeper hole yet manages to add an FBI agent to their ever-growing party, anyway. There's something about her, though, that only Vera is privy to. author's note: dedicated to @sweet-hometea for all the love on this fic and the fanart, and to @mykobirb as well, especially for the lovely comment on ao3! and also!!!!!! to @byexbyez -- literally nobody commented on my works ever like they did, thank you so much 😭😭😭😭😭

READ ON AO3 ! ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

Leon was—

He didn’t sound like himself.

Vera was unable to withhold a great deal of worry from showing itself in her face through what was essentially a crumpled discomfort like she’d just chomped down on a ripe lemon.

One didn't need months to decipher this guy’s true nature, he was the straightforward type that way; a single glance at his well-mannered, gentle demeanor spoke volumes. Leon wasn't the type to engage in psychological chess, not because he lacked intelligence or cunning, but because his character exuded honesty and sincerity — his approach to extracting information was direct, relying on trust and a genuine connection rather than manipulative tactics, after all, even when he knew she was hiding things, no on-the-nose attempt was made by him at any point to try getting her to let the cat out of the bag.

This… bargain technique didn’t suit him — and even worse, he was, frankly, terrible at it, the nonchalant charisma he should have had to support his claim was more of an anxious fight stance preparing to receive a blow because he visibly wore his heart on his sleeve, intentions transparent.

And it was none other than Vera who had steered him to this road.

Guilt washed over her in an overwhelming wave, the point where her actions, or rather, her inaction brought them to was bearing down on her with the force of a blizzard. She had let him go to great complicated and uncharacteristic lengths, navigating through the murkiness of uncertainty, all because of her own hesitation and selfishness, and the regret she had been able to push aside before suddenly became an avalanche, burying her in its suffocating embrace.

She could have saved Leon from the anguish he had put himself — was putting himself through, the desperation to uncover the answers that haunted him he was holding at bay for others’ sake. She could have spared him the emotional and mental toll it had taken.

How could she have allowed herself to play the role of the selfless protector, pretending to spare Leon and Claire from the truth, when in reality, it was her own fear and inability to confront the difficult questions that held her back? This was never about protecting their blissful ignorance, was it? She was doing this to not be hated and lose people she’d gotten attached to. It was self-preservation from the very first moment, the protection of her own feelings. Not wanting to be judged. Not wanting to be questioned. Not wanting to be perceived at all. She would have told both her companions from the start if she truly cared about them, and that was a pill she didn’t want to even look at right now, let alone attempt swallowing.

Oh, if it wasn’t the consequences of her own actions.

Of course life had thrown a whole FBI agent in the mix to laugh at her squirming to choose the least bumpy way to go about it, because how the hell was she going to set things right with a trained individual who could sniff out liars on the spot?

No point in panicking now.

It had been too long of this pretense and too much acting and misleading for her to randomly come out in what would essentially be a confessional. He would certainly resent her if she decided to disclose everything now of all the times. Because it would be personal. Because the question would be, ‘Why did you hide it from me after everything we went through together?’ and not ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ — and somehow that was worse.

Vera didn’t know if she could take it if Leon were to look at her like Irons did. Hell, even the imagination of his features twisted in hate and disdain pointed right at her induced a whole body shudder.

God, why was this scarier than anything else they were facing?

So it was right back to the starting point. She couldn’t say anything.

Not now, anyway.

She had to stay quiet… as long as circumstances allowed it.

And if it were to be unexpectedly revealed, an excuse had to be up and ready to go with a cherry on top, and she needed to come up with one, fast.

A lie never lives to be old. Or, as they say in her homeland, the candle of someone who lies almost always burns just to midnight — and after that?

But.

But redemption of a smaller scale was still possible.

Leon could still get his questions answered and she also could delay the inevitable — all through this FBI Agent. If she were to spill the beans, then Vera wouldn’t have getting exposed to worry about for a while until they got out of RC.

This was it. Yes, fuck, good thinking.

Help Leon get the information from her, fall back on the road, get Claire and Sherry and hightail it out of here — and the following course of action?

Vera would think about it once she had a clean bed and slept like the dead and turned her brain off to everything for at least a month.

The priority was now with the obviously struggling blond and the agent.

The problem was Leon trying to play bad cop while he was clearly fit for good cop to the bone, an assist from her was necessary to swap the roles, that much was obvious from the flat reaction he’d gotten from the woman.

Her pointed, chiding pause was followed by an unmoved expression save for the amused twitch of her glossy, red-hued lips at his attempt to play the interrogator, supporting Vera’s silent hypothesis reeking from the twisted anxiety on her face shadowed by the anticipatory cringe she was trying to hold back for Leon’s sake. As an FBI agent, she must have dealt with individuals far more skilled in manipulation than a rookie police officer who didn’t even know the contents of the tape he was offering.

She wasn't about to fall for his bluff so easily.

"Let's be clear," she remarked with a touch of sarcasm, a tilt to her head. "You're not the type of individuals I would typically rely on for crucial information."

Let’s do this.

Vera put her hand on Leon’s forearm, lowering the hand he was death-gripping the tape recorder with like his life depended on it as she stepped forward, all hands on deck, preparing to take over the reins of the conversation and sending him a reassuring look as he silently questioned her. Poor guy was winded as a wire about to snap, the stress that seemed to make him sweat had waned upon her intervention, and that alone was enough to keep going. “You’re not relying on us. It’s Bertolucci. We just have his stuff. And if you’re interested, possibly more.”

Another thing that weighed on her throat and her conscience.

It was so twisted to utter the man’s name in these circumstances and use it to her own benefit, when he had perished right in front of her in the most gruesome way possible. He’d been brazen and shameless to her face, alive and breathing and talking five minutes ago. One blink and he was no more. She knew this man. She’d worked with this man, laughed with him, shared common grievances, and just like that, he was gone. They didn’t even have a chance to take in what was left of him before having to hightail it out of there for their lives. It was as if her feelings hadn’t caught up with what her brain had already comprehended.

Dying was easier than breathing in this rotting city, and getting used to it all was a silent disease as much as it was an immune system reaction.

And Vera was using the poor bastard’s name as a tool to have her way. It was a whale on her tongue.

Just keep going. Don’t think about it.

This was for Leon. (Yeah. Not herself. Leon.)

The woman made a small, judgmental noise from her nose as she slowly crossed her arms loosely over her chest, not even glancing at the ball Vera had kicked over to her side. So withdrawn.

Assessing the situation more up close and personal couldn’t go without acknowledging the government had basically caged the city in, waiting the destruction out instead of interfering, so, this sole agent’s presence here despite the raging outbreak indicated one singular objective, and Vera would carrot-and-stick it out of her, it was the least she could do for Leon.

She hoped it’d be worth it to make light of legit traumatizing events that were still fresh gaping holes in her very being.

“Spoiler alert: Emails. Journals. Documentation. Exchanges—” She purposefully stopped, as if trying to remember, squinting, and then waving her hand dismissively, but not too oblivious to raise some suspicion, adding some concern in there for flavor. “Something about some Gee-virus, its whereabouts, what it does. Some unbelievable stuff if you ask me, but graves don’t stay sacred in this city anymore and the late Mr. X over here just popped a head like a pimple in front of me.” Leon made a sound of discomfort behind her, she could hear him shift around, walk back perhaps, wary at the burning, crushed frame of the said creature buried in debris. “So shit be damned, someone really is playing Frankenstein out there somewhere. I think.”

A-ha. There it is.

A tiny flicker beneath the impenetrable ice as Vera purposefully kept on rambling. The slight raise of her prettily pointed chin, falling open of the lips, the inconspicuous shift of her gloved hands where they were snug in her crossed arms.

So, the target was G-Virus after all.

“We’ll hand over everything we have to you if you’re willing to tell us what’s going on,” Leon cut in, too impatiently eager, causing Vera to snap her head at him with a tut and throwing a look at him pointedly in a silent message to shut up and let her handle it.

He immediately got the shifty eyes of guilt.

If Leon kept bringing bargaining up out loud like that, she could hold obstruction of justice over his head for withholding information and take whatever she wanted anyway — he really was backing himself to a corner by doing that and didn’t even know it, proving once again that interrogation wasn’t his forte against a seasoned individual.

“You’re playing a game I have no patience to entertain.” Vera’s face went sour. And here we have it. This woman had to be waiting for someone to slip up to pull this card. “I guess I should inform you of Section 37A of the Federal Confidential Informant Protection Act. It’s an offense to withhold information that may hinder the progress of an investigation or put informants at risk.”

Vera held up one pointer finger in parallel to her head like she wanted permission to speak in class. “Miss. May I?”

For a split second, the agent was utterly speechless, mouth opening and closing, this was a true absurdity when all things considered they were conversing in front of a giant dead creature and a smoking, burning vehicle, bargaining like merchants, but it didn’t last long for it to be considered slipping. “What are you doing?”

Her finger went up higher. “May I?”

“You don’t have to—”

The girl opened her palms to the side and brought them together. “At risk is a magnanimously underestimating thing to say about your informant’s condition, I mean the man’s head just got squeezed like a lemon.”

Leon’s croaking sigh resonated in her soul. Truly the spirit of a scandalized goody two shoes. “Oh my god.”

She didn’t feel great about it either. He didn’t need to sound that disappointed.

“What? Why are you making that face, I’m right.” Leon looked like he was considering their friendship momentarily there when she shrugged. No idea whatsoever it was a tactic. Which was fine. Only added to the authenticity. “And. And. We are your informants now. So. The only one doing the hindering and risking is you.”

“You’re making me regret saving your smartass.”

“Oh, snippy. No need for that, we just want to help.”

“Then do tell me how you came to possess such information?”

Vera tilted her head in what would be her dumb blonde moment in a joking manner, purposefully making it clear she was playing dumb as a joke. “Stumbled on it.”

The agent wasn’t having it at the moment, however, patience cut short by Vera’s cheekiness so far. “Stumbled on it.”

“Well, purposefully stumbled on it,” Vera said, dropping the act since her energy wasn’t matched, unhooking one strap of her backpack to search the contents so she could bring out her camera, and when it was in her hand, she shook it triumphantly at the skeptical woman. Mixing a dash of truth in there for good measure. “I’m also trying to actively record everything going on in the city, so it’s not really a coincidence. In case the public would claim the footage is too Hollywood, like, I dunno, to claim mass hysteria, I was also looking to get every file in the station documenting the events and that’s when we found something — and neither of us understood what we stumbled on, to be honest.”

Her fingers had begun tapping on her arm. “What exactly is the basis of your evidence?”

“His Chief happened to be involved in guarding something impor—”

Leon chimed in again. “The G-virus.”

“The G-virus, yes,” she sighed, deep but short, not wanting the exasperation to show on her face as she focused on the automatic garage door behind the agent, trying to ignore the covered body of her dog just in the corner. “And he was bribed for his services — apparently. We saw the proof of it in his office, and took it with us. Easy as that. Interested yet?”

A head tilt. “Maybe.” Her arm lock loosened as one of her hands rested on her hip this time, an authoritative and commanding pose. More relaxed and receptive. “After I see with my eyes what you have.”

Leon tried his chance again. “You’ll tell us, then?”

Vera saw the corner of a raised eyebrow peeking up underneath the sunglasses, clearly unimpressed by his persistence. "I'll tell you what you need to know if your claims hold true," she responded, finally giving in, steady and composed and not so much like she was at the losing end of a gambit.

Leon, sensing that the agent's interest had been piqued, took a step closer, meeting the woman’s unwavering gaze underneath the veil of her black lenses. "The evidence is right here. Please. We’re not asking for much.”

The agent's demeanor softened slightly, a glimmer of curiosity shining through her stern facade. "Very well," she acquiesced, measured. "Show me what you have."

It didn’t look like she’d take off running once they gave her what she wanted — not with those stilettos, so Vera reached into her backpack once again, carefully retrieving a stack of documents neatly resting at the very back, courtesy of Leon’s organizational skills. She handed them over to the agent, who took them with a measured caution, scanning the contents with an astute precision, skipping over the police reports and obviously searching for something specific.

As the agent perused the evidence, Leon leaned closer to Vera, his voice barely a whisper. "Do you think it's enough?" he asked, his apprehension evident.

She just hummed in return, eyes not leaving the woman, not even for a second.

It was enough. The emails made the location clear as the sewers. It was all the agent had to have needed.

Vera bit her lip, teeth nipping at one particular layer of chapped skin, gaze fixed on her reaction. She had laid all their cards on the table, hoping that the evidence would be compelling enough to elicit the truth Leon sought, and if it came down to the worst, they had the keycard anyway, she could figure something out to stick together all the way to the sewers and come up with a way to persuade the woman to reveal anything at all that’d be satisfactory enough to him for the time being.

After what felt like an eternity, the agent finally looked up from the documents, her expression a mix of contemplation and intrigue. "This... is unexpected," she admitted, clearly not in her plans today to be surprised. “I need to hear that tape as well.”

Success.

She sure didn’t seem the type to be thrown off-kilter or shaken, and that fact alone caused an inexplicable smugness to spread in Vera, taking a turn to teasing, letting out a chuckle as she retrieved the tape recorder and held it between two fingers towards the agent like a piece of evidence herself. "You sure you don't want to see the movie too? Have popcorn, sit down on the sofa? Agent...?"

Vera couldn’t help but continue with an arched eyebrow, expectant and confident, as the agent seemed to process how to deal with her after Leon simply held out his palm at the sight of Vera playfully offering up the item of importance. But it was undeniably amusing seeing how someone who carried herself with such assurance got stuck in the moment for just the shortest instant of uncertainty before she smoothly recovered to reach and take the device from Vera, who did not miss a beat to toss it over.

"Ada." The agent replied dryly as she handled the device, fiddling with it until she found the right button, and with a nod, pressed down on it, ready to absorb whatever secrets hid within it. "And take it down a notch," she warned with a serious undercurrent, before turning around and starting to walk away towards the entrance of the garage, a silent expectation for the both to follow her.

The corners of Vera's lips drew upwards, the beginnings of a smirk curling them as she nudged Leon. "Too much?" she whispered.

Leon was torn for a moment, before his eyes locked with her and he released a sigh of surrender that quickly morphed into a resigned smile, glancing behind him . "Let's just follow her before she changes her mind and leaves us to the mercy of this... thing."

The three continued towards the other side of the room, the clicking of the agent's high heels echoing ominously as they walked across the dark concrete, the tape recorder crackling into life, static cutting through the heavy silence.

Vera gazed to the side at Zeytin's covered body, spacing off at the lone paw poking out, trying hard to suppress any thoughts she might have, biting inside of her lip, and clenched her fists tight at her sides, staring ahead now.

“But that doesn’t explain the rumors about the orphanage. I-I just find it way too coincidental Umbrella’s one of the benefactors,” Ben Bertolucci pressed, obviously slipping it in there nonchalantly in the middle of some conversation, his casual attempt at digging further into the company sounding like gossip he was trying to get her to talk about with him, and Vera snorted, never tiring of the audacity this man possessed.

May he rest in peace.

Leon jogged forward, producing a keycard out of his pocket, and slid it inside the control panel, the gates rolling up to give access to the outside world, a cold, fresh whiff of night rain enveloping all their bodies, and it was so refreshing that Vera inhaled deeply through the nose while Leon didn't look away once from the agent and the tape recorder, intent to listen.

There was a pause, a few moments of silence save for the rhythmic beats of their footsteps against the ground. “You told me this interview was about the new scholarship Umbrella set up.”

Vera's ears twitched as they exited the building, listening closely, but she was focused more on the woman and trying to read her mood. So far so good as they started ascending the slope, getting a clear view of the street ahead and a hint of freedom.

“Come on, Annette. Nobody cares about that. They want to know about the G-Virus, and the—”

“Where did you hear about this?”

That made her feel strange all over, a creeping uneasiness rising inside her belly, like when someone says your name, you naturally react — like a trigger. The same happened when you heard your own name being spoken out loud in the distance, even though you didn't quite catch the rest of it, but it still hit home and you looked around, expecting to spot who it might have been.

“—and that big fucking sinkhole in the city which, by the way, rumor has it goes straight to your underground lab.”

She heard Leon murmur, "Lab?"

Vera took advantage of their walk uphill to glance back, noting they had left the doors to the underground structure open, to hide her face, mostly, and feign observation over their route. But she couldn't stop the flinching of her body when they finally stepped into the rain, droplets splattering onto her clothes, instantly cooling her overheating head, so refreshing she wanted to stay and turn her head up at the sky.

They were leaving the station behind.

Leaving her dad behind.

That somehow was harder to come to terms with than having to bury him with her own two hands.

“Now, are you going to talk to me or are you—”

“This interview is over.”

One hand slipped down from her heart to rest against the stomach that wanted to reject her half-digested food at the realization.

Was this really going to be their goodbye? Just walk away like that without so much as a proper ceremony to remember him by? A pitiful, shallow hole with no time to mourn over him?

"Bitch."

When her hand began trembling, a large, warm one touched hers, taking it off her belly and loosely holding it in comfort, and it grounded her to reality. She blinked several times rapidly at nothing, trying to quell the random hysteria from descending upon her, feeling like her limbs were detached and she was watching herself on the side.

The street they arrived at after climbing the parking garage ramp was quiet, apart from the trickle of water and the distant sounds of shuffling feet in the background, almost peaceful, if not for the unnatural, desolate feel that seemed to permeate the entire neighborhood. They stood in a rectangle of a road surrounded on all sides by narrow buildings of varying architectural styles, tall houses lined up together like little boxes, and cars littered throughout like forgotten, thrown toys, the bright light from a nearby fire flickering against the gloomy backdrop in the far right corner. Some of the windows of the buildings were shattered or boarded up; others were partially open, allowing them to see the darkness that loomed behind the glass.

All of them seemed empty, abandoned.

Despite the lights.

What an oddly organized ghost town it was, she thought absentmindedly. She spent her teen years here, yet it appeared like the architecture didn’t want to blend in with her memories, clashing instead in an eclectic showcase. Everything had this… vibe of having been lived in once, and now just completely lifeless and dormant.

An ambulance was parked awkwardly in front of a rusty metal fence to the left of the trio, its back door hanging open as if it had been hastily discarded there, the vehicle's wheels dug deep in the mud and it looked to have been abandoned for days. There was blood spattered across the paramedic uniforms that lay on the ground next to the stretcher, but thankfully, there were no signs of bodies anywhere. It was a part of a barricade of vehicles blocking the path down the main road, leading deeper into the city center, with a pair of police cars taking the lead and another ambulance as the rear guard, a seemingly hasty precautionary measure to prevent anyone from driving past, or things from coming in, which meant the only way to move forward was to the right.

Where the, uh. The sinkhole was. Leading to the sewers. What a neat coincidence.

"Does that confirm the intel?" Leon prompted the agent again when they all approached the roadblock. He stopped by the nearest police car, eyeing the hood as he spoke. The way he stood, rigid, alert, like he was ready for something bad to happen anytime—

"Surprisingly, yes." Ada was quick to respond, the low, sharp edge audible over the pitter-patter of rain around them. It was obvious she wasn’t too keen on cooperating fully. "Good job, you two."

Vera turned towards her. "Huh?" Her response came out small, choked, her face twisted in genuine confusion that bled into her voice too, but the woman paid her no attention as she simply proceeded walking. She jogged along to catch up with her, frowning. "You said you would tell us what's going on!"

The agent slowed her pace, tilting her head just slightly to address Vera over her shoulder as they crossed the blockaded area. "Will you finally get the hell out of here if I do?" she asked, her voice dripping with thinly-veiled contempt, the first sign of frustration surfacing beneath her calm demeanor.

Leon caught up in an instant. "We have friends trapped in the sewers. We won't leave without them." He was firm, leaving no room for discussion, and it was that determination that seemingly convinced Ada to drop it with a sigh, reluctantly stopping by an old brick wall, the surface marred with graffiti, posters, and dried up bloody handprints.

She glanced over at him, lips pursed as if debating whether to elaborate, then turned her head and pulled her sleeve to check the watch. "Just my luck." Her jaw visibly clenched, tense lines etched on her forehead, her annoyance apparent, and the way her gaze drifted off into the distance, lost in thought, until she straightened her back abruptly and faced them. "You might not make it out once you get down there. It's best if you forget about your friends and get yourselves to safety," she warned them matter-of-factly, dismissively, with none of her previous sarcasm, a subtle change in the pitch of her voice like a different person had taken her place, despite the jaw-dropping cruelty of her suggestion.

"One of them is a child," Leon countered, a twinge of disbelief coloring his words. It didn't escape Vera's notice, nor his wince at the way Ada tilted her head to the side in response. "We can't just..." A pregnant pause followed his words as he fought for the right ones, shoulders sagging. "You've seen what this city is like," he finished quietly. "We can't just merrily go on our way and leave her behind."

The woman hummed in response, folding her arms on her chest, and stared pointedly at Vera this time. "What about you?"

The question hit her like a bucket of ice, and her mind just blanked out. The shock must have registered on her face, because Ada just made a noise resembling a suppressed snort of amusement. "You don't seem the type to play hero like this one over here."

Ouch.

No, she definitely wasn't. That much was true. How'd Ada read her so well like that?

She wasn't selfless, heroic — she didn't do the right thing for the sake of it, like he did, no, she wasn't acting out on a moral compass, not really, she was... just selfishly sticking with him, so she could keep him safe and protect what she cared about. Nothing else. Was that wrong? She couldn't help that her instinct to preserve her own skin kicked in like that, but she refused to let him or Claire and Sherry die. She didn't want to lose any more people. For her sanity, or not. At most, she was just following his lead in hopes for a bigger payoff, and if they were able to get to them alive and healthy in one piece, it would absolutely be the biggest win she could get out of this nightmare situation, along with collecting even more evidence pertaining to Umbrella's illegal experiments, proving the company's crimes against humanity once and for all.

Everything was connected. It had to be.

But.

But she was aware it sounded bad if she had to voice any of it out loud. It was truly morally gray territory for her, but it didn't feel like a choice. Not a conscious decision. It just... was.

"It's not playing hero if I'm just returning the favor of saving my life," she murmured, crossing her arms on her chest with an exaggerated shrug, defensive, unsure where the answer came from but it sure felt true. "And what does it matter, anyway? We're all going the same way. Let's just help each other out."

Another slight head tilt. "Right," the woman said in a drawl, seeming amused and intrigued by Vera's answer. "My point still stands. I'm only trying to save you both some trouble and help you out," she added, walking ahead of them, stopping at the point where the road ended in a sinkhole, staring down at the construction site that led to the sewer below and turned her head to the left. "We'll take the long way."

Two things happened in Vera's brain at once: victory exploding in a colorful triumph of fireworks because holy shit, this whole FBI agent fucking wordlessly agreed to adding them to her party like this was some videogame, and dread crawling like an army of ants all over her body at recognizing what had Ada’s attention.

Gun Shop Kendo. Where Uncle Ken lived upstairs with his wife and daughter.

Her thoughts instantly raced on how they'd be faring and surviving in these conditions, a surge of fear pulsing through her veins like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart.

Leon wasted no time and went after Ada, taking careful steps towards her side. Vera lingered at the edge of the sinkhole, eyes wide at the glowing neon sign above the shop, unable to move an inch further. The red color that flickered on and off cast a hypnotic haze to her vision, and in the midst of it, her legs moved of their own accord, propelling her towards the other end of the street without thinking too hard about it.

It was automatic. Unconscious. Like falling into a dream. Or a nightmare.

One foot after the other, picking up the pace as she advanced closer while Ada was crouching in front of the shop's door and picking the lock, her mind wandering aimlessly to those past moments of playing with Emma in the backroom of the store, Uncle Robert teaching her the ins and outs of gun care, Mrs. Kendo serving delicious, piping hot lunches that had Vera drooling just to think of, Marvin having to personally come and pick her up because she wouldn't want to go home after spending the day here with the family, learning something new and getting pampered by a woman who showed her actual motherly affection.

All those fun times replayed in her head on repeat like a nostalgia montage, but the smell of something rotten snapped her back to the present, a nauseating sensation making itself known in the pit of her stomach, threatening to revolt against her as she paused in front of the storefront, frozen on the spot, swallowing thickly as she eyed the corpse of the infected woman slumped across the shop window, blocking their path inside and to the backroom behind the counter where the stairs to the apartment were located. It had her wanting to scream at the sight of the dark, slimy substances spilling everywhere and tainting everything they touched, but she swallowed her own bile down as she gazed at the decomposing creature, barely recognizable at this point, so mangled and broken that it felt disrespectful to acknowledge it had ever been human once.

Did they all end up like that?

A wave of crippling fear swept over her, causing her whole body to tremble, sending a cold shiver down her spine, forcing herself to walk forward into the shop. As she stepped in, a soft 'click' echoed in her ears as the lights blinked on and she could see her surroundings clearly. The inside was deserted and ransacked, with all the displays lining the walls empty, tables turned, items littering the floor, and bloodstains covering every inch of the hardwood surface. The door to the display cabinet behind the counter was hanging loose from its hinges, creaking and groaning as the wind blew it back and forth, creating a ghastly rhythmic symphony to go along with the raindrops tapping against the windows.

The shelves and cabinets that were usually full with all sorts of knick-knacks and goods, now left empty, had fallen over during the attack that transpired here and were strewn about in a haphazard fashion; the register sat on top of the counter, with a trail of dried blood smeared across its screen, and a black laptop lay cracked open near the cash drawer. Vera kept going around aimlessly, not even thinking about looting whatever was still there, more preoccupied with scanning the wreckage in search of any signs of life - anything at all that would give her a glimpse of hope — but, seeing nothing promising, it suddenly seemed futile.

There wasn’t much she could do, except stare into the distance and observe the destruction around her in silence, trying to digest the scene unfolding in front of her without losing her composure and letting despair consume her soul whole.

At the very left corner of the store where the guns were on display, and shooting targets hung on the brick wall, she could see bullet holes and shattered glass everywhere, as well as pieces of shattered wooden frames lying around the area, remnants of whatever furniture might have once adorned the space. A note carefully left on top of the table pinned by a piece of wood caught her eye, and after approaching it curiously, she could clearly read the writing that was scrawled across its surface.

Kendo,

It seems like you've got your reasons for staying put, so I'll trust you to take care of yourself.

Still, if things get worse and your "other arrangements" don't work out, you know where to find me.

I'll do everything I can.

Jill Valentine

Jill! So she was okay, just fine! Relief filled her with happiness and comfort at reading it — the woman was competent and kind enough to make sure someone at this place she trusted was doing alright. That was great news. It also meant Uncle Ken was around! That cheered her up so much she actually found herself smiling for the first time since they got out of the station and it felt natural.

She was about to call for everyone when a muffled sound reached her ears, freezing her on the spot. People talking. Arguing.

She would recognize his grumpiness anywhere.

Without any further thought, Vera stumbled forward, sprinting towards the direction she thought she heard his gruff voice coming from, hoping against all odds that he was safe and sound, and turned the corner, out the door leading to the back street and into the rain again, and came face to face with Leon and Ada having their guns on Uncle Ken, who was also pointing his shotgun at them, standing in front of a barefoot Emma.

The relief she initially felt upon seeing that they were both alright gave way to sheer terror at the scene unfolding before her eyes, her brain unable to process anything other than the sight.

"Uncle Ken!"

In one second flat, she dashed forward towards the group as fast as her legs would carry her, ignoring Ada's sharp, "Stay back!" and Leon's shout of her name, and wrapped her arms around Ken's waist, pressing herself close to him, a choked sob escaping her mouth, trying to suppress another one when she took in the smell of cigarette smoke, soap, and sweat — and despite everything that happened today, the familiar scent of home engulfed her senses, easing her nerves and calming her racing heart.

He smelled like he always did after a shift, ready to cuddle up on the couch together and eat junk food while watching reruns of shows and movies they liked to critique, or have a discussion about all kinds of stuff while Emma did her homework at the dining table.

His breath left him like a gust of wind, like he couldn't believe what had happened, but still, after an exasperated huff, she could feel his solid body relaxing under her grip, and in that moment, she knew she did the right thing by reaching out for him. His free hand rested on top of her head gently, carding his fingers through her hair in an attempt to soothe her, murmuring softly in her ear, "Oh, kiddo..." And when she finally pulled away, she noticed tears forming, a tired smile appearing on his weary face as he took her in.

Vera couldn't hold it in, feeling no older than Emma, just as helpless and small as her voice shuddered, "He's gone. Dad— dad's dead."

The words made everything seem final, closing the chapter on what had transpired tonight, and she watched helplessly as his expression fell, a somber look passing over his features. He didn't say anything, didn't ask questions, just stood there in silence, absorbing everything she told him before taking another breath to compose himself, placing his hand on her arm.

"Step aside, we need to terminate her before she turns," Ada interrupted briskly, finger curling around the trigger at Emma as Uncle Ken pushed Vera behind and swiftly blocked the woman from aiming, shouting in defiance.

"Terminate her? She's my fucking daughter!"

Vera took a step back, really looking at Emma for the first time since arriving, and saw with horror that she was... uninjured. But... sick. Barely on her feet. She swayed precariously, sweat beading on her brow, white as a sheet, sleepwalking almost, unblinking, unaware. There were dark purple veins all over her neck, face, limbs, creeping slowly up to her temples as though they were trying to spread outwards and consume her flesh whole.

Oh...

She gaped, open-mouthed, at the young girl, unable to do anything else but stare dumbly, heart thumping loudly in her chest, a horrible, crushing weight settling down inside her lungs, paralyzing her muscles, rendering her speechless.

"Emmie, honey?" Her voice broke as she tried to reach out for her with trembling hands, stepping forward hesitantly. Tears stung and burned in her throat when she received no reaction whatsoever, not even acknowledging that someone was calling her name or touching her shoulder, so unlike her. Her beautiful brown eyes were almost milky, unfocused.

"Emma, sweetheart, I told you to stay put." Uncle Ken's gruff tone wavered, raw emotion leaking through his usually stern exterior, not tearing his vigilance away from guns pointed at his way either.

"Daddy..?" Her little raspy, frail voice whispered. A shaky palm held up the air, her head swiveling left and right, dazed and confused, lost, wandering through darkness in search for something tangible, graspable, to keep her grounded. It was for her parents. Of course it was, who else but the most important figures in her life would she yearn for, scared and alone and probably hurting, being taken over by whatever was happening to her inside.

For a fleeting moment, Vera thought she wouldn't mind being bitten by her. To share whatever pain she was experiencing. Perishing together side by side, holding onto each other's hands, because there was nothing she'd rather be doing in this world right now.

Leon lowered his gun, an unmistakable sadness flashing across his gaze and his mouth twisting into a frown as he glanced between them with sympathy and sorrow, reaching and putting a hand on Ada's extended arm, shaking his head at her. "Ada, just let them be."

And she complied, surprisingly, sighing heavily, though she didn't seem too thrilled about it judging by her pinched expression. It was only then Uncle Ken's tense stance loosened and he released a shuddering breath, shoulders dropping along with his shotgun, but when Vera looked at him again, she couldn't help but flinch back when her gaze met those hazel eyes that normally exuded warmth, now lifeless, dull, glazed over like those of a dead man walking, devoid of anything recognizable except for pure emptiness and exhaustion.

He passed by Vera, who didn't follow his movements and just froze fixated at the place he just stood, to kneel by Emma's side and embraced her small form carefully, tenderly, burying his face in her greasy, short locks.

She didn't reciprocate the gesture, letting her father squeeze her, not blinking, not breathing, just staring blankly at somewhere ahead, as her father rocked their bodies back and forth in a soothing motion, a comfort that didn't get through to her, not anymore, never again, and he must've known it too, yet refused to acknowledge it. "Yeah, Emmie. Daddy’s here. I’m here, okay?"

The sound of strained breathing was loud in Vera's ears, ringing in harmony with her thunderous heartbeat as the situation fully sank in, weighing down heavy on her entire frame, bringing her down on her knees, clasping her mouth, muffling the loud, ugly, painful sobs that forced their way past her lips. The wet pavement beneath her legs was cold and rough against her exposed skin, the frigid air penetrating her every cell with every labored breath she took, a biting, stinging sensation spreading across her body, burning like acid eating away at her flesh and bones, corroding everything.

She couldn't do this anymore. She just couldn't do it anymore.

Emma, little Emmie, the embodiment of sunshine. Too smart, too young, too good. Had no chance against the evil that befell Raccoon City that night.

Too innocent.

"Those fuckin’ things outside… Look what they did to us," Uncle Ken cursed, anger laced within every word he spoke, seething.

"Mo-mmy..?"

"Mommy’s sleeping, honey, okay? …Emma."

All her efforts, all her sleepless nights spent hacking into databases and infiltrating buildings, collecting evidence—all for naught, because of her stupid, arrogant negligence, acting all high and mighty when she had the privilege of avoiding living in this hell, not even checking in on the Kendos for one simple reason — convenience and cowardice. All she did was play detective and waste time looking for ways for others to succeed instead of using the tools at her disposal and saving lives.

Someone — Leon, she assumed, gathered her into his arms, pulling her into a tight embrace against his chest, shielding her, offering solace, allowing her to cry freely without any judgment or shame.

"Why did this have to happen to her?" Uncle Ken murmured, his voice cracking with regret, sounding broken beyond repair. "Why my sweet little angel? Why... why is there no justice in this goddamn world?!"

He didn't receive an answer from anyone in response, but Vera wondered what answer she'd give herself if the question was directed at her.

"Why did this happen? How did this happen, huh?" he yelled, hysterical, making her squirm uncomfortably in the blond's arms. "What the fuck do your lot exist if you can't provide help when it matters? What use are you!"

Vera felt Leon flinching back, his muscles tense from being confronted. Nothing was even his fault. Hell, this was his first day. And yet, here he was, on the receiving end of all of her Uncle Ken's frustration, like someone who was getting scolded at and deserved it, with the way he tightened his jaw.

She wanted to protest, to defend him and stand up for the rookie officer. Because the same could be said about her, not him — not Leon, who was willing to put his life on the line for strangers, who took action when nobody else could, who carried other people on his back, who was gentle and compassionate and empathetic and just so genuinely good.

Vera pushed away from Leon, wiping at her face hurriedly, the tears falling nonstop despite her best efforts, and threw a pleading look at her Uncle, desperate. Don't blame him, she begged in her head, over and over like a mantra, and she hoped she conveyed the same to him through her bloodshot eyes. Please don't.

To which, the middle-aged man just bowed his head and held Emma closer, his breaths ragged. His eyes glistened with unshed tears. This was the portrait of grief: a deathless loss of a loved one.

She stood up on shaky feet, wobbled to Emma and laid a hand on her father's arm, swallowing down the lump in her throat as she peered down at Emma's lifelessness. Vera took in all the details of her pallid face, committing each curve and feature to memory, afraid to miss out on something as they walked away. It felt like she had lost the only thing tethering her to her old life, like she was floating above a vacuum and if she allowed it, would just vanish into thin air, evaporating, disappearing. But she had to stay strong - it wasn't about her.

"What can we do for you?"

A beat. Silence. Uncle Ken closed his eyes briefly, distraught, but resigned, exhausted and tired of carrying all this burden that should have never been his to begin with. After a pause, he rose to his feet and faced them. He lingered on her with meaning, searching. Whatever he wanted to convey, it was lost on her, for the time being, because she could barely maintain eye contact with him as it is, with how overwhelmed she was with sadness.

"Just go, leave us be," he ordered softly, turning his back on them, clutching Emma close and lifting her up in one swift motion. "Don't come back, Vera."

A single drop rolled down her cheek, followed by many, streaming down relentlessly as she watched him disappear into the backroom with Emmie staring right at her without seeing her. This was it. There was nothing she could do, no comfort she could bring to him or even herself. The door slammed shut, the echo resounding throughout the alley and making her shoulders jump, the click of the lock loud in the otherwise deafening silence.

Gone. Just like that. No goodbye, no closure, just finality.

Yet another door between her and the people she cared for shut before she could do anything, another bridge taken away. Another loss.

She hung her head, focusing on her boots, too weak to even cry anymore. Everything felt wrong, off somehow, disconnected and faraway like an image fading into obscurity, slipping through her fingers like dust.

The first gunshot coming from within the room rang through her ears, clear and distinct, breaking the fragile peace surrounding them, the shattering noise ripping apart the fragile threads that tied her mind together. She shut her eyes tightly, squeezing them until her eyelids ached, gritting her teeth hard and digging nails deep into her palms until it hurt enough to distract from the agony in her chest, hoping that the physical pain would offset the mental torment.

The second gunshot came soon after, and with it, another piece of herself that broke away.

Leon was suddenly by her side, standing next to her as still as a statue, fixed on the door, stricken, strangled, like all of this was his doing, his fault.

He whirled around to face Ada, who Vera had forgotten was even there, a silent bystander to the tragedy. Her impassiveness, so different compared to him, showing absolutely no remorse, made her wonder whether this kind of suffering was commonplace for her.

"This is madness," he said to her, looking around wildly in search of answers he knew weren't there. "We can't let this go on. Someone has to put a stop to this, somehow, if there's a chance—"

He was stopped abruptly, a hand pushing against his chest, Ada's voice commanding and unwavering. "I won't argue with you here, but you should realize that there's nothing you can do. The sooner you accept that, the easier it'll be." Her face softened slightly as she watched him grit his teeth in frustration, frowning and conflicted, running a hand through his hair.

Vera couldn't help but agree with her on that.

He turned back towards the source of the noise, facing his demons, whatever he believed them to be, head on, headstrong, fists balled by his sides in defiance, and then pointed a finger at the door and looking at Ada once more, his expression full of righteous rage, and underneath the surface, a simmering self-loathing. "I want to find out what’s happening here. And stop whoever’s behind it. Helping people like them… that’s why I joined the force. So please, just— tell me—us the truth, Ada." He paused for emphasis. "Where are we going? Who did this? What do they want?"

As he demanded an explanation, a shadow crossed over Ada's features and her lips curved down into a scowl, she simply exhaled deeply through her nose. "This is so much bigger than Raccoon City," she said quietly after a moment, "you have no idea." She continued to stare him down with an intensity that Vera didn't understand. "But trust me when I say, the deeper you dig into this mess, the closer you are to the grave."

If her warning was supposed to deter Leon in any way, it had the exact opposite effect - his expression darkened and a muscle jumped in his jaw. "Well," he started slowly, deliberately, enunciating every word clearly and confidently, "let's find out."

Ada smirked at him wryly before glancing around at their surroundings, "You asked for it. But once we get moving, I'll need you to listen to everything I have to say. Otherwise you're just a liability, so make up your mind - follow my lead or stay behind."

Leon nodded grimly, but Vera remained silent, lost in her own thoughts. This was suddenly about assisting an agent in her mission than going in to help Claire and find Sherry, Leon's newfound objectives aligning with Ada's perfectly.

Vera had to talk about this privately with him at some point.

She was done with this all. There was no more fire left in her for anything - least of all a covert operation led by someone she trusted about as far as she could throw them. All of the people who meant the world to her had perished, all of them taken from her one way or the other, and her will to fight back had gone out with Uncle Ken, had died like the light in Emmie's eyes. Was it that selfish of her to mourn their losses and not think of anybody else in a time of crisis? Did that make her a monster? Wanting to handpick Sherry and Claire from a roster of infected innocents and escape unscathed?

Worst of all, she couldn't find the answer, and that troubled her most of all.

She had to insist that they still focus on rescuing Sherry and leave this to Ada, someone who had professional training and experience in dealing with this kind of threat. It was not their responsibility, and they would possibly only be hindering her goal if they kept doing this. Even though she understood that Leon had to help anyone in danger, she couldn't jeopardize her chances of finding Sherry. The young girl needed their help. They couldn't just hand that over to Claire and call it a day and follow Ada.

The woman in question made a motion with her head for them to follow her, walking down the back street that would eventually lead to the entrance of metal scaffoldings leading down to the sinkhole. Her strides were measured yet quick, and the other two hurried after her without question, catching up to her in seconds, going down the stairs.

She opened with, "Ever heard of the Umbrella Corporation?" after a beat.

"Yeah," he replied, scratching behind his ear sheepishly. "They make cosmetics or something? Didn't they get sued for animal testing?"

Ada huffed a soundless laugh from her nose, pushing strands of black hair behind her left ear. "Yes... well, among other things," she replied drily, amusement out in the open. "The company's been around for decades, doing experiments behind closed doors and creating illegal viruses."

The trio came to an abrupt halt when they reached the ladder going down to the platform leading to the sewers, Vera stepped back from the rusty water she accidentally stepped into that instantly splashed around with a disgusted face while Leon shot Ada a bewildered double-take.

"Viruses?"

"C'mon," she urged, jumping down expertly to avoid having the dirty liquid reach her clean shoes and landing in a crouch, her athletic figure swinging down with practiced ease and elegance, and left the both to climb down the rungs. Vera trailed after her without hesitation, huffing at the sight, wishing she could be as graceful as the woman. Not wanting to lose sight of her, she wasted no time, not even sparing a look at Leon and just nodding at him to join, the steel creaking under her weight but holding on strong.

"This one right here." Ada explained - like whatever was done to cause this was already over with, that it had already taken root in the city. "Turning them into mindless, cannibalistic and indestructible monsters."

"Great. Did they name it the G-Virus, by the way?" Leon's sarcasm was thick, it didn't suit his soft voice. Vera chuckled weakly at it, glad that he was trying to keep the mood light by making a joke, and Ada smirked at him, one corner of her mouth lifted slightly higher than the other.

"How very observant of you."

No, wait a minute.

That wasn't right.

The virus turning people into undead wasn't called the G-Virus. It was the T-Virus.

If a normal civilian like her was able to find out there were different strains out there with her limited resources and only her skillset at her disposal, an FBI agent would definitely be informed about the whole situation beforehand. If there were any existing viruses that were known to be fatal, such as the G-Virus, the government would surely keep tabs on its creators, researchers and distributors.

So if Ada knew about the distinction between G and T, then why would she lie to Leon?

As the three made their way past the piles of cones and sandbags strewn across the area, avoiding them deftly with little trouble, Vera picked up pieces of conversation in between their dodging moves, trying her hardest to concentrate despite her racing brain.

"My mission is to take down Umbrella’s entire operation." Ada clarified further to Leon, leaping onto the large yellow pipes, climbing up one step at a time. Vera frowned. Take down an entire organization? Why couldn't they do that in court? They should've had enough evidence to sue the company for everything they've been doing to people in Raccoon City. One singular agent wouldn't be enough to singlehandedly take on a multi-million dollar conglomerate like Umbrella. This just didn't add up. What did take down mean, anyway? What would she be able to accomplish? Vera initially thought she was here to collect evidence, but Ada was being vague about everything. What else was there to do?

Unless...

Unless she was here to destroy everything.

But that would mean... getting rid of the evidence, not obtaining it.

Oh fuck. Oh, fuck. This was a federal agent. Government agents did things differently. They would want to eliminate every piece of tangible, irrefutable proof that Umbrella existed, to remove them from history, erase them completely. This could be a cover-up. To eliminate leads that connected the government with Umbrella's corruption and human experimentation and to eradicate them permanently. That would explain why Ada was here alone, in the city during the outbreak, instead of the whole team coming in with armored vehicles and equipment to evacuate citizens and cleanse the streets.

That could be why she kept urging Leon, a police officer, to turn a blind eye on all of this, so she could finish this as fast as possible without interruption.

There was one way to test her theory. She would have to try.

"Hey, Agent..." she piped up, walking alongside the other woman. "Why so late? You know, the first reports of infection came around a week ago. Why didn't the feds move in immediately?"

It didn't seem like Ada was paying attention to her, too busy watching their steps and keeping watch. For the first few moments, Vera thought the question fell on deaf ears, until Ada slowed down to fall into the same rhythm as her, keeping a steady pace at the back of their small group as Leon ran ahead.

She sighed before responding curtly, "We always seem to be late. Ironic, isn't it? Since our job is stopping evil from taking root."

That sounded way too earnest than it should have been. Vera was expecting her to be defensive, or maybe shrug it off with a dismissive one-liner. This wasn't helping her case. "I... suppose. But, uh, where is everyone else?"

Ada shrugged, still refusing to meet her eye. "Things got messy real quick."

Yeah, okay. Vera tried, but Ada was adamant about this. Fine, she could work around it. This was a professional, alright. She knew what she was doing.

They finished descending down to the entrance of the sewers as the conversation between her and the agent ended, the tunnel in the size of an alley leading deep into the heart of the labyrinth, the area was damp and dark and moist, the waft of mildew, rot, and other smells Vera had never smelled before filled her nostrils, and it was suffocating, making the air thick. She coughed harshly into her forearm to get the gunk out of her lungs.

"Based on what you said, the sewer seems fitting," Leon spoke up after they entered the passage, sniffing his nose loudly.

Ada hummed in agreement, pulling the flashlight out of her vest, shining it down the hallways, and walked forward, gesturing for them to follow her again.

Before they began to make their way deeper into the bowels of the city, Vera tugged on Leon's sleeve discreetly, drawing his attention to her.

She jerked her chin in Ada's direction. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure," he nodded, casting a glance at the woman, who paid it no mind as they put some distance between them. "Is everything okay?"

When they stopped in front of a puddle of disgusting liquid Vera didn't bother naming, she lowered her voice into a hushed whisper, leaning in so only he could hear.

"Look, I know how hard this is for you. And I understand you want to do what's right for this place — help those you can save, make sure the ones responsible pay for what they've done. But the FBI agent obviously has her orders. If she wants us to tag along to get her job done faster, fine, but that doesn't mean we're obligated to stay with her." She saw his features contorting into one of apprehension, and she rushed to finish her sentence. "We really need to go for Claire and Sherry now. The longer we're out here, the greater the chance of them getting hurt and worse. There's no guarantee we'll ever make it on time even if we go straight for them."

She wanted him to agree with her.

She needed him to agree with her.

Instead, he pressed his lips together firmly in disapproval, turning his face away from her and clenching his jaw. She watched the vein on the side of his temple throb rapidly as he seemed to come to a conclusion of his own. When he faced her once again, the determination shone bright like a blazing fire, his decision set in stone. "We can do both."

Vera swallowed down the protests lodged in her throat, trying hard not to yell or break something out of frustration.

"We don't have the luxury or time for that right now. She won't do for us what you're prepared to do for her." She inhaled deeply through her nose, counting to three in her head and letting it out slowly through gritted teeth. No. The only way she'd be able to convince him to change his mind was by making him see that they would never succeed if they stuck themselves to a mission that was not meant to be theirs and was so beyond their capabilities. "There's simply no way in hell that she would assist us and prioritize a couple of random citizens above her official order, Leon. I mean, I would love for her to, but she literally told us not even an hour ago that we would only hinder her with our presence."

Her words fell on deaf ears, apparently, as he just smiled, actually fucking smiled at her. "Just you watch. Trust me on this."

With that, he patted her shoulder reassuringly and spun around to catch up with Ada, leaving Vera to glare after him in disbelief, the lights above flickering in tandem with her blinking as if to say, "Hey, you also seein' this?"

She squeezed her eyes shut. She should trust him. God, she wanted to trust him, she wanted to have faith in him so badly, because he was so eager to make things right and fix this hellscape. All because this woman had given him hope there was a possibility.

However, her gut had been screaming at her that there was something sketchy about this. But Leon was so damn hopeful, she couldn't crush it.

And who was she to take that from him?

Vera threw her arm in the air and then shoved it into the pockets of the jacket he'd given her, stomping after them, deeper into the dark tunnels, throwing yet another bait in Ada's general direction. "So, this leads right into Umbrella’s secret facility?"

But Leon, unknowingly, blocked her probing by addressing a question of his own. "Sewers are run by the city. How could they have a facility… without the authorities knowing?"

This would be the hundredth time today she'd be thinking, Bless his soul, about him. Even after finding out about Irons' corruption, he still believed. She tried not to roll her eyes out of fondness, the world from his perspective had to be so beautiful, leaders and those in power always righteous and moral, and everything bad happens without anyone meaning it to. Adorable. Vera would have preferred a world he got to stay like this, living inside a cocoon of idealism that protected his innocence rather than exposing the cruelty and coldbloodedness of the people controlling the strings behind the scenes.

Ada flashed her flashlight across the murky walls of the passage, not responding immediately as she scanned the perimeter for possible danger. "Welcome to corporate America. Umbrella’s controlled Raccoon City for years."

Leon visibly deflated, his face falling slightly as he took the news in. "Oh."

"Absolutely not. You are not jumping into sewage," Vera scowled, hands planted firmly on her hips as she stared down Leon, daring him to challenge her. This man was insane, and he would definitely jump in whatever the fuck there was in that disgusting, vile river of waterlogged garbage and waste, and die a horrible death of hepatitis and dysentery. Even a little cut could get infected down there, and a dip in that filth would be the end of him. Fuck, she was feeling a bit queasy just from the thought.

They were sitting ducks at the end of a steel catwalk ending in a drop into a tunnel nobody should take a swim in. There were no more routes for them to proceed through, and jumping into that would be suicide, there was no way in hell she was gonna allow that.

Leon frowned up at her, lifting his shoulders up to his ears, feigning innocence and acting as if he didn't see how stupid of a suggestion it was to jump down there like some sort of superhero in a B-movie.

"Unfortunately, it's the only way forward," Ada pointed out drily from behind her, sounding a bit ticked off, and then huffed impatiently. "Wouldn't even be surprised to find out that they designed this part specifically to kill whoever might be trying to sabotage the underground research lab."

The rookie officer pushed himself to his feet, dusting off invisible dirt from his trousers in a lame attempt to be nonchalant, sticking his chest out like a pufferfish. "No better way than to get to the bottom of things than headfirst."

"No, there is a better way! We can just backtrack and find another way in!" Vera exclaimed shrilly, raising her hands up incredulously, skin now damp from sweat instead of the rain, waving them around for emphasis. Leon shook his head, stepping closer to the ledge to peer down, and her heart clenched at the sight. He was actually considering it.

She jumped in front of him, cutting his vision off and poking him hard in his pectoral over his bulletproof vest, the pressure applied sending ripples into the flesh of his torso. "Stop, I'm serious. Let's look around some more— like, like—" Zeroing in on a vent grate with an opening large enough for them to fit through, she ran towards it and gave a quick tug, it rattled in her grip and slid sideways smoothly, with little noise. She turned back to him, gesturing towards the rectangular frame enthusiastically, almost bouncing on her heels in excitement. "—like this one right here, we could slip in! It has to lead somewhere!"

Ada regarded Vera with interest, tilting her head to the side at an angle in contemplation. The young PI stood still, trying not to blink in front of the agent, hoping she found this viable alternative more acceptable than diving headlong into a death trap, fingers crossed for herself.

Leon's lips stretched into a smile, softening around the edges as his expression thawed, he strode over to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, patting gently in poorly concealed excitement. Her breathing stopped for a second. She forced herself to gulp in air as subtly as possible to maintain her composure and not start gasping like a fish out of water, hyper aware of the body heat seeping into her flesh from the point where his fingers touched her bare skin. She flushed from the touch, turning rigid in the span of a millisecond and standing awkwardly as if she was carved out of stone.

"Nice find," he praised warmly, beaming down at her with what seemed to be pride. If this was the reaction she got out of him with that one move, she would gladly keep finding exits and escape routes every few minutes.

He then turned his attention to Ada, hopeful to hear her agree to this arrangement, and she didn't disappoint, letting out a faint sigh in reluctant acceptance.

"Good enough," she mumbled under her breath, seemingly quizzical about it for whatever reason. "Let's move."

Vera wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but refrained from doing so, instead opting to plaster a smug grin on her face, basking in Leon's appreciative gaze.

The trio crawled through the narrow ventilation shaft, each step careful, afraid the slightest miscalculation might cause the metal to crack and cave in. It didn't occur to Vera before, but the constant danger lurking around at every turn brought their survival rate from 40% to a staggering 1%, making it a miracle that they had come this far.

All it took was a snap of the wrist, or a loose screw. They could have easily slipped from the platforms they've traversed or missed a jump or fallen into an abyss. Any moment they could all perish, or one of them would become separated from the group, or separated permanently, in a most gruesome manner. They could be eaten alive or dismembered into chunks of meat while they screamed themselves raw, nobody close enough to hear or see them dying.

Was Vera supposed to be panicking? She probably should be. However, instead of fear, a rush of adrenaline washed over her entire being and spread throughout her system, and she felt like a high school student sneaking out for a late night drive with friends who brought alcohol along for the ride.

Their progress came to a halt when the tunnel began to widen in width and height so that they could at least crouch, revealing an opening at its end, light streaming through the cracks of the metallic barrier blocking the way forward.

In perfect synchronization, Leon's hand flew to his holster, flicking the safety button open in one swift movement, index finger poised above the trigger, while Ada knelt in the corner opposite to him, gun at the ready with the barrel directed towards the source of the light, one knee supporting her weight on the ground. In silent communication, she pointed at herself and gestured towards Leon in a sequence with two fingers, the cop nodding affirmatively, understanding the message loud and clear, before proceeding to crouch lower and slither to the front of the group and flattened himself against the wall.

Ada gave a count of five with her free hand, jaw locked and firm, and when she curled her pointer finger inwards to her palm, she yanked the blockade, sliding it sideways to the end of the bar and peeked through the space, lowering her aim carefully with no signs of a threat visible to her, letting out a barely audible huff.

"Okay, all good."

After ensuring there was nothing lying in wait to ambush them as soon as the exit opened wide, Leon hopped out with a bounce in his step, brandishing his shotgun this time, scanning his surroundings for any movement and finding none, pointing the muzzle in various directions, left and right.

Vera followed closely behind with a shaky breath, shaking off her nerves before hoisting herself out of the passageway, glancing around. They had stepped into the middle of a long corridor, which was particularly well-lit compared to the places they've seen previously.

"Left or right first?" She asked the other two, since there were bloody streaks on the floor leading towards an elevator down the hall to the left, and even more construction materials piled against the walls, cones and structural steel, along with bags of cement. Another large ventilation duct was positioned above them on the ceiling, which was big enough to use as an emergency exit if they found themselves in danger.

"Right," Ada decided, jerking her head that way and striding across, checking each individual nook and cranny with care, signaling them to stick close behind her. More cement bags, and a couple metal drums later, they turned the corner out of the corridor into a catwalk, only to find themselves at the very end of presumably the same river of waste Vera wanted to avoid in the first place. The stench that hit her nose as soon as she stepped foot into the area threatened to knock her out if she stayed any longer.

She pulled the neckline of her borrowed jacket to cover her nose, trying desperately to draw in a decent lungful of air, not bothering to conceal the grimace on her face anymore, triumph overcoming her repulsion at getting to take a breather from that vile odor. "You two owe me a thanks for avoiding that shit. Literally."

Leon, being the adorable ray of sunshine that he is, responded instantly to her teasing, flashing her a cute smile, cheeks dimpled. "Thank you for saving our asses from sepsis."

And not a drop of sarcasm in there. Vera could almost picture him using his sincerity to butter up his superiors and earn a raise or a promotion. Unwittingly, of course.

"So let me get this straight: Umbrella sells the things we've seen so far to who? Our military? Somebody else’s?" Leon asked Ada, who was leaning against the opposite wall of the elevator they're in, arms crossed.

"They don’t sell the things, they sell the viruses that make them." The agent corrected, her speaking was more leveled than Leon's, easy to miss among the grating sound of the elevator descending. She shifted her stance so that one foot was planted on the wall to brace herself against it. Those heels had to be uncomfortable, right? After spending so much time on them, at least? Though Ada had not broken an ankle, let alone stumbled walking on grates and unstable walkways, so she probably knew what she was doing. "To anybody who can bid the most for it."

"Sounds like you know a lot about the buyers."

"I work for them."

Vera couldn’t help it, she snorted at the deadpan response Ada delivered, quickly covering her mouth with a hand to mask her laughter, seeking Leon's face to see his reaction. Brow crinkled in surprise, and he whipped around to gape openly at the agent bored as ever.

"My condolences," She blurted out as an afterthought, wiping off the imaginary tears threatening to escape. "Who would have thought? The U.S. government does business with bioterrorists. Sounds like a win-win situation, am I right? Everyone gets something. Until one of those outbreaks happen on your own soil. Or somebody slips the wrong thumb drive into your own computer. Then you have an apocalypse on your hands. Shit happens."

Ada was blank as a clean sheet of paper. "Indeed. That's why I'm here."

"Of course, Miss Confidential."

As if on cue, the elevator slowed down to a full stop and dinged at the same time, doors creaking open agonizingly slowly, revealing a small room leading to a lone door directly ahead. There were no other corridors, nothing else of interest in their line of vision. It looked to be a machine room of some sorts, with exposed pipes lined up next to each other running vertically and horizontally, going left and right as far as the eye could see. The door opened to a smaller room — a passage? — with one more door to go through, and Vera could only imagine the purpose of this smaller room was, and then that door opened to —

A blonde woman kneeling over a body sprawled on the floor, contemplating and inspecting, muttering to herself, and Vera caught the ending of her sentence only: "Definitely William's handiwork."

Leon stopped mid-step, aiming his shotgun towards the unknown entity, shoulders hunched forward slightly. He didn't seem to trust this new addition to their little party, but then again, she seemed harmless, and he lowered his weapon halfheartedly. The woman hadn't even noticed their arrival, and upon further scrutiny, Vera realized her focus was solely on the person laying supine. Her clothes were somewhat similar to that of a researcher, judging by her white coat, the ID badge pinned to her chest reading "Annette Birkin", her pale skin was practically glowing under the fluorescent lights illuminating her figure, and her platinum blonde hair cascaded down over her shoulder, shielding her features partially, although they were sharp and angular.

"Not much time... Need to dispose of it..." The woman — Annette, stood up, brushing the dust off her coat with her right hand, still clueless about their presence, and movement in the corner of her peripheral got Vera's attention. In the chest of the corpse she was crouching over earlier. First, she thought it was the motion of breathing, but no, something was moving inside. Then, it pulsed, the organ (liver?) inflating to twice the size, expanding like a balloon and exploding, spilling a gross mixture of blood and something blue that looked like a drug, fluid oozing out of its ruined tissue, some kind of parasite coming to life from the innards of its former host.

And that's when Annette flicked a lighter in her fingers and dropped it right onto the monster, causing it to catch fire immediately, along with the corpse.

The smell. Dear God, the fucking smell. A putrid, sickening stench of burning flesh, human flesh, mixed with chemicals assaulted her nostrils, nearly making her gag and retch in horror and disgust as the fire lapped up the thing, setting it alight and melting it to... not even ashes, just to... a sculpture of it. Its body remained intact in form, but grayed and shriveled as the black smoke drifted upwards and dissipated into the air.

Sweet hells. These Umbrella experiments sure didn't skip out on the creativity department, did they?

Leon stepped between Ada and Vera, pushing both women away from the flaming monstrosity towards the opposite wall and raised the shotgun, ready to pull the trigger at the thing if it lunged. "Ma'am, I'm Officer Leon Kennedy with RPD, please get away from that."

This time, it seemed their combined presence had caught the scientist's attention, as she spun around in shock. Vera was fairly certain she wasn't expecting visitors, especially from three strangers, let alone law enforcement.

The woman pursed her lips into a thin line, taking a deep breath as her gaze shifted rapidly from the three figures gathered together to the grotesque abomination, and then she turned on her heel without answering, leaving Leon bewildered.

"Hey!" He exclaimed indignantly, gesturing wildly to Ada and Vera to stay behind while he gave chase after her. "We don't mean any harm!"

Harm? Really? All of them were armed. Even Annette, apparently, as Vera spotted the glint of metal protruding out of her hip, she must have had a handgun there.

"We're here for Sherry!" She heard him yelling out as she struggled to keep pace with him, slipping past the burning, now-dead, corpse to join Leon's side.

And that's what got Annette to stop. She whirled around to face the pair, face pinched, boring holes into Leon's skull. "Sherry? This is the second—what do you want?"

She spoke in such a biting tone, and her demeanor changed as if someone had flipped a switch. Gone was the woman who paid no attention to their presence, who was focused on disposing of a creature. Her attention was laser-pointed at Leon, staring him down as if he had just made an accusation against her character.

"We just want to help find her," Leon responded in a placating manner.

"Find Sherry?" Annette repeated, scoffing, clearly not believing a single word coming from the rookie's mouth. "My daughter is safe at home."

Leon and Vera shared a baffled look, each searching for an answer from the other. Annette didn't know? But Claire said she met her — and that the woman was more interested in finding William rather than protecting Sherry.

"Ma'am," Leon started slowly, as if he was trying to reason with a hostile threat, stepping closer to her and trying to keep his voice low in hopes he would be able to reason with her. "Your daughter is here right now. She's in serious danger—"

Vera witnessed the moment everything clicked for the woman. It was written all over Annette's face; realization flashed like lightning across her facial muscles. Her expression went slack, lips parting into an o shape as if trying to speak, yet no words came out, only a choked, strained gasp, eyes darting around in pure panic. "William."

Without giving them a chance to react or respond, she took off once more, footsteps echoing throughout the hallway she disappeared into. Vera threw up her hands in exasperation. They were having difficulty keeping track of all the people they came across. Why could no one wait for them for one moment to finish speaking before running off?

Leon took off in a sprint behind Annette, with Vera hot on his heels, chasing after the two. When they rounded the corner, the scientist was already at the end, punching numbers on a padlock on the double doors to activate the security mechanism. With a loud click, the electronic lock gave way, and she pushed one open, slamming it shut behind her.

Vera skidded to a halt and bent over to pant, lungs burning and head spinning, the lack of sufficient oxygen making her feel like she was about to keel over and die on the spot. As she struggled for breath, Leon stepped forward and jiggled the door handles furiously, grunting in frustration.

He groaned, slamming his fist onto the metal frame in defeat. "God damn it!"

"Claire," Vera croaked, clearing her throat after swallowing some phlegm in her windpipe. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth due to dehydration. She motioned with her hands for him to take out his radio and contact Claire, and he nodded vigorously, grasping the device and flipping the switch frantically, tapping into the speakers.

"Claire, you read me?"

Her voice came through after a series of static, tinged with concern. "Hey, Leon! You guys alright?"

"We made it to the sewers," He explained, exhaling sharply, and a happy noise Claire made was caught by the radio. "Any updates on Sherry?"

A pause. "Nothing since I last told you. But we should try to regroup, if possible."

"Sounds like a plan, but there's trouble, too. We just met Annette Birkin — it seemed like she didn't know Sherry was down here."

"That can't be true, though!" Claire protested on the other end. "I talked to her earlier, that woman didn't care!"

It wasn't the time for this. "You know what, the details aren't important. Point is, we lost her. She closed the door with a code, so we can't get through right now. We have to find a way around."

"Ughh—okay. Anything else I should know?"

"We came here with an FBI Agent, she's—"

Vera and Leon turned around in tandem in the direction of where they came from, only to realize Ada was nowhere to be found. Her footsteps were completely absent, neither light nor heavy, not a trace of her whatsoever.

#leon kennedy x oc #leon s kennedy x oc #leon s. kennedy x oc #resident evil oc #oc: vera kaplan #era: no time to die #story: gravedigger #resident evil x oc

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mandalhoerian · 2 months

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NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 10

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 12K~ warnings: COCKROACHES. gunshot wound. blood summary: A lie never lives to be old. author's note: bit anticlimactic, this one. i hope you enjoy anyways!

READ ON AO3 ! ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

The headless chicken they were after Ada's disappearance, it took the duo a while to map out the T-junction, and the process was made even worse by talking each other's heads off, mainly because Leon acted like a little boy who lost his mom in a mall, and kept calling out for Ada's name while jogging around mindlessly, hoping his shouts would bring her back home, or whatever the fuck.

Of course he didn't understand Ada hadn't strayed off. She had left. Without a word of goodbye, no mention of anything to them beforehand, simply gone in a flash, vanished out of thin air. No different from how she waltzed into their lives in the first place.

Surprisingly, Vera reacted to it how she would to being ditched at a night's out with the girls, instead of losing her fucking shit like Leon. The problem was probably her in this case for her lack of reaction. But what was she supposed to freak out about, exactly? A woman wanting to go her own way? Which was understandable? Was it concerning? Well, maybe if she was a normal person instead of a professional, but this was also an extenuating circumstance, and Vera really couldn't care less about Ada's intentions or reasons as long as it didn't affect them, and it didn't seem to be.

Emphasis on seem.

It was definitely affecting Leon.

One would think she had been abducted right in front of him, and Vera definitely had become fucked up in the head after everything, because she wanted to laugh in his poor face. Ada was absolutely fine. She would go unscathed from this, with the FBI gifting her a spa visit in Cabo after her success. Vera on the other hand needed at least a year of therapy, or maybe a decade in a mental institution to recover from the trauma.

"What the hell. Where could she have possibly gone? It doesn't make any sense." He complained loudly, voice bouncing off the walls, echoing in the empty space, the same question he had repeated like a parrot at least five times. "Ada!"

Yeah, okay, Vera had enough.

"Okay, hold up, will you?" She yanked his arm backwards, causing him to stumble to a stop and turn around, eyes wide open in surprise, flitting to her hand holding onto him, then back to her face, the slightest twinge of red dusting on his cheekbones. "Are you trying to call out all the undead to our location? Because it's working, and there's going to be a zombie stampede headed this way at this point. You see that elevator shaft?" Still holding onto his elbow, she pointed to what she was talking about with her free hand. "They'll be raining down from there."

He stared at her with an incredulous expression on his face, mouth opening and closing, until his shoulders slumped, sighing in resignation. "Sorry. You're right, I just—"

"You're worried. I know." Vera let go of him, and crossed her arms behind her back, standing straight and rolling on her heels, shrugging nonchalantly, plastering a grin on her face to dispel any tension lingering. It was tempting to double down on him by pointing out that calling out for her in that hypothetical scenario was equal to a baby bird in a nest screaming for his hunting mother with a mouth awaiting food. "But it's an FBI agent we're talking about, she can hold her own."

His gaze was trained on her for a few seconds before shifting away, looking everywhere but her. A companionable , short silence settled over them after that, save for the occasional buzz of the air conditioning system powering the generators scattered throughout the complex and Leon's intermittent huffing. "Yeah, but... It doesn't sit well with me when it comes to abandoning people who might need help..."

Leon was... legitimately ashamed, hunched slightly forward, brows drawn together, the puppy dog look he always seemed to unintentionally sport when upset. He was going to be the death of her. "Trust me, she doesn't need our help," she replied, flinging her arms out with a dramatic flourish. "You're not abandoning her, just getting out of her hair. She left for a reason, Leon."

A snort of amusement. One he let out with zero conviction. "Sure."

Vera chewed on her bottom lip, digging the toe of her boots into the ground in a timid manner. Did he have to sound this sullen? She didn't know how to handle these kinds of situations. Emotional shit wasn't really her forte, not unless she was in the same position. And she was never good with words — and still wasn't, after being supported so much by him.

It was awkward. Vera wanted to give Leon a pat on the shoulder or something, but that was crossing the line and would make everything even more weird. "Listen. You know who truly needs your help? Sherry. And even Claire. We have each other, but she's on her own out there. They're our priority."

Leon inhaled a deep, shuddering breath, raising his head up and locking eyes with hers. The sheer intensity of his stare, the storm brewing beneath, was almost intimidating, she would be burned by his gaze. His voice was firm, resolved. "You're right. Let's get going."

"Lead the way, officer."

This was the Leon that was worth the hype, Vera decided. Leon when he was in the zone, focused, driven by duty and morals, doing what he thought was the right thing, no matter what, ready to face whatever challenge lay ahead with confidence and assurance. It was something to admire, especially when he wasn't the type of man who showed off.

"You wanna find out where that pipe leads to?" Leon asked, tilting his head in its direction and pointing a finger.

As they drew closer to the destination, the distant sound of machinery powering on, buzzing and grinding in tandem echoed off the walls, followed by a distinctive squeak of rusty metals that was definitely leaking in from the giant ventilation tunnel Leon was talking about. Leading up to it was a single metal ladder hanging off the ledge, offering the duo a chance to climb up to investigate further, and this time, there was no dilemma - Leon hopped onto the rungs, testing each one individually to ensure they wouldn't buckle, and Vera waited for her turn, bouncing on the balls of her feet in anticipation.

That was before it was revealed that a horde of cockroaches was waiting for them up there.

"Ah, Jesus!" She swore, stumbling back at the sight. Leon joined in too, also cursing.

One of the insects chose that moment to crawl on her boot, and she kicked it away with a panicked yelp. There might or might not have been an embarrassing scream that put Leon's Ada-call to shame. "Fucking shit, ughhh, whyyyy," Vera complained loudly, face scrunching up as she covered her nose with her elbow. She could cry. She could fucking cry.

"Well, at least they're not zombies," Leon quipped.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Vera didn't dare breathe through her nose, afraid she would puke at the overwhelming smell of ammonia and alcohol, which were mixed with an acrid, coppery scent that caused bile to rise up to her throat, burning the insides. If one cockroach touched her, she was going to lose it. The tunnel was filled with at least a hundred of them, and they were either scuttling around the floor or clinging to the sides, creeping out from underneath the cracks. One of them could fucking fall on her hair and she would legitimately pass out.

It was the worst sight she could imagine, the very embodiment of nightmare fuel. It didn't take much imagination for her mind to conjure up images of a dozen cockroaches crawling up her limbs and inside her mouth and ears, which she quickly tried to shake off physically as she whined, shaking both her hands around after having to put away her Samurai Edge so she wouldn't accidentally fire away in her panic. "Oh, sweet hells. Ughhhh, okay, okay, okay. Alright. Let's just run. Let's run to the end. I'm literally one step away from having a fucking seizure."

Leon cocked his head to the side, not at all affected by this whole ordeal. How did he not break a sweat? Vera wanted to push him into a bed of roaches, see how he'd fare.

He was about to say something, probably make a joke that was funnier in his head, but she didn't stay for that, sprinting straight down the path with the biggest leap of faith she had taken since ever, ignoring Leon's startled shout from behind as she dashed past the critters as fast as she could, not stopping to gag at the crunching sound below her feet.

At this point, her disgust of a concert hall of cockroaches trumped the fear of dying and turning into one of those things. At least if she got attacked and turned, she wouldn't have to experience the torture of having them chew at her flesh.

How she made it to the end, Vera didn't know, but her heart was hammering against her rib cage, lungs on the verge of collapse, she was probably yelling all the way there too to expel all the revulsion inside her too. The aftermath of that little marathon was practically the day after a major workout session, except, with more horror involved. She wasn't even paying attention to her surroundings after jumping down to safety without checking for a ladder to climb down or whatsoever, too busy catching her breath as she hunched over with her hands on her knees. And when that was done, pacing around in circles while shaking her arms was next, and it wasn't long until Leon came into view and she latched onto both his arms like a koala, the jitters making her jump up and down.

"I hate bugs. I hate bugs so much. Ugh. Ughhhhhhh! Eww. Ughh!" She rambled, feeling him tense under her touch, his body going rigid. Rubbing her fingernails up and down the outside of his arms was doing wonders in getting rid of the crawling feeling. "I'd rather fight ten zombies at once than deal with those."

Vera could almost swear she heard the smile in his voice. "We'll stick to that then, alright?"

When she pulled back, a tiny smirk adorned his features, despite the tiniest bit of red in his face from what was probably having to run after her. She nodded, still scratching the vest, the pace of it getting less aggressive. "That would be awesome. Just round them all up and feed them to each other. Should be easy."

The laughter that escaped Leon's lips, this time, was genuine, and Vera was delighted to hear the sound — a bit husky, but boyish and infectious. He stepped back, gently prying her away from himself, and even though nothing about it was curt, Vera felt the heat spreading to her face, only now realizing she had basically cuddled him up and got away with it.

Her hands returned to her side like a whip. "S-sorry, I just..."

"It's fine," Leon reassured, averting his eyes and clearing his throat. "No offense, but that was definitely a sight to behold. Who knew you could run that fast?"

No witty retorts were made on Vera's part, at that moment, all she was capable of was an entertained huff, and a light slap with the back of her hand to his chest as she turned away, promptly coming face to face with an unconscious body of a man lying face down on the floor.

"Gghhk—! What the fuck!"

That made Leon actually laugh.

Creeping forward hesitantly, she nudged the body with the tip of her boots. "Was he here the whole time?"

"Guess so. Maybe he got caught off guard by those bugs and fainted, who knows?"

Vea clicked her tongue, groaning at him. One slip, and now she was the butt of all the jokes — Leon of all people was making fun of her. Great. "Yeah, yeah. Go on, get it out of your system."

Her curiosity was piqued by the small backpack the man was carrying with him, the item in question slung around his upper body. From her vantage point, she could only see it was packed with something, and she stepped to the side to crouch beside him and flip him over.

"Hey," Leon's tone was colored with concern, approaching Vera with caution and holding his shotgun tightly, readying himself in case this guy woke up in a bad mood and took it out on them. "Careful there."

Vera leaned in, bending her head to get a better look. "Look at all that ammo. This is good stuff, what the heck is he doing with all this?" She whistled in approval. From the jumpsuit and the location, this was a sanitation worker, likely abandoned in his duties when shit hit the fan and then spent his time hiding. She took it upon herself to salvage as many useful items as she could, she opened his pack to gather up his findings — namely, the shotgun shells and 9mm bullets, painkillers, a half empty box of magnum ammo, and a pouch with some emergency gauze. Vera immediately started gobbling up one of the bars of candy from the bag, grabbing a bottle of water to wash it down with as she emptied the contents into her pockets, letting Leon take the rest.

The last object to be found was a photo, crumbled from being inside the pocket of his pants, but with some effort, she flattened it and flipped it over to examine the contents.

A family in the picture, on vacation by the looks of it, beaming at the camera. Two children stood in front, the oldest appeared to be in her pre-teens, with long dark brown hair and a sly smile that could rival Vera's. She was wrapped around the waist by her younger brother, a little boy with a huge gap between his front teeth and messy auburn hair. He was flashing a peace sign to the camera with the most mischievous expression she had ever seen, and the image of a perfect family unit was completed by the father himself, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth as he grinned down at the two kids.

Vera gave nothing away as she also took that photo, and put it away in a secure pocket in her backpack. Her brain was clean of any thoughts as she did it, driven only by a twinge of breathless longing, a fleeting desire to preserve, as if this was her vacation and the kids in the picture were her siblings.

Leon didn't say anything about it, observing her movements but not questioning them. Vera didn't owe him an explanation — she didn't have one in the first place.

With that done, they moved on, the lack of undead on their path having created a false sense of security that crashed and burned the moment they opened the next door in the form of multiple guttural groans and the signature moaning, along with shuffling feet.

Peeking through the narrow slit of the gap, both Vera and Leon could barely make out the forms of the creatures staggering around, and Leon raised his finger to his lips, signaling her to get back and retreat. They closed the door silently, communicating solely via eye contact and hand motions to form a plan.

A nod.

Leon was going to lure them and show the way with his flashlight.

Another nod.

Vera was going to shoot. No need to waste any shotgun ammo. Aim for the knees and then go for the head.

Third nod.

Leon slid his fingers in through the crack and counted down. Three. Two. One.

Container room. This was a container room.

The fluorescent lights weren't working above as she spun in circles, surveying the area. Stacks of pallets, forklifts, metal boxes and other heavy equipment she was too unfamiliar with in the corners of an endless maze of containers, with a few elevated walkways, but that was about it. She also took note of the random objects that stuck out: a couple of crates to their far left, some yellow barrels that definitely should not be lit on fire, especially not in close quarters. In any other circumstances, she would be very fascinated, wanting to pull apart the machines and test the functions, but that was not the time for any of that. They didn't have the time for that, to begin with.

An upstairs of some sort ended up to be the only way out of this, neither of them thought it was worth it to explore the nooks and crannies, the presence of half a dozen undead was proof enough they would waste their time looking for just another dead end.

After that, it was relatively quiet for a while as they progressed onwards through a passage with a glass window, leading to an area with a busted, giant ventilation fan with enough space between the blades for a grown person to squeeze through, and surely enough, she could see a path to something down there.

Propping the butt of his gun on the fan's lower blade, treating it as a railing, "You think Ada went this way?" Leon mused.

"It's between the locked door down the other way and this. Or a secret third thing," Vera added, peering into the darkness that swallowed up everything in view, eyes trying to adjust to the lack of light. It was pretty dark inside, and there seemed to be nothing but more vent tubes leading into tunnels. It smelled less sewer and more industrial exhaust in here, a burnt odor filling her nostrils and irritating her senses.

"I don't know..."

"Doesn't hurt to try." Vera shrugged, turning back to look at him with a grin. "Just go ahead, I'm right behind you."

"Alright," Leon mumbled, kicking off the fan to hop over it, landing on the platform below gracefully, without missing a beat. Distracted by watching him, she bumped her head to the blade above, causing her to flinch and step back, rubbing the sore spot on her forehead.

"You okay?"

"Yup, just a tiny bonk."

"I can catch you if you're scared."

He was getting comfortable with the banter. If it was another man with a more inflated macho ego, he would be accused of trying to flirt, but Leon was too innocent for that, and she wanted him to be able to throw barbs at her so she could counteract and return it in kind.

"Nope, my childhood self would love this," Vera continued, smiling and tucking a strand of stray hair behind her ear. "We're practically in a giant bat cave. That basically stinks." The final line was muttered as an afterthought.

He looked over his shoulder, obviously confused with how he should react, the slightest twitch of his lips made it hard to determine if he was amused or disturbed. "Didn't you just complain about the cockroaches? Now you want to add bats to the list?"

"I'm really going to literally jump you if you keep going on with that," she grumbled, not in the mood to get into that topic. Her grip on the steel tightened as she pushed herself up, throwing herself over the gap, and there was a split second of weightlessness, where the adrenaline rushed and her stomach dropped to the ground as her legs flailed in the air. Then she landed, kneeling down with a grunt, and the impact reverberated all the way up to her thighs.

A hand was held out in her peripheral vision, and she glanced up to see Leon hovering above her, and Vera almost wanted to slap it, but took it anyway, letting him help her up. She made sure to get in his face by tugging his arm downwards to her height, smirking, enjoying how flustered he was getting. It was the ephemeral joys of messing with Leon that she wanted to milk out for as long as possible.

It got interrupted by a woman's voice trickling in from afar, the echo reaching them as fleeting whispers. Leon's head shot up, and Vera whipped around, her entire frame rigid from the shock.

The voice sounded like Ada's, and she couldn't make out what the exact words were, but she could tell for certain, the FBI agent was somewhere nearby.

However, Annette's answer was much clearer as she answered, "You'll never get your filthy hands on G."

Leon let go of her to whirl around, and the movement brought Vera out of her daze as she refocused, watching as he brought a finger to his lips in a signal to be quiet, and motioned towards a pathway, and Vera nodded, following his lead.

They climbed up a rusty metallic stairwell and sneaked up to the source of the voices, hiding behind the side of the container like it was a wall, the shadowy silhouette of Annette Birkin visible at the far end, standing before what looked to be a closed garage door with yellow tape on the ground framing the entrance, warning any personnel to keep out.

And too fixated on Ada who had to be behind the door and inside that metal container, Annete wasn't paying attention to anything else, continuing with, "Then you won't die alone."

There wasn't even any time to take in a surprised breath before a buzzer rang out, and a rectangle of flickering orange lit up Annette's face, accompanied by a mechanical whirl from within the sealed door, the grinding of gears as the mechanism inside the container powered on.

It dawned on Vera as Annette started walking away, her heels clicking with purpose.

"You locked her in an incinerator!" Leon exclaimed, anger coloring his tone as he stepped forward and revealed himself, triggering Annette's flight response.

"Shit!" She followed, forcing herself to get out of her stunned state by bolting into action and bringing the Samurai Edge up, aiming at the middle of her back and firing once. It wasn't intended to kill her, Vera just wanted to get her to stop, or at least delay her escape.

She missed on purpose, the bullet hitting the sliding door the woman opened with a bracelet around her wrist, and her yell of alarm pierced the air. She didn't turn around to try confronting the two, managing to slip away as Leon slammed into the door, rattling the entire thing in the frame.

"Goddamn it!" He groaned, pounding a fist against it.

Out of instinct, "Upstairs!" Vera yelled to inform Leon, not stopping to discuss with him as she flew past and headed up the stairs right across the incinerator, finding a single lever among the different types of controls, buttons and switches. It was surrounded by electrical cables and wires, with one end of it leading into the floor, and she grasped onto the handle, pulling it down, and a low rumble resonated from the mechanism, a generator powering down, and the faint glow of the flames streaming through the metal blinds dimmed out.

"Did it work!" Vera called out, panting as she ran back to the door to see if it worked. It wasn't open yet, and Leon had resorted to opening the rectangle latch on eye level to peer into the room, knocking on the barrier to get her attention.

"Ada!" He yelled, tapping on the door rapidly with a flat palm.

"I'm fine!" Ada responded, voice muffled as it seeped out from the crack, but clear and loud, meaning she was in good condition. "Just get this damn thing open."

Relief instantly made her a thousand times lighter, she could fly away, and Vera released a shaky exhale, her shoulders dropping.

"Give us a second."

Vera knew exactly what to do, turning on her heel to jog back up to the control panel she was working with just seconds ago, and pressed the button to her far left that turned on a green lamp to life. There was a button underneath it, and she lifted the cover to push it down, and the beeps from the keypad-like lock beside the switch could be heard as she did so. Another rumble, louder and more violent, followed suit as the door's status changed, and the blinking of red changed to white, the humming of the motors increasing in volume to a high pitched whirr.

"It worked!" Leon confirmed, and Vera bounded down the steps, breathless from ricocheting back and forth downstairs and upstairs in such a short amount of time, coming to a stop to wait for the door to open. She bounced on the balls of her feet, licking her lips to get rid of the dryness in her mouth and wiping her sweaty palms on her black jean shorts. The hot wind blew in her direction, blowing strands of hair across her face and exposing her neck, the distinct smell of burning plastic assaulting her senses.

It was a bit longer than she anticipated, with the metal doors finally giving in to gravity's pull to reveal a clean hallway, no signs of fire or smoke at all, and then there was Ada, looking disheveled with her bangs sticking to her damp face, and soot all over her trench coat, but she was alive, unhurt, and most importantly, breathing.

Vera didn't realize how nervous she was until Ada emerged, the second wave of relief flooding over her senses, a rush of warm liquid, making her boneless as she watched the older woman stumble out with Leon's supporting hand on her back.

She couldn't hold back the sigh escaping her, running her hands up to her hair and pushing it back, the black curtain parting to reveal she was flushed all the way to her hairline as she walked over to her, a giddy, light sensation in her stomach, a bubble of happiness she was afraid to pop, afraid it was all just a dream she would wake up from at any moment.

"Want some water?" She blurted out, and her words were a bit breathy from the adrenaline in her veins.

"Don't mind if I do," Ada replied, raising her chin to accept the offer. Vera shoved her hand inside the backpack to get out the bottle, uncapping it with practiced ease with one hand.

Before she could do so much as get it to her face, Ada grabbed her hand, taking a generous swig, the angle allowing for droplets to trickle down her jaw and soak the collar of her shirt. Her gaze met Vera's as she drank, and Vera, for some reason, felt her heart drop all the way to the floor, freezing in place, a deer in headlights.

The first few drops of water trickled out the corners of her mouth, dripping onto the smooth column of her neck, disappearing behind the scarf around it. Ada withdrew to release an exaggerated gasp for breath, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "Much appreciated," she said, passing it back, the lingering warmth on the plastic ghosting across Vera's skin like a caress.

Vera's cheeks grew hot, her mouth parting slightly to collect some oxygen to her brain, the upturn of her lips weak, wavering as she forced herself to be calm and collected. "Yeah—you're welcome."

The reply was delayed, her attention divided between her inner struggle and Ada, and the woman in question herself smirked, knowing she caught the effect of her actions on Vera as she brushed past to join Leon, who was staring at them with what he thought was discreet observation.

"Good to see you in one piece," he remarked, sounding friendly and casual, as if they didn't just bust her out of an incinerator.

"It takes more than that to bring me down."

"Speaking of," Leon started, folding his arms over his chest. "What the hell was that? Why would she—"

Ada didn't give him time to finish as she cut him off, stating firmly, "Umbrella doesn’t want anything getting out. Not the truth, not what they do, and definitely not what they make."

"Sherry's mom works for Umbrella?"

It wasn't the lengths Umbrella would go to that surprised Leon, not even the fact that Ada had almost died for it, Vera concluded. Leon had to have already witnessed similar things or worse during the course of the night, to not be shaken up by all of it. His speechlessness stemmed from Annette's connection to Umbrella. And what an idiot Vera was not to anticipate this reaction. It was a mistake, Vera felt the coldness spreading as if her blood froze, ice crystals growing in her veins, creeping to the ends of her nerves.

W.B. is William Birkin, she remembered blurting out. With no evidence whatsoever, a statement thrown in the wild she expected Leon would eat up, and accept it as her randomly connecting the dots out of the blue, his brain doing the rest of the work by itself.

"Exactly," Ada confirmed, not taking her eyes off him, but Leon's entire attention was on surveying Vera's reaction as she sweated under his stare, refusing to meet his gaze and feeling it bore into the top of her skull. "Umbrella's top research scientist along with her husband, William Birkin, who's also responsible for all this. The G-Virus."

Leon remained silent, the suspicion that was bubbling under the surface he didn’t bother hiding leaking out. She could almost hear the gears turning in his head, processing the information, chewing over it, mulling over what was presented and drawing conclusions for himself. All the while staring directly into her soul, and Vera almost cracked. Almost.

It was when the silence turned unbearable that Leon spoke up, his voice gruff, "We better get moving, then." He broke his gaze and turned to the other woman, leaving Vera to breathe, the coldness dissipating in a wave of heat.

Vera was a bug under a microscope.

He knew something was wrong and that she was privy to it. He had already begun distancing himself, putting a thin wall between them that would grow thicker and thicker, the more he found out. And what was more was that Vera was aware he had caught on she knew more than she led on. He hadn't figured it out completely, but he was closing in.

"I'm telling you two again, you should get out of here." Ada repeated, for the umpteenth time, but the only response she was graced with was Leon shrugging, nonchalant and unaffected by her concern, and Vera shooting her a glance. "You have your answers. Forget about Raccoon City. Forget about the Birkin girl. Go back where you came from, and never look back."

The authority and conviction in Ada's tone made the hairs on Vera's back stand, and her spine straightened, a shudder raking up her body, goosebumps exploding on her skin, every muscle tense, every fiber of her being screaming in protest, a deep crease forming between her eyebrows.

Leon gave no indication that he agreed with her. "Not a chance. We can't abandon that little girl to deal with all this on her own."

"Then, the moment you find her, we go our separate ways," Ada announced, cold, unrelenting. "I've risked enough as it is, and so have you."

His silence was damning. Vera wasn't stupid, she knew why. Her stomach sank and she felt hollow inside, the emptiness gnawing at her guts, the walls of this maze caving in on her as Leon faced the road ahead and walked with Ada by his side, the two of them moving together seamlessly, no hesitation, no falter in their steps.

So Vera trailed after the two, but in that moment, she knew that this was it.

The candle she was holding had finally reached its end, and all that was left of it was the wax.

Ada now had a similar bracelet to Annette's, the door Leon had previously slammed into opened with a beep, a digitalized sound that echoed in the large, open hall, the corridor extending in front of them.

"Visitor clearance confirmed. Your ID is authorized until October First. Please return before this date."

The concrete was crumbling and falling apart, revealing the pipes beneath and the wires peeking out from the holes in the structure, with the familiar green, artificial glow, the lights from the ceiling providing the main illumination to the hall.

This entire area was humid, and she could feel the condensation on her face. Not only that, but they heard the sounds of water flowing from ahead, a river coursing through the halls, and Vera could swear she felt the vibration of it from the ground under her feet. The sheer size of this underground labyrinth was a testament to just how big this place was, and she couldn't help but wonder, how far had they dug this place to have it built this expansive? How much resources and time had Umbrella poured into this operation that the city above was going to shit and people were dying on the streets and this laboratory was thriving and expanding with each passing day?

The answer was obvious. People's lives didn't matter to these corporations, there were thousands of nameless, faceless numbers whose death wouldn't affect the bottom line of the company. She had done the math before. All those disappeared kids. All those missing families that didn't exist and would never be found because Umbrella made them disappear, and then would turn around and play hero, use their money to save the children that mattered, and then whisk them away to create even more subjects, and it was an endless cycle.

That was the point. That was how it all worked. It was a miracle she was freed from that system, if it wasn't for her father, she would be right where she had been born, taken out once in a while to be injected with new experimental serums to find out their effects on a child, and then sent back to her cage. And then disposed of, once her body gave up, used up by the age of ten.

She felt low for not telling the truth to Leon and Claire, but all of this... It was too much—

Bang!

"Ada, watch out!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Her eyes snapped open from the train of thought, and Leon had been the first to react, tackling Ada to the ground from the bullets fired, saving her from death yet again. She could see the metal rain pelting the concrete wall, spraying debris everywhere and kicking up a cloud of dust.

Vera stayed glued to the wall swerving into the corridor the gunshots were coming from, while Leon and Ada were still lying on the floor across from her to the opposite wall, and Ada hissed from being crushed underneath him, struggling to push him off.

It stopped as abruptly as it started, Annette's voice ringing out, "This is my final warning. Next time, it will be a bullet to the head!"

Then with a beep and a mechanical click, she was gone.

Leon rolled to his side with a pained groan, and Vera saw red—

She was in front of him in an instant, leaning over to pull his upper body upwards, the man yelping from the sudden movement, clutching his left shoulder and gritting his teeth.

"Is this the part where you yell at me for being reckless?" He asked, in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

She would have laughed in any other circumstances, but no. "Go!" She whipped around to face Ada, who was already propped up on her elbows, watching with a mixture of emotions. Vera tried her hardest to hide her shaking. "Don't let her get away!"

Ada was stunned at first, but Vera saw her eyes harden, the fire dancing in the brown irises as she got up with a grunt. She didn't go the way Annette did, moving instead to a separate direction, disappearing from their view as she slipped through a fire exit door, and Leon tried to push himself to sit upright, only for her to push him back down, making him lie down on the cold ground.

"Don't fucking move," she commanded, her tone leaving no room for arguments, but there wasn't any malice or hate in it, no disdain for his recklessness or that he almost got himself killed for Ada, just the ice cold of dread that pooled deep in her stomach.

This was the second goddamn time.

Him crumpling to the ground as Irons shot him square in the chest in that parking garage was playing in her head over and over again, it didn't matter he had a bulletproof vest on, in Vera's mind, he'd died on the spot. Shell-shock had smoothed her brain for any logical reasoning, blood visible or not. Irons was there. Irons had shot Leon. Irons had killed him. It was enough for her to shut down.

She couldn't believe this was even worse than then.

Blood was soaking through the uniform and his fingers, staining her hands as she pried it off the wound, a part of it sticking to the moist skin, the edges of the torn fabric glued to his flesh. Red was blooming on the stained, gray concrete, and the liquid was seeping through the cracks. There was an exit wound. The bullet had pierced through. She just didn't know what. Just the meat of his clavicle? Did it shatter the bone?

It could be just the deltoid, maybe, she was grasping onto hope.

God, there was so fucking much in the way, the short-sleeved uniform, the undershirt, the vest—

Her hands were slick, her fingertips slipping against the saturated fabric, trembling too violently to untangle the straps of the Kevlar and unzip the vest to open it. "Leon," she whined, voice shaking, her head swimming from the stress. She was panicking, she knew it, the tears were burning in her eyes, her vision becoming blurry. "Leon, I need you to sit."

"You just said not to move—"

"Fucking sit up!" She shouted, finally succeeding in removing the vest, pulling it over his head and discarding it on the floor beside them, hearing the metallic clink of the shotgun shells and spare mags on the hard floor. She immediately felt like the shit that felt just at home in these sewers, biting down on her lip, swallowing thickly and blinking the mist away. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so sorry."

Gritting through clenched teeth, she didn't wait for his reaction before wrapping her arms around his torso to lift him up to a sitting position, his groans of discomfort ringing in her ears. Nausea washed over her as she heard the squelching sound of the hole in his shoulder shifting, the muscle fibers stretching, and his blood flowed freely down the curve of his pectoral and abdomen, spilling onto the ground, turning the patch of gray a dark red.

"Jesus—" Leon breathed, gulping down to calm down, adjusting to the pain and the change of positions. His eyelids fluttered, shutting and opening repeatedly, the muscles around his eyes flexed, creating tiny folds on top of the ridge above his nose. "M'okay."

He had to be on the brink of passing out from the sheer shock, his breathing was shallow, and his face had drained of color, which was frightening, given how pale Leon was naturally. Vera focused on relocating him to lean his back against the wall and out of the puddle of blood he'd formed on the floor.

He was really trying, though, huffing as he shuffled around with her help, his feet sliding in the slicks as she pushed him back to rest on the vertical surface. "Easy, easy," he cooed, reassuring her, although it was also probably directed to himself. He winced when his back touched the wall, unable to contain the grimace of pain that followed, breathing out from his mouth.

"Oh my god, oh fucking hell, I'm sorry!" She wailed, feeling horrible she put him through it all, wanting to help him with whatever she could do to make sure the pain would go away. "Okay, okay, okay... Listen, I need to..." Vera fumbled with her words, looking around frantically for anything useful, and remembering she had a backpack bursting with supplies, she ripped it off in a haste. "Uh, your sleeve. I gotta—"

She took out her pocket knife, and began sawing through the hemline, cutting and tearing the cotton until the both sleeves were separated from the rest of the outfit, throwing the severed pieces aside and leaving his entire left arm naked from the shoulder down.

Vera was a woman possessed, a wild animal crazed as she scrounged through her belongings, looking for... There! A packet of gauze pads, and a roll of medical tape, bandages, disinfectant, saline, she forgot everything in her panic, but she recalled that at some point, they looted first aid kits and stole all of it. She got out a tube of antibiotic ointment and set the items in a line next to her.

"Fuckfuckfuck..."

Everything felt so small, as if the world had shrunk around her and collapsed upon her, her own personal universe collapsing in itself and her along with it. The lights seemed brighter, the air thinner, and the smell was stronger than ever. Blood was running down Leon's arm in rivulets, pooling underneath and joining the larger puddle he was in a minute ago. It wasn't gushing, it wasn't spurting out, but it was dripping, a steady stream that didn't seem like it was going to stop anytime soon. The panic made her want to wipe all the blood away and get rid of the mess, but she had to focus on stopping the flow first.

Leon, bless him, was bearing with the pain admirably well, but Vera could see it wasn't the worst part — she could tell from the sweat gathering around his hairline and the beads rolling down his temple he was having a hard time. And she was about to make it tenfold. But she was beyond caring now, her whole life became focusing on making sure he pulled through and survived another day.

"Listen, I'm going to... I'm gonna have to disinfect this first. Front and back. It'll hurt like shit."

She was met with his half-lidded eyes, dull and fogged. He nodded once, understanding what he needed to do. "Do it," he ordered, straightening his spine against the wall, and his features hardened, steeling himself for the pain to come.

Leon kept his left arm extended and close to him, elbow resting on the knee of the leg bent vertically, allowing Vera space to do her thing. With one last deep breath, Vera tore open the package of the gauze pads to pull one out, soaked it in the disinfectant and brought it to the entrance wound, touching the broken, oozing skin.

"Okay," she whispered. "On the count of three. One, two—"

Leon inhaled sharply the moment she applied pressure, and she moved quickly to blot over the front first. He cried out, shouting hoarsely and in agony as she worked, not letting up once to give him time to adjust, dabbing over and over, feeling like an ass for putting him through so much. His forehead had fallen on her shoulder, his legs began to jerk involuntarily, and she fought the urge to sob.

It took much longer than she anticipated to finish, her heart hammering against her ribs with every anguished cry from Leon, her mind racing with scenarios where he would bleed to death, her palms were clammy and her fingers slippery but she managed to get through this stage.

"Almost done, baby. Almost done, Leon. Hang in there."

She told him sweet nothings to distract him from the pain, but they were for her peace of mind. Vera needed to reassure herself that Leon was still there and it was up to her to keep it that way. The process was draining, and she couldn't imagine the amount of suffering Leon had to endure.

The exit wound was much easier, the disinfectant not as agonizing, and Vera wasted no time in repeating the procedure.

She discarded the bloody gauze and put her entire weight onto him, her lower arms on the sides of his ribcage and the open wound. "Now the bad part, okay? It's okay, Leon, it's okay. You're doing so great."

Her right hand searched around for the saline, finding it near the first aid kit she had yet to touch, and she unscrewed the cap. The syringe came next and she carefully filled it, before tapping the outside to release any excess. Vera leaned in to inspect the entry hole of his shoulder, the blood gurgling up, and she pinched the edges.

Leon gasped when she stuck the syringe into the hole and released the liquid into his body, forcing it to clean out any dirt. He jerked wildly, his other hand holding onto her to brace himself, his entire being pulsing with life and fighting back with all he had, but Vera wouldn't budge, pressing herself deeper to the wound to prevent it from closing up.

Leon whimpered, almost screamed when she yanked out the syringe, and Vera held him close as he moaned and groaned and panted and squirmed, waiting for it to subside.

"That was it. It's over. It's all over now." She crooned, reaching to stroke his cheek, to grab a fistful of his hair to grip and tug on gently, and Leon raised his head, his chin hooked on her shoulder, but didn't open his eyes, eyebrows knit together from the immense strain he went through, and she stroked the bridge of his nose with the back of her fingers, cupping his jaw, careful to avoid his injury, brushing the pad of her thumb over his cheekbone. "Look at you... It's all over. You did so well, so good. That's it. Take a breather. I need to take care of that wound."

Withdrawing from her embrace, Leon was a wreck, and she could only imagine how awful he felt. She hurried to peel open the packet of bandages, ripping them off to throw them to the side and applying the adhesive plaster on the back to have it stick together. She held it in place over the exit wound, and motioned for him to bring up his right hand.

"Hold this, okay? Hold it there."

Vera got more gauze and opened the ointment, squeezing a dollop to the center of her palm, and smeared it across his entire front, and then back, ignoring his pained protests and wincing and jolting, running the heel of her hand across his trapezius and up to the back of his neck to apply more pressure, hoping it would alleviate some of the throbbing, the greasy, yellow fluid coating the wound, mixing with the blood that was drying on his skin, and Leon grunted from the pain, but Vera didn't let up, lathering more and more in hopes the medicine would take effect.

It was all done in a span of minutes, she threw the empty tubes aside and grabbed the gauze, unrolling it to wrap it around his upper body.

"Okay, just a bit more and I promise you can rest," she promised, using the sticky side of the bandage to attach to the layer in front, looping it under his arm, to his back and up over his shoulder, before bringing it to the front to continue her work. She wrapped the roll around a few times, holding the layers in place, and when she was satisfied, she cut it with her knife and secured it with the tape. "There. All done. How do you feel?"

Leon cracked his eyes open, and Vera wanted to laugh — the look he gave her was priceless. "Like someone took a nail and drilled my shoulder. How do you think I feel?"

His voice was dry and tired and rough and in pain, and she smiled, taking the last remaining gauze pad and soaking it in the saline, before she used it to clean him up, wiping away all the dried blood. "At least you're still sassing me. That's a good sign."

"You sure you didn't go to nursing school?"

She scoffed, finishing her last sweep to collect the scraps and throw them in a pile on the ground, the bloody fabrics and used plasters. "Far from it. That was all improvisation."

"Well, if there's an RPD after this, we gotta tell them you're worth a damn in an ER."

Vera could fall asleep on the spot with how relieved she felt, like she'd run a marathon and couldn't think of anything else other than sleeping. She slumped against the wall next to him, the rush of adrenaline wearing off, leaving her to bask in the aftermath.

Her heart was slowing down to normal, her blood pressure dropping back to regular levels and the erratic pulse calmed down to a more stable beat. She didn't know when the fingerless gloves on her hands had come off, but they were somewhere on the floor next to them, as was Leon's shirt and the vest, the other things they were carrying too, scattered around in a messy heap. The blood staining his front and his hands and her clothes made her skin itch and her nose scrunch, but they didn't have the luxury of privacy, much less time to get cleaned up.

Vera stared at the ceiling, the pipes that ran on it, the blinking fluorescent light, the rust on the screws that bolted it into the solid concrete.

The exhaustion hit her with a tidal wave, her muscles aching and her bones weak, a switch flicked, the colors of the world around her losing vibrancy and growing duller, and she could hardly keep her eyes open, the heaviness on her eyelids pushing her into unconsciousness.

She wasn't even the one who got shot, for fuck's sake.

Don't think, thinking slows you down, the voice of her father started in her mind.

Leon shifted next to her, and she turned her head, about to ask him if he was okay, when she saw him slip, his knees bending as the strength in his thighs disappeared, and she gasped, straightening her legs in a quick reflex to support him. He leaned over, the weight of his head falling on her shoulder, his right side pressed up against her left, directly against her burnt, bandaged upper arm, his cheek to her collarbone, and it made her exhale heavily to adjust to the additional weight, the sudden zap of white hot pain radiating down her arm and up her neck, and the muscle twitching involuntarily.

Vera was hyper-aware of his entire body, the smell of gunpowder, his breath, his hair tickling her throat, the moisture from his sweat cooling down and evaporating, and most importantly, focused on not to move despite her discomfort, as not to disturb him. She bit her lip and tried her hardest to not show it, as not to make it seem he was unwanted, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Leon needed his rest, he deserved to sleep for all the things he went through and did for others.

She lifted her right hand to cradle the side of his neck, the silky locks of the dirty blond strands tangling in her fingers, stroking and carding through to keep her mind busy, her heart heavy, trying not to get stuck on how cold his ear was. He was unconscious, passed out from the trauma his body suffered, and she felt that pressure at the back of her throat, the burn in her nostrils as she swallowed it all back. Her gaze flickered to his face, studying him in the quiet that blanketed them, his brows no longer furrowed and relaxed, the sharp lines on his forehead fading as the muscles loosened.

She took a deep breath, leaning forward to rest her temple on the crown of his head, and sighed.

Leon stirred and was roused to consciousness by a rhythmic pattern of constant pressure, massaging his scalp. He recognized the feeling immediately, the gentle scratches on his head and the comforting petting motion, the soft, affectionate touches, the familiarity of the sensation soothing him to wakefulness, and his eyelashes fluttered, attempting to blink open the haziness.

He wasn't fully aware, he was still out of it, barely lucid, and there was a sharp pain in his left shoulder, pulsating and shooting down to the tip of his finger, making it tingle as he wiggled his digits, the limb felt stiff and leaden. He couldn't move it properly, but he didn't try, just remained where he was, comforted by the ministrations.

There was something cold, wet, and slightly painful on the tender spot of the affected area, and he became aware of his surroundings, of the scent of antiseptic, of the drip of leaking pipes somewhere, of the crackling of electricity in the cables, the noises of the sewers he was all too familiar with by now. He had his right side leaning into a body, head lolled on the curve of a warm shoulder, his arm was dead asleep from lying on top of it for who knows how long, and he was tempted to move it to get the pins and needles out of it, but his eyes landed on Vera's face, her own tilted up and away from him, her expression distant.

"... Vera...?" He tried, his voice strained and feeble, coming out in a rasp. The strokes on his head paused and stopped altogether, and she flinched, startled by the suddenness of his awakening. Leon tried to clear his throat and failed, his lips parched and cracking, tongue heavy. He blinked rapidly to fight off the fatigue. "Wha... What—"

That's when he noticed the dead body lying on the ground, right in front of him and Vera at their feet, with the shovel sticking out of its skull.

Vera removed her fingers from his head, and he immediately missed it, completely at a loss as to what was happening. She glanced at the corpse with a scowl, before setting her attention back on him.

"Don't worry about that," she said, not a trace of remorse on her features, twirling a silver band with a green digital band on her left wrist — and Leon immediately took notice of her bandaged hand underneath the fingerless gloves.

He wanted to reach for it to examine it, to check if it was injured and if he could do anything, but the ache in his shoulder prevented him from lifting his arm. "Are you... Okay? What happened to your—"

She shrugged, offering him a nonchalant smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Don't worry about that either. Do you want to sleep some more? We're safe here for a while. I checked."

Her eyes roamed across his face, assessing him, checking him for injuries, a downward pull at the corners of her mouth. Leon's mind was too foggy to keep up. "Ada..?"

She kept staring ahead for a while, stuck in the process of trying to form a reply, and she glanced at him. Her hair was damp and hanging around her in loose curls, stray strands were plastered to her cheeks, framing her face. Leon thought it was very fitting. "Went after Annette."

The cold, hard floor was seeping the warmth out of his body, the wind blowing in from somewhere icy, but he still found it in himself to give her a disapproving frown. "You should've forgotten about me. I would've caught up."

"Always the hero, never the damsel," Vera commented, a sigh of exasperation leaving her lips as she reached over to fuss over the bandages on his shoulder, tugging on the ends to fix the arrangement. "How is your pain? Still hurts like a bitch? Wanna pop some pills?"

It was almost impossible to think clearly, but he realized he'd been a burden enough for the two of them. "No. Save it. Just let me... Sit for a while."

"There is no honor or victory in bearing the pain Leon, just take the damn painkillers," she snapped, annoyed for whatever reason, her brow quirked up, daring him to defy her, and it clicked — the severity of his situation must have kicked in Vera's protectiveness and she was angry he almost got himself killed. It was sort of endearing to know he'd matter to somebody that much, but the shame of letting her down was just as strong.

Leon tried to sit up with the strength of one arm, struggling with it for a moment, before he managed to move a few inches, and Vera was there in an instant to help, her arm around his back, keeping him upright.

The shift of positions was awkward and clumsy and required her assistance, but he found himself thankful she was there to keep him from crashing to the floor. He leaned back onto the wall and grunted at the impact, and Vera was right beside him, hovering as he took a few deep breaths, waiting for it to pass.

He stared at the body on the ground instead, not knowing who this person was, wondering their life before the outbreak. "Yeah, al—alright."

Vera stuck her hand inside the pouch of the backpack between her legs to rummage around, the zipper opening with a loud sound, and she took out a small box with a first aid label.

To him, an eternity had passed when the capsule fell into his open palm, and another one followed shortly afterwards. It was embarrassing to be unable to perform the simple task of popping the pills in his mouth, his left hand useless and unmoving, and he wanted to shout in frustration, but Vera was there, guiding his hand to the bottom of the plastic bottle, helping him raise it to his lips.

He drank it greedily, the coolness of the liquid running down his throat, washing away the soreness, and the pill slid in effortlessly as he chased the freshness, before she withdrew her hand and Leon pulled back.

He kept gulping it down, a few drops dribbling down the corner of his mouth, and he licked at the corner of his lips to catch it before it spilled. Vera turned to the side, returning the box and the water bottle to the bag, and he wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

"Is the wristband from the unfortunate bastard?" He asked, craning his neck to peer at the dead body, at the protruding shovel. Vera hummed.

"Yep," she mumbled, looking up, the hollow in her eyes still present, her gaze distant and glazed over. "That door doesn't open without one of these, 's how he got in."

"I don't even wanna know how you managed to kill him," he chuckled, impressed with her, always impressed with her, and he didn't understand why she seemed to have an issue with it. "And what the hell happened to your hand?"

She flexed the fingers of the said hand, wriggling them in the glove. "Asshole snuck up on us. Closest thing was the knife and well, grabbed the blade in a haste. Ouch ensued. Nothing bad. No nerve damage outside my ego."

Leon studied her profile, the slope of her nose, the soft, full line of her lips. She definitely looked younger without the black lipstick, and the dark circles underneath her eyes looked more prominent than usual. "Any news from Claire?"

Vera shook her head, shifting to turn towards him, pulling up her leg to cross it over the other, and rested her elbow on the knee. "Nothing yet but I did call her about you. Told her to keep searching for Sherry. She sounded pretty shaken up. You should talk to her if you feel up to it, she'd probably appreciate it. Let her know you're okay."

The thought of Claire being worried about him made him wince internally, and he felt like absolute shit for being the reason behind the fear. Claire was doing all this on her own, with nobody to watch her back, and he was in a cozy spot with Vera by his side.

"We should keep going," he sighed, carefully wiggling his left shoulder to gauge the damage and testing the limits of the range of movements. "We've lost too much time already because of me. Can't afford to stall any more."

"Give it some time," Vera proposed, waving a dismissive hand, and Leon closed his eyes, savoring the feeling of her knuckles grazing over his forehead, and for a moment it didn't cross his mind that she was checking his temperature, taking it as a sweet gesture. "Let the meds kick in. At least until you can stand on your own."

Vera's entire person screamed 'just relax, everything's gonna be fine' as she took on the role of taking care of him, and Leon wanted to let himself be taken care of by someone else for a change, wanted to forget about all the bullshit they've been through for a minute and bask in the tranquility that she offered, to allow himself to be the weak and not be responsible for anyone else but himself. It was hard not to give in to the temptation, his nerves too strung up to deal with it on his own, and it was so easy to get used to this.

And this was the perfect opportunity.

"Only if you tell me why you hid the truth."

Vera's hands stilled, the calm replaced with hesitation and alarm, her shoulders tense, her entire being rigid. It was brief, fleeting, lasting a split second, but Leon noticed the subtle changes that occurred in her demeanor.

"What?" She tried to brush it off with a casual chuckle, but it came out too forced, and Leon wouldn't have it. Not now. He wanted to know. Deserved to.

Maybe it was Leon's own fault for not seeing it before, he'd only known Vera for a day after all, deeming it a personality trait or a quirk of hers, and perhaps even a trauma response that she would barely react to information that others would freak out over, like he and Claire did. She knew Sherry, it was natural she would have information about her parents about being virologists, but the minute Ada had revealed they worked for Umbrella, all the little nuggets of knowledge Vera had dropped that would otherwise be classified as useless information, all the tiny clues that were too insignificant and nonsensical at first, fell into place and made sense. W.B. William Birkin. Brian Irons. The sewers. Ben Bertolucci. Vera Kaplan, P.I.

"You knew it was Umbrella. From the beginning. Why did you keep it a secret?"

She froze, not even a muscle twitching, her eyes wide and fixed on him, all the oxygen got sucked out of the room. It was a wonder she didn't stop breathing altogether, the only noise that broke through the dense atmosphere being the buzz of the neon light in the distance. Leon wanted to take it back, to take it all back and pretend it didn't happen, but they couldn't remain stuck in the past.

"I mean, why act like you had no idea at all— you just... Watched us, watched me go out of my mind, with Sherry and... and Claire and—" He bit his tongue to stop the words from spilling, to refrain from saying too much, and to avoid crossing a line, continued softly, "I don't understand."

Vera's blank face became devoid of color, her complexion taking on a sickly hue, and he was almost sure she'd shut down on him, but she surprised him when she lowered her eyes and dipped her chin. "I suppose it doesn't matter how you figured it out, huh?"

Leon didn't want to fight her, not about this. Not when all he wanted was the truth, the undiluted version of it. Not when all he wanted to do was understand her, the motivations behind her actions and why she felt the need to hide. "Who are you, really?"

"Fucking hell, I didn't bullshit that much. You saw me bury my father, give me some grace," Vera scoffed, rolling her eyes, and she looked annoyed, but not at him, at herself. He wanted to retract, to tell her he was sorry, he didn't mean it to sound that way, but she beat him to it. "... I'm sorry. It's not you, it's— no, it was you, that's dumb, I'm sorry. But, not in the way you think, ugh—" Vera pushed herself off the ground with an unceremonious groan, stepping over the dead body with a slight sway to her step, and held the handle of the shovel in a firm grip. "I can't just go around and give this information to anyone. Like, hello, this is a big ass company that has government officials under their payroll and nearly all of the city's residents dying because of this virus. And before that even happened, what do you think happened to people who blew the whistle on Umbrella? Hmm?"

Vera pulled the shovel from the deceased's head, and the resistance in the rotted flesh and bone made her grunt. She took a deep breath, giving it another forceful tug to loosen it, and with a final pull, the head came free, and Vera stumbled back from the momentum, barely catching herself. "They disappear. Never to be found again. They all become a statistic. People who never existed and are erased from the records, as if they never lived to begin with, as if they never mattered. Maybe their loved ones never even learn the truth about their fate."

Leon watched her with intent, observing her every move as she began to pace, back and forth, around the small area. "And... And I was in it from birth, Leon. You remember the orphanage? Founded by Umbrella. I don't know Irons because he was the boss of my dad, I know him from there. He was the director. He ran that shithole. Sold children to be test subjects. Like fucking livestock."

"What?" Leon breathed, his eyes following her as she moved. All warmth in his body drained, leeched out by the very words she uttered.

"Do you have any idea how fucked up these people are? The things they did to my friends? They preyed on the poor and homeless kids who came in as abandoned infants, fostered them for years and then handed them over to the researchers to be experimented on, to see if their mothers' drug addictions affected them in any way or something."

She was… speaking a different language, one that he heard but still comprehended one way or another, his stomach twisted and undulated, calcifying from the mental images, his blood running cold. "What the fuck."

Kids. Kids. Children.

Experimented on.

Leon had to lean forward and support his head, focus on breathing loudly from his nose so he wouldn't throw up. The dizziness had him frantically blinking to make it go away. What kind of world was this? What kind of monsters lived in this city? It wasn't the ones that kept coming back from the dead, that was for sure.

Vera rubbed her fingers together, her eyes darting all over the place. "And I found out too late, after I got out. After Marvin... Yeah. I was like some golden fucking goose for them, I don't know. Good for P.R. Gifted kid. I was worth something because I was the face of the Raccoon Orphanage for Umbrella, the star pupil of Raccoon City, the girl who went places and became a technological genius and made something of herself—"

"You're Doe-Eyed Jane," Leon completed, Jesus, his whole generation was plagued by this girl who only lived through the T.V. and newspapers. She was all anyone — any parents could ever talk about at family gatherings. Documentaries, the news, the magazines. Jane Doe, the Girl Who Defied All Odds. He remembered the stories about her going viral, about how she was a prodigy, so small compared to the guest speakers on the screens, shaking their hands as she presented the projects she was working on, what had won science fair competitions, all the academic awards she had earned. Leon had thought she was too good to be true, too unreal to exist, and wondered if she was ever really a real girl who was actually living or just some stunt to boost the company's image. The poor, unfortunate orphan who was so smart that she got an internship with the leading corporation in the country, the future of their tech innovations, and he could see her clearly in his mind, standing on stage in front of cameras with an Umbrella representative, holding up an award. It wasn’t a mental image he’d conjured up, too, there really were poses she had given with Oswell Spencer, the creator and founder of the company, in the covers of many newspapers.

Even in that giant portrait in the orphanage’s hall.

"Yeah," she confirmed with a grimace. "Doe-Eyed Jane. Shitty name for a shitty image. The golden calf they paraded around to convince people that Umbrella was good."

Leon had to stop to take a deep breath. He would have never been able to guess. The little girl and Vera in front of him were different people. So different. One was a cheerful and outgoing child, who smiled at the camera with big bright eyes and shiny teeth, who laughed in interviews, who waved to the crowds that swarmed her, well-mannered, intelligent, and polite, dressed in expensive clothes with her hair always in the same braids, and the other one was this fierce, stubborn young woman with a sharp tongue, a blazing fire in her eyes, and an aura of an untouchable confidence with the penchant for trouble and chaos.

"I'm sorry for not telling you, or Claire, I really am. At first, I didn't think it was even necessary. It became a matter of eventually spilling the beans. And I really couldn't handle being fucking questioned, you know? About how I could have prevented it, how I could have done something— believe me, I know. I've had to live with that. Every single day of my life. Because in the end I took advantage of the cushy life Umbrella provided for me. How could I look anyone in the eye after learning what I now know?" She gestured around wildly, throwing her hands up in the air. "I'm not gonna lie to you or make excuses. It was easier to shut up, to be honest, than to talk about it. All of it."

She clasped her hands behind her head, threading her fingers through the disheveled mess of brown strands, and shook her head. "The shitty thing is that I wanted to at some point, and I just couldn't. I just kept coming up with reasons to postpone it further, oh the timing isn't right, oh Marvin no, oh Sherry disappeared, oops, there goes Claire too. And then… and then too much time passed. I was too scared I would ruin our trust."

She crossed the length of the small corridor, moving from side to side, unable to keep still, the silence settling between them heavy, as his eyes stayed glued to the floor, vibrating from the anxiety, from the pent up emotion that was begging to be let out he really didn’t think should be the focus here.

"Not that it matters now," she whispered, almost inaudible. Leon glanced up from his spot, and she looked miserable. "But I'm going to use it for good. That's why I'm recording shit and collecting documents left and right. To make sure nothing like this happens again. I was Umbrella for years, and the moment I was aware, I betrayed them. This time I'll do it right. I will make sure they pay. All of them. Even if it kills me. I swear. That, you can trust."

He understood. He couldn't say he was happy about the outcome, but he understood. And for now, that had to be enough. "Okay."

Vera halted and stared at him with wide, unbelieving eyes. "What?"

"I said okay."

She continued to stare at him with an open mouth, blinking, gawking, a fish out of the water. "That's it?"

"What do you want me to say?" Leon shrugged, the movement shooting a hot, white bolt of lightning up to his neck, and he flinched, hissing. Vera took a hesitant step forward, wanting to help but not knowing if he would accept it, and he extended his good arm towards her, making her understand he wanted her closer. "At least you were right about this not being the right time to talk about it."

She moved as he beckoned, placing her palm in his, Leon intertwined their fingers together, and she tugged, helping him get up. "We're on the same side. Whatever information you have, no matter how insignificant, can be of use. And not to me. To the victims. They deserve justice. They deserve someone who stands up for them. Or else what would their sacrifices have been for? Just promise me you will be there to speak for them."

Vera bowed her head, and Leon could see a single tear drop falling from her eye, hanging on to her chin, and then disappearing into the material of her turtleneck, her voice weak, "They will get justice."

He gave her hand a tight squeeze, a physical reassurance, and she squeezed back, nodding.

#leon kennedy x oc #leon s. kennedy x oc #leon s kennedy x oc #resident evil oc #oc: vera kaplan #era: no time to die #story: gravedigger #resident evil x oc

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