Death Island: Penumbra - Shadows Collide - TheLadyFrost - Biohazard (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

I:

First Contact

Three Months Prior...

Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

The smell of stagnant water was foul. It lingered in the nostrils as her boots shifted through puddles of unfiltered waste. With a crinkle of the nose, Jill Valentine moved slowly - carefully - gingerly through the acrid odor of gray decay.

She hated sewers.

The goddamn dregs of the world waited at the bottom of oily shadows and the stench of rotten sh*t. She couldn't escape the rot even above ground; why not follow it into the darkness? It didn't take a therapist to explain how the world was when her eyes were open. She'd lived it for five years since her return from captivity.

She'd spent most of it chasing down those who'd played a part in her torture. The leads stagnated the further from Africa she went. After leaving behind the windswept heat of the Savannah, she'd found it more complicated than it should have been to locate those who'd left her stranded to be the handmaiden of a monster.

The smell of death tickled her nose and gave her a moment to pause. She waited for the flash of memory to hit behind her eyes. She watched the face of the man she gutted while he begged for mercy. There was nothing quite like the odor of an open body cavity and the feel of intestines spilling like greasy snakes over your hands as you pulled the knife down from the sternum like opening a zipper. He'd still been alive when she kicked him mercilessly over the rooftop's edge. She'd watched, dead-eyed from the P-30, while he'd tumbled into the sand and looked like a leviathan in a lake of blood. In her head...she'd been screaming with rage and regret.

For three years, she'd been the weapon of a madman - the harbinger of his evil will. Before she'd woken up in that room, she'd known that Wesker was a bastard. She'd learned quickly at his side that he was a megalomaniac.

He'd stood above her in those sunglasses, watching her lie there with a smile on his face, and he'd said, "I offered you a chance once to join me, Jill. Now I show you what it means to deny me."

"I will never join you."

"You will," he'd answered tonelessly, "because you no longer have a choice."

"f*ck y-"

She'd never forget the moment he'd stuck that syringe into her neck. She'd flinched, trying to fight back, but she was still so weak. She'd thought she was dead when she went out that window. She thought she'd finally done something to change the world they were trying to save. She thought she was a savior.

She was a fool.

Because dying hadn't saved anyone...and it had just given the mastermind behind the madness another weapon.

She'd died and handed Wesker the key to his future filled with fear.

The P-30 coursed through her. She lifted a hand like she'd fight him off, and he stated, "Stop."

And she had. She stopped. She just stopped like he'd flipped a switch. The horror compounded as he commanded, "Rise."

She'd done that too. She'd slid off the table and stood, a good soldier, a robot - looking at his face like a machine waiting for his next command. He'd tilted his head and demanded, "Move to the mirror."

She'd gone and found herself naked, pale, blonde - icy- and a stranger. She looked somehow ethereal and ghostly. She looked like an angel somehow, but she wasn't. She wasn't. She was a demon. If she was any kind of angel at all, it was a deadly one—the kind who showed up to reap your soul and take you away when you least expected it.

He stood behind her - blonde as she was- dead inside as her face suggested- and said, "See what failure looks like, Jill. See what it means to resist."

Her face was still and calm as he added, "Punch the glass."

And she did. She punched it, and it cracked. The glass cut her hand, but she showed nothing. It hurt. Her head screamed in pain. Her body stared lifelessly at the shattered reflection of herself stained in her blood. It wasn't her in that glass. It wasn't her.

But it was all she could see now.

She paused, skimming a hand through her short dark locks. The second she'd been able to, she'd dyed it back brown. She cut off the long Valkyrie-style blonde hair and returned to what she'd been before - a version of herself with dark hair but hopefully a brighter future.

She pulled out her old clothes. She knew it was stupid, silly even, to wear clothes from before - so old they should be falling apart. But putting on the familiar felt like her again. The old but faithful blue tank top, the jeans that still fit like a glove and were well worn, the boots broken in and loved. When she wore her faithful old attire, she was Jill Valentine again.

He couldn't take that from her.

He'd tried like hell to take everything else.

She was still trying to get it back after all these years without his memory hanging over her like a shadow she couldn't shake. When the sun was bright on her, she swore she could see two there beside her - hers and his - and sometimes? Hers, his, and who she used to be.

She'd taken every mission she could when they'd reinstated her to active duty. After months and months of rehabilitation, after facing a firing squad of those who wanted her to pay for her crimes, she'd been cleared because Chris had raided that damn volcano to bring up the rest of Wesker's stock of the P-30 on board. They'd seen the effects of it. They'd held her down while she fought and tested it on her just to be sure.

As much as she'd wanted them to believe her, she still fought them, putting it in her again. She couldn't help it. She'd panicked and screamed and lost. They'd shot her full of it and watched it work. They'd tested her and claimed it was for her own good.

He'd claimed that too.

It left her unable to trust anyone. It left her angry and hurt, and hopeless. She'd spent hours in therapy talking about what she'd done. She told them anything she could think of to help. She'd been the good soldier.

And they'd shot her full of poison for their own amusem*nt.

The rift between her and Chris was so wide it was like standing on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon and shouting at each other. He tried to mend it. She knew that. He tried to understand what she'd been through.

But he couldn't. And every time she looked at him, she saw the subtle touch of condemnation and regret in his eyes. Or worse, pity. She couldn't stand it. She couldn't even be around him without it echoing like a shout down a mountain. Under the layer of aching loss, a roiling sense of betrayal loomed.

Because he'd left her in Wesker's hands for years. He hadn't known she'd survived, but they'd never found her body. He should have kept looking. He claimed he had. He swore he'd never stopped.

She didn't believe him. If he had, he'd have found her. He'd left her to rot. She'd died for him...and he'd left her to a fate worse than death.

After three years in the hands of Wesker, they were strangers. After five years of recovery, they still were. No more partners. No more pals. They were now coworkers in a fight they were losing daily.

That fight had brought her to a dirty sewer beneath a rotting former Umbrella compound in the middle of nowhere. She'd tracked a lead on a missing scientist linked loosely to Chris' time in New York. The death of Glenn Arias had opened more doors than shut them.

Wherever you turned, another of his connections looped through the leftover mess he'd made of Manhattan. The death toll there was in the thousands. It was a mass outbreak on a scale they were still trying to determine. A failure of the airborne vaccine distributed by Chris had seen only a handful of those turned returned to some semblance of consciousness. Those who'd managed to regain any humanity were perpetually poisoned by what they'd done.

They'd eaten friends. They'd killed. They'd turned and tortured each other. Their sanity was destroyed. Saving those they could had made a bigger mess than sanitation might have. There wasn't a single survivor who wasn't forever ruined by what had happened.

Bioterror had won again. Anything gained by that event was lost under the tremendous hopelessness and futility of a fight they couldn't win. The rumors now said Arias had sold countless samples of the A-Virus to black market contacts before his death. Even now, it was circulating the globe to be used in warfare and for political gain. Crops of horror had started in places suffering from unstable regime changes and were utilized to advance agendas.

They were further behind than they'd ever been because Chris had rushed into New York like a goddamn tank and nearly leveled the place with bad decisions and zero forethought for the fallout. Instead of evacuating, Chris had tried to save the day. He'd cost lives with rash action instead of levelheaded planning. His mistakes were haunting her as she moved.

She would find this f*cking scientist she was hunting and bring him to justice to start correcting those mistakes. After all, if one good thing had come out of her time with Wesker, it was this - she was relentless, brutal, and efficient. She knew how to get the job done. She didn't flag, didn't stop, and didn't care who she took down to do it. She was still trying like hell to make up for what she'd done.

She wouldn't stop until she'd avenged every life she'd taken. She figured it would take the rest of her life to do it. She was ok with that. If she died this time, at least she'd die making a difference.

And after all, she'd died years ago - maybe this time she'd die a hero instead of a disgrace.

Jill stepped through a small opening in the sewer and listened.

The click of noises gave her pause. Her hands kept the knife ready as she watched the dark before her. She saw a skittering and lifted the weapon. As she hurried quietly toward the noise, a movement to her left had her spinning.

The hand swept the knife down at her wrists. She spun a kick and met air as he ducked and came into her attack zone. They grappled, hands and feet catching and sliding. He didn't hit her, which surprised her; he just tried to stop her.

She didn't bother. She tried to kill him. They dueled hard for a moment. Lots of strikes and sweeps. Tons of spinning and slapping. He didn't try to hurt her, but he didn't let her hurt him, either. He was fast and good. She hadn't had trouble with an opponent in a long time. Her training was top-notch.

His was better.

She let him come in close as they locked arms, and he swung her around with her back to his front. Jill stepped on his instep, threw an elbow at his face, and swept the knife toward his belly. His hand caught her wrist, hyperextended her arm, and spun her again until the blade was aimed at his face with his wrist braced against hers.

Jill lunged with the knife, and his foot swept behind her ankle as she came. It spilled her forward against him, and the blade sliced over his left biceps as she went. He bled, his arms pinned hers around his torso as he clutched her, and against her ear, he hissed, "Stop."

A handful of moments - less than thirty seconds and over. She was winded. He was winded. It was a good fight.

It might have looked like they were hugging to anyone that came along. Jill whispered back, lips brushing the shell of his ear, "No f*cking way."

And she tried to head-butt him.

He used his body to jerk her up and bend her backward as the head butt missed. Her foot kicked into his shin, he stumbled, and he bodily lifted her again against his front, turned, and shoved her hard into the wall to their left. The rushing water muffled the impact as she hit. Her back sang with pain as the water gushed over her face and head. Jill went to hook her ankle around his and trip him, and he jerked her away from the wall, slammed her back again, and stunned her with the force of it.

Temporarily dazed, Jill couldn't stop him from spinning her back to his front again. He ducked into the water, and it showered around them as his gloved hand slid over her mouth, and his mouth hissed at her ear again, "Stop, you stupid woman. And look."

She saw what had been clicking around through the veil of the waterfall. Lickers. Three, at least, maybe half a dozen. They moved beyond the waterfall with blind eyes and bulging, exposed brains. Their tongues lingered, licking the dirty water as they went - inside out, muscle and tissue exposed over their exoskeleton.

Into her ear, his voice stated, "You almost shot one and rang the goddamn dinner bell."

It hadn't once crossed her mind that he was there to help.

Who was he?

Shaggy dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, muscled build - a spark of familiarity zipped through her brain as she waited in his arms, watching their death beyond that watery filter.

She couldn't place his face until her eyes shifted to the little cleft in his chin on his stubbled jaw. Then she remembered because the first time she'd met him, Claire had remarked - "You can't mistake him...he's got the f*cking buttchin of a comic book hero."

Leon S. Kennedy - super agent, perpetual badass, the golden boy of bioterror. Also, they said, a notorious drunk. But it didn't seem to stop him from saving the day. Hadn't he been with Chris in New York? Maybe he was here chasing down the same lead.

"Leon." She murmured in surprise.

"Jill Valentine." He answered in a dull tone.

Jill whispered, "I see them. You can let go."

When he didn't, she added, "I won't hit you again."

He let go of her reluctantly. She slid away to stand beside him against the wall. They glanced at each other for a handful of seconds before he nodded. Jill scanned in his tactical vest and blue shirt, noting he was a little bloody and just as dirty as she was. However, they both looked like drowned rats after their trip through the falls.

Luckily the falls obscured their voices enough they could get their ducks in a row here before they moved.

She glanced at his arm, still seeping blood from the shallow cut she'd given him. He followed her eyes, shook his head, and gave her a pass on it. Jill flicked her eyes back out into the sewer, and he whispered, "Schematics for the sewers suggested the lab is east of here."

Jill nodded and returned in a quiet voice, "This tunnel should take us to the ladder leading up to the alley behind the building."

She'd gone through the sewers to avoid detection by the patrolling guards. In a way, it had been smart. In another, here they were - beneath the streets of a city turning to sh*t from infection. Someone had set loose bioweapons in these tunnels. Why? Accident or design?

How had it gone unchecked before this?

But, of course, the little island off the coast of Massachusetts wasn't heavily inhabited anyway. It was mostly there for tourists looking for fun after visiting Salem. The average Joe wouldn't know what waited on this haven. It wasn't safe here, it wasn't fun, and it wasn't meant to be enjoyed as a vacation.

Unless your idea was to vacation in the mouth of hell.

Jill nodded and breathed, "Let's move."

He swung the assault rifle he had strapped over his back into his hands. They ducked through the water. They moved. It was quick and efficient. He moved as he fought, with no wasted gestures.

They used the water like a silencer as they went. It muffled their boots and movement. They were almost to the ladder leading up someone screamed.

A voice echoed down the tunnel. A woman, no doubt, based on the wailing. There was a rush of claws on the ceiling in the water. Leon hurried for the ladder with Jill fast behind him.

A woman was being torn apart by them about ten feet from the ladder. They could easily use the sound as a distraction to make their escape. There was no saving the woman anyway. Even as they moved, she gurgled with her throat ripped out.

Leon was four rungs up with Jill hot on his heels when something wrapped around her ankle. It looped. She felt the pull, and it ripped her off the ladder with a squeak and squeal of metal.

Airborne, she went up and came down, landing in the water and rolling over the stone floor. Another tongue looped at her wrist as she fired, the bullet winging off into the dark and the gun flying from her grip from the strength of that tongue. She slashed the tongue with her knife, and it retreated, the licker roaring with pain and denial.

She scrambled to her feet, and another tongue looped at her ankle again. It jerked her to her face, she rolled to slash the tongue, and it threw her against the wall for the effort. That tongue held on, the licker smacking her into the concrete like an angry toddler with a broken toy. She hit on her back and felt it pull her toward it. She slashed, it jerked harder, and she was suddenly racing through dirty water on her face without hope of stopping it.

Her hand flailed wildly as she lost her knife in a rush. It pulled her in, crouched over her, and roared, and she smelled the fetid stench of death again. A pulse of fear shot through her - making her breathless as Jill couldn't stop the shout of denial. Its dripping teeth came for her face, the tongue whipping at her as it went, smacking her arms that she threw up to protect herself.

And a hand caught one of hers and slapped, palm to palm, holding on. It jerked on her, she let Leon rip her free of her death, and he fired with the other hand as she went with the rifle braced against his side. The one trying to kill her was blasted back as Jill rolled with her hand in his, caught sight of the thing dropping from the ceiling atop him, and jerked his sidearm from his vest.

She shouted, "Down!"

And his head and shoulders jerked to the left, her hand lifted and aimed, and she fired.

Blood rained down on them as she blew the one inches from his head out of the sky.

Leon jerked on her hand, slinging her up in a single movement, and Jill used the momentum to land on her feet and keep on firing. They let go of each other and stood back to back, circling, shooting, circling, shooting. He aimed into the dark like a man who'd done it a thousand times before.

Jill could hear the sound of their heavy breathing as the last body fell into the water with a dull splash.

She lowered his gun and felt him do the same.

After a moment, Leon remarked, "So much for stealth."

Jill shook her head, "Stupid woman. What was she doing down here?"

"What?" Leon mused while they both scanned shadows for more threats, "You don't hit the sewers on your vacations?"

"What's a vacation?"

His mouth twitched. "I don't have a clue, but I hear they're nice."

"Not hers, apparently."

Leon snorted and glanced over his shoulder at her.

Jill shook her head. "Wanna tell me what you're doing here?"

"Wanna tell me what you are?"

She eyed him before stepping away. "What else? Taking a scenic tour on this fine evening."

"Some f*cking tour. I'd ask for a refund." He met her eyes as they turned to face each other. After a moment of considering each other, he remarked, "You move like a well-oiled machine."

Jill arched a brow. "Makes two of us."

She stepped through the bloody water toward the tunnel they'd left behind. Leon followed, eyeing the darkness. As they approached the ladder, she caught sight of the dead woman in the water. She wore a lab coat and floated in a sea of pink and chunks.

Jill crouched at her badge and took it off her jacket. She looked at the name and sighed, "Sorry, Marian, I need this more than you do."

Leon shook his head. "Just once, I'd like to get sucked into this sh*t and not end up eyeball-deep in the dead."

Jill started up the ladder, deciding, "In the wrong profession for that, Kennedy. Besides, who would save the girl without you?"

He snorted. He watched her ass climb. It was a nice ass, admittedly. He'd heard the stories, but he hadn't ever seen her in action. She was swift and merciless, but he could see the enormous chip she carried on her shoulder even below her on the ladder. He should know. He had his own.

And like any good cross-bearing redemption hound, eventually, she'd collapse under the weight of the lives she'd taken and failed to save.

He followed her up the ladder anyway, content to finally be in this damn nightmare with someone he could trust at his back. Maybe they could compare notes on all the dead bodies they'd left behind them. He was still climbing the mountain of the lives he'd lost and figuring out there was no summit.

Jill? She was probably at base camp one with little hope of ever going higher.

So, here they were - two people ass deep in undead and monsters, swimming in a sea of regret and redemption, trying like hell to find a way to make right all the people they'd failed. It was a hopeless quest. But it all started one life at a time.

At least in their eternal push for absolution, they could keep the other from dying before they found it.

God knew it was better than swimming in the dead alone.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

II:

Legends

Penumbra - the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

Her hands slid against the mud, clawing through the muck. Sliding to one knee, Jill tried to rise. The sky was set ablaze, the fire eating through the clouds and casting flickering shadows around her as she moved. It had been a wildly desperate move, a mad one, but a necessary one - the lab and the monsters inside it had died roasting in the fires of hell from whence they'd come.

The smears of black and char on her face and clothes were a small price to pay for survival.

Marian had given them the pass, but why she'd been running had become evident when they'd keyed into that lab. What had waited in the once sterile environment was the stuff of nightmares. Tanks and tubes filled with abominations - grotesque testaments to experiments of men playing gods. Humans turned into things you only glimpsed in your darkest moments of horror. Lovecraftian creativity lingered like a hostile ghost around them as they stood, too shocked to move and too terrified to believe.

It took a helluva of a monstrosity to stun into frozen silence two of the most jaded people in the world when it came to the unimaginable.

In one tube, what had once been a little girl floated - her face bloated and sporting tentacles, one eye dangling like a forgotten deflated balloon on her ruptured cheek; one bugged out and looking terrified in a socket turned wet with rot. Her dress remained intact over her twisted belly and hips, white, pretty, and pure against a backdrop of infection and mutation. One hand had become a curled claw with razor-sharp fingers, slicing through the liquid that suspended her as if seeking to destroy and rupture any humanity it encountered. The other looked human enough, still clutching a teddy bear half ripped apart; it's cotton innards dripping down from missing legs and rended belly.

The contrast between innocence and malfeasance felt like a nauseating moment when you glimpsed something, blinked, and it became something entirely juxtaposed. Every time you closed an eye, the image changed - another horror, another suggestion of what had once been sweet purity - dual realities that perverted the eyes until the brain couldn't be sure what was real and what was illusion. Jill whispered, "Jesus..."

And Leon simply grumbled, "Not here, sweetheart...not here. God left this place long ago."

She covered her mouth with her hand to almost implore, "...if he was ever here at all."

Leon glanced at the hand holding the teddy bear and supposed, "...he wasn't. He couldn't be. Because this...this sh*t doesn't happen if there's a benevolent god to stop it."

The other tanks were myriad monsters in the early or late stages of growth. They were alien - unreal- covered in scales or mutated into half-human, half-animal hybrids. Plagas poked from heads and necks, erupted from faces and sockets, and infection took over where plagas ended. Strains of viruses making man into a monster. T-Virus evident in some, turning them into zombies strangely well preserved but half bloated in places from something, not T. Aquatic things huddled in schools like fish in other tanks, piranhas with burgeoning arms and legs somehow, goldfish with razor teeth and tentacles.

It was too much and too horrible. And it wasn't alone. A table waited beyond the glass, a woman strapped to it - her guts removed and dangling like meat in a butcher shop from hooks above her, a baby half aborted pulled from inside her with her face locked in a mask of pain, death, and horror. The baby had eaten part of her as it had been pulled free, its squirming body dripping still and twitching as it tried to find purchase to keep going - but even here, even in this house of madness and this obliteration of science, it was still incapable of survival on its own. It cried and whined sadly beyond the glass, the room unable to stop its piteous sounds from reaching her ears as it tried to eat its deceased mother.

Leon clicked on the computer in the far corner while Jill stood transfixed in horror. The room beside the birthing room was clearly for breeding. Monsters and human hosts locked in mid-coitus, some still copulating as she watched - a parody of sex that seemed impossible. Tentacles and fingers and f*cking - hands and parts that didn't belong, penetrating in places that shouldn't exist. It was such a jumble of flesh, such a phantasmagoria of cosmic horror; her mind couldn't even make sense of most of it. The grunting, slapping, and thrusting of things finally had her gagging and turning away, her head swirling with disgust, one hand pressed to her belly to stop the rolling need to vomit. But the piteous cries of a baby eating its mother - the horrible symphony of procreation turned monstrous and perversely demonic - left her dizzy.

She thanked her subconscious or whatever instincts the brain had to protect us from too much horror kicked in to offer confusion to her eyes instead of clarity. Because if she'd seen it all and somehow made sense of every nasty moment, she would have gone insane on the spot from it. Instead, she swayed a little where she stood, her mind locking away the most horrible parts to save her sanity.

A whoosh of sound had drawn their attention as the doors opened and didn't give them time to do more than stare in horror. What ducked through was a tyrant, or wasn't, or hadn't ever been. It was human enough to stand erect, but its bloated body was covered in pustules that burped and dripped as it walked - loathsome and disgusting, stinking somehow like emptied bowels and sewage. Gnarled at the hands, what came from the wrists were curved scythes covered in blood. Its head had bloated to the size of an enormous pumpkin, its brains spilling out of a burst skull and sliding down shoulders so big it turned sideways to fit through double doors. It clomped on cloven feet, like a goat or a demon, as it moved slowly toward them as if it were Jason Voorhees and it had all the time in the world to do so.

Leon shot first, hitting it in that bloated face. The impact blasted off a chunk of that ugly face, throwing guts and brains around like confetti. Jill's shot was a half second behind his, hitting it in the chest, blowing a perfect fist size hole out its back with a cacophonous boom and crunch of bone. Leon popped off two more shots before she could readjust her aim, proving why he was the best around. What splattered the tanks stuck like glue, inching around as if they were slugs, slipping over the glass and then sticking - sucking on the transparent tanks until they cracked, the glass spiderwebbing out, showing the fragility and promising to release what waited inside.

Leon lowered his gun and lamented, "...f*ck."

Jill backed up with him. "Yeah...yeah."

They couldn't shoot it. Shooting it was just using its goddamn blood to make more of it. Where it bled, leeches and slugs seemed to coagulate from its hemoglobin, turning into things that ate along the floor and stuck to everything they touched, collapsing tables, toppling chairs - and cracking glass enclosures. It was stupid to keep shooting. They'd had one enemy, and just like that, now they had a hundred.

And the glass was cracking all around them.

He backed up until he basically covered her and commanded, "Go. Now."

She listened. She turned and ran. She took flight as he covered her retreat. Whatever he'd gotten off that computer would have to be enough. The hallway they'd come through seemed too long somehow. She ran so fast her lungs ached, and her thighs screamed in pain.

She heard the first boom and didn't look back. She felt the building rock and shake like an earthquake. Jill cut left through a doorway and headed toward the emergency stairwell they'd found to get them into the building primarily undetected. Guards lingered as she burst into the room, caught unaware of her arrival.

They were lounging and drinking coffee or reading the paper. The second they saw her, they all went for their guns. There were at least six of them.

She kept on moving. She fired from the hip, spun low, and felt the air whiz over her head from a swung shock rod. It crackled; she punched him in the groin from the splits she was in and rolled out of the way of the next one swinging down at her on the floor. As she gained her feet, one grabbed her, and she leveraged him by his arm up and over her shoulder, flinging him into the wall with his own momentum.

Another grabbed her as she spun back, and Jill elbowed him in the face, kneed him in the crotch, and pushed him back into his companion. They both careened into the wall as the last one came for her. Leon's gun went off from the doorway and sent the man spiraling away with a burst of blood from his temple. Jill leaped over his body without a single thought. She shot the first guard that made a grab for Leon and swung into the now flashing stairwell.

Red lights chased her down the stairs as she went. She heard his boots to know Leon was behind her. He called, "Fifth floor, fire escape - west side."

He'd only seen the map of the building once for a handful of seconds. He really did have an eidetic memory. Impressed, Jill exited onto the second floor. She ran as another boom sounded behind them. The building rocked again, and he yelled, "Static charges, we've got ten minutes!"

Jesus.

She'd practically flown toward the fire escape.

More guards had waylaid them. He was swift and merciless, blasting his way through them while Jill picked off the stragglers. Bodies fell like tossed toys from a toddler's hand, and behind them, something roared. The whole building trembled as they ran, the titanic monstrosity having split and somehow turned into a Gumby of horror. The bones had twisted and became weapons from inside its own exposed chest cavity, waving bony protrusions like blades on tentacles and pus-laden intestines that slithered like snakes looking for food.

She hit the ladder first, hurrying down, and Leon turned back to cover her again.

She let him, sliding with boots to the side of the rungs to move faster. He followed, his gun echoing around the night sky as she slid. She hit the metal landing and found the ladder completely locked and unusable to keep going. Leon hit the ground behind her, and Jill shouted over the sound of their pursuer lumbering toward the ladder to follow, "What now!?"

He'd grabbed her arm, slung her out, shoved her against the wall, and commanded, "There! The goddamn window cleaning cart. Go!"

She'd gone. She'd crossed the narrow ledge from window to window to window, sliding with her back against the glass as they hurried toward the cart dangling in the distance. He joined her when she slid onto the cart, grabbing the lever to start their descent. It bucked, grumbled, and grunted with age, but it started lowering them toward the ground.

Jill glanced at her watch - three minutes. They had three minutes before the f*cking building blew. It wouldn't be enough time.

She started to say just that, and the thing chasing them took a swan dive toward them from the window above. It raced toward him in a free fall, targeting their cart, and Jill shouted, "Jump!"

He glanced behind his shoulder at her, and she gestured wildly at the lake circling the building. Jump. Seemed stupid. It was too far down. But it wasn't. Fear just made it seem further than it was. She was hoping like hell the water was deep enough to survive.

Leon called, "Go! Jump!"

Jill jumped. She heard the thing hit the cart and the clunk of sound as the wind rushed around her. She couldn't know if he followed. She plummeted. She kept her body in a straight line and took a hard breath. Something exploded too close behind her. Fire licked at her face and arms. She instinctively resisted the urge to cover her face and took the sear of pain from it.

The hit to the water hurt. It shocked her system from the cold and the pain of entrance. She went down like a dart, sinking, sliding in the dark. But the pain was over quickly enough to figure out it wasn't as far as it had looked. She pushed upward, swimming through the cold. And the boom of sound forced her body to roll through the water. The chilly waves worked like a sonic boom, rippling over and over around her as it thrust her body into a swirling circle. She let it carry her out and out, watching the night above her in the liquid go red and raging.

And then she'd touched the shore.

Climbing out of the water, she turned back to see the building roasting as it exploded - launching steel and flame into the blackened heavens. The water made plop sounds as pieces of the exploded monster hit the lake's surface. She waited, watching, to see if those pieces started swimming, but they didn't. She knew why. Leon had chucked a pulse grenade into the water, which had stunned her and started her on that swirling journey, but it worked like a charm to stop the pieces of the exploded nightmare from pursuing them.

She looked wildly around for him as she gained her feet, aching but alive. She couldn't really doubt the stories about him anymore. He'd performed faster than her, more brilliant than her, and more instinctually. Survival was in his bones, and he'd earned the whispers she'd heard around the office regarding him.

Voice hoarse from the smoke pumping into the night, Jill called, "Kennedy!?"

Something grabbed her forearm, and she spun; the knife jerked from her thigh without thought. The blade landed against his throat as he kept that hand on her forearm and grunted, "Stop f*cking trying to kill me."

Jill lowered the knife and breathed, "Sorry, habit."

He understood that kind of habit all too well.

His hair was singed around his face, making the perfect shag look black in places and crispy. His left eyebrow had a burnt spot in the middle, and soot and smears of something worse slid down his face. He looked ok otherwise. Soaked but surviving.

They both panted, watching the building burn.

Softly, she whispered. "We got nothing."

Leon returned, "We got plenty."

He let go of her forearm and limped away, steadying himself until he could sit on a stump overlooking the flames. Jill mused, "You got something off that computer?"

"That one and the one in the lobby."

She'd forgotten he'd put a USB drive into the lobby computer. He must have done the same in the lab while she'd stood there staring like an idiot. Jill studied him where he hunched around himself, texting something on the device in his hand. She wondered, "You ever seen anything like that?"

He shook his head, "Not all in one place. That was a goddamn carnival of horrors."

Jill glanced back at the burning building. "You sure that blowing it up will work?"

He shook his head again. "Nope. But can't hurt."

"f*cking bastards," Jill breathed with a fine trembling of rage, "you see how many f*cking kids were in there?"

"Yeah," Leon leaned back a little and rubbed a hand over his face, "didn't think you could turn kids."

She made a slight sound of distress. "Me either. They've found a way."

'Yeah," he exhaled again and groaned lightly in pain, "and a way to transmit the virus via water."

Surprised, she looked at him. "Like T-Abyss?"

His hair shivered as he denied that. "T-Abyss was probably a baseline. This wasn't that. This...it's plagas based or combined with it, or something. And the data on the computer...it looks like it's meant to be spread by drone or something. Land or sea, sky or earth. It doesn't matter. Bugs, from the looks of it, can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime. My guess is a two-front assault - first the water, then the drones. This way, you can't even escape it - you drink, you turn, you die. You run, you get hunted down by a f*cking killer mosquito, and you die."

"They're breeding, right?"

Leon glanced at her, his eyes silver in the flickering firelight, "Looks that way."

"Breeding f*cking monsters," Jill released a heavy sound of horror and rubbed at her tired face, "Should be a limit to what madness assholes can make."

"They infect, they mate, they grow in tubes when all else fails - natural selection and unnatural at its best."

Jill glanced again at the burning building. "Sick f*cks. Stupid, sick, twisted f*cks."

Leon gruffed quietly, "...yeah. And these are the people we think are out there trying to save the world."

"They're not," Jill returned dejectedly, "they're just trying to make it theirs."

Sirens slid against the swirling night, and Jill encouraged, "We should go. Now. They catch us here; not even diplomatic palm greasing will keep us from the inside of a cell tonight. And I don't want to be anywhere these f*ckers might have the leverage to interrogate us."

"Right," Leon intoned, "Let's move."

He started to rise and told her, "Campsite about three miles due east of here. Abandoned for repairs but operational. We can hole up there until I secure a good evac or safe house."

Jill nodded. "Yeah. Great. Let's do it."

They started through the woods, slowly but steadily. He limped, but he moved well even hurting. They were silent as they went, both reflecting on the horrors they'd seen. After a good trek in the dark, Jill finally offered, "You were f*cking aces back there."

His voice came back to her, sounding strained and gravely, "Thanks. You listened, which is all I can ask for. I appreciate that."

"Sure," Jill glanced over her shoulder at him, "I did pairs missions for years, so I'm ok with taking the side seat provided the lead is right."

When he said nothing, she added, "You were right. I was distracted by that sh*t. But you kept it together...you saved our lives."

He shrugged, face looking pale in the moonlight, "It's what I do. No thanks necessary."

"You ok?" He looked too tired for what they'd gone through. Sure, they'd taken a dive and done some running, plummeting into the water had sucked, too - but that wasn't he worst he'd ever been through. She wondered what was amplifying it on him because he looked in too much pain for that.

Leon grunted, "Good as gold, sweetheart. Don't I look it?"

She started to answer, and he grabbed a tree beside him, staggering, nearly going to one knee. Worried, Jill turned back, rushing to catch him as he almost tumbled forward. Her arms gathered around his chest, and the vest clunked with magazines against her as she urged, "Whoa whoa, whoa...what is it?"

The second her hand slid across his back, she felt it. The vest was split from the left shoulder to the right hip. It was hanging on by threads. Her fingers slipped through warm blood and looked black in the darkness. He'd been bleeding this whole time.

Shocked, Jill gasped, "Oh my god, how bad?"

Leon soothed, "Doesn't really hurt."

"So, bad," Jill decided and tucked his arm over her shoulders, "Ok. How far?"

He muttered, "Less than a half mile."

"Ok. Hold onto me; I'll get us there."

He wasn't sure why, but for some reason, he believed her. They'd become unexpected partners in this mess, but it was working for them so far. So, he leaned on her and let her lead the way. With little choice and a whole lot of faith, he put his trust in a woman who'd been the weapon of a madman, and he never once doubted she'd see it through.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

III:

Hero

Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

He sagged a little as they moved, but he held on. Her arm around his waist was kept warm by his blood. It wasn't a good thing. He was heavily sagging on her by the time they reached the campgrounds. She walked him to the camp counselor building and up the few steps to a porch.

When she tried the door and found it locked, she leaned him against the railing, and he remarked, "Want me to kick it in?"

Jill gave him a droll look. "Please. Have we met?"

She sank to one knee and picked the lock in a handful of seconds. A little loopy, Leon laughed, "Right...the master of unlocking..."

Jill came back toward him. "Come on, tough guy, let's get you inside."

She shouldered him through the door and toward a set of cots to one side of the room. He blurted, "sh*t. Is the room spinning? Am I drunk?"

She laughed lightly. "Are you?"

"Might be," he decided as she sat him on the cot, "Where's my flask?"

"You have one?"

"Yep. Left back hip."

"Good," She took it off his belt and unscrewed it. Tipping it to his lips, she commanded, "Drink it."

He did. A good swallow. It burned and made him sigh. Then she took it away, and he complained, "Hey...mine."

Jill rolled her eyes. "I need it, you lush. Sorry."

"...women." Leon leaned to the side against the wall, and his eyes fluttered closed, "always taking my sh*t."

Jill's voice floated around him as he drifted toward sleep. "Must've known some real bitches then."

"..mmm.." he agreed, "...mostly bitches."

"Sad story," her voice soothed as her hands rustled his body. He felt her take his vest, sliding it off his front like it was nothing. He felt her peeling his shirt off the same way after a whisper of the knife slicing the back open.

She guided him to his face on the cot. He went, nearly asleep, feeling her fingers probe his skin. It felt good, relaxing, almost like a massage. The cot shifted as she joined him on it, straddling his hips and butt. Woozy, Leon slurred, "I like a woman on top."

Her voice slid against his ear as she shifted his body around some more and mused, "...then you're gonna love this."

She dumped the whiskey on his back. The pain was sharp. It was immediate. It hurt so bad he reared up from his face on the bed to find she'd bound his hands to the wrought iron frame above him to hold him down. Leon jerked, cursing with pain, and Jill commanded, slapping his denim-clad butt between her thighs, "Be still, princess, this party just started."

When he bucked to try to dislodge her, she snapped, "I mean it, Kennedy. Hold still, or I'll f*ck this up."

Leon stopped fighting to get her off him and grunted, "If you're gonna tie me up and hurt me, at least buy me dinner first."

She chuckled, amused by him. She'd heard he was funny. He was, one-liners and bad jokes aside, he'd kept cracking them as they'd made their way to the lab. He was droll, sure, but it worked to ease the boredom anyway. It was an interesting change from having partnered with Chris for so long who, it seemed, didn't understand how to joke if you'd thrown the entire cast of Saturday Night Live at him and told them to improvise. Sure, Kennedy's jokes tended to be as flat as old beer, and mostly annoyed instead of amused, but she had to appreciate the effort anyway. Like tossing a whoopie cushion into a room full of praying nuns- inappropriate as hell, but worked to break the tension.

Jill laid her left hand on his shoulder and warned, "It's deep. I gotta stitch some of it."

He jerked again. "No. No. You kidding!? No thanks, bro."

She shoved him back to his face. "Be still, you big baby. You want to bleed to death before help gets here?"

He bitched, "...f*cking satan's hairy ass crack...just do it."

Mouth twitching, Jill pulled the skin together and used the First Aid kit she'd found in the cabin to start suturing him up. He jerked, he flinched, but he kept still for the most part. As she wove the needle, Leon grunted, "...it burns like your piss after f*cking a whor* - blow on it."

Jill rolled her eyes. "It spreads the germs doing that, idiot."

"Goddamnit, Valentine, I'm gonna start fighting you in a minute if you don't help me here." His back was trembling, his body shaking like he couldn't control it, signaling he wasn't lying, "I mean it, woman...blow on it."

She leaned down and blew her breath along the line of his wound. It was stupid. It wasn't hygienic at all, but it helped. He stopped shaking so much. He went still as her breath stopped the worst of the stinging. He actually sighed, "...Jesus...that's good. I can't believe I have a beautiful woman atop me blowing on me, and it hurts this f*cking bad."

Jill's mouth twitched again. "Pervert."

He grunted. "Not pervy, just true."

After a moment, he went still. She watched his corrugated sides expand and contract to tell her he'd fallen asleep. She finished stitching him, covered the wound in antibiotic gel, and bound it with gauze. When he didn't fight her, Jill untied his hands let them lie above his head. His face was turned to the side, the burnt edges of his hair looking sad somehow against his tired face.

She climbed off his butt and moved to wash her hands in the sink of the kitchenette. Then she set about securing the cabin until his evac arrived. While he slept, she sat in a chair and watched him. He was all muscle. From shoulders to hips, there wasn't an ounce of fat on him. There were scars, but that wasn't surprising given the life he led.

She thought about that time she'd met him. Even there, he'd been different, odd, a stand out amongst suited penguins. He'd been in blood red button down with a black tie - a splash of scarlet against a void of color. She'd listened to him lecture - found him engaging, direct, and no bullsh*t. He advocated the cause, outlined his plans, and he gave his report.

He was, without a doubt, made for what he did. He charmed. He encouraged. He led by example, demonstrating he knew his enemy with slides and data about each image he showed. He roused the room with his inspired call to arms.

He wasn't Chris, he didn't use fear to bring those to the fight beside him. He used common sense, and boatloads of truth. He shook hands, smiled, and turned men and women alike with just the dedication and drive he radiated like an aura around him.

They'd shaken hands, and Leon's first words to her had been, "I didn't expect a legend to be so beautiful."

She'd rolled her eyes, mouth twitching. "I didn't expect one to be so unprofessional."

Leon had chuckled. "What? The shirt? Life's too f*cking short to dress like it's a funeral every day."

Intrigued, Jill had mused, "I meant the flirting."

He'd cast her a look and smirked, "Was I flirting?"

"Weren't you?"

"Not really," He'd shrugged, "Life's also too short not to compliment something when it looks good."

"A big believer in taking your shot, I assume."

He'd leaned down enough to speak beside her ear over the din of the rest of the agents around them, charming her against her will. "Why not? My life is all about hedging my bets. Telling a woman she's beautiful? That's the safest bet I've made all day."

Jill had rolled her eyes again, and he'd offered, "How about I get you a drink and show you the difference?"

"Between?"

"Between an offhanded compliment and flirting."

She'd snorted and returned, "No thanks, bro," making him laugh as she left him standing there.

They hadn't spoken much after that, too busy doing their circles of the room to drum up support for the organizations. But before he'd left, he'd sought her out for just a moment and invited, "So, how about that drink?"

Jill had shook her head with a smirk. "No, thanks."

"Some other time then," he'd answered, and he'd lifted her hand to his lips to kiss the back of it.

She'd advised him, "You're wasting your time, Mr. Kennedy. Fair warning."

He'd shrugged a shoulder, unflappable, and decided, "Never a waste to take a night away from this, Ms. Valentine. If you ever change your mind and just wanna do that, give me a call."

She let him kiss the hand, amused more than annoyed. It had been a long time since anyone had bothered to flirt with her. It wasn't like she avoided romance, she just didn't bother to chase it, either. There simply wasn't time for it in her world. And usually, the circles she ran in were full of people she knew professionally and wouldn't dare cross the line for anything that might fall apart and weaken those ties.

It was, admittedly, nice to take a moment and let a handsome man remind her she was also a woman under the warrior.

She'd gone out the window to save Chris not long after that, ending the warrior, the woman, and the legend he'd jokingly called her. After waking in the hands of a monster, she'd had most of herself eroded under the sheer force of Wesker's will. How she managed to hang onto who she was might have been a testament to her own iron resolve, but mostly it was just survival. She refused to give up, die there, and let him own her.

He might have controlled her body, but her heart...her head...those were her own. They were Jill Valentine. And Jill Valentine was made of more than limbs and legs and fingers formed into weapons against her will.

She'd heard he'd suffered in Spain under the control of the plagas. She knew the charming guy she'd met at the convention had come back harder, darker, more determined somehow under a layer of near defeat. Surviving infection tended to do that to you, left you a little haunted, a little fractured, and forced you to fill in the cracks of yourself with whatever it took to keep going. Whatever he'd survived in Spain, it had taken him from a boy who'd once held a badge to a badass whose name was whispered with reverence in every circle they shared and those they didn't.

He was the guy who wouldn't die. No matter where they sent him, he came out covered in blood but victorious. The redshirt suited him then, it would suit him now - red, the color of passion and death - somehow intricately linked, somehow complementary. Inexplicably, he had a penchant to survive and save those who needed him. She suspected the plagas infection had done for him what the T-Virus had done for her - taken a mere mortal and boosted him to something not nearly so human.

Curious, she pulled up the tape on the bandage on his back to check his wound. It was already a little less ragged, a little less inflamed, a little less deadly. And the answer she was looking for was clear as day on his flesh.

Jill fell asleep in the chair, watching him, oddly comforted by his presence. Because right here, at this moment, she wasn't alone anymore. She was betting Leon Kennedy understood what it meant to be an outcast by choice, a pariah by design, and a freak by circ*mstance. Maybe they had more in common than anyone else in their field for it.

She came awake huddled on the floor with his arms pinned around her. The panic nearly sent her into a manic state to be confined until his hoarse voice declared, "Easy. Easy. It was a nightmare. It's ok. I gotcha."

Was it? Had she been having one? She did, though her brain often shut down the truth upon waking. She had them. Oftentimes, she'd wake somewhere beside her bed to find herself hiding in corners and half concealed under the bed itself. Apparently, even at rest, her mind still tried to save her from the things it didn't want her to remember.

Her legs were curled under her, her arms pinned against his chest and hers, his wrapped around her back to hold her against him. He had a set of nail marks looking raw and ugly down the left side of his neck, proving she'd hurt him without meaning to. And just like in that sewer, he hadn't hurt her back, he'd just stopped her from hurting him. Voice cracking, Jill offered, "I'm sorry. I'm ok. I'm ok now."

He shifted his face to look at her. Their noses brushed. His voice was strained from smoke and survival, "You sure? I can keep holding on until you are."

He was compressing her central nervous system by applying pressure across large parts of her torso and body. It was a survival technique, often use to stop outbursts among trauma victims or autistic personalities, and it worked like a charm. She was calm in his arms once she let go of the latent need to panic.

Jill nodded rapidly. "I am. I'm good. I swear. Are you?"

He released his hold enough she could reach around his back to touch his bandage. It was dry, showing it hadn't leaked through while he'd slept. It looked like they were hugging on that floor, and maybe they were, but not exactly. Leon murmured, "I stink like sh*t, but I'm alive."

Jill's mouth twitched. "You smell ok."

He snorted. "You liar."

He smelled like smoke and lake water. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't the worst thing she'd ever smelled, either. So, she'd meant what she said - he smelled ok.

He rose up, and he offered her a hand to do the same. She took it, figuring it wasn't a time for feminism to rear its head and reject him. Jill circled around his back to look at it. She peeked under the bandage again and announced, "Looks good. Healing...fast."

Leon grunted. "I do that."

Jill nodded. "Me, too."

He crossed the cabin to steal a camp counselor t-shirt in gray from the wall of them behind the counter. Slipping it on, it clung to him like a second skin, showing every muscle. His biceps bunched as he knelt and started relieving his vest of its magazines. With some regret, he remarked, "Damnit. This thing was custom made."

Jill's mouth twitched. "Can it be fixed?"

"It's trash," he decided and rose to steal a backpack from the same wall with the camp logo emblazoned across the canvas. He poked the spare magazines and the ruined vest into the pack and started to sling it on his back.

Jill grabbed it and offered, "Let me."

Head tilted, Leon smiled. "I'm ok, Jill."

Jill took the backpack and slung it on. "I know that. But no reason to piss off that wound. You cover us, let me play pack mule."

"Why not?" He joked with a smirk, "Women do that, right? That's women's work."

Jill gave him a deadpan look. Leon winked at her and had her rolling her eyes. "...men."

He chuckled, eyes sparkling under his butchered and burnt hair. "That's my line."

Jill said nothing as she crossed to the door of the cabin. He added, "There's a drop site about a mile from here. Should have a car on-site for use. The safe house is set up on the back side of the island. We'll hole up, and I can get you where you need to go once we're there, and it's all clear. "

Jill tilted her head. "Any reason why they're keeping us off radar?"

Leon held the door as they crossed through it to the early dawn in the dirty sky. "The cameras at the lab got us, Jill. Full display, full body - right now, those images are being broadcast over the wrong networks to the worst possible people. We need to lie low until the heat is off."

Jill considered as they walked. "Is that a fire joke?"

He glanced at her over his shoulder and smirked. "Inadvertently."

Jill sighed as they moved. "I never considered the cameras. We should have disengaged them before we went in."

Leon returned, "I tried at the console in the lobby. But apparently, even my superb hacker skills weren't enough to crack the program. So, instead, we lay low and let the government clean the slate for us."

"They're ok with covering up for me, too?"

"Sure," he answered, "I told them I'd deputized you."

Jil blinked. "You what?"

"I told them I deputized you to work with me. So, now you're sorta a confidential informant and specialized liaison to the DSO. Welcome board."

"They were ok with that? Knowing who I am?"

Leon shot her a look as they eased down an embankment. "And who is that exactly?"

"The butcher of Kijuju."

He paused as she passed by him and watched her move, and she added, "The scourge of Africa."

"Are you?"

Jill snorted. "Of course, I am. I killed hundreds of people under Wesker's command."

Interested, Leon followed her. "Not by choice."

"Doesn't matter," Jill muttered as they walked, "The blood's on my hands. I wouldn't think I'd be all that trustworthy as a CI."

Leon was quiet for so long, she had to glance back to be sure he was still there. "You ok?"

He caught up to her in two strides and paced beside her before he spoke. "What's your number?"

She blinked. He caught her arm to halt her when she kept moving forward. Jill flicked a look at the hand and then back at his face. "What?"

"What's your number, Jill? Dead- your body count- what is it?"

Jill chewed her bottom lip before she answered. "Eight-hundred and eleven."

Leon nodded. His face didn't change. He kept that hand on her arm and returned. "Mines five times that."

He let go of her arm. He started walking again. Jill hesitated, blinked, and hurried to catch up. "It's different."

He said nothing. She hurried again to keep pace with him. When he didn't even say a word, she did, "Damnit, Kennedy, it's different."

After a second, Leon demanded, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why is it different? They're still dead. I killed them. The only difference I see? I did it of my own free will."

Jill gnawed her lip again. She fell behind once more, because his legs were just that much longer, and he was moving like a man on a mission. She called to him, "Hold up, goddamnit, you're too fast."

He slowed his stride. She caught up and told him, "You were trying to save people, Kennedy. Not sent in to slaughter. That's the difference."

He stopped walking. He turned to face her, "Was I? How do you know that?"

Jill shifted where she stood. "You're the guy they send to save people. That's why."

"What's my nickname? What do they call me?"

She hesitated before she murmured. "The Executioner...but that's just jealousy talk, Kennedy. Because you're so good at what you do."

He shook his head, denying that. He started walking again. "No. It's because usually, by the time I get there, Jill, the body count is already too high for anything but sanitation. I'm the clean-up crew. I go in and waste those who have no hope. I save who I can, sure, but otherwise? I'm just there to limit the fallout. The only thing I can do to make peace with what I'm there for is to tell myself that I'm giving them mercy. Mercy, Jill. That's how I sleep at night, by convincing myself I couldn't save them anyway, so at least this way - I can give them peace."

Jill fell into step behind him again.

As they reached the road, she caught sight of a motorcycle lingering there. Apparently, the car he'd been expecting wasn't a car at all. He strapped the backpack to it and told her, "Mercy or not, they're still dead. And I killed them. Most of them were still half-human when I finished them off. And let's not forget the number of lab geeks and mercs I wasted along the way. So..."

He slung his leg over the sleek machine and announced, "Don't expect me to judge you for something beyond your control. Because I had your body count covered three weeks out of training for this job. And no one had to stick a device on my chest and pump me full of sh*t to get me to do it."

Jill hesitated to get behind him on the bike. Finally, she returned, "Look me in the face and tell me you really had a choice."

Leon kept watching the horizon. "I had a choice, Jill. I could have run."

"Look at me."

He did, reluctantly. She eyed him. "I know how these outfits work, Kennedy. I know what they did to get you to serve them. You can pretend you were operating of your own free will all you want, but I know what it means to do what you do, and what it costs to do it."

He shook his head. "I could have gotten out if I tried hard enough, Jill. I didn't. I stayed. I'm still here. Because even though I know what I am, even though I know what I've become - I gotta believe it's all worth it. It has to be. Otherwise, what the hell are we doing here?"

Jill studied his face. "...I don't know."

"Me, either," He patted the back of the bike, "but it's gotta be worth the loss. So, stop beating yourself up over it. Let it drive you, but don't let it own you. Or you end up lost and looking for answers - and trust me when I tell you, you won't find any that fill the void."

Just like that, he got it. He understood. She was her own worst enemy. She'd been hating herself for so long she'd forgotten that maybe not everyone did. She'd never stopped to consider that maybe, just maybe, the rest of the people understood her and forgave her.

Because she couldn't forgive herself.

All she was trying to do was atone for what she'd done. But here he sat, telling her you couldn't, you just had to keep going. There was no fixing it because the damage was done. All you could do was keep pushing toward that goal, that thing that drove you, that thing that made you fight. Sometimes it was the greater good, sometimes it was absolution, sometimes it was just sheer revenge - but whatever it was, it had to be enough to fill those cracks she'd been thinking of earlier.

And it had to be enough to keep you whole to do it.

Jill swung her leg over the bike. She took the helmet he offered her and slipped it on as he did the same. Leon gunned the engine, her arms wrapped around his waist, and she was careful to avoid pressing against his back too hard, and they shot off into the rising sun.

That was the thing about the darkness that haunts us, Jill thought as the bike whipped expertly down the road, one way or the other, the dawn always came. It was up to you how you decided to exist in the shadows left behind when it left. All she had to do was find a way to do it.

And maybe, just maybe, she could learn that from the guy in her arms.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

IV:

Confessions

Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

Jill stood watching the water on the craggy rocks below. The damn safe house was the oddest thing she'd ever seen. It was accessed through a f*cking tree stump that took you down and into a tunnel. You transversed the tunnel and came up on a jutting piece of land off the main island. The fact that it existed, like a James Bond special hideaway, proved that something worse than she'd even thought was happening in Witch Haven.

The cottage itself was secured in the endless forest on the chunk of broken-off island. To get to it, an average person would need a boat or helicopter out and then rappel down. At first, she'd been surprised they didn't just flee the island together, but hiding under their noses in plain sight was actually wiser. This way, Leon could still observe what was happening on the mainland, but no one would assume they were close by.

The forest backed to the cliffs, and you could smell the salt and the sea air, hear the cry of gulls, and know you were sequestered like the Swiss Family Robinson on your own chunk of paradise or your own self-enforced seclusion. Either way, it was beautiful. Leon switched from badass agent to knowledgeable survivalist when they arrived, proving it wasn't his first rodeo with being in hiding post-mission.

He tucked the motorcycle after they emerged from the tree trunk route behind the cottage and covered it with leaves and branches to obscure it from aerial view. The cottage itself was more of a hut, covered in the same foliage, looking from the air like a cluster of trees instead of a habitat. If you could even glimpse it through the dense foliage of the surrounding forest, you'd just assume it was a glade. There was nothing on this chunk but mountainous terrain and trees, no shops, no people, no humanity at all. No one would live here. There wasn't any reason to.

Unihabitated was the best way to hide out.

Leon came back daily from his excursions with rabbits or other various animals for eating. He was as good with a bow as he was with a blade or a gun. Effortless. He cooked and cleaned them like a man who knew what he was doing. There were enough dried goods in the hut to keep them fed for months. They'd been here for a week now and were getting along just fine. There'd been spare clothing in the cabin, nothing fancy but functional and clean. You could bathe out back under the bucket-based well water system when you were dirty or head down to the water, and let the salt cleanse you as you waded in the ocean. There was toothpaste and soap. There were dog-eared books stacked in a corner for entertainment and an old crank-style phonograph with records for listening to music. There was a generator for electricity if they really needed it and enough gas to keep it going for a while.

She'd existed in Africa under Wesker with less. It was rustic here, but it was safe and clean. She wasn't a woman who bitched about surviving.

He sat now at the small two-seater table, cleaning the crossbow.

Jill glanced away from her view outside of the window to look at him.

He was shirtless, his bare chest glistened from a recent shower as his arms bunched nicely with each movement. The fine sprinkling of hair over his pecs and trailing down his taunt stomach was just enough to add texture to all that supple skin. She'd cut his hair for him that first night they'd arrived, snipping away the singed ends and leaving him looking less like a rockstar and more like a mortal.

It was still long enough that he kept tucking it behind his ears as he worked.

After the third time, Jill came toward him and, stepping behind him in the chair, scooped his hair back from his face to secure it with a hair tie. Amused, Leon glanced at her, "You give me a man bun?"

Jill's mouth twitched. "Just helping you. Why not just let me cut the whole mop off?"

He tilted his head, his face somehow even more handsome without all the hair to hide it. "Why?"

"You don't need it," she declared and moved into the living area to scan the records they had, "it's just another shield to hide behind."

Leon paused, watching her. "You don't know me well enough to make that kind of remark."

Jill shrugged. "Don't I? I dyed my hair dark and chopped it off the second I was back on dry land after Wesker. I did it to prove I'm still me. I'm guessing you hold onto that same hairstyle to prove you're still you - the cop who'd once promised he'd serve and protect. We always use our hair and change it in order to prove something."

Leon considered her as she selected a record and set it on the phonograph. "...f*ck."

Jill tossed him a look, "What?"

"...nothing," he chuckled, "I don't like being that transparent, I guess. I don't know if I was actively meaning to do that, but you're kinda right. It's the one damn thing I can control, I guess."

Jill nodded. "You betcha. Same for me, and trying like hell to pretend I'm still the same person."

Leon studied her. "Aren't you?"

She cast a look at him and laughed. "Ha...no. Not even close."

He kept on looking at her. "You look the same to me. Like..not even an extra wrinkle."

Jill set the needle down on the record, and Vivaldi's Four Seasons filled the cabin as she told him. "The T-Virus retarded the aging process."

He sat for a moment, just looking at her. And then, he whistled low and laughed. "Look at you, the fountain of youth in the flesh. Forever...what...twenty-three?"

Jill rolled her eyes. "Yeah, it's really awesome. Everyone else will age and die, and I'll still be here, preserved like a mummy - never able to escape the mortal coil."

Leon pursed his lips. "Most women would pay their entire life savings for that."

Jill gave him a cool look. "Sure, and all I had to trade for it was any hope for a normal life. Totally worth it, man," she affected a rich woman's crusty accent, "who needs Beverly Hills when you can live forever?"

Leon started cleaning the bow again. "Hmm. Are you sure you're not aging at all?"

Jill shook her head. "Nothing. I woke up in that tank and underwent so much testing. Wesker was impressed that I wasn't preserved just by the activation of the T-Virus to save my life but by the initial infection. Apparently, once you've got it, you've got it forever. Like herpes."

Leon smirked, "Eternal STDS."

"Yippee," Jill muttered with a tone of resentment, "Lucky me."

He paused, watching her. The music swirled around her, and still, she stood apart from it. Quietly, he admonished, "You are lucky, Jill."

She tossed a look at him filled with reproach. "Please."

"You are," he affirmed, "you lived. You made it back. You're a little bitter and kinda bitchy, but you're here. Maybe there's something to be said for that."

Feeling chastised, Jill held his eyes. "You trying to shame me?"

He chuckled. "Not entirely. But I'm trying to get you to realize I've been there - lost, hopeless, wishing like hell there was another option. Alone. Lonely for it, and put there by my own choices. What happened to you wasn't your fault, Jill, but what happens now? It is. Don't make my mistakes, don't ostracize yourself by choice."

Jill flicked her eyes over his face. "Why are you alone?"

Curious, Leon tilted his head. "Why?"

"Yeah, why?" She moved her head back and forth like a dog, "Objectively, you're attractive. You're a little bit of a clown, but girls like that. You sit there with more muscles than Superman and fight like him too. You could have a wife and a couple of tater tots. Why don't you?"

Leon set the bow down on the table and leaned back in the chair. "That's easy enough."

"Is it?"

"Sure," he shrugged, "You love something, you can lose it. I don't like to lose. So, instead...I set myself away from anything I might risk."

Jill laughed sarcastically, "So...a coward at the core."

Leon smirked. "Seems that way. But it's my choice. What about you? You could give this up and do the same. Marry, make a life. Why are you still here?"

Jill shrugged. "Why else? Atonement. After that, it's a promise I made to myself that I'd never stop, ever, until it was done."

Leon made a hmm sound. Jill narrowed her eyes, "What?"

"That's part of it," he announced, "but not all of it. What's the rest?"

Jill shifted where she stood. "Nothing is the rest. That's it."

"Hmm," he murmured again and made her narrow her eyes further, "you're a liar, but it's ok. We've got time. You'll tell me the rest eventually."

Jill rolled her eyes.

"If I had to guess," Leon stated conversationally, "I'd say it because you think you don't deserve to be happy."

Jill turned her back on him to leaf through books and said nothing. Leon chuckled lightly. "Yeah. Ouch. Hit that on the head, huh?"

She said nothing.

Lips pursed, Leon teased, "I could make you happy if you want. Right now."

Jill gave him a droll look over her shoulder. "You ain't that f*cking charming, Kennedy. But keep trying."

Leon winked. He chuckled and went back to the bow. He didn't press. And he did seem to flirt almost absently, like a defense mechanism to lighten the mood. She had no doubt if she said yes and jumped on his lap, he'd likely freeze like a deer in the headlights with shock. He hit, but he never expected women to hit back. She was betting he'd sh*t his pants if she did.

Or maybe she was wrong. Maybe he'd throw her down on that table and mount her like a prize pony if she did. God knew it would take her mind off this sh*tty set of circ*mstances.

Curious about it, Jill turned toward him and decided to test it. He was skimming oil over the bow joints when she leaned over his shoulder and eyed the work he was doing. It put her face aside his, cheeks aligned, as she commented, "That's good and clean, I think."

Leon remarked quietly, "Too dirty, and it'll jam. Gotta find that sweet spot."

Jill turned her face a little until her eyes met his, but he was staring pretty hard at the bow as his hands worked. She said softly, "Hmm. I like a little dirt on my weapons, keep them lubed up and ready. Your sweet spot should be a little...dirty."

His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, and his face remained passive, but that quick swallow told her everything she needed to know. She was right. He flirted, but it was almost reactionary, and it wasn't, it seemed, meant to be reciprocated. He was nervous with her this close when they weren't in combat or survival mode.

She was half tempted to push it to watch him scurry back like a scared rabbit, but she'd made her point. No reason to make things tense. She rose from leaning over his shoulder and left him to clean the bow with a quiet, "I'm gonna head down to the water and wash off."

"Cool," His voice was a little hoarse, making her mouth twitch with humor, "Keep to the shadows and shallows."

"Aye, aye, captain, " Jill teased, "remember to hit that sweet spot while I'm gone."

The second the door closed, Leon laid the bow on the table and blew out a hard breath. He laughed, shaking his head. Jesus, he needed to get laid. He was sitting here imagining her sitting on his face while he found her sweet spot. Ill-timed, which summed up most of his romantic interests, and totally unintentional on her part. She wasn't even close to trying to flirt with him.

Mostly, she seemed to tolerate him. They got along fine, but he got along with everyone for the most part. He was congenial and cordial and good at reading people. He usually knew which buttons to press to get what he wanted from them. Objectively, Jill was attractive, as she'd said about him. But that wasn't enough to really get his interest.

Beautiful women were a dime a dozen. He could throw a quarter in a street and hit three with one toss. It didn't mean he wanted to do more than look at them like artwork in a museum. He flirted, but that was almost second nature, he did it to charm and persuade them. It got him what he wanted.

It was harmless.

Touching Jill Valentine wouldn't be harmless. Hell, she didn't even call him Leon unless she was surprised. It was always Kennedy. That didn't put them on terms for dating. f*cking maybe, but he wasn't looking for that either.

She definitely wasn't.

He set aside the bow and opened his laptop. The battery was getting low, so he'd have to charge it off the generator soon, but it booted up and found the satellite uplink he needed to view the report he was working on. He didn't want to focus on Jill and f*cking. If he did, he'd get all hot and bothered and have to run into the woods to beat off like a horny teenager.

Instead, he set about trying to connect the dots between the lab and the missing scientist. So far, he wasn't among the dead, which was saying something. Which meant the contact was still in the wind. Finding him was paramount to figuring out what had been happening in that lab. The connections between Arias and that mess were tenuous at best and needed more solid links.

The breeding angle was alarming but not surprising. He'd always assumed someone, somewhere, would be trying it. Nothing like making killer babies from birth. The grotesque abuse of power was pretty typical of bad guys. Jill's horror at it said she was still naive enough to believe there should be a line for how f*cking evil you could be.

Leon had learned years ago that drawing lines for bad guys was a waste of time. Villains loved to just erase them and do whatever they wanted. Trying to fit evil into a box was a fruitless endeavor - it didn't give a damn about rules.

Leon rose from the chair and moved over the clean the wound on his back. It was harder than it should have been. One, he wasn't Gumby or Professor Gadget, so his arms didn't like the angles, and all the yoga in the world wouldn't make him double-jointed. And two -doctoring yourself sucked when it was in a mostly unreachable location.

Leon trying to reach his lower back with his jeans hanging so low on his hips that they were almost falling off when the door to the cabin opened, and Jill admonished, "Here. Before you rip it open reaching. Be still."

He did as she commanded and held still while she went about cleaning his back with iodine. Quietly, she queried, "How is it?"

"Itchy," Leon decided as her fingers trailed over his hip with the cotton ball, "how's it looking?"

"Ok, actually. A little irritated, puffy, but healing nicely - quickly," she eyed him as she brushed the cotton ball above his butt cheek, "do I need to speculate on the why?"

Leon snorted. "No. I think you get it."

Jill nodded. "How long?"

"Spain," he answered as she worked, "Plagas didn't stick around after the removal, but the effects did."

"Hmm," Jill skimmed the cotton ball up his spine, and his skin popped with goosebumps, "regret it?"

"Hard to when I get a cold that lasts half a day and f*cks off," Leon glanced down at her where she worked behind his shoulder blade, "or when I get chucked across a goddamn square sideways into a column and don't even break a bone."

Jill sighed. "Any adverse effects?"

He considered that. After a moment, he answered, "Rage."

Surprised, Jill stopped cleaning to lean over his shoulder to look at him. "In what way?"

"Before, I was broody...after...I was pissed," he eyed her face next to his, "and I couldn't shut it off the same way. It lingered. It festered like a wound. And when it hit, something...activated in me, I guess. It surges through me, and I can punch a f*cking door and not break my hand."

Quietly, Jill asked, "Can you punch a hole through that door?"

He held her eyes, "Depends."

"On?"

"The amount of rage and the thickness of the door. But can I kick it down? Yep. Even most metal doors with enough incentive."

Jill scanned his face. "How about monsters?"

He glanced at her mouth and back at her eyes. "..yes."

"Chris would be so f*cking jealous," she laughed lightly, "All his muscles, and he can't fist fight a goddamn tyrant. I'm guessing you can."

"Don't know about that," Leon returned with a snort, "but so long as it doesn't gut me, I can sure as f*ck try."

"You been gravely wounded since Spain?"

He felt her hand lying flat on his back as she leaned around him to see his face. His mouth turned up at one corner. "Not so far. But not for lack of trying."

"Badly?"

Gruffly, he answered, "I'm still here, so not that goddamn badly."

She tilted her head. "They said you died in Tall Oaks."

He laughed. "Lies. Rhetoric to throw them off my scent. But the thing about that...I was submerged in water with some goddamn monster for...half an hour? I'm a good swimmer, but even Michael-f*cking-Phelps wouldn't be able to be under that goddamn long. It sucked. I coughed up a ton of water...but then I just...kept swimming."

Jill nodded. She admitted, "Under the P-30, I was stabbed in the stomach by a f*cking sword. They twisted it. They tried to gut me. I should have died on the spot. I ripped it out and killed them with it...but...when I woke up on the cot in the lab, I was healed."

Leon held her eyes. Understanding passed between them as she murmured, "...freaks, right?"

His mouth turned up in a smile. "All the best people are."

Jill shook her head. "How can you be so goddamn congenial about it?"

The smile stayed on his face but didn't reach his eyes. "Better than the alternative, Jill."

"Which is?"

"Giving up. I won't do it. I can't," he avowed, "until I'm done."

"When are you done?"

"When they are."

"Who's they?"

Leon's smile turned into a flash of wolfish teeth. "All the ones who think they have the right to kill without discrimination, to murder in the name of science, to destroy for the sake of success."

Jill tilted her head, "You can't fight them all."

"Maybe not," he winked, "but I can damn well keep trying."

He was still smiling as she shook her head and confessed, "I don't get you at all."

Leon chuckled. "Yes, you do. Maybe that's what's so confusing. You get me, you just don't want to."

He was pretty insightful for a noble clown. Jill let her fingers slide down the fresh bandage on his back and murmured, "All done."

Leon tilted his head, "Yeah? How's it look, Doc?"

Jill skimmed her eyes over his muscled back and those hips with the tops of that pert ass peeking from his jeans and muttered, "...you'll live."

"They all you, The Surgeon, ya know." He teased and watched her roll her eyes.

"I heard that," she snorted, "Stupid nicknames. Who comes up with this sh*t?"

"I'm not sure," Leon joked just to make her roll her eyes again, "but they could have at least called me something more flattering...like...Big Long Dong."

Her eyes held his with a measure of sarcasm. "Why not Big Dumb Douche?"

He chuckled and shrugged. "Maybe the cutting-out hearts part of the name doesn't suit you, but the slicing tongue and healing hands do. I appreciate this, Doc."

She waved her hand in the air to dismiss him.

She stepped away while he chuckled. He watched her move to the phonograph while he buttoned his fly. "Thanks."

Jill shrugged, and Leon urged, "I mean it, Jill. I don't know if I'd have bled out without you there."

She shrugged again. "Probably not, but let's not pretend I saved your life. Dead you weren't any help to me."

Leon snorted. "I might have been lame, anyway, if I would have been able to stop the bleeding. You made sure that didn't happen. So, I'm in your debt."

Jill rolled her eyes. "Forget it."

"Why do you do that?"

She glanced over her shoulder, "Do what?"

"Blow it off, reject it."

"I don't need your thanks, Kennedy. So, keep it."

He eyed her and stated, "Leon."

"What?" She turned to look at him.

"Leon. That's my name. It's Leon. You know that. You said it in surprise in the sewer. Why not just call me by my name?"

Jill laughed with frustration. "Does it matter?"

"It doesn't," he crossed his arms over his chest, "and it does. It's another distancing thing. I get it. I do it, too. But I'm curious what happens if you stop doing it."

"I won't, so it doesn't matter." She tucked her hands in the back pockets of her shorts, "we're not friends, Kennedy. We're barely even acquaintances. We're in this together at the moment, but it won't last. When the time comes, I'll go my way, you'll go yours. Why bother to get any closer?"

Leon actually rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, princess. Keep that shield up. No skin off my ass."

He turned to the kitchen to hunt up some food. Jill considered him. He pulled a pot from the cabinet and took some rice from the top shelf. Curious, she inquired, "Why are you offended?"

Leon scoffed again. "Am I?"

"Yes," Jill decreed and smirked, "I can't figure out why you care if I like you."

"Do I?"

She laughed lightly. "You do. But why? I'm one person. Who gives a sh*t what I think?"

Leon paused and glanced at her. He gave her a pitying look that made her shift on her feet. "Is that really what you feel? That no one should give a sh*t what you think?"

Jill turned away to study the books again. "I'm not worth trying to impress, Kennedy. So, waste those charms on some girl that will coo and flirt and fall for you. I'm not looking for any new friends."

Leon laughed with a touch of annoyance. "I wasn't aware I was trying to charm you, Jill, but it's good to know where I stand, I guess."

She said nothing, eyeing the books on the shelf with a flicker of regret. She wasn't trying to push him away, not really. But she didn't want him close either. If she let him close, he'd see the wide empty pity of emptiness inside her where only the goddamn anger dwelled. She was so f*cking mad. Mad, at the years she'd lost, at the things she'd done, at the world for letting her do it, at Chris for failing upward in her absence. At coming back and finding nothing had changed, nothing was better, it was all worse - so much worse- and it wasn't even a struggle, it was a loss. They'd lost while she'd been gone.

They'd lost.

And she'd spent the last few years since she'd come back trying like hell to fix it.

She'd gone out a window to save him, and Chris had f*cking failed in her absence. She'd died and changed nothing. Here she was, still on the losing end of an already lost battle, a pointless peon pushing herself closer to the cliff with the rest of them - still resisting, still denying, and unable to accept it wasn't going to change. They couldn't win. They wouldn't win. It was impossible.

She glanced over her shoulder at the man in the kitchen. He didn't see it was impossible. He didn't see it that way. He just kept on fighting. His urge to change the world for those who couldn't was so f*cking noble. It would get him killed. It was fruitless.

Right?

He shifted and started boiling water. He moved stiffly like a man who'd taken a f*cking scythe to the back to protect someone else. He'd almost blown himself up trying to spare the world what was in that lab. She'd heard he'd been circling the drain not long ago, lost, looking for answers.

What had changed? Why was he back and pushing harder than ever? Quietly, Jill urged, "Can we do this?"

Leon didn't look at her. "Do what?"

"Can we win? With the world against us...can we win?"

He stopped. He turned to face her. And he said, "Maybe not. But if we give up, then we've already lost."

Jill took two steps, stopped, took two more, and stopped. Leon glanced at her feet and back at her face. "It's ok," he gruffed, "it's alright to move forward, Jill. Keep moving forward. That's all you can do."

She covered her mouth with her hand. She had to stop this. She had to stop the overwhelming urge to talk to him. It burned in her throat like vomit, verbal diarrhea trying to come up and regurgitate all her fears and worries on him until he collapsed under the weight of it. He hadn't known her before. He didn't care who she was then. He saw her now, here, at this moment - a woman with regret like a cloak around her and with emptiness covered in rage in her heart. She tried to ape being who she'd been. She tried so hard. But it was all lies - smoke and mirrors, a fractured face in the busted glass looking back at her, judging her.

Like she judged herself.

But not him.

He didn't judge.

She wanted to feel some of that hope he still carried in his heart like a tiny flame, flickering, seeking oxygen to keep burning and burst into a wildfire that consumed the world.

She wanted to feel it.

She just didn't know how.

Her voice came out before she could stop it. "I don't know how."

Something on his face echoed with understanding. Not pity, no, but sheer and simple empathy. He looked her in the eye and said, "You just do it. One goddamn step at a time. And if you end up two steps back, you keep on trying."

"Did you?"

Her voice was so small. But the question so large. So important. Maybe the most important one she'd ever asked of another.

Leon nodded and returned, "I'm still here. I'm still fighting. So...sometimes that's as good as it gets."

Jill nodded rapidly in response. She inhaled slowly and centered herself, she closed her eyes to do it. When she opened them, both shades of blue held until he offered in a husky tone, "Hungry?"

And she nodded again with a tremulous smile. "Sure. And you know what?"

"What's that?"

"I could use that f*cking drink."

His eyes flickered. His mouth twitched. And he returned in a sheepish tone, "Backpack, middle pouch."

She turned. She went to the backpack and opened it, and found a small bottle of whiskey tucked into the folds. She eyed him as she rose, and he confessed, "I gave up a spare magazine for that guy."

Jill laughed roughly. "Wise man."

"Or a stupid one, dealers choice." He turned back to the stove. She moved to get two mugs from the cabinet. It wasn't much, it was just a drink, but it was something more than she'd shared with anyone else in years.

It probably meant nothing...or it might have meant more than he'd ever know. Either way, it was the start of something new for her. And maybe that was how she took that one step forward.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

VI:

Collision

Penumbra - the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Late Summer- 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

In the bathroom, Jill kept staring at her face in the mirror. Some days, she didn't see herself. She saw blonde hair and sunglasses. Everywhere she looked, blonde hair and sunglasses. The only way to stop that was to cover it up.

In her head, she heard his voice, "Even if you escape me, Jill, you'll never be free. I'm inside you now," his lips brushed the back of her ear as he spoke, as they watched her empty eyes in that mirror, "blood of my blood - all that you are...is me."

His blood was literally inside her. The P-30 made from it, laced with it, tethers of control and slavery. It was how he was able to command her - the host shared blood with the subject to form an unbreakable, unstoppable, unalienable bond. Even dead, even gone - he was still there. She spit water at the reflection staring back at her, and it slid down the glass, obscuring her face, but never the truth.

She'd gotten more from him than just his DNA, she'd gotten the bloodlust that came with that it. Her body had killed and maimed, tortured, and taken. The dark places in her head that offered solace had stared back from the abyss, forsaken. Sometimes, when the despair was deep and endless, she remembered the pleasure she'd hated at killing those he'd deemed a threat. Some had been actual monsters themselves, bad guys brokering bioterror without his permission to rain death on the world at their demand. Some had deserved to die.

But he'd had no right to bring it to them. He'd had no right to force her hand as his instrument. He'd had no right to stand behind her and make it all sound so, so reasonable. "Think of what you've done here, Jill...you've saved lives by taking theirs. The world will be remade into a worthy tribute to the only thing worth worshipping - a benevolent god who deems those who are worthy and those who aren't. Our new world will be filled with the just, Jill. I will be its creator, and you...you will be its shepherd - guiding the flock to their master...guiding them all to their source. Together, we will remake the world as what it should be and purge it of vice and waste."

His lips against the shell of her ear again, whispering, promising, damning. "Together, Jill. As one. Blood of my blood."

She stared at his face superimposed over hers in that mirror and cursed, "f*ck your blood, you dead bastard. I hope you rot in hell."

Sometimes, all she had was that small comfort - if there was a hell, he was there. And she hoped he was burning alive while the souls he'd murdered plucked the flesh from his rotten bones.

Leon caught her one morning through a crack in the bathroom door using something on her hair. It took him a moment to realize she was laying teabags on her roots. His eyes narrowed, studying her. After a moment of confusion, it hit him what she was doing - she was covering up the blonde that had started to emerge from the dark.

Leon tilted his head, unabashedly observing her. He'd heard she'd lost her pigmentation during experimentation. Apparently, the cryotank and P-30 had robbed her of melanin. It left her arctic blonde. She was Elsa from Frozen under all that hair dye and regret.

Without a word, he left the cabin.

Jill was reading through a copy of The Catcher in the Rye when the door opened later. She lifted her gaze, determining, "You've been gone all morning. I was starting to think you'd run for the hills."

Leon smirked as he moved into the cabin and sat a small plastic bag on the counter. "Out here, I'd be afraid of what I'd find in those hills."

Jill sighed. "The girl in me would like to pretend it would be fairies," she swung her legs to the floor and set the book on the little wicker table beside her, "the grown-up version knows those fairies would have claws and fangs."

Leon snorted. He moved into the kitchen area to pour himself a glass of water. Jill studied the bag. "Whatcha got there?"

Without looking at her, he answered, "Mocha Brunette, number eight-seventeen."

Jill tilted her head, blinking. "What?"

"I was guessing on the shade, of course," Leon shrugged as he put the water in the little campsite coffee pot they had, "but I think it'll come out close enough."

Jill narrowed her eyes. "You coloring your hair?"

He answered with his back to her. "Not today." The coffee pot started percolating, making familiar popping sounds as it heated up, "but I thought you might want to."

She froze. She stared at the bag. She was at a loss for words. He'd ventured onto the mainland to buy her hair color. Jill kept staring at that bag until he turned, coffee in hand, and informed her, "I'm gonna head up to my perch."

Jill said nothing.

The cabin door swung shut behind him as he left. She kept staring at that bag on the counter like he'd brought her back flowers. After a moment, her lips lifted into a smile. She covered her mouth with her hand and just laughed even as the tears filled her eyes with gratitude.

The tree rocked a little behind him. Leon offered the second pair of binoculars without looking at her. Jill settled down on her belly and lifted them to her eyes. Her hair was damp but dark again, the faded brown from before and the naked blonde roots covered.

She was once again Jill Valentine. He wondered if she'd ever accept the Jill she'd become. He wondered if she'd ever let go of who she'd been. When faced with her fortitude and desperate grasp on the past, he asked himself - could he? Had he? Would he ever?

They were both still holding on to what they'd lost, like children to toys they didn't want to share.

But the simple gesture of that purchase had gotten her to break even further out of her box. She was up here in his perch beside him, and she never came up. She'd let him in with the dancing. She'd gone out of her way now to be with him.

It was progress. It was good. And it reminded him that it was ok to break that box. Maybe he, too, had been waiting for years to do it.

As they scanned the horizon, they didn't talk. They didn't need to. The lack of words said everything.

And told the story of their growing connection.

"William DaFoe is eating another donut."

Jill turned her binoculars in Leon's direction. This close, his patrician nose looked like the beak of a sandpiper. Jill chuckled at the thought and changed her direction toward where he was looking.

This many days into spying on the workers at the blown-up lab, they had familiarized themselves with faces. There was William DaFoe who was always eating donuts and somehow still, magically, managed to stay slim. There was Rocky, who was always fake fighting the air while he stood guard outside the building. There were Beavis and Butthead, two nerds that laughed a lot as they dug through ashes. But no one, not a single one, that seemed important enough to be the Big Cheese.

Jill studied the donut and remarked, "Hmm. He's changing it up - jelly today."

"I know," Leon returned, "Maybe he got sick of those powdered ones for once."

Jill snorted and scooted a little closer to him as she angled her binoculars more toward the burnt building. Beavis and Butthead were once more laughing as one pulled pieces of metal from the debris. Jill studied the fat one and determined, "Beavis needs to lay off the fried chicken. He's turning into a chunkster."

Leon chuckled, "Maybe he has Dad bod."

"How do men get Dad bod? I mean, seriously, you don't even have the babies. Why do you get fat afterward?"

Leon considered that as he watched Rocky go for a second round against his own shadow. "Sympathetic weight gain?"

Jill snorted.

"Hysterical pregnancy?"

She rolled her eyes.

"Maybe we just get comfortable thinking you love us no matter what."

She lowered her binoculars and glanced at his profile. "Do you really believe that?"

He shrugged. "Why not? I like the idea that someone can love you no matter what."

"Have you ever really seen that happen?"

He surprised her by replying. "Sure. My parents did. I'm glad they died together in that car accident when I was eleven. Because they would have been half alive without the other one."

Jill kept looking at his profile. He didn't say it like it still hurt. He said it like it was just facts. Quietly, she prodded, "Where'd you go after they died?"

"To live with my Dad's best friend." He watched William DaFoe drop jelly on his tie and curse. "Oddly enough, he's the reason I'm in this gig. Retired cop turned C.I.A. director turned President."

Jill blinked twice. Surprised again, she murmured. "Adam Benford was your Dad's best friend."

Not a question - a statement of fact. But Leon answered anyway. "Since the Academy," he shifted his binoculars toward Beavis and Butthead, "He was always a guy who was gonna change the world. Big ideas, big brains, big presence. He kinda took over the room when you entered."

Jill kept looking at his profile as he added quietly, "He'd have been a helluva President...if some asshole hadn't put a bullet between his eyes and ended him."

Softly, after a moment of silence, Jill offered, "...it wasn't your fault."

"Sure it was," he returned, and it sounded so off the cuff. As if it wasn't the most painful failure of his adult life, "It was my job to run security. It was my only job. And the one damn place I didn't look was inside my own men. I assumed absolute loyalty from the Security Service. I was too busy making sure the garden was covered and protected from threats. And the goddamn snake was already in the building."

Jill was quiet for so long. Finally, she remarked, "I didn't know I was playing house with Nostradamus."

Leon finally lowered the binoculars. He turned his head to look at her. The wry lift of her eyebrows had his mouth twitching as she added, "Nice to meet you, asshole. You predicted the world would be over by now. I think you deserve to get your ass kicked for lying."

Leon pursed his lips. He finally let out a chuckle and hip-bumped her where she lay beside him. "Only you would make light of my complete and total disgrace."

Jill shook her head. "You didn't fail anybody. You did your f*cking job. Nobody, Leon, and I mean nobody is omnipotent. When he died, what did you do?"

Leon held her eyes as he muttered, "I hunted down his f*cking killer and put him beside him."

"Exactly," Jill returned in a cool voice, "Exactly. You aren't his f*cking killer. Derek Simmons was. And Helena Harper is serving life in prison for it. You did your job. Stop blaming yourself for what you couldn't control."

She rolled back to her belly and picked up her binoculars. Leon studied her until he finally said, "How in the hell can you say that and not realize it cuts both ways?"

She stopped lifting them to look back at him as she answered, "Because I give good advice, I just suck at taking it."

He laughed. He reached over and tucked a strand of errant hair behind her ear. The humor on her face softened as he murmured, "Makes two of us, Valentine. What a f*cking pair we are."

"Yep," she agreed quietly, "just a couple of assholes still in a fight we have no hope of winning."

"And still trying to catch that forgiveness we probably will never believe we deserve."

She smiled sadly. He echoed it. Into the long silence, she finally cleared her throat and joked, "Jesus, what a couple of sad spies we make. Let's get back to business here."

"Absolutely," Leon teased, "We wouldn't want to miss Rocky's third attempt to fight his own farts."

Jill snorted. Leon took up his place beside her. Their hips bumped and the sides of their legs aligned.

And neither moved away to get more space.

Over the next couple of days, Jill kept following him around to get him to talk to her. She'd needle at him until he spoke like his voice soothed her. He'd try to make conversation, and she'd demure, avoiding conversations that touched too closely to her own past.

Leon finally snapped one afternoon, "Talk to me."

Jill glanced up from the book she was reading. "What?"

"Talk to me. Tell me about you."

"What about me?"

"I don't know," he slapped the dish towel in his hands down on the counter, "Where were you born?"

Jill arched a brow. "New Jersey."

"Ok. The city?"

She shrugged, "Down by the shore."

"Mom and Dad?"

Jill finally set her book in her lap. "Both. Like most kids."

"What did you want to be when you were a kid?"

Jill tilted her head at him like he'd sprouted a second one that was speaking gibberish. "I don't know. Alive? Why?"

He shook his head. He drummed his fingers on the counter. Finally, he snapped, "You don't talk."

"I'm talking right now."

"No," he drummed those fingers harder, "You don't talk about anything that matters. And if you do, it's like you recoil right after. If you reveal anything at all that matters, you panic and retreat. Why?"

Jill pursed her lips. She didn't answer. He demanded, "See? Happening right now. You want me to spill my life story to you, but you won't talk to me. You won't give me anything. Why?"

After a moment, annoyed now with the needling, Jill snapped, "Why do you care? Huh? Why do you care where I came from? What I did? Who I was? Why does it matter? That girl? She's dead. She's gone. This is what you get, Leon." She spread her hands wide and gestured at her body, "This is all you get. The rest is none of your f*cking business. Take it or leave it."

They glared at each other until he tossed his coffee cup in the sink with a clatter and declared, "Fair enough. I'm gonna go keep watch."

He left the cabin. Jill sat breathing hard in the chair. She lifted her book and found her hands shaking. She didn't want him mad at her. She didn't want him upset. She didn't want to talk about what had come before.

Why? Because she wasn't that woman anymore. She'd meant that part. Talking about who she'd been meant admitting she was still in mourning for that version of herself. And she didn't want to mourn what came before. She just wanted to f*cking move on from it.

If he didn't understand that, then they had nothing left to talk about. Everyone was always trying to pry into her past. She wanted it exactly where it was, behind her. She was tired of people looking at her like a broken thing in need of healing. She just wanted to leave it where it was.

But it wasn't like he'd ever pried. He didn't. He just talked. He talked and talked and eased her mind with it. He shared. He made her laugh. He brought her hair dye and danced with her. He was her friend.

He'd become her friend. Maybe her only real one. Because he seemed to accept her as she was. He wanted her to talk to him. He wanted her to share. Because maybe it made him feel a little less alone when she did. He wanted her to purge that sh*t, she knew that, because he was hoping it would purge the poison of a past she couldn't forget.

She wasn't ready. But she was afraid that fear would signal the end of their friendship. She was afraid it would signal the end of whatever they'd found here, in hiding, with each other. She was paralyzed with the fear of that.

She tried to talk to him throughout the rest of the day. He grunted or shrugged. He didn't say anything at all. She tried the next day too. His responses were clipped and short - polite, but never personal.

As he passed by her to head to bed one night, Jill blurted, "I'm sorry."

He paused. He kept his back to her. She tried again, "I'm sorry, " she rushed into the opening, "I'm sorry. I don't know how to do this."

"Do what?"

Softly, she declared, "Be friends. I don't know how to do that anymore."

He glanced over his shoulder and returned, "Don't worry about it. I don't, either. So, we just hang here until this is done and get on with our crappy lives, right? No big deal."

Jill worried, her hands at her waist as he added, "It's ok, Jill. Seriously. I'll see you in the morning."

She stood there after the lights went out, wishing she had the words to just talk to him. But she was afraid of what she might say. And that fear kept her standing there long after the silence closed around her.

The nightmare woke him. Leon gasped, awake, the moonlight streaming into the cabin to cast him silver and shadow. He rubbed at his face, the beard sliding against his fingers. He hadn't shaved since they'd arrived, almost two months now. Two months of waiting it out, watching and learning, and seeing the island settle again after the lab's explosion.

Daily, he could be found in the eagle's nest he also used for hunting, perching up in the trees, eyeing the mainland, and documenting and studying behavior. He'd learned routines and faces, actions and reactions. He could tell the lab was under construction to be rebuilt; he had pictures taken from satellite drones of faces and car tags.

Nightly, he found himself sitting beneath the stars with Jill, talking. He talked of things that mostly didn't matter. Polite conversations and getting to know you on his end with little from her. Small talk, for the sake of sound, when silence was too loud. They rarely talked about important things. She'd been so careful around him to avoid the pitfalls of it.

In wigs and disguises, they occasionally ventured mainland for supplies. They wandered the woods to pick apples and fruits, and Leon would talk about the foliage and relay useless information about their origins. Jill always listened, looking interested, and she was either a good faker or she really enjoyed how his mind could fob off even the most mundane of details.

After their pseudo argument a few days past, things had been tense. They rarely spoke at all now. And when they did, there was nervousness on her side. He was sorry to have hurt her, but he was rapidly coming to care about her so much that he wanted her to feel the same. He wanted her to want to share with him. He wanted her to open up, so he could open up, too. So, he could get closer to her.

He wanted to be close to her, and he hadn't wanted to be close to anyone in years.

Panting, sweating, he lay on his cot where he'd been sleeping and gathered his breath to him. The nightmares always fractured upon waking. They never stuck around to linger with more than feelings and ominous tendrils that tethered themselves to his shaky resolve.

The jingling of his phone drew his hand to the floor to clutch it, lifting it to check the message.

Safety secured. Cleared for duty 0800.

He turned his legs to the side as Jill's slumberous voice asked, "...you ok?"

He glanced at her cot in the darkness and grumbled, "Yeah. I'm good. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

She said nothing, likely already asleep and taking him at his word. He rose, his back aching a little with the movement. He was almost entirely healed now. The scar had formed, puffy and pink, but that, too, would fade with time.

He headed out of the cabin, the scent of sea and coming autumn ripe and robust on the tongue. The leaves rustled as he headed down the mountain to the shore. Some scattered as he walked, falling patterns of gold and green, orange and red - a litany of a bygone era, begging off to the end of summer and saying goodbye to sunny days and cloudless skies. The chill felt good on his clammy skin, reminding him he'd never been a fan of summer anyway.

The heat often left you with brain fog, cloying the mind like cobwebs in a dusty room.

He preferred the rich scent of fall and the promise of coming winter. Winter meant quiet, cold but not dead. No. Just...sleep. Hibernation. A time to contemplate and renew yourself and the world around you. What waited beneath the snow was simply slumbering, looking for the moment the spring would be sprung and the cycle of life continued.

Each step led him closer to the water, which rippled dark and deep in the cloudy night. A grumble from that sky told him rain was coming. But not yet. Not now.

He shed his jeans and slid into the water, and it closed around him like a chilly hug. Still warm enough from the heat of the day to hold a suggestion of summer but cool enough to remind you the nights would soon be too cold for ocean bathing. When his feet lost their rocks, Leon slipped under the foamy waves. They frothed up and around him as he sank, as deep as he could go, down, down, down where the water was black and still - undisturbed- and uncorrupted.

When his lungs signaled he'd gone too far, he surfaced, shooting toward the sky like a bullet. He erupted from the sea, a selkie shedding its skin, becoming a man again after the call of the waves had abated. He circled in the water, his hair streaming around his face, obscuring his eyes from the vast, weeping sky.

Soft rain peppered his face as he floated on his back, eyeing the moon, tucked into her clouds like a woman gathering her lovers to her bosom to hold. She winked at him, silver and flirty, promising pleasure and joy if he just kept looking. He'd been looking at women much the same way all his life. Always with a sense of wonder and delight at the beauty they so mysteriously offered, sometimes in glimpses, sometimes in passing, sometimes in coy flirtation.

On the shore, a voice called, "Tell me."

Surprised, Leon floated downward, bobbing in the water like a cork. Jill was cast in shadow, eclipsed by clouds and moonlight, wearing a tank top in white and matching panties. Pure, somehow, but provocative because of that simplicity that was woman. He watched her and shook his head.

She urged, "Please?"

He waited, feeling the urgency of that request. She always wanted him to talk. She rarely did so much herself, but she was trying now. He shook his head again: no. Jill shifted on the shore, her arms wrapped around herself, looking pensive.

They eyed each other like warriors waiting for the other to strike first.

Without a word, Jill came into the water. It closed around her as she moved. She floated toward him while Leon remained, bobbing, watching her. The water covered that white and turned it nearly translucent. He could see the impression of her nipples when they broke the surface.

She reached him after a few strokes of her lithe arms. Her dark hair streamed around her face as his did. Softly, she encouraged, "Now? Was it bad?"

He shook his head again: no.

A flash of annoyance on her face made his mouth quirk in a smile. Tone tense, Jill demanded, "Talk to me, damn you."

He didn't. He floated toward her. She didn't back away. His hands lifted and scooped the hair from her face. They lingered to thread through her damp locks, and his thumbs angled under her chin, pushing her face up to the moonlight and the soft rain.

He saw the flicker of panic in her eyes a moment before she echoed him. Her hands lifted, slipping through his shaggy hair, curling behind his skull to peel it back from his face. They twisted, anchoring there, thrusting a little bit of pain into his scalp that made his breath catch.

Her tone wasn't gentle now but commanding, "...talk to me."

He shook his head: no. But she caught him in mid-movement and cursed, "Bastard."

It made him grip her tighter, his thumbs digging just a little into the soft place beneath her jaw. She gasped, eyes flaring, breathing coming faster. He pulled her closer, his biceps bunching, her breasts brushing against his chest in that little soaked tank top. He inclined his head toward her, and she tugged gently, almost slowly.

Eyes open, his mouth slid against hers, lips brushing. When his tongue glided out to trace along the seam of those lips, she parted them, and it sank between to claim her. Hers slid out to join it, swirling in her mouth, seeking entrance to his. Wet, like the water, and undemanding, like the winter waiting for spring.

When the kiss broke, Jill gasped, a little madly, "...damnit."

Leon's mouth turned up as they locked and held eyes in the moonlight. She accused, "You son of a bitch - I don't want to want you."

He lowered his mouth to speak against hers, and it was so, so low - like a bear grumbling, "How's that workin out for ya?"

Lips brushing, Jill demanded, "...just don't stop talking to me. Ok? Keep talking."

A wild demand from a woman who'd once told him the sound of his voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Leon rebutted as her eyes fluttered closed, "Takes two, Jill. Two. That's how this works."

And she gushed desperately, "...deal."

They kissed again, mouths brushing and sealing. Each one sunk them deeper, deeper, deeper - like the water around them that was cold but enticing, offering solace and embrace even as it promised endless depths. He had no doubt she was the same - cool, dark, mysterious...inviting him in, deeper, deeper, deeper until he wasn't sure where he ended and she began.

He carried her from the water; Jill locked around him like a vice, holding on as he walked until he laid her back on the patch of warm grass in the grove beside the beach. The canopy of leaves and stars both twinkled and lured, offering lights and privacy, as if they needed it here - away from the world, isolated, and able to lose themselves in the other.

The cold cloth of her tank top slid wetly against his chest as he inclined over her, elevated with his hands beside her head in a pushup motion. Her hands slid down his sides, around his hips, down his ass to draw him between her legs. The soles of her feet slid against his calves, finding purchase while he kissed her, each plunge of tongue and pull of lips more intoxicating than the first, more tempting than the last.

The tank top slid over her head, tossed away into the starlight. The panties drawn down her legs as he freed her, questing his mouth against the inside of her thigh, along the line of her leg, amid the taste of her ankle. His mouth roved as he roamed back up her body, all supple slick hands and sucking mouth and teeth. He swirled his tongue in her belly button and over her hip, down the crease in her thigh, and across her taut ribcage. Full and heavy, her breasts cupped in his palms, spilling over the sides as he mounded them to his mouth to swallow their flavor and feast on her nipples. He buried his face into their wealth, rubbing his jaw and beard over her tender flesh, hearing the whimper of want from her desperate mouth.

Smooth, silky, slipping the skin of battle-hardened warriors to become something more here, sweeter, softer, needy, wild, and free. She tunneled her fingers into his hair to hold him against her breasts, watching his mouth savor and suckle, slickening her nipples until they glistened in the moonlight as if coated in magic. With her breasts so tenderly mounded together, his face slid against them, seeking hers, seeking her mouth. They shared a wet kiss over those ample peaks, his palms and fingers molding her to him, her hands cupping his ass to roll her hips toward the jut of his erection.

When the kiss broke, he lifted, and her right hand ventured over his hip to his groin, dipping against his pelvis to grip his ready dick in her velvety grasp. She milked him, digits delving, tracing, and taunting, along the shaft and the flared hood of him, against the weeping slit. He echoed her, fingers venturing through her folds to find her swollen, slick, and ready. He tested her anyway, dipping his middle and ring finger inside her, thumb swirling lazily against her cl*t. When her thighs trembled, and she gasped wildly into his waiting mouth, he eased his hand away, and she guided his girth into its place.

With little encouragement, he surged into the snug confines of her slick center. She thrust up to take him, hips and thighs pushing, eager sheath claiming. Hilt deep, he held himself there and lifted, looking at her beneath him. Her eyes were open, filled with languid need, locked on his in the light rain and flickering shadows. Two shades of blue by day, two shades of silver by night - both made somehow ethereal in the perfect storybook center of their moment on this island. It couldn't be real. It shouldn't be real. It was too romantic for that. It was too much like a novel written by a woman bereft of passion.

It shouldn't have been so utterly perfect.

And then Leon started moving, and Jill, Jill moved with him, rising, riding, drawing him down into her as he plunged -the rhythm like the ocean behind them, rushing in, retreating, and rising again to leave its mark on the shore. No quick bang; this was a facile, fluid, tender f*ck. He gathered handfuls of her hair to hold her to him; she gripped his ass to force his body in as far as he could go until there was no space between them, no divide, no difference. Her neck craned back for his mouth, his elbows shifting in the grass to find purchase and go somehow deeper, tighter, further...more.

He'd been with more women than he liked to think. He'd flirt and bed them. He'd pleasure and please them. He'd leave in the morning with no regrets. He'd never, in all his time since before Raccoon City, been with one like this. He'd never been with one who held his eyes while they f*cked, and never wanted to see one while he did.

f*ck - a stupid word for this. This wasn't f*cking. He could call it whatever he wanted. He could attach a dirty word to it and try to cheapen it. But it wasn't f*cking. It was more than that—much, much, much more.

And for the first time in his life, he wanted to know what that more was.

When they lay together, curled like two pieces of the same puzzle, he spoke against her ear, "We're in the clear. In the morning, we can go."

Jill clutched him closer, her face against his neck. "Then we go."

Ask me to stay, he thought, ask me to stay with you. Ask me - anything.

She didn't ask, but she didn't let go of him, either, and they fell asleep in the warm grass with no space at all between them.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

VII:

Cassiopeia

Late Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts

They moved in the dark like dancers - perfectly made, perfectly coordinated, perfectly practiced, as if both had been trained to operate in shadows. They had, so it fit, but it wasn't done under the guise of mission parameters - this time, it was done out of regret. The ride back to the island would signal the end of what they'd found here. Neither was ready to say goodbye.

Jill pinned her short hair behind her skull in a sloppy ponytail, the pieces trailing around her ears and nape as the wind kicked up upon her exit from the cabin. She hesitated to put her little knapsack into the saddlebag on the bike. An owl hooted and drew her eyes to the lightening sky above them - pink and blue, mauve and myriad navy mixed with stars. She wouldn't see that sky above a blinding metropolis.

Would she see the same sky as him ever again?

She lingered long enough that the ground crunched to signal his arrival. As the wind whispered, Jill spoke first, surprising them both. "What's this cluster of stars there?"

She angled her finger skyward and felt the air shift as he aligned himself to her back and crouched just enough to follow the line of her pointing. His lips brushed the shell of her ear as Leon answered in a low, rolling tone - even his damn voice sounded like a melody sometimes. "Andromeda," Leon guided her finger around the shape of the stars as he explained, "if you look, you can see she's next to Perseus, the demigod who would come to save her from the Krakken sent by Poseidon to eat her as appeasem*nt for her parent's hubris."

"Hubris over what?"

"They claimed she was more beautiful than all of Poseidon's children. Andromeda's mother, Cassiopeia, chained her to a rock as a sacrifice to save herself and her king."

"Selfish bitch."

Leon chuckled. "Always women that are the ruthless ones in old stories."

"Hmm," Jill felt her mouth twitch, "Is Perseus the other cluster?"

"He is," Leon guided her finger around, "It's said they were cast into the sky upon their death to show endless love and loyalty. Andromeda was pledged to marry another man, but Perseus used the head of Medusa to kill him and claimed her for his own."

Jill pursed her lips. "Seriously? That's romantic?"

He laughed again. "It is...since she loved him, too, they say, and didn't want to wed the other man. Cassiopeia, for her hubris, was cast into the sky beside them, tied to a chair as eternal punishment."

"Good. I hope the chair had a spikes on it."

Leon snorted. "But Andromeda is there, upside down, floating beside him. See?"

"Another story about a man saving a woman."

Her tone was teasing, but his answer - it was why she was afraid she was falling for him. "I think they saved each other."

His softly uttered syllables made her feel somehow sad and moved at once. "She gave him a reason to keep fighting...and he gave her a reason to hold on."

Oh, yeah, she thought desperately; Andromeda wasn't the only one falling.

Jill leaned her face against his gently, almost a ghostlike caress. "...she's falling."

"Maybe you never really stop falling for the right person."

Jill made a soft noise of agreement as Leon added, "I like to think she's eternally floating...suspended forever beside what matters."

Jill turned her head to look at his profile. "You think we really leave anything behind worth remembering?"

His gaze kept following the stars as he answered. "I think it depends on who we've left behind us and what we meant to them."

"What if we leave no one behind?"

Leon glanced down at her face. "There's always time to make sure that doesn't happen."

Jill's mouth trembled. "Right...right." She glanced back at the sky. "Beautiful...sad...but beautiful."

"Not sad," Leon corrected and guided her finger toward the Cassiopeia constellation, "there's more to that one. I'll tell you about it sometime."

Jill leaned her cheek fully against his as he guided her arm down, looped it around her waist, and covered it with his own to hug her from behind. Quietly, she wondered, "And if we never see each other again?"

His chest rumbled against her back. "Then next time you're near a telescope, aim it toward that furthest star in Cassiopeia and zoom in...and you'll remember me for a minute."

He let go of her. Jill lingered as he climbed onto the bike. She hesitated before climbing on behind him. Her arms looped at his waist. She laid her lips against his ear and promised, "I won't ever forget you."

He couldn't hear her; she was sure of that because the bike was roaring as it tore up the road, but she meant it. She'd spent a long time trying to find herself again after her imprisonment. Here, on this island, she'd found some piece of who she'd been and some promise of what she'd become. He'd given that by just treating her like a person. Everyone treated her like a bomb, ticking, ticking, waiting to explode.

He treated her like a woman, not a broken one - just a woman with scars. The healing made sure you couldn't see them anymore, but they were still there, still buried beneath the skin and burned onto the bones. She was branded - marked - marred from torture and survival. He didn't see that; he just sawalive. It was incredible to realize how much they had in common - two people who'd been jerked around, abused, used, and left for dead. Leon was still so hopeful and determined to see it through and see what came next.

She wallowed in that strength next to him and knew she'd mourn it when he was gone.

The bike tucked into a spot at the edge of a forest. Jill reluctantly let go and slid off the bike. She gripped her little knapsack, and there was a clicking of beads that had him turning back to look at her. She offered him the little twist of brown woven hemp and white seashells in her hand.

He glanced at it and back at her face as Jill murmured, "...I made it on the beach one day. I thought maybe..."

When he said nothing, she closed her fist around it and flushed in the pink light of a new day. "Sorry, it's stupid. I shouldn't have bo-"

Leon cupped his hand over hers and tugged her forward. He uncurled her fingers from the bracelet and extracted it from her grip. Pulling the little knotted ties, he slid it over his wrist and offered, "Can you tighten it for me?"

Jill kept her eyes on his arm as she muttered, "You don't have to wear it. It's silly."

"Did you make it for me?"

When she said nothing, his left hand caught her chin and pulled it up so she'd look at him. "Did you make this for me, Jill?"

Voice small, she whispered, "...yes."

"Why?" The gruff question seemed to matter. It echoed on his face. It slid through his eyes like ghosts of what might have been.

Her eyes flickered in the wild red rising sun. "...so you wouldn't forget me."

"...then tighten it for me."

She tightened it. It hugged his skin. It looked small on his muscled arm. He caught the back of her neck and dragged her to him. On her tiptoes, mouth brushing his, he avowed in a husky voice, "...I willneverforget you, either."

So, he'd heard her after all.

Jill surged upward to kiss him. It was heavy, needy, and over too quickly. A chopper tossed wind as it landed in the clearing beyond the tree line. She clung to the straps on his vest for a moment before he told her, "That's your ride, Valentine."

Jill darted her eyes desperately. Finally, she let go of him and settled back flat to her feet. "Thank you, Kennedy. For everything."

With a flicker of amusem*nt and command, he answered, "It's Leon, Jill."

Softly, she admitted. "I know what your name is."

Jill let go of him. He caught her wrist as she headed toward the waiting chopper and pressed a small piece of paper into her palm. When she held his eyes, Leon said, "...in case you ever need me."

I can't seem tostopneeding you.

But her mouth replied, "See you around."

Their fingers slid apart. Her feet carried her forward as she left him behind. Eight steps, ten, twelve -and she boarded that chopper that lifted toward the dawning day. She didn't look down at him on the ground; she was afraid, like Medusa, she'd turn to stone if she did.

Dallas, Texas

At the little table in the corner, two men sat with their heads bowed and their voices low.

Around them, the small bar lulled happily. It was a honky-tonk, for lack of a better word, and flush with rodeo memorabilia, kitschy cowboy tributes, and a fair amount of animal heads mounted like trophies on all the walls. It was horns and heavy-handed decorations made of fur, spurs, and boots. Peanuts littered the floor in an homage to a good steakhouse, and spittoons took up corners for the spit of the average tobacco-chewing badass.

At the table, the two men there were speaking in tones lost amongst the rolling strain of bluegrass country, and the twang of one looked twice at them; no one bothered, no one that milled and laughed, that danced and kicked up their boots, understood the nature of their conversation. Two men with a hidden agenda. Two men with a purpose. Two men with a devious plan.

And nothing to lose.

In the middle of a honky-tonk, a plan was hatched for espionage, and only the watchful eyes of the taxidermy bore witness.

Sangre de Cristo mountain range - New Mexico - early Fall

Sangre de Christo meant the blood of Christ in Spanish. The southernmost edge of the Rocky Mountains branched down into the outskirts of Sante Fe, New Mexico. It was red because of the alpenglow, the light cast upon the world by the greatest spill of gold on the horizon, offering a beautiful hue to the eager when the world went dark and when it rose again to greet the day. It was crimson now as the sun began to set above it.

It was vermillion.

Leon gained the ledge with his left hand, huffing as he mounted the final craggy set of rocks. Sweat slid down his collarbone and glistened on his muscles as he paused to drink a long mouthful of water. Vermillion. His eyes scanned the horizon. The mountains were the color of Jill Valentine's call sign.

He'd thought about her dozens of times since he'd seen her a few weeks before. He'd pictured her face driving. He'd heard her laugh when sleeping. He'd woken to miss the sound of her snoring beside him. This, he thought, was what it meant to long for someone.

His fingers traced the little bracelet of shells on his wrist. It was rapidly becoming a gesture of habit. He did it without thinking, without realizing, and whenever he was looking to settle himself from an errant tangent of thoughts. He did it when he was thinking of her, too.

His gaze turned from the sprawling glory of the mountains and danced over the barren peak where he found himself. A small glimmer in the distance was the camp he was trying to reach. They'd made it so goddamn hard to get there; he was starting to think it was a test of his fortitude.

His boots crunched as he walked, sweat sliding down his spine like a salty tongue seeking the thirsty ground. As he approached the table in the tent's center, Rebecca Chambers met his eyes over the map and files spread before her. "Leon!"

The dulcet sounds of a sprite with the face of a fairy. It made him smile as he approached, "Rebecca Chambers...you wanna tell me why we're meeting in the middle of nowhere?"

Rebecca glanced behind him, frowned, and then glanced to her left and over the rise. "It's obscure, and no one knows we're here. We're hiding out, remember? There's a trail from the canyon that would have made your life easier."

His mouth twitched with a smile. She was right, of course, but he'd opted for the climb. He wanted to purge the need for alcohol with good old-fashioned physical strain. It had worked. He wanted a gallon of water but didn't want a goddamn fifth of whiskey.

So, it was something.

Leon approached her and glanced at the files and maps on the table. "What are we planning here? I didn't know I was coming in on Oceans 19."

Her deadpan look had a grin flashing on his face and disarming her. She rolled her eyes, chuckled, and smacked his arm. "You won't be laughing when you look at this."

She handed him a file. Leon perched his sweaty ass on the table's edge and opened the manilla folder. His grin dropped away as he went, flipping pages and scanning information. He glanced up at her. "You sure about this?"

Rebecca bobbed her dark head. "Oh, I'm sure. They weren't really trying to hide it, Leon. They were just yanking information like they didn't give a sh*t who saw."

"And you think the link comes full circle to Arias?"

Rebecca nodded rapidly. "The threads that Quint could tug on the cyber end found it bounced around servers in Ottawa and then beelined to Nova Scotia and Greenland before finding the root in New York. The thing is...the video we pulled from the cyber cafe where the downloading was happening...it wasn't Gomez."

Leon narrowed his eyes. "Who was it?"

Rebecca tapped the file. "Flip the page."

He did and paused, studying the big violet eyes and pouting lips. His tongue circled his teeth. "Goddamn."

Rebecca shook her head. "Jessica Sherawat. I thought she was dead."

He shook his head, scanning her dossier. "She escaped Jill and Chris on the Queen Zenobia. She went underground after she handed over the virus to her respective buyer. No one's been able to locate her since."

Rebecca sighed and picked up another folder. "I contacted Parker Luciani, who used to work with the B.S.A.A. and the F.B.C. while she did. She basically left him for dead on that ship. He washed up offshore in Malta and returned to work for the B.S.A.A." Rebecca opened the file and passed it to Leon. "He worked with Claire in Sonido de Tortuga during that cannibalism disease outbreak. He was wounded and no longer active in the field, so he retired and took a job at the F.B.I."

Leon scanned the folder. "What do you think he can tell us that he hasn't already?"

Rebecca shifted where she stood. "It was rumored he was involved with Jessica...romantically."

Leon glanced at her face. Rebecca shrugged. "I know. I get it. It's like the rumors about you and A-"

She stopped. His head tilted. She cleared her throat. Leon urged, "S'ok. Finish it."

"-and Ada Wong."

Leon sighed. "I'm not involved with Ada Wong. "Anymore.He added that part silently. He'd had one night with her - just one. That didn't equal romance. His mind stuttered over that. Technically, he'd had one night with Jill, too. So what was the difference?

The difference was he'd never stood beneath the stars and held Ada. He still had both hands and his arms, so that was proof enough that he hadn't even tried. Ada was like a succubus - you wanted her, you let her seduce you, but you lost your soul doing it. He still had his. He'd made damn sure he didn't lose it to her.

He might have...if he hadn't met a goddamn brunette in a sewer and seen the difference between wanting and longing. Or felt the difference between f*cking and loving. It was hard to stand there in the blazing sun and compare Jill and Ada because it was like fire and ice. Both could kill you, sure, but one blazed so fast there was nothing left of you when it was over, and the other...the other left you chipping away at it until it covered your hands, headed up your arms, and covered your heart.

His gaze shifted to Rebecca's face. "Putting aside rumors and speculation, what can this guy really tell us?"

"He might know who she was working with then."

"Which has what to do with now?"

Rebecca slid another folder to him. "Everything," she affirmed as he opened it, "Jessica Sherawat, before she exited the B.S.A.A. via espionage and betrayal, hacked the server archive at their H.Q. She downloaded files - anything related to Raccoon City stored there...including all its survivors on record."

Leon arched his brows. "We're just now hearing about a breach that big? What was that? Oh-five?"

Rebecca nodded. "At the time, Lansdale covered her tracks. It was uncovered during a protocol sweep a few months later, but by then, Jill was in captivity, and the B.S.A.A. had undergone a purge of potentially dirty employees."

"So, the coincidence is too strong to have it be circ*mstantial."

"Indubitably."

"What's Redfield say on the issue?"

Rebecca shifted and studied the horizon. "He's defensive, but he should be. It was his job to police the mess, and he dropped the ball back then because of losing Jill."

"Where is he now?"

Rebecca gestured to the furthest tent. "Currently working with Claire over there on the other threads that tie in here."

Leon arched a brow as she explained. "We've got whales that washed up on a beach in Mexico and in southern California that have evidence of T-Virus."

"T-abyss?"

Rebecca shook her head. "No...just T- but not the strain we saw in Raccoon. Not the common one. It's something altered...similar to A."

Leon furrowed his brow. "And that ties in here, how?"

"The scientist of record out of Rosarito was named Lucia," Rebecca waited for him to turn the page on the file he was holding and for his shocked face to turn up to look at her as she added, "Yeah. Lucia...you've met before."

His eyes stayed on the adult face of the girl he'd met aboard the Starlight cruiseliner after Raccoon City. She'd been a test subject for Umbrella and infused with a parasite that allowed her to use mimicry to replicate other people. It gave her hypersensitive hearing and awareness and allowed her to heal like the plagas did. It was suspected that it was Umbrella's first experimentation with inferior plagas. She'd survived the encounter and been put into the care of an intelligence agent with the C.I.A.

Leon shook his head, "I don't understand. What does that have to do with t-"

"Look at the name of her adoptive parent, Leon. Look."

He scanned down, eyes seeking, and froze. Rebecca nodded and looked grim. "Yeah...that girl you rescued on that ship...the one with the B.O.W. affiliations...she was fostered by Glenn Arias...and adopted by Diego Gomez and his wife, Salma."

Leon laughed without humor. "Son of a bitch...she changed her goddamn name."

"She did. She doesn't go by Lucia anymore...she goes by Maria."

In black and white, there it was. She'd fled New York and taken a job in Mexico under her former name. Maria Gomez was the little girl he'd rescued on the Starlight. He'd saved her life so she could turn around and be turned into a monster by Glenn Arias. After the bombing, Arias had taken Maria's former parasitic infection and made her a super soldier with the A-Virus. The extent of his experimentation was unclear, but it was evident that Gomez was beyond human. She'd survived the New York A-Virus attack where he father and Arias had perished.

And now she was playing scientist and infecting ocean life.

Why?

And what did it have to do with Jessica Sherawat downloading their updated information?

Leon glanced at Rebecca. "How are they connected?"

Rebecca shifted where she stood. "I think Jessica was working with Arias, too, before his death. I think they're in it together."

"...what's the end game?"

Rebecca shrugged. "Revenge on us, I'd say, is definitely in there. But the infection in the ocean? I can't figure that part out. What good does it do to infect whales and dolphins? What's the point?"

Leon shook his head. "They're experimenting. Did the whale mutate?"

Claire's voice answered that as she wandered over. "That's the thing - it had evidence of trying, but it didn't survive the change," the redhead stopped beside him and patted his forearm in hello, "but what's the point, Leon? What are they trying to do?"

Leon studied all the files. His brain clicked around in his skull, trying to make sense of it. "Subaquatic B.O.W.S.?"

It was Chris who answered in his gruff voice as he joined them. "That's my thinking." The big man tapped the file folder for Arias. "They want to rule the water where they failed on land. But why?"

Leon studied the pictures of the whale on the beach. "Because the world is seventy percent water," he said quietly, "Imagine the potential of an army of aquatic life in that case. You could overrun almost anywhere with something that could go from land to sea without hesitation...and if for some reason they're attempting the mimicry that Maria suffered as Lucia..."

Claire breathed quietly, "...oh mygod...they plan to invade, copy, and claim any place surrounded by water."

Chris grumbled. "Aquatic invasion...but it can't work. It won't work. They'll be shot down or fought back into the water. How can it work?"

Leon shook his head. "Something is missing—some piece we're not seeing. The aquatic invasion only works if they can turn people en masse when they emerge. Something that allows them to spread the virus and bring others under their control."

He glanced around and queried, "Where's Jill?"

Chris sighed heavily and shook his head. Claire returned quietly, "She's chasing down leads."

Leon glanced from her careful face to Rebecca's worried one and inquired, "Alone?"

Chris grunted out a response. "She won't work with anyone else." He shook his head and glanced over the horizon. Rebecca added softly, "She doesn't trust herself...and she's afraid no one else does either."

Leon shook his head. He set the folder down. "Where is she?"

Claire shrugged. Chris laughed mirthlessly. "You think I know?"

Rebecca offered urgently, "I tagged her knapsack when she left us in Los Angeles."

Surprised, they all glanced at her. She flushed pink but defended, "I was worried about her."

Rebecca turned her computer and typed a few keys. "She had the knapsack last in San Francisco."

"Is she still there?"

Rebecca nibbled her lips and admitted. "Maybe. The knapsack hasn't moved recently. It's in a hotel on Clay Street. I can't be sure she's still there."

Leon shook his head. "No one should be alone at the moment." He turned to look at Claire and Chris. "One of you should go after her."

Claire denied that. "It won't work. She's polite, Leon, and always clear - she doesn't want us around. We keep trying, but..."

Chris snapped. "But Jill has guilt so deep and wide that it's all she sees. She won't listen to anyone."

Rebecca narrowed her eyes at the screen. "What's weird about it? Maybe she knows more than we do at the moment...because the last threads I can find on Maria Gomez implies she took the ferry to Alcatraz Island. Why? What's there? Is she hiding out? They do tours all the time there; it's not like it's remote. But Jill's already in San Francisco...so maybe she's already headed to Alcatraz."

"Then we go get her."

Chris grunted. "She won't make it easy, Leon. Nobody's been able to get her to play by the rules since she got back in the field. It's not what she wants."

Leon laughed and turned away. "Good thing I don't give a sh*t what she wants." He headed toward the far tent and announced, "Get Luciani and head toward the bay area. Set up at Land's End, Rebecca, and see what you can find about any of this. Did Claire get enough to start working on a vaccine for this sh*t?"

Rebecca nodded rapidly. "I have enough to throw something together."

"Good," Leon gestured to Claire and Chris, "you two figure out what you can about tours to Alcatraz. We'll go in under the cover of tourists. It'll make life easier and won't raise any red flags. I'll tag Hunnigan at F.O.S. and see if I can find anything on Sherawat and Gomez having any other stragglers out there. Maybe we can find a scientist with a big mouth looking for clemency."

Claire called after him. "Where are you going?"

Leon laughed. "Where else? To grab the Master of Unlocking. God knows, we might need her in a prison full of cells."

The world was against them right now. Someone was possibly out to kill, kidnap, or infect them, and Jill was running around like the Long Ranger looking for clues and bad guys to best. Weirdly, the lone wolf routine was entirely Ada, but he suspected Jill wasn't nearly as sly about it. She was likely out there gunning, kicking asses, and drawing attention to herself because she didn't care to play the espionage game and find the answers.

And she didn't give a damn if she died trying.

There were still so many missing pieces to what was happening, but one was glaringly obvious - Jill was out to finish this herself. Why? What did she know? How was she connected to what was happening?

He had a feeling when he found her, he'd have even more questions. It was time for her to start talking about that past she was trying to forget. Because somewhere between Raccoon City, Umbrella, and Glenn Arias - Jill had indeed become the master of unlocking. She had the keys to secrets none of them even knew yet.

And it was time to find her to get them.

His fingers rubbed the little shells on his wrist as he pictured her beneath him, her eyes on his, her hands stroking. He could stilltaste her.And he'd bedamnedif he let her die trying to redeem herself.

Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Reunited

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

IX:

Reunited

Penumbra -the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

San Franciso - Early Fall

There was a crack and a snap of bone as blood splattered the wall beyond slim shoulders like a burst water balloon. It struck, sliding down the slick surface in clumps and smears. Congealed. Blood only congealed when the heart stopped beating and oxygenating it. In other words - when the body died. And these bastards had been dead for a while.

Jill moved swiftly through the shadows, her flashlight bobbling in the dark. She entered an office with a creak of old hinges. The thing looked tossed, which was expected, but somehow had done so in a way that said they didn't really inspect the contents of what they were rifling. Destruction, it seemed, instead of collection. They didn't want to preserve; they wanted to eradicate.

She eased down to a crouch and leafed through papers, scanning words and dates with the beam of her Maglite. She studied intel splashed with dried blood. Her gaze flipped through the typical - questions about what was for lunch, scheduling of meetings, interoffice gossip, and jokes. She nearly tossed the pile of papers before her gaze landed on something that gave her pause.

4th June 2014

Bill -

The prototype is in production! Can you believe this!? I think by this time next year, we'll see a real surge in stock prices. Keep your fingers crossed; it means extra vacation days and less overtime! This is what we need to take the prototype into mass production. Hit me back with vendor information, would ya?

-Erin

Jill skimmed her eyes over a list of projected supplies and what appeared to be a formula of some kind. She couldn't make heads or tails of the science, but she knew someone who could. She gently folded the papers and tucked them into the fanny pack strapped to the back of her hips. She was just skimming through another stack of gathered papers when a noise gave her pause.

She lifted her head, listening. A shuffling sound and a moan had her rising, hefting her pistol in one hand and bracing it with her flashlight. She eased forward, peering around the doorway and flashing the light once down the corridor to give her a quick illumination on what waited. It reflected on a shambling form at the end, bouncing stupidly against a wall like it might find its way through solid stone.

The brief flash of light didn't even alert the pathetic creature to her presence. Jill eased forward in a crouch, shifting silently down the old carpet until she was level with the corpse that moaned and slobbered from greying gums. She slid the blade of her knife into the back of its skull with little preamble, catching the body and laying it gently on the floor to avoid the noise as it gurgled sadly and went still. The dead didn't offer any challenge anymore. She'd been kicking their asses since the dawn of time. It would take more than a few roamers to give her any kind of real threat.

The overrun office building was quarantined off in an area of the bay that had yet to see help from the government's elected "monster squad." The monster squad was just a coy nickname for the DSO, currently being spearheaded by Leon Kennedy. She wondered how long it would take for suits and agents to swarm the complex and clean up the mess. They'd likely release a story about a gas leak or something innocuous to explain all the deaths. God forbid they went public with an outbreak. The people would panic and flee the city so fast they'd literally leave their hearts in San Francisco.

There would be no honesty from the government on what was happening in the Golden State. A sad but simple and decades-long occurrence when it came to bioterror. She wondered if Leon was okay with all the lying that happened inside his organization. She'd like to think it wasn't up to him. Because thinking he was covering up something like this made her dislike him.

And she didn't want to dislike him.

She paused, thinking about him for a moment. Her skin tingled, as it tended to do when she let her mind conjure up his face. Her body remembered him. She could almost smell him over the stench of saturated blood and bloated flesh. It was a nice distraction.

It was also stupid. Because that one second of reflection on something besides the job cost her awareness. The glass of the office window behind her shattered in a burst and tinkle. It struck her like shrapnel, causing Jill to wince and lift an arm to protect her face. The thing landed atop her while she hunkered down.

It took them both into the wall with a raucous burst of sound. They struggled, the thing lunging and snarling faster than a typical zombie. It snapped those jaws inches from her nose, trying to take a piece with it. Jill kicked her boots into its hip, got it up and away from her face, and thrust her knife into its soft lower jaws. The move pinned its snapping teeth together as it attempted to tear out of her throat with its hands. It should have been a killing blow - right up into the brain. But it wasn't. Because the damn thing just kept trying to kill her.

Pinned beneath its bulk, Jill grappled for her gun at her thigh. The thing encircled her throat and jerked, pulling her up off the floor. It slammed her back into the floor, and she let it, absorbing the impact with her back as she grabbed the gun, angled it to the left temple, and pulled the trigger. The silenced shot was muffled further by the head that took the bullet. But the brains and bone blasted free rained down on her like nasty confetti as it collapsed against her.

Grunting, Jill shoved it free of her body and clamored to her feet as three of its friends came to join the party. They ran fast as sprinters going for the gold. Jill took off like a shot down the hallway, racing to the staircase and bursting through. She backed down the stairs, clearing the way down before she turned, waiting.

The door burst open, and she killed the first one through effortlessly. It fell, knocking its cohorts around like bowling pins before it tumbled over the railing and plummeted into the dark. She took the next one as it crawled mindlessly down the stairs toward her. The third one did something remarkable at the death of its friends - it hesitated at the doorway.

Jill tilted her head, studying its shadow in the door frame. It stopped. It understood. It knew the others were dead. It was...what? Making a plan? Impossible. Zombies didn't make plans. It wasn't plagas; she was damn sure of that because it was rotting like its dead brethren. But it wasn't exactly T-Virus quality either. What had Chris' report said about New York? Smart zombies. Zombies that could think. But only if they were controlled by someone else.

Someone here had control of these f*cking corpses.

Jill fired a warning shot into the doorway. The thing retreated, making a sound similar to a whimpering human. Unnerved, Jill backed down the stairs. She kept the entrance in her sights as she went, waiting. When she reached the bottom of the stairwell, she elbowed open the door behind her and split her focus. She glanced through into a breakroom and heard the sound of feet on the stairs above her. Turning back, she sighted up the stairwell, but the thing on the stairs was moving fast enough that she had to wait it out.

It didn't head for the final curve in the stairs; it went ahead and leaped over the railing instead. She fired up at it; it kept coming down, and Jill shoved backward into the breakroom to keep from being smashed by the falling body. The thud and crash of it hitting the floor as the door swung shut behind her seemed inordinately loud. She eased open the door to be sure it was dead and saw it was missing the left side of its face.

Satisfied, Jill turned back into the break room.

And came face to face with another one. It stared at her with its fishy gaze, filmed over eyes sightlessly looking into her own. She tried to get the gun up, and its slapped her arms to the side, grabbed the back of her neck, and shoved her head first into the vending machine. The machine squealed, throwing lights and alarms as it cracked beneath the assault. Dizzy, Jill spun back and threw a kick, knocking her attacker into the table before it. It rattled, the zombie stumbled, and she kicked from the hip to send it sliding over the surface to collapse to the floor.

Jill sighted down her arms at it and snapped, "Not smart enough, you asshole."

She blasted its face apart with a heavy round at close range. Human-controlled or not, zombies were still slowed by degeneration. It was also likely they didn't learn how to fight just because their human puppet master told them to, either.

Jill hesitated, eyeing the darkness. Finally, she called, "Stop sending your sh*tty bullet sponges and come face me yourself, you coward."

No one emerged from the shadows for a showdown. A pity, Jill thought as she moved quietly, but not surprising. Villains weren't often known for their bravado. Of all the bad guys she'd ever faced, known but the Nemesis had ever really just shown themselves for a fight. The rest used subterfuge and armies of grunts to do their dirty work. She was still hoping she'd face one with some balls one of these days.

Jill cut across the lobby of the building, moving toward the main reception area. She was almost there when the lobby doors parted. Without thinking, she dropped, swirled into a leg sweep, and took the feet of the thing that emerged. The zombie stumbled, Jill surged forward, and they grappled in the shadows. A handful of moments before, she crammed her gun against the ribs, and a hand encircled her throat, thrusting her back against the wall.

Light filtered onto their faces as they hit the wall nearest the window.

Her finger froze with the trigger partially depressed.

Softly, voice breathy, she gasped, "I almost blew your f*cking heart out your back."

The hand on her throat eased as he answered, "Not through the plate I'm wearing, sweetheart."

Jill lowered her gun as Leon released her. He stepped back, eyeing her in the dark. She was filthy, looked wild-eyed and exhausted, and was clearly hyped on adrenaline. He wanted to catch her chin and study her face but curbed the reaction, turning to look into the dark. "You know this building was under quarantine."

Not a question. A statement. He knew that she'd broken the seal and let herself in. Jill shifted where she stood. "I watched. I waited. It's been three days, and no one came to inspect it."

"So, you broke a federal seal and just helped yourself."

"I was tired of waiting."

Leon studied her in the shadows. "I imagine you were."

Jill shrugged. "I found what there was to find."

"Which was?"

"Not entirely sure," Jill gestured with her head, and he followed her out of the lobby into the sunshine. She winced, eyes dilating against the heavy light. "But something leaked in there, and it stinks like a cover-up."

She looked worse somehow in the light. Pale, dark circles beneath her big blue eyes and blood splattered over her as if she'd been the canvas for Jackson Pollock. Her short hair stuck up in places, cut too close beneath her ears as if she'd taken a whack at it with scissors when it got in her way. Quietly, Leon remarked, "We've had this building under surveillance for a few months regarding rumors of it being a depot for delivery to the lab out in the bay."

Jill winged up her brows. "There's a lab in the bay?"

He studied her face. "Not that we can find - officially. Unofficially - we know something is cooking out in the water. We just don't know what or where."

When she kept staring at him, he turned and pressed a few buttons on the panel beside the door. It beeped, showing the seal restored. The seal should have kept out everyone who didn't have the voice print and thumbprint to get into the secured building. It hadn't stopped Jill Valentine. Worse yet, it hadn't even alerted anyone to her being inside until a random scan of possible locations had shown it as green-lit instead of red on lockdown procedures. She'd more than earned her title of Master of Unlocking. She was a goddamn wizard with tech and subversive entrance.

He'd made a half-hearted effort to acquire her to work with him a short time before her imprisonment. He'd known then she was gold with those fingers and brains of hers. She'd dismantled the security on the facility Umbrella held in the Caucasus region herself - no moles, no equipment save for a portable scanner and her wits and knowledge. Finding someone with that level of commitment to her craft was rare. He was sorry now he hadn't pushed harder. If she'd been working with him, she wouldn't have been with just Redfield in the Spencer Estate. She'd have been spared her capture. But he'd made overtures to the BSAA to acquire her and been rejected outright by Redfield and Burton. He wondered if she even knew he'd tried.

Leon turned back to face her and held her gaze until she broke first. "What do you want, Kennedy?"

His left brow winged up. She echoed it and had his mouth twitching with a smile. After a moment, he teased, "Is that an invitation?"

Jill rolled her eyes and turned away to head up the walkway toward where she could hail a cab. He followed her and called, "You know someone out there is hunting us, right?"

Jill paused, glancing back at him. They held eyes again. The seconds ticked off, and finally, she blinked three times, quickly, and shook her head like she was clearing it. Amused, he kept pace beside her as she started walking again. "And?"

He chuckled. "Aren't you worried they might find you?"

She rolled her eyes again. "Let 'em. Why not? I'd welcome a good fight."

He arched his brows as she headed toward the corner of the road. "You just had one, Valentine. You already spoiling for another?"

Jill snorted. "That wasn't a fight. That was a kid's play date. I've had a harder time taking a sh*t when I don't get enough fiber."

Leon paused. He laughed. He finally rubbed a hand across his eyes and remarked, "Goddamn, Valentine, you got a mouth like a sailor. I think I kinda missed you."

She shrugged. She eyed him. "You come here to play white knight and rescue me?"

Leon scanned her features. "Can't say I did. I definitely came here to bring you in on the op we're planning."

Jill paused. She tilted her head. "I'll play ball. What's the deal?"

He gestured to the sleek black car parked across the street. "Take a ride with me, and I'll spill the beans."

Jill shrugged again. "Cheaper than a cab anyway."

She joined him in the expensive sedan. He fired it up and eased into traffic. The pretty Pacific Ocean greeted them as they coiled through the streets. He talked. He told her everything he knew so far. He mentioned the idea of Alcatraz. Jill listened, looking pensive.

"You think we'll just walk in there playing tourist and find some f*cking lab waiting?"

He lifted a shoulder and mused, "Stumbled into stranger things than that in our time in this biz, kiddo."

Jill sighed. "You with these damn endearments. You realize they're condescending, right?"

Leon chuckled again. "Not meant to be. But I know it's not PC to use them anymore."

"Was it ever?"

He sighed. "I'm working on it. But old habits die hard."

"Can't teach an old dog new tricks, am I right?"

He glanced at her. She was smiling. Amused, Leon returned, "Something like that."

Jill leaned her head back on the seat, still smiling. She closed her eyes, sighing a little. Leon queried, "You got a place you're staying?"

She shrugged. "I get by. I moved around. Sleep where I can."

He shook his head and sighed. "Like a hobo?"

"Like a nomad," Jill corrected, "Can't track me if I keep moving, right? And I don't need some fancy ass suite to sleep."

"You sleep?" He teased with a note of feigned surprise, "You're kidding me. You don't look like you've slept since I saw you last."

Jill scoffed but kept her eyes closed. "I do fine, hotshot. Don't you worry."

"You realize that sounded condescending, right Jill? You should work on that."

Her mouth twitched. His did, too. After a moment, she snorted, "Touche."

"Where should I drop you?"

"Wherever."

"How do I get in touch when we coordinate the trip to Alcatraz?"

Jill shrugged. "I'll find you."

Leon rolled his eyes. "Maybe I could send an encoded message through the personals in the newspaper. Single Sexy Spy Type Seeks Hobo For Prison Fantasy."

Jill couldn't stop the chuckle. "You're an idiot."

"I've been called worse."

She shifted in the seat a little as he drove. "Just pick a corner and drop me off. Give me a good number to get you at. I'll call you later today, and we can hook up."

"Hmm."

The silence fell again. It stayed this time. After a moment, he heard her breathing even out. His mouth twitched. She trusted him enough to fall asleep with him. She probably didn't even realize what that meant. He doubted there were a handful of people alive she would have trusted as much.

He angled the car through the streets and up a winding climb of roads. The ocean smelled salty as he turned on Sea Cliff Avenue. The decoration of mansions overlooking the Pacific and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance was overpriced and in typical California flair. Still, it offered views worthy of a pretty penny. He parked and climbed out, walking around to open her door.

She didn't even stir. Gathering her up, he carried her like the boneless dead into the house. Wide open windows offered floor-to-ceiling views of water and sky. The house was done in white and gray walls with pale wood floors in the current fashion of colorless chic. A pool waited beyond the living room, seemingly dropping off into nowhere to meet the sea and cliffs beneath it. The crash of waves on rock was comforting and soothing as he carried Jill down the hallway and laid her gently on the bed in one of the vast rooms. The expensive silk comforter curled around her as she sank into the mattress and didn't move.

She needed a bath, but he wasn't going to wake her to shove her into a shower. He left her there and took her boots at least, setting the filthy things to the side. His hands unclicked her fanny pack and laid it beside her on the bed. She lay on her side, snoring softly. Resisting the impulse to brush her hair back from her dirty face, he left her as she was and went off to make calls.

He was dozing on the fluffy white couch with a half-empty highball of scotch on the table before him when the clink of ice cubes in glass had his eyes whipping open. His hand snatched at the pistol on the cushion beside him, and a hand grabbed his wrist to soothe, "Easy. It's me."

Her voice had his hand relaxing. He left the gun where it lay and watched her lift his scotch to her lips. She sipped, studying the fantastic view beyond the open sliding glass doors. She was still filthy. Her hair was worse than before, sticking up like spikes around her face. The sun had set, casting yellow and red like blood and gold over the shimmering pool water.

Jill mused, "Million-dollar view."

Leon chuckled gruffly. "Out here? It's the twenty million dollar view."

Jill rolled her eyes. "Adventures in real estate. This yours? Or the DSO's?"

"Mine," He shifted on the couch, "Sorta. A shell company owns it, so it's untraceable."

"Gotcha." Jill stepped toward the beautiful deck and the pool that waited. "Thanks for bringing me here. But you could have dumped me anywhere."

"Hmm," he watched her move. She tossed back his scotch and set the glass down on the lounge chair on the deck as she walked. "Don't generally toss women out on the side of the road when they're sound asleep."

Jill snorted. "Why not? I've survived worse."

He said nothing.

She studied the water. After a moment, she tucked her hands around her dirty shirt and lifted it, tossing the smelly material onto the deck. He sat watching her as she stripped to the skin and dived into the water of the pool.

Amused, he watched her swim. She moved like an eel, but he knew she was more like a mermaid - a siren, really. Calling men to their doom with that heart-shaped ass and killer-muscled form. She ducked under the water and was gone so long he started to wonder if she'd become an actual one, disappearing over the side of the pool to join the others like her in the waves beyond the cliffs. A selkie, perhaps, who'd found her skin and returned to the embrace of the salty sea that called her home.

And then she bobbed to the surface of the water.

Her hand speared through her locks, pushing the heavy dark hair back from her face. She sighed happily. Her eyes turned up as he wandered out onto the deck. She studied his feet as he walked, nicely bare and cute, curving against the thick, pretty wood as he moved with that dancer's grace she admired. There was no wasted movement in Leon Kennedy - he was fluid. She wondered if he knew how many steps it was from the couch to the pool.

Curious, she inquired, "How long would it take you to run from the pool to the kitchen?"

Amused, Leon glanced down at her. "...you think I know that kind of thing?"

"Yes."

No hesitation. Just yes.

With a short laugh, he answered grudgingly, "...fifteen seconds."

"Could you shoot a man from down here to that window across the way?"

He glanced across at the house furthest from them on the cliff line. His mouth twitched again. "Yes."

"What's the wind resistance?"

He was silent so long she was the first to laugh. "You know. Just say it."

"What do you want? The ballistic coefficient?"

Jill's eyes sparkled. "I just bet you know it."

Leon said nothing. He laughed. He didn't answer. But that was answer enough.

Jill didn't flinch. She didn't look away. The direct combat of their gazes simmered until her lips turned into a smile. She'd seen his wrist when he'd reached for the gun on the couch. She knew what he was hiding. "Take off your jacket."

Surprised, he tilted his head. She tilted hers. Neither looked away again until he inquired. "Why?"

"Just testing a theory."

He didn't look away as he shrugged his jacket off his shoulders. The expensive blue leather sighed as it spilled down into his hands. He tossed it beside him onto the lounge chair. In a black ring-neck short-sleeved tee, his bare forearms were thickly muscled and appropriately spiced with enough golden hair to flicker in the dying sun.

And looped around his wrist was the bracelet she'd given him.

She leaned her arms on the side of the pool edge and floated, watching him. "You could have sent men to get me."

Surprised, he glanced down at her again.

She tilted her head. "You could have sent agents to bring me in."

He said nothing.

Jill arched her brows. "You came alone to get me."

Still that silence.

Treading water, she demanded, "Why?"

Leon glanced down from studying the bay and the shoreline. He held her eyes. After a moment, he answered, "You know why."

Holding his steady gaze, Jill waited to see who'd flinch first. To her surprise, he did. He turned from the deck and headed toward the inside, informing her, "We should be able to get a tour to Alcatraz in the morning. You're welcome to stay here if you'd like - or I can drop you somewhere else."

Jill's mouth twitched as she watched him walk. After a moment, she finally called, "I'll stay. Beats sleeping on a park bench."

Leon shrugged as he walked toward the house like it didn't matter. But he still wore the bracelet. As he reached the living room, Jill called again, "It's good to see you...Leon."

He jerked like she'd shot him in the back. He paused. She waited, wondering if he'd turn back to look at her. He didn't turn back. He kept on walking.

But he called back. "Good to see you, too, Jill. Even with that sh*tty haircut."

She laughed. She watched him disappear down the hallway. She floated in the water, listening to the waves and feeling the wind. And she cast her gaze toward the sky to see if she could see Cassiopeia.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

X:

Leviathan

Penumbra -the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Africa - 2010

The crackle and stench of fire and flesh tickled inside the nose like a tongue of made of taunting torture. She didn't lift a hand to rub at the tickle. She couldn't. Her mind was aware of it, but her hand wouldn't cooperate. Instead, she stood over the burning pile of corpses while the flickering flames reflected in the empty blue of her eyes.

It echoed in the sky above her, curling tendrils of smoke making their way toward the heavens as if crying for grace from a god that had long since abandoned this place. She watched a man attempt to crawl from the pile, somehow still screaming even as he burned away to nothing. She could shoot him, give him mercy, put him out of his misery.

But her hand wouldn't move to do that either.

Because her hand wasn't her own. And hadn't been in a long time.

The long cascade of her blonde hair curled in the wind around her shoulders and narrow waist illuminated like gold gone copper in a smelting pot. The thick strands hitched on her hips and her nose, slid against her cheeks and ass - a lover's caress. A hand echoed it, skimming against her hair as he joined her at the pyre, head tilted as he watched the bodies burn and the forsaken try to crawl to salvation. That gloved palm slid down the mane of her hair, petting like one might a dog, as he said, "You did well here, Jill. Not a single wound and not a single survivor."

The tail of her hair was often a form of control for him. He kept it long. He liked it long. He liked it useful. When she resisted, when the P-30 was out of her system, he used it like a leash to manipulate her. He jerked on it. He pulled her across the floor by it. He used to pain to enforce her compliance. In his own way, Wesker was never cruel. He didn't hit her. He didn't really hurt her. Just the hair. Just the pulling. Just the control.

And the commands.

Always the commands. Done with a straight face, with a dull voice, without a single note of concern, care, or inflection. He simply had no regard for the human race. He didn't hate them - no. Hate would denote an ability to feel anything at all about humanity. He simply saw them as disposable. What he killed, he killed with purpose. What he destroyed, he destroyed with plans. He was what he'd been created to be - a man seeking immortality through the mortals he annihilated on Earth. On one hand, she could feel sympathy for the orphan boy they'd taken and turned into a weapon.

On the other, she had no sympathy for the monster he'd become.

Jill said nothing, staring at the fire as it ate across ground and grain, destroyed flesh and bone, fire through walls and windows - eradicating homes and lives, obliterating memories of those who'd lived within. She watched the fire consume a portrait of a family on the pile of things with the bodies. Smiling faces, happy souls, lost now to a blazing scorched earth campaign of revenge and an almost religious crusade. Holy. Wesker thought he was holy. He felt he was divine. He thought he was saving the world.

He really believed he was a god.

There was a shout from behind them. Wesker turned superhuman fast; Jill was slower - turning as if without concern for what waited behind them. He caught a small girl around the throat as she rushed him with a knife. He lifted the little dirty urchin in the blue dress off her feet, eyeing her as she swiped wildly at him with the knife, dangling from his grip - choking to death- but still fighting. Her dark hair swirled around her face as she screamed wordlessly, slashing and stabbing - for all the good it would do.

Wesker's mouth tilted into a half smile. He mused, "Curious. Your family is dead, girl; why do you fight?"

The girl gurgled, trying to stab him in the throat. He spoke to Jill, watching the girl strangle in his grip. "Shall we toss her on the fire? Or keep her for a pet? I do enjoy the fire of resistance. I think such loyalty in the face of fear should be rewarded."

Jill spoke mechanically, the doll she'd become responding. "Whatever you like."

"Good answer." He patted Jill's back again like you might a dog who'd performed well. He glanced at the fire and back at the face of the strangling girl. In her head, Jill was screaming.Let her go...let her go. Just let her go. Just this once, let one go.She tried to telegraph wisdom to the girl who was dangling in his grip. She tried to send the message to play along, play the patsy, play the reluctant slave...but her eyes gave away nothing. And the girl looked at Jill like what she was - a horrible bitch who'd come to slaughter her family.

The girl decided for him. She stuck that knife into his shoulder. Her rage was infinite. Her need for revenge complete. The blade sank in, and Wesker didn't even flinch as he admonished, "Stupid humans. I offer you the chance for greatness, and you choose mediocrity and predictability. I look forward to the day evolution takes you all."

He tossed the girl onto the fire while Jill's head roared with denial.

Her screams blazed across the dirty sky. Jill's body jerked, a puppet severed from strings. The knife in her hand jammed hard and fast into Wesker's side, surprising him. She twisted it, screaming with the girl that burned - screaming with the need to finish him - even if it cost her her life. He backhanded her for it. The strike smacked her skin with a crack like thunder in the smoke thick air. She collapsed to her knees and hands on the blood-slick ground. She tried to crawl forward to grab for the girl, and Wesker snatched her ponytail, dragging her back, tilting her face up to him while the screams of that little girl bathed her ears in helpless horror.

He looked into her face and demanded, "Don't be predictable, Jill. Or you'll burn like the rest of them."

He shoved her back to her hands and knees and demanded, "Now watch. Watch what you've created. Watch the world burn to make way for the new one. Watch. And don't resist again."

Jill grabbed for the girl who burned. She grabbed for the fire.

The P-30 burst through her system to take away her control.

And her hand wasn't her own anymore.

So, she crouched on the bloody ground and watched the world burn.

Like she had with the Nemesis. Like she had at the Mansion. Like she had as she'd dove from the window to save Chris. Death, it seemed, was meant to stalk her - but never to release her. Even her death was not her own.

Two tears slipped from her eyes to spill onto her cheeks as that brave little girl finally, finally, finally stopped screaming. Inside, finally, Jill did the same.

San Franciso- Early Fall, 2014

The bed shifted in the moonlight. He rolled, going for the gun strapped to the headrest, and a hand snatched his again in mid-movement. Fast. She was so fast. It made his breath catch as she crawled atop him, fluid and free in the silvery streaks that poked through the clouds beyond the bed.

Softly, she implored, "Don't."

Did she think he'd shoot her? It was reactionary when his world shifted to grab for a weapon. It was just who he'd become. He relaxed his hand in her grip and looked at the wild fear on her face.

Responding to it, voice gruff but hard, he demanded, "What happened? Are you alright?"

Jill shook her head and urged, "There's no threat. No threat."

Relaxing a little but still concerned, Leon pressed, "What is it, Jill? What happened?"

She pulled his hand away from the headboard and pressed it into his chest. He let her, watching her face as she straddled his lap, her eyes flickering as they skimmed his features in the dark. "I had them shave my head when I got back from Africa."

Surprised at the confession, he kept his eyes on her face and said nothing as she talked. "In recovery, they were curious why I wanted to be f*cking bald. I had them shave the whole damn thing like Ripley inAlien 3."She laughed sadly and shook her head as a tear escaped one eye and slid down her cheek. "I didn't want to see that sh*t anymore."

Softly, Leon queried, "Why?"

Her smile was self-deprecating as she laughed again with a tone rich with regret. "Because it was another chain that bound be to a person I didn't want to be anymore. This sh*tty haircut? It's more me than that f*cking golden leash he made me wear."

Leon volleyed his gaze over hers. "Tell me."

Her voice broke as Jill confessed. "He used it like a lever when the drug wore off. He used it to force me to his will. I won't let anyone force me, Leon, ever again. I won't let them hold me down and use me. I won't be a dog. I won't be controlled. Do you understand me?"

Curious. She thought, somehow, that's what he wanted here. Or maybe...maybe she just saw that in everyone. She was traumatized, damaged, broken - but trying so hard to heal herself. What did she need here? Confession? Commiseration? Capitulation? He was good at reading people. It was his goddamn job. He was a master at studying the human condition and responding.

She was still a mystery. Because nothing about how she responded was the typical victim. She didn't fit in a box. She never really had, assumingly, and being a weapon at the will of a madman had somehow made her an entirely different breed of survivor. He eyed her in the dark and responded, "I'm not looking to control you, Jill. You're free. Free to go. Free to stay. Free."

Her eyes flickered. She shook her head as her voice lamented, "I'mneverfree. Never. Everyone, everywhere - wants something. So what do you want, Leon? What do you want from me? What? Because your kindness is killing me. So, just tell me - say it- so I can-"

She trailed off. He urged into the silence, "Can what? Hate me?"

Jill shook her head. He added, "I don't toss out sleeping women on the side of the road, Jill. And I don't bend them to my will. I'll say it again - you're free. I don't want a damn thing from you that you don't offer yourself. I don't f*cking force women."

The insult in his tone had her whispering, "What if I force you? Can you stop me? Would you? I...I could kill you like this. Right now. And you think you can stop me, you do because you're good. Maybe the best I've ever seen. But I'm not- I haven't been- I'mmore.I'm a monster, Leon. A monster. I can do things...I've done things...and you wouldn't understand. You can't. And you can'tstopme. No one can. I have to make it right. I have to. Do you understand? I can't stop until I do...and I'm so tired."

Their eyes held as Jill confessed, "She won't stop screaming."

Softly, Leon demanded, "Who?"

Her eyes flickered again as she whispered, "The girl who tried to fight back. The girl who tried to survive. She's still on that fire burning...and I couldn't save her. Because my hands weren't my own. I wasn't me. Iwas...his.I can't be gone anymore. She won't stopscreaming."

And just like that, he understood. The girl was real. The girl she spoke of was real. But how real? A memory? Or a figment of her guilty conscious that her mind had tossed up to represent herself? Was the girl in the fire someone else, or was itJill?Either way, she couldn't save herself. She couldn't escape the fire. But she'd fought until the end, screaming, screaming, and still haunting the woman atop him to this day.

Feeling a roll of real sympathy, Leon shifted his free hand. He lifted it and wrapped it around the headboard, binding himself to it, letting her pin the other hand to his chest. Eyeing her in the darkness, he instructed, "Those hands? They'reyours.I'm not forcing you, Jill, and I'm not fighting you. You're still you. You're still, Jill Valentine. But I can't tell you who that is now. I can't stop the screaming...butyoucan."

Desperately, she demanded, "How!?"

Softly, Leon told her, "By holding on."

Not letting go. They always told her to let go. Let go, Jill, it's over, Jill. It's done, Jill. Let it go. But not Leon. He didn't say let go. He saidhold on.Voice breaking, Jill urged, "Towhat? I have nothing."

Into the tense air, he answered, "To me. Because I won't let you fade away. I won't let you give up. I don't know how. So hold onto me, Jill, if you need to. And I will help you figure out who you are now. I will help you find Jill Valentine."

Softly, Jill almost pleaded, "I'm so tired."

His eyes held hers as he urged, "Then lay down and sleep. I will make sure you do. Lay down and hold onto me. I won't let go."

Jill made a small sound of surrender. She shifted the blankets with her knees and legs. Her left hand pressed over his on the headboard. It pinned him there as her right slid over the nest of blankets that bound his lower legs. Her hand found him; it worked him, tugging on his dick until it answered her - rising like a leviathan from the sea of her despair to service her needs. She tucked it between her legs, ran it over her body that straddled and pinned him to the bed and lifted her hips.

She seated herself on him with a single swift stroke. The short cap of her hair shivered in the breeze from the open sliding door beside the bed. The smell of seawater surrounded them as she grabbed his other hand from his chest and lifted it, wrapping his palm around the headboard beside the other, binding him, holding him down. She rode - her hips and legs and body smooth and staggeringly beautiful in the moonlight.

The wet heat of her welcomed him, the sounds of her claiming like mouths suckling in the dark. She held his eyes as she claimed him, her ass rocking, her thighs lifting and lowering. The pace was slow and then faster, faster, swift, and merciless. She took him at his word. She took him at his promise. She took what she wanted from him. The slapping sounds of skin punctuated the crash of waves on the cliffside.

Pleasure cut like a double-edged sword between them. The panic on her face became need. The sympathy on his became hunger. They f*cked in the dark like feral things, his body rising to meet hers and each desperate crash of her atop him. Sweat dewed on flesh. Breath panted, hers high and greedy, his low and lusty. Softly, Jill avowed in a whiny cry, "...oh, god..."

And he grunted, "...f*ckkk..."

She did. She f*cked like she fought- mercilessly and beautifully. Their eyes stayed pinned as his hands did. Her back arched over him, curling down, down, down until she laid claim to his mouth. Tongue and teeth, lips and sucking. A single desperate merging of mouths coupled with their clashing bodies. Her forehead pressed to his. Their eyes caught, and didn't relent.

Handfuls of moments. Minutes really. Nothing in the grand scheme of time. Nothing.

And everything.

The walls of her c*nt squeezed around him like a mouth begging for his tongue. Leon grunted. Jill gasped, high and desperate. And then she shook. Her skin, her bones, her blood, and body - it shook and quivered, quaking like she was having a seizure. She whined, she whimpered, tears leaked down her cheeks as she released, as the org*sm thrust her crying into full-blown pleasure. She rode him through it, thighs clenching, eyes leaking, hands clutching like claws around his where she bound him.

Her mouth pressed to his as Jill pleaded wildly, "...please...please?"

And Leon tilted his head back so she could spear her tongue into his mouth as he gave her what she wanted. His hands seized around the metal, his hips thrust into her so hard it made her mewl into his mouth, and he bathed her insides with his own release. It rushed out him almost as fast as the groan that he spilled into her sucking lips. She tongued f*cked him as he came, suckling at his mouth with a wild abandon that made him grunt, thrusting roughly into her waiting body through the edges of the org*sm.

As his body twitched to the finish, Jill jerked his hands off the headboard and tugged him into her. He rose from the bed to curl around her, clutching her to him as she did in response. They hugged on their knees, Jill crawling into his lap to curl around him as a monkey might, legs and arms swirling and seizing. When her head tilted and nuzzled at his, he turned his face to let her kiss him where they wrapped around each other on the bed like a human pretzel. His hands slid into her badly shorn hair and held on, tongue lapping and twirling in his mouth, in hers, in the shared space between.

When the shaking ended, Jill trembled, mouth sliding against his as she begged, "...oh...god...please."

He tried to pull her closer. He tried to merge their skin. He tried to pin her to him to hold her, not to own her, not to bind her, not to control her - to let her know she wasn't alone. Not anymore. She was safe. She was here. She was herself. She was here by choice. She was here because she wanted to be. He shifted her around in his lap until the half mast of his sticky dick found its way back into her body. He guided her hips into a rhythm, still f*cking, still merging, still mating.

After moments of this, she locked her ankles behind his ass and sat completely atop him, putting that part of him as deep into her as it would go. Her hands peeled his hair back from his sweaty face as she tangled her fingers into his nape and ground her hips atop him. Hard. She wasn't gentle. The pressure built, her mouth opening on a whine, and his arms trembled with something that was part pain, part the most intense pleasure he'd never known. His dick ground against her cervix, finding the spongey center waiting for him, ready for him, and accepting.

His voice was a hoarse growl as he grunted, "... Jesus..."

And she whispered, "No...just Jill." And made him laugh.

They kissed once more wetly. Their octopus arms and legs curled and clutched, holding them together in a sweaty knot of skin until it was hard to determine where one ended and the other began. They stay curled together as the moonlight made a home on their wet flesh, and the sound of the ocean soothed them both to sleep.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

XI:

Old Partners

Alcatraz Island- Early Fall, 2014

The passenger ship cut across the waves. The sunlight reflected on the clear water, tossing foam and mist into the sky as a voice echoed from the crackling speakers. "Welcome to Alcatraz Island, folks! Remember that although the island is well maintained, it's still a historical building, so tread carefully. You wouldn't want to fall into one of the cells, right!? You could get locked in the clink just like the ghosts of those left behind!"

Leon winced, his hair catching in the breeze. Jesus- the tour guide sounded so goddamn cheerful for a person leading them to a mecha of utter desolation. God knew the stories you heard about the abuse of prisoners at Alcatraz were legion. Imagine trying to make what equated to legalized torture against humans into a fun trip of discovery—American sensationalism at its finest.

It was interesting to see what everyone's version of tourist chic consisted of, he thought as he stood nearly the bow looking at his rag-tag group of companions. Jill tossed a haphazard old, fraying cardigan over her jeans and blue tank top. Claire wore her signature red leather jacket and looked eerily like the night he'd met her in Raccoon. Chris, apparently the only one who understood the task of blending in, still took it too far the other way and tossed a Tiki-style shirt over his jeans. He looked like the Hollywood definition of "tourist" if a tourist was a mountain of man built like a brick sh*t house.

Rebecca was behind in her lab, doing her damnedest to work on a vaccine for something they still lacked data on. She was a wizard; she'd do her best, but since she had the fighting style of an eager recruit, she was best left off-site for her safety. She'd arrive when and if necessary when the time came. All in all, they were as good as they would get, considering someone was out to kill them.

That morning, when he'd awoken curled around Jill's warm back, he'd started to think about what he'd always imagined his life might look like when he was a man. As a boy, he'd loved fairytales - the dauntless hero, the damsel in distress, the evil vanquished after a remarkable feat of bravery and daring. In the fairytales, good always won. At least the ones his mother had read to him as a boy. At least the ones Disney marketed with no regard for their source material. He was nearly fifteen before he discovered the fairytales he'd modeled his entire future on had been taken from something darker, something uglier, something more based in the truth of the humanity he'd wanted to protect and serve.

By the time he accepted that his favorite stories had been hom*ogenized, he'd enlisted in the Police Academy. Maybe the boy in him had been forced to face the ugly truth of the world, but it didn't stop the budging cop from wanting to spend his life trying to change it. In his guts, he still believed that evil paid the ultimate price for its blight on humanity. He still believed that when you did wrong, you paid the price.

And then Raccoon City had happened.

Everything he thought he'd believed in crumbled in a burning necropolis cast aside by those who'd promised to protect it. He understood, finally, that fairytales were for children - to let them sleep in their beds without fear. The truth was a much harder pill to swallow - Rapunzel, saved from her tower, wouldn't marry a handsome prince and have a wonderful life. She'd be kidnapped by a sex trafficker and sold into prostitution. He'd pimp her, pump her full of drugs, erode her innocence and her body until she was nothing but a hallowed shell of what she'd been, beat and rape her, and then toss her in the trash when he was done.

The last vestiges of hope had died when he'd kept the proof of what Jason had been killed for from Claire. The look on her face, the disgust, the repulsion reminded him of his own when he'd faced down Ada on that bridge and been forced to understand that no one, not a single person, was more than the sum total of their actions. He'd done it for the right reasons - he still believed that - exposing the program would have put fear into everyone living in the United States. People would have tried, somehow, to overcome that fear by purchasing the very thing they'd feared - bioweapons made by a government to be kept in their yards and houses like protective hounds. Soldiers bred for war turned into human guard dogs, terrifying the world at what came next in the most powerful nation in the world.

He'd meant well. Not that it mattered. Claire had hated him from that moment on. Her absolute distrust of him was still lingering around them now, nearly a decade later. Their once burgeoning friendship was long since slaughtered, another death on his plate of what he'd lost trying to save a world he couldn't save. They kept things civil, of course, because their jobs still intersected to the point they used each other for what needed to be done. But Claire had never looked at him the same again. It's like she'd seen the truth of what he was, like he had with Ada on the bridge, and she could no longer believe in him.

Fairytales of heroes blackened by the truth beneath the glittering shell.

He'd almost given up on himself in the years since that day. He made every choice for the good of the people. Every choice he made plunged the world into a bigger quagmire of crap. He was simply a man now who had to ride out the storm created by his choices. Good, bad, questionable - they were his. If he'd exposed the U.S. and their scheming, he might have saved lives in other parts of the world. He might taken down Tricell before the African experiments conducted by Albert Wesker had become global.

He might have saved Jill Valentine from her imprisonment.

That was the kicker. That was the big one. That was what lingered in his soul like a rotting fairytale faced by a kid who finally sees the truth of it. He wasn't the hero. He was the Rumpelstiltskin of his own story - stealing babies and making deals to further his own agenda. It came from a place of good, but the results...the truth...it was ugly. He was ugly. And he was ashamed.

Instead of facing it and making peace, he'd covered it up by pushing harder, pushing more, pushing and shoving, and killing to make amends. He'd traded being a good guy for being a guy who did bad for the good. He'd done a pretty good job pretending he was ok with his choices.

And then he'd met Jill Valentine.

He trauma. Her loss. Her inevitable push to keep going, fighting, and trying like hell to protect those who'd never appreciate her reminded him what he was doing. It reminded him that sometimes you make a choice, sometimes you go out a window for the good of others, and sometimes it costs you everything. She was still here. She was still trying. He could do no less.

Lying next to her in the burgeoning sunlight, he'd known somehow, someway - he'd granted her just a few moments of peace from her past. He wasn't a man who spent too long looking at a woman as anything more than another body in the dark. He just wasn't. And yet he was looking at her. He was seeing her.

Did he think if he saved her from herself, it might redeem him?

Maybe. Maybe it did. Perhaps that was part of it. But it was more than that. Their time in the cabin. Their time in his house. Their time together. It all made him feel like there was finally something beyond the blood and the choices he'd made that ended somewhere else than the bottom of a hole dug six feet down. He felt like a man with her. Just a man. Not a monster, fool, or weapon - a man. Holding her, helping her, humping her - somehow...even that...reminded him of the boy who'd believed in happy endings.

Stupid, indeed, but true.

He had a chance, here, at this moment, to do the right thing. Save those who'd lost and given up so much in the same fight he was in. Claire - who'd chosen the healer's path in the face of death. Chris - who had more resolve and determination to fight when the odds were entirely against them. Rebecca - who pushed harder than anyone he'd ever met to find answers to questions that never seemed to end. Jill - who battled from a place of sheer reckoning, making her peace with what she'd done and hoping to absolve herself of sins that weren't even hers to bear.

His sins were his own. Leon accepted that. He knew it. He'd always accepted it. He couldn't change what he'd done. But he could certainly make sure none of them ever again died because of it. That was how he made his peace. That was how he remembered a boy in a dying city who'd just wanted to protect.

The boat let out a loud gong of arrival, signaling it was about to make port. Leon crossed the deck and ranged himself beside the others. Jill glanced at him and smiled softly, her eyes and expression looking complacent for the first time since she had met him. She touched a hand to his forearm, nodding. Chris gave him a slight nod of the head as well.

Claire met his eyes. She'd never been a woman to look away. She met his look with her own, her expression guarded, her mouth unlifted. No smile there, Leon thought with a sigh. He couldn't blame her. But he tried one anyway, smiling at her. She arched a brow and turned, looking over the horizon.

Ok, he thought with a wince, no softening there. Not in almost ten years. He figured there was no hope for there ever to be. But he'd keep trying.

As they disembarked, they split off. Claire and Chris stuck to the tour, following the others into the main building with the guide blabbering on about what life had been like for the unfortunate souls kept on the island prison. Leon and Jill slipped away from the tour and headed down the path to the south, curving near the base of the building and seeking out the tunnels that ran beneath.

Jill eased down the embankment and queried, "Do we know why we're looking for the scientist?"

Leon joined her at the entrance to the tunnels, boots skimming through stagnant water. "He's dealing classified intel to foreign agencies. Hunnigan is convinced he's selling our information to whoever is out to get us in addition to the robotic engineering he's been doing for enemies of the United States."

Jill paused and lifted her brows. "Robotic engineering?"

Leon nodded as he waited for Jill to pick the lock on the sewer drainage gate. "Drones. He's taking American-acquired intel and selling it to our enemies for superior drone creation."

Jill shook her head. "Money - the great motivator."

"He was working on drones the size of bugs when he was kidnapped. With that kind of technology, imagine a battlefield laden with them. Chemical and biological weapons injected right into soldiers who don't even see it coming."

Jill paused and glanced up at him from where she knelt. "Jesus. They could turn the battlefield against itself."

"Exactly."

They held eyes until she shook her head and returned to picking the lock. "Wesker would be proud."

Leon shook his head, glancing over the water. "We can't innoculate against everything, try as we might. f*cking T-Virus let loose on the world like malaria."

Jill sighed. "Innocent people used like guinea pigs. There's no limit to what assholes will do for power."

"Makes you question what we're doing," Leon said quietly, "as if we have any shot of stopping this globally. Makes your f*cking soul numb fighting without finding any end."

Jill rose, the gate swinging inward with a metallic groan, and looked at his profile. After a moment, she returned, "There are people out there who are just leading their lives, Leon. They're just having kids and paying bills and being alive. They're happy, and they don't know the ugly sh*t stirring just beneath their feet."

He turned his eyes to her face as she continued, "They need us to protect them the best way we can. The only way we can. We don't have time to stand here and worry about our souls."

The truth of that, so calmly given, leveled him. It had him nodding quietly, watching the sunset on her pretty face. "You're right." The admission came with a tone of surprise. It had her mouth twitching with a smile.

"I am... sometimes." She ducked under the grate and into the tunnel. "And sometimes I'm so f*cking wrong it costs me all this righteous indignation I'm currently sitting on."

Leon watched her shift into the tunnel with another twitch of his lips. She was right. Fairytales and souls were for children. They were for days when you could sit there and believe in a better world. They had no place in the fight they were in. There was no time for regret or absolution - not when so many lives hung in the balance. It was amazing how quickly you could see that when you weren't choking on the past.

He just wondered how good she was at taking her own advice.

They crept through the sewers, moving stealthily through the dank and the damp. Out of the corner of her mouth, Jill remarked, "You and I have a thing about hanging out in sh*t."

Leon chuckled softly. "There's no one I'd rather pretend to be a turd with than you, Valentine."

Jill rolled her eyes. She wrinkled her nose and remarked, "What the f*ck was the point of all these tunnels beneath this place anyway?"

It was a rhetorical question, of course, but Leon answered it. "It was a military fortress at one time before it became a prison - this was how they moved munitions through for the guys stationed here."

Jill arched her brows. "What about bootleg liquor?"

Leon glanced at her in surprise. "Because...?"

"You know...Al Capone was imprisoned here."

His mouth twitched again. "Maybe. Although, don't you make booze in prison with urine and a sock?"

She blinked. She paused. He paused, too. Finally, Jill shook her head with a snort. "You're so weird. Who knows stupid sh*t like that?"

"Guys who drink too much?"

She almost laughed. She started to retort, and a skittering sound filled the tunnel. Their eyes locked. They both shook their heads. The tunnel toward the end flickered with shadows and light.

And a licker clicked along the ceiling. Jill held her breath. She backed up. Leon did, too. Both as quiet as a tomb. The licker was different, odd, its body warped and inside out as all its brethren, but it had gils fluttering along the sides of its eyeless face. Gils. The damn thing...was it possible...was it...aquatic?

Leon gestured with his shoulder to the small crawl space beside him. Jill preceded him into the space, easing through on hands and knees. He joined her in the darkness, his flashlight illuminating the path before them. They crawled silently, the drip of water and threat behind them. The tunnel was surprisingly dry as they moved, elbows and knees scraping on smooth stone.

Jill slid down to a metal walkway when they emerged into an open area. She blinked, studying the gathering of crates and humvees scattered around the wide-open hanger. Leon stepped beside her, shaking his head. "Awesome. They're using it as an armory."

Jil glanced at him, and he added, "We're walking around in a goddamn powder keg. This much firepower in one place, a well-placed aerial drone strike would turn this island into a bloodbath."

Jill shifted over the walkway, moving toward a row of doors. "Seems stupid to store this sh*t down here with tours passing through daily."

"Yep," Leon agreed as he joined her, and she opened the door, "but it's remote. It's out of the way from major cities. I get it."

Jill started to answer, and they emerged into the lab on the other side of the door. The walls were glass, monitors displaying data in streams. Computers were set up around the small area with beeping sounds and flashing lights. Jill studied one and mused, "An armory and a goddamn hub."

"Sure," Leon returned with a laugh, "Taylor clearly had free reign down here."

Leon touched a couple of keys on the computer and started to signal Hunnigan when his earpiece beat him to it. It dinged in his ear, and Hunnigan's voice remarked, "I think I have a name on the source acquiring your intel."

"Shoot." Leon stuck a thumb drive in his computer and clicked it to download data.

Before Hunnigan could answer, a voice filled the room around them. "Jill Valentine."

Leon spun with his gun up. Jill already had hers lifted, though the shadows above them didn't offer a body for the disembodied droll. They backed together, their spines aligning, turning slowly, trying to find something to shoot. Jill mused, "Have we met?"

The voice laughed softly. "A long time ago, doll face. I'm sad you don't remember."

Jill glanced to the side at Leon, who shrugged in answer. "Refresh my memory."

"Alright, supercop. You always did like a man who goes after what he wants."

Of all the people in the world it might have been, it was the one she least expected. They'd parted ways after their brief time together. He'd been brave, selfless, redemptive. He'd tried to save those he'd been hired to kill.

And now he was here, in this moment, trying to killher.

Why?!

Into Leon's ear, Hunnigan's voice sounded, "...that's what we were afraid of."

Quietly, Leon queried, "What's that?"

"Jill Valentine's loyalty started to be questioned because of him."

"Who is he?"

Softly, Jill answered Leon's question. Her voice was shocked, lost, sad, and betrayed. "Carlos?"

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

XII:

Truth

Penumbra -the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Alcatraz Island- Early Fall, 2014

The voice that came back was familiar. It was a friend who'd saved her life so long before. One she'd thought she'd left on a beach somewhere to protect him. One who now answered her with the same tone of loss, "What's a tall drink of water like you doing in a place like this?"

Jill's eyes shivered closed. She shook her head in denial. Carlos was a good man. Agood guy.What was he doing here? What had happened to make him switch sides? Why was he after them now?

She called softly, "What are you doing, Carlos? Whathave you done?"

Into the cold dark, his voice came back, and it wasn't soft and sad now; it was cold, and it wasangry."Ask your boyfriend beside you there. Ask him about the program. Ask him about thelies!Ask him about what it takes to escape a f*cking prison! Ask him why...after everything...why I was theonlyf*cking oneleft!"

Leon tensed behind her. Jill didn't look back at him; she didn't dare. Into his earpiece, Leon demanded, "Hunnigan...was this mother f*cker in the program?"

Hunnigan's voice was a little scared. "...yes. But he was presumed dead."

"...when?"

"...when Jack Krauser lost the rest of his team...when the sanitation occurred."

Jill shivered where she stood. Carlo's voice trumpeted down through the lights again toward them. "I joined the fight to make a difference. I joined because they gave me no f*cking choice, and I thought - hell, I owed it to the people who'd died n Raccoon. I owed it to the woman who fought beside me to save anyone she could. And to those I lost along the way. I had cost everyone who mattered everything. I owed it! And they left us in that f*cking jungle to die."

Jill glanced behind her finally at Leon. "...did you abandon him in that jungle?"

A moment passed before he answered. "If he was on that team, then yes. I didn't have a choice. I was wounded, I had Manuela with me. I took the chopper and left Jack to rendezvous with the team for clean up. The lab was overrun, and the village was lost. He called for evac...the risk was too great. I couldn't get them to go back for the team. I tried..."

Carlo's voice roared through the dark. "You didn't try hard enough! You coward! You liar!"

Jill let her eyes flutter closed again. Leon engaged the voice, tone calm. "I had no power! You know I had no power! I couldn't do a damn thing!"

"You're right about that," the voice answered, "you couldn't then, you can't now. And Jack made damn sure we found those who could."

Jill called desperately, "Carlos! Umbrella betrayed you, too. Umbrella was the reason the government sought you out and took you! You know that!"

Silence. Quiet. Finally, Carlos returned, "Umbrella put me in that city...butyouwere the reason they took me, Jill. You. And you're the reason I've lost everything. Umbrella came after my family after that night. My mother, my sister...myfamily...and I was a prisoner in a cage unable to find them. And then...I was nothing more than a f*cking discarded experiment by the people who could havesaved them all!"

It echoed. It sounded like the voice of god thundering from the turbulent heavens. His rage was so painful that the hair on her arms stood up.

Quietly, Leon snorted, "So instead of taking responsibility for your own choices - like working for f*cking Umbrella to start with - you decide instead to become a cliche villain in a bad story? What's this? Revenge against those who had nothing to do with what happened to you?"

Carlo's voice was whip-sharp. "Nothing to do with it? Nothing? Umbrella was out to get rid of you- all of you. Anyone who helped you, anyone who stood against them, anyone who had a modicum of skills - was either used or destroyed. I had nothing. I lost everything. Instead of eating a bullet, I decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So, Jack and I...we set out to find answers."

Leon snorted again, closing his eyes and listening for the voice. It wasn't in the room; he was damn sure of that. But maybe he could determine where the speakers originated by keeping this whiner talking. "Jack was a treacherous piece of sh*t. He died in his own blood and piss like the turncoat he was."

Urgently, Jill advised, "Leon, stop. Stop. You don't understand."

Licking his teeth, Leon returned, "Don't I? Jack trained me. Trained Carlos, too. Am I right, amigo?" No answer. But that was ok. The answer was clear. "Some of us decided to Darth Vader when things didn't go our way; some of us kept on the path trying to do the right thing. Apparently, Carlos here decided to take the path of least resistance and become a bad guy. Ain't that right, Carl?"

"You think you're clever, don't you, Kennedy? You think you can get me to rise to the bait like Jack. He had all that rage all the time. A pissed-off bag of lost promise. When he joined that goddamn cult, I sought out a better ally. Finding them among the wreckage of Umbrella rejects and the government's broken toys were easy enough. Glenn Arias was more than happy to work with anyone who had their own sad agenda."

Leon shook his head. "Glenn Arias was as pathetic as the rest of you. Do you think a sh*tty backstory is a good enough reason to kill innocent people? Does that help you sleep at night?"

"I think you can only burn someone so many times before they go numb. I went numb in that jungle. I stopped thinking about anything but revenge. I'm not after killing anyone who doesn't deserve it. I don't have any interest in world domination. I just want to kill those who have it coming."

"Meaning those of us who survived Raccoon, the same as you? Any particular reason why?"

Carlos laughed gruffly. "With you dead, your swath of sh*t dies with you. And I get to test Glenn's final experiment for him in the process. If it works on you, it'll work to take down the people who put me here. Can't kill off most of Umbrella, sadly, as that's dead and gone. But I've spent a long time finding out who screwed me, and I'm going to enjoy seeing them die, becoming what they created. Even now, the drones I've helped create are about to spread panic and horror to most of the governing bodies in this corrupt country. Why you ask? Why else - because a panicked people is a rebellious one. If they have something to fear, they have something to fight for and someone to blame. It's time to pay the price for what they helped destroy."

"Same sh*t, different day," Leon remarked with a snort, "get a new agenda, Carl. This ones tired and tropey."

"Tropes work for a reason, you fluffy-haired fop," Carlos's voice returned with a curl of laughter. "Enjoy becoming one."

The speakers clicked off. Jill stood there for a moment before she breathed, "Jesus. How does this happen? He was a guy who worked so hard to make things right."

Quietly, Leon returned, "He woke up one morning with nothing left to lose and decided to blame the world for his loss. Some of us keep fighting, some us just give up."

Into his earpiece, he instructed, "Get a team out here, Hunnigan, fast. And contact Rebecca to see how that vaccine is coming."

"On it. Be careful." She signed off.

Leon gestured with his head. "Let's keep going. We need to find Taylor and get off this island, now."

He started forward with Jill in tow. He made it four steps before she inquired, "Did you know him? From before?"

Leon glanced at her. "I didn't. The program was really good at keeping most of us separated. Krauser trained me and several other recruits. But he wasn't in my group. The program works, Jill, because people don't usually come in contact with each other. That way, when something like this happens and one of us goes bad - we don't have a hitlist of all the others to take out."

"Does it happen often? Agents going bad?"

Leon held her eyes for a moment before he answered, "...it's not easy being a dog on a leash."

He pushed open the doors in front of him. Jill followed, silently. They found themselves in the cell block. The silence was deafening. There were bodies littered around like discarded trash. Blood splashed the walls and curled around the feet. Leon's boots squelched as he walked.

Softly, Jill murmured, "Jesus."

A moan from close by had them both spinning with their weapons.

But it wasn't a zombie in a cell. It was Claire. Shocked, Leon rushed forward and went to his knees by the cage, reaching through the bars for the hand she threw toward him. They clasped, palm to palm, and she urged, "We're infected." Her voice rasped. "It's some kind of tiny drone. It got us both before we could do anything."

Behind her in the cage, a man in classes urged, "Open this! Hurry! Let me out - she's turning!"

Leon studied him and remarked, "Antonio Taylor."

The man shifted. "Please...hurry. She'll kill me."

Chris grunted in the cell beside them, "Shut your hole, doc. You ain't going anywhere, and nobody is turning. Not today."

Jill crouched next to his cell. "Well, you've looked better, Redfield."

His smile was sad. "I bet. Claire is turning faster. I don't know how much time we have."

Claire moaned softly. "Jesus, Jill, you should have told me how much this sh*t hurts."

Jill smiled at her. "Eventually, you'll pass out...it doesn't hurt after that."

Leon held Claire's bloodshot eyes in the darkness. "Hold on, ok? Rebecca is coming. Just hold on."

Claire gave him an indulgent lift of lips. Her lids trembled. "Liar. You know it's over. Shoot me and make this end."

He rolled his eyes. "Don't be a hero, Red. It's boring."

Claire laughed softly. "Like you haven't wanted to shoot me for years."

Leon gripped her palm. "I haven't. Never." He paused, judging the fever of her palm, and added quietly, "I'm sorry, Claire."

Her feverish gaze held his. She squeezed his hand tighter. "Me, too. For everything."

Leon shook his head. "This isn't it. I'll find a way. I..." He paused. He shook his head again. "I want you to try to trust me."

She smiled again, eyes jittering with sickness. "I'll give it my best shot."

Leon squeezed her hand again and rose. He turned toward Jill. "I'm gonna head back to the lab. There's gotta be something on those f*cking computers about a vaccine. If I can simulate something, it could buy us time until Rebecca gets here."

Jill nodded and rose as well. "I'll keep going. We need something, anything, to try to disable the damn drones and make sure this ends here."

As they started to turn, a click of heels signaled they were no longer alone. The darkness parted, and Maria Gomez crossed through the shadows. She was still tall, still built, still beautiful inside the shell of what had once been human. She wore jeans and a lab coat, her long blonde hair pinned back in a sleek ponytail. The white top she wore still left that impressive cleavage of hers on full display. She didn't look dangerous. She looked like a model pretending to be a scientist.

She was a monster dressed as a woman.

Jill hesitated, but Leon didn't. He shot at her without thinking.

She simply skittered up the wall like a co*ckroach and bounced off, landing behind them as they turned. Her boot lashed out, kicking Jill so hard that the smaller woman was thrown into the cell beside her and slid down while Chris roared, "You f*ckingbitch!"

Leon fired again, and Gomez jerked, blood spraying on her chest as she rushed him. They grappled, the gun going off again and the bullet pinging uselessly against the floor. She picked Leon up like he wasn't all muscle and tossed him through the air like a child chucking a toy. He kept the gun, somehow, and went down on his back, sliding over the floor.

She mounted him on the floor before he could rise to fire again, forcing his own gun up and under his chin. The muzzle crushed against the soft underside of his flesh, denting the tender area as she spoke tonelessly above him. "Pull the trigger now, you little weasel. Make this easy on me."

Her thick accent grated on his nerves. Her enormous tit* in her tight tank top rubbed obscenely against his chest. Ordinarily, he liked a stacked blonde straddling his lap. But not when the one in question was a bioweapon and playing Russian roulette with his life. Gomez spoke against his ear, lips brushing the shell, "I'm going to enjoy killing you for my father."

Leon answered with a tone of amusem*nt. "Well, your Dadwasadick."

Gomez returned. "I'm sure he'll rest easy knowing I've chopped yours off."

The voice filled the air around them. "Maria, if you wouldn't mind, let's stick to the plan here."

Gomez trembled with repressed rage. She leaned back. Her finger pressed harder on his on the trigger of the gun. Leon resisted, sweat springing on his brow at the strength it took to keep that digit from depressing and turning his face into soup.

Behind them, Jill advised, "Get off him, bitch, before I turn your head into a canoe."

Gomez answered happily, "It'll kill him, too."

And Jill simply said. "I'll take that chance."

Softly, Leon awarded, "What a woman."

The voice of Carlos came again. "Maria? Please?"

Maria grunted. She lowered the gun, slapped Leon's face with her free hand, jerked the gun from his, and rose in a single moment. The slap stung, ringing his ear like she'd used a bat. He grunted as she got off him, kicking his hip to send him to his side on the floor. Gomez turned with the gun in her hand, and Jill adjusted her aim as Carlos called, "Don't do it, Jill. I've got this scope on Claire there. Don't be stupid."

Claire commanded, "Do it, you spineless turd. Make my day."

In his cell, Chris snorted, "Listen to her, sounding like Dirty Harry while she dies."

Leon mused, "Do turds have spines?"

On the landing, Carlos remarked. "Such good humor for a rag-tag group of losers. I used to be the same. It's amazing what a little f*cking betrayal can do to your ability to crack a good one-liner. You're out of time for jokes, heroes. I want to know the timeline on infection here, which is the only reason the Redfields are even still alive. And Taylor? If you don't start talking, you're gonna find out what you've been creating looks a whole lot worse up close."

Taylor started to speak, and Claire let out a low moan. She tumbled to the floor and splayed her hands on the cold stone. Spittle dripped from her lips and plopped on the floor. She trembled until her arms quivered with the need to collapse.

Jill surged forward, and Maria blocked her, lifting a sculpted brow. Jill raised the gun again on her. "Move before I blow apart that impressive rack."

Maria snorted happily. She started to raise her gun in answer, and Carlos shouted, "No! Maria!"

But his little minion was tired of listening. She raised her gun, Claire grabbed her ankle through the bars and jerked, and the shot went wild as Jill's took her in the shoulder and spun her around. Leon surged forward, caught her back to his front in a grapple, and tossed her into an impressive suplex. As she went down, she wormed her way over until her legs were around his neck and shoulders and threw him. It wasn't human.

It wasn't even really possible. But monster strength tended to allow your spine to move like a f*cking serpent. Leon was airborne, slung through the hallway and sliding along the floor when he landed. He flipped quickly to his feet, and Jill might have fired again if Carlos didn't plant a shot into the ground an inch from Claire's fallen chin. "I said enough!"

He roared it.

It echoed through the cells as Jill turned the gun on him on the balcony. Maria, tired of being commanded, tackled the brunette in the side as she did. It took them both back against the iron bars with a clang. Chris reached through the bars as his sister had done to grab Maria's ankles and jerk, and Carlos declared, "Enough. I only need one of them alive anyway."

He shifted his gun to Chris, and Leon shouted, "Jill!" There was a clunk on the ground as the grenade rolled between the battling feet of the brunette and the blonde trying to hold her feet.

Carlos roared with rage and ran for it. Chris jerked Maria once more and sent the blonde to her back, and Jill kicked from the hip to send her sliding over the ground. Leon shouted, "Go! Stop the drones! I will hold her here!"

The grenade went off, and there was no time to argue. Light seared the eyes. It seared the ears. It seared the room in a flash so bright you either covered your irises or risked going blind. Jill took off in the ensuing madness.

She dashed down the hallway and left the others behind. There was no time. There was really no choice. She had to move. She had to get to the control panel and try something, anything to disable what was about to happen. She had to stop Carlos. She had to save the Redfield's.

She was on borrowed time. Her heart pounded to let her know that adrenaline was pumping through her system like a drug. It gave flight to her feet and hope to her soul that she'd somehow denied for far too long. She could save them. She could save them all.

Or die trying.

Her face reflected in the smudged window beside her as she ran. Even in the dying light of day, it wore sunglasses. Lies. Always lies. Her past was strewn with lies and betrayal. It was memories of broken faith and shattered hope. Her reflection wasn't her own and hadn't been in a long time. And even now, what she'd once believed scattered around her like broken glass.

She had to trust Leon Kennedy to be the partner she'd tried so hard to avoid for so long. She'd trusted Carlos once like that. He'd come through for her in Raccoon City. He'd just...lost his way somehow since then. He'd lost his purpose. He'd turned on her when he might have risen above and become more than another two-faced villain with delusions of grandeur.

She knew Leon might have, too. Somehow, someway - he'd held onto the good in the face of so much evil. He'd held onto the core of what they were doing here. He'd danced with her in a cabin just to remind her of what they were fighting for. He'd held her the night before just because she needed him. And he'd stayed until she let go.

She liked him. She just needed to learn what that meant again. It had been too long since she'd bothered to try. She had to learn to put her faith in more than the gun in her hand. She had to trust him to hold that bitch and protect the others. So, she could run like hell and maybe, just maybe, do what she'd failed to do when she'd went out that window so many years ago.

She had to kill a man she'd once trusted.

She had to believe in another to guard all she had left in the world. Good, bad, or broken - the Redfields had always been her only family. She'd died once to save one; she’d damn well die again to save them both.

Her faith was tied up in the broken roads of her past and the blurry landscape of her future. And the only thing she could do was keep running.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

XIII:

Infected

Penumbra -the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Alcatraz Island- Early Fall, 2014

Back in the corridor with the cells, Leon rose to his feet. Maria did as well. They faced each other in the flickering lights of a long-dead prison with the memory of a long-dead monster between them. The tunnels beneath Alcatraz were old and endless. The ire that lit the face of the woman watching him felt the same -old, familiar, and unforgiving. It looked oddly like his own in the mirror sometimes.

Softly, he told her, "You picked the wrong side, Maria. He was dead a long time before I came along. I just put in the ground what you helped create."

Maria twitched. Some sliver of who she'd been before Arias had turned her into a monster slithered through her eyes like fog against a cloud-covered moon. She twitched, her head tilted like a curious dog to voices only she could hear. Finally, she spoke, and her lips moved almost lazily, "He's dead...they're both dead...but you're still here. The only way this ends...is when you're beside them."

Leon rolled his neck and shoulders and invited in a tone of resolve, "Then let's finish it."

She raced at him, and he turned, taking flight down the acrid hallway. The stench of the flash grenade burned his lungs. The scent of sulfur and stench filled his mouth beside the flavor of survival. Both, somehow, tasted like regret.

He emerged into a booth that housed the security systems for the island. The walls were glass and covered in scrolling streams of data and cameras. It showed bodies littered on floors, rustling water filled with aquatic monsters, death, dying, and destruction. It couldn't be released. Lickers let loose with the ability to swim, striking at swimmers off the coast of California. Tiny drones laden with viruses. He might be targeting the government, but the result would be the same as one against the public - the people caught in the fallout would still pay the ultimate price.

There was no massive strike that didn't destroy the innocent. You couldn't, after all, make an omelet without breaking some eggs. And the eggs didn't even know they were about to get scrambled.

Maria raced into the room without preamble. She rushed him, and Leon grunted in battle. They collided in the center of the room in a series of kicks, sweeps, punches, and swipes. She tossed him into a glass wall that burst around him in a tinkle of musical shards.

He came down, his blood spilling red and wet on the ground as she crossed toward him, where he finally slid to a stop against a wall. "You can't win," she stated almost conversationally, "I've been toying with you this long just because I want you to suffer."

Leon grunted again, leveraging himself up to one knee. "Typical woman."

She spun a kick at him. He got a partial block up with one arm, and it sent him sliding along the floor again to smash into a console, which set off a series of beeps and burps of noise and light in protest. "Pathetic piece of sh*t," Maria declared as she crossed toward him again, "how are you something to be feared? You are nothing. Flesh and bones and blood in a meat suit. I'm going to rip off your arms and shove them up your ass."

"I always had a fondness for learning how to crab walk." Leon pushed off the console and rose, blood spilling into one eye from his cut face.

Maria rolled her eyes. "Fool. They call you the executioner. But all you kill is dialogue. You sling jokes around while you bleed to death. Will you joke while I break your bones?"

"Depends," Leon retorted as he circled her, "if I get you to laugh, do I win?"

"Oh, I've been laughing at you since I met you," Maria paused before him, "I especially love your fear. When I finish with you, I'll do the same for your companion. She'll be fun to break. I'll make her scream your name while I do it."

Leon laughed derisively. "She won't be the first woman to do it. Though usually, I like to be the one on top of them when they do."

"You're not the top of anything, you fool. You? You're the bottom of the f*cking food chain."

She surged forward. He met her again. He punched her solar plexus and swung around to sweep her feet. Gomez stumbled, looped her leg around his head, and jerked him around toward her. She gripped a handful of his hair and swung herself up and onto his back like a monkey. Leon stumbled into the console. It squealed again in anger, and she shoved his face down against the buttons. They beeped and blooped as she sank her teeth into his neck like a vampire and bit down.

His elbow came up through the pain, smashed into her face, and sent her reeling to the side as he gripped the coffee mug beside his left hand and rolled on the console to crush it against her forehead. The ceramic shattered, Maria staggered back, and Leon bounded off the console to leap and kicked her in the chest. She tumbled backward as she laughed, "That it? And here I thought you were some kind of legend. I'm done with you. Carlos is probably killing your girlfriend as we speak. I'd hate to miss the show."

She was probably right. Carlos wanted Jill alive so he could end her himself. The longer Leon held Maria here, the longer the risk to Jill and the more imminent the threat of losing Claire and Chris became. He didn't have time for games. If he died fighting Maria, Claire and Chris didn't have a shot in hell of surviving her.

And Jill would be alone to finish it.

Blood slid down his neck from the bite. His back and legs ached, and his head throbbed from the glass. He had bits of it embedded in his palms. He was hurt. He was tired. He was pissed. He wasn't going to die here for killing a monster. He wasn't going to fail anyone else. He was finished blaming himself for trying like hell to save everyone.

And he was finished with thisbitch.

Maria raced forward. The world slowed down. It was like he had all the time in the universe to see her move. Blood surged hot and wet through his body. It burned as it did, making his breath quicken and his eyes dilate. It skittered with fingers of fire into his lungs, legs, and hands. It rocketed through his body like the battle cry of a desperate man with nothing to lose.

And it activated something he'd been trying to pretend didn't exist for years.

She swung at him, and he ducked smoothly and effortlessly. She kicked, and he deflected. She raged, and he rebuked. Calm. Centered. Simple. Training and skill and something tangible that had no name. He was one step ahead. One kick beyond. One move before. Her wrist snapped with a wet pop as she grabbed for his throat. He broke her wrist and tugged her, screaming against his front. Her arm snapped at the elbow with a crunch as he cranked that arm behind her back and bound her to him.

Face to face, Maria gasped wetly, "...how-"

She drove her heel toward his foot. Leon's hand grabbed her throat and lifted her from the floor, easily, thoughtlessly, with little more than a pop of biceps and forearm. She dangled, gurgling in his grip.

And then he threw her away like she was weightless—like a child tossing a toy or a master tossing a ball for a faithful hound. She flew, crashed through two panes of glass, and kept going. As she smashed into the far wall, he picked his way toward her with a tinkle of boots on broken shards.

With her broken arm pinned to her side, Maria struggled to rise from the floor. She grabbed a chunk of glass from the floor and threw it. It zinged. It zipped. He plucked it from the air and launched it back, muscle memory and speed. Like a javelin, it pierced her chest and thrust her into the wall, pinning her there - spitted as a bug on display.

Maria sagged, her perfect cleavage wet and red with blood. Her mouth bubbled with it, her eyes glossy with tears. Her one good hand grabbed for his face. But she didn't try to kill him as he approached; she cupped his cheek almost tenderly. "...maybe...not so pathetic after all."

Leon gripped her arms in his hands to hold her against the mortal blow and the wall. She trembled, foamy pink bubbles spilling from her lips. "...whatareyou?"

The whisper echoed quietly around them. Softly, he told her, "Go be with your Dad."

Maria gasped wetly. Her hand slid down his arm. Her face settled against his neck and shoulder, gentle now, almost seeking comfort. Against his neck, she whispered, "...executioner...thank you."

Her lungs gasped once more. Her body jerked in defeat. And then she was still.

For a moment, he held her against him. Her skin was still warm. Her eyes fixed and dilated, with small tears trembling and unfinished on her lash line. Something cold and ugly continued to pump through him. Something alien and surreal. It chewed relentlessly at his humanity with tiny teeth made of something that almost scared him.

Leon drew a sharp breath and let his eyes flicker closed for a handful of moments before he released the woman in his arms and pulled her from her perch against the wall. The glass squelched as it separated through her chest, slicing her heart and ribs to ribbons. He laid her carefully on the floor, passed a hand over her eyes, divested her of the gun holstered at her side that she'd never even attempted to use on him, and turned toward the consoles.

His breath shook as he released it, grounding himself. He wasn't ready yet to address the thing that surged into him in moments of survival. He wasn't prepared to think about the blood on his hands, once his own, now entirely Maria's. He wasn't prepared to look in the glass beside him and see the cuts on his face had healed. He'd see the bite on his neck was healed. He'd see the face in the glass was him, but it hadn't been him for a long time. He knew it. He'd seen it plenty. He knew what it meant.

But he didn't have the time now to face it.

He turned to the console and started typing in orders on the machine. It brought up data. It shot through video feeds. He tried to find something, anything, that would allow him to generate some kind of vaccine or possibly shut down operations on the damn drones. He was clicking keys and passed over a feed quickly before pausing, reversing it, and finding the screen filled with a woman and a child. The woman was crouched on the floor in an office, half leaning on a desk. She was bleeding badly from the neck and face. She listed to one side while the child with her cuddled against her chest—a little girl, barely three or so, with solemn eyes and sadness on her blood-splattered face.

He clicked on the monitor's sound and heard the woman's ragged breathing. She spoke quietly but desperately to the little girl who was shaking her head and holding on. She was dying. He didn't need to be standing there in person to see it happening. She was dying, and she'd turn. She'd turned and take the little girl with her. Leon hesitated and marked the location in his head before he clicked another button and brought up the cells.

Rebecca's small form was crouched by Claire's, reaching through to touch her. She carried a bloody bag on her arm and looked soaked, scared, but alert. When she injected Claire with a needle, Leon understood what had happened, but he clicked on the sound anyway to hear her say, "-ill said to come right here. She's trying to head off the attack. She found the main hub of the lab, I think."

Claire's voice was too muffled, but Rebecca responded, "What?"

The look on her face shifted from concern to intense disbelief. "Where?"

Leon clicked a few keys on the console, and a hum distracted her. She nearly backed off before the locks on the cells clicked audibly. Her head turned toward the ceiling. It was almost like she looked right at him as she smiled. "Looks like Leon found the control room. How about we take that drive and go save lives?"

Leon turned from the console and glanced at the map on the wall. His eyes scanned the map and memorized it in a matter of moments. The central lab was across the damn compound. He'd have to circle the tower and down the back stairs to find Jill. If she was there, tangling with Carlos, he didn't know how much time he had.

He glanced at the monitor with the little girl, hesitated, and then turned back and exited the west door away from Jill. He knew what she'd have told him to do. He knew what she'd say—every life, every single one, mattered. If you didn't save one, you wouldn't save any. He knew she'd approve.

His boots crunched on glass and scattered papers as he entered the office. Behind the desk, the woman's moan had him moving faster. As he circled the bloody room and picked his way around bodies, a tiny voice spoke in broken Ukranian.

The little girl was shaking the fallen woman. She kept prodding her face and her chest with tiny hands. She was pale, her back bloody, her face splattered with it. Her dark curls bounced as she begged, but she didn't cry. When she turned her head to see Leon, she lifted her hands to him as if pleading.

He crouched, his left hand searching for a pulse on the woman. Nothing. She was gone. The ragged state of her neck said she'd died painfully - her carotid torn to shreds. Instead, Leon offered his hand to the little girl, shaking his head back and forth at her. She glanced at the woman and back at his face. She hesitated, and the woman jerked.

She twitched.

Leon shifted, wrapped his arm around the small girl against her will, and tugged her against his hip as he backed off. The woman surged from the floor, fish eyes rolling, body twitching as she shot to her feet too fast for the T-Virus, too slow for a child to have avoided death from her. He drilled her between the eyes and set her smashing back into the desk to slide to the floor and go still. Coagulated blood splattered the wall beyond her like chunky jello.

The little girl clutched him, her small hands grabbing his neck and shoulder. She trembled and whimpered sadly. She didn't cry. She needed to cry, but the shock was all over her. At the moment, it was saving her from a complete breakdown. Or maybe, just maybe, little kids were tougher than anyone ever gave them credit for.

Hadn't Sherry proven that so long ago?

Leon set her down on a desk and lifted the ragged back of her shirt. The scrape was deep and ugly but looked like glass, not teeth. He leaned back and spoke, surprising her with the grasp of her language. He asked her if she'd been bitten. She shook her head no. He asked if the woman on the floor was her mother. She shook her head no.

Did she know where her mother was? Again, no. He asked her if she'd go with him now? And that answer was yes. Be brave, he told her; be courageous and stay quiet. He'd protect her now. He promised it. He asked her name. She gave him big eyes, but she didn't answer. She just stared at him. When he set her down on the floor to walk, she took his left hand and clung. It was good enough for now.

He carefully led her from the room. She wasn't the first child he'd rescued from something like this, and she wouldn't be the last. However, she was the youngest. He was concerned she was too young to understand the scope of danger. He kept her close to him as they walked. He transferred her little hand to his belt to free up his left hand to brace the pistol as they moved. She followed like a small shadow of death.

They circled the tower, Leon clearing quickly and efficiently as they moved down the stairs. He edged around a corner and found the door to the lab. As he shifted inside, the little girl whispered, "Oksana."

Surprised, he glanced down at her. She gave him those big eyes and repeated, "Oksana."

With a soft smile, he returned, "Leon."

She nodded and clung to his belt as he moved into the room. The lab was beeping and secure—no Carlos, no Jill. As he started forward, something shifted in his peripheral vision. He turned, gun raised, and something pricked his neck. He flicked his head to shake it free, and it tumbled to the floor with a clink of metal.

Small, tiny, no bigger than the mosquito it pretended to be.

Oksana made a slight sound of fear as he stumbled and cursed, "...sh*t."

Sweat sprang on his brow as the first roll of nausea hit. He laid his left hand on a desk to steady himself. Infected. He was sure Carlos had sent it after him. He had no doubt he was on borrowed time now.

He told Oksana about Rebecca. He described her and Claire and Chris. He told her about Jill and what she was wearing. He warned her to get away from him, fast, and hide if he went down. She shook her head. She didn't want to leave him.

The door rattled across from them. Leon poked her behind him and raised the gun. His vision wavered, but his hands were steady. The door was thrust open with power instead of caution. It smashed into the far wall, and a hoard burst forth through the opening, falling on each other, stumbling, tumbling.

He shot the first through in the left eye and made it harder on them. When the next crawled over its fallen comrade, he hit it, too, creating a human shield in the doorway. Each body collapsed atop the one below it, growing the tower of flesh until no room remained for more. They'd have to shove through the corpses to get to them now.

He'd stopped the assault, but he'd blocked that way out as well. They'd have to go back now the way they'd come. He picked up Oksana for speed and started running. His boots echoed on the stairs as they went back up, circling as his skin felt warm and tight on his bones. His feet were swift, and his body worked independently without much need to look to his boiling brain for signals.

Sometimes, training helped you out.

He backtracked through the office where he'd found her and cut left down the hallway outside, moving fast but carefully back toward the armory. Sweat pooled on his spine and face as he went, kicking open the door to the armory and sighting through to the other side. He was down to three bullets. He needed another f*cking weapon. Apparently, Maria had taken his and disposed of it somewhere, and hers was almost empty.

He took three steps down to the landing and set Oksana on a box near the wall as he went to open a crate and look inside. His hand closed on an M4 Carbine in the crate surrounded by straw, and the water bubbled behind him. He grabbed the weapon, found it empty, and spun around as something burst out of the water. It landed with a splat on the landing in front of him.

The aquatic licker whipped its tongue wildly as it sat there, blind but listening. He lifted his finger to his lips toward Oksana, and she obliged, utterly silent. His eyes darted around the armory, looking for anything that might hold the ammo for the gun in his hands. The licker padded across the landing with a wet slop of paws and click of claws. Its gills flicked and wiggled, throwing water as its tongue made serpentine swirls across the floor.

Leon backed up quietly, sliding his foot instead of lifting it, avoiding making a sound. Oksana shifted on her box, slipping to the floor behind it silently. Smart kid. There were only two options in a moment like this—brains or death. Tiny or not, she'd seen death. She was a baby with a brain big enough to know what that licker was. It made him hurt for what she'd been through.

Leon let the carbine swing to his back and cupped the handgun. His vision wavered, worrying him, but his hands were steady as he aimed at the licker. Its tongue trailed two inches from his left boot. In a swift move, he stamped down on that tongue, sighted at its exposed brain, and pulled the trigger twice. It squealed, twitched, and died, and the silence was loud again.

He waited, watching the water, but nothing else burst free. As he turned to check the supply box behind him, the tongue by his boot twitched. It flicked before he could sidestep, and it curled before he could jump out of the way. The fever in his body was affecting his swiftness. The tongue looped, jerked, and pulled him over the deck toward the dead licker. How? Somehow, the tongue was still active even though the monster was unmoving.

Leon angled the gun, and the tongue jerked him up. It threw him into the air like tossing a person juggling. Launched skyward, he tried to rotate in the air and control his descent, and instead, he plummeted down, down, down, and hit the water so hard it made his head spin. He sank, grasping for the gun which he'd lost somewhere along the way. The carbine dangled off his back, empty and useless.

The water splashed as the not-dead licker joined him in the water. Leon grabbed for the knife on his vest; he twisted his body in the water as it reached him. Claws swiped, slowed by water, and missed his face by an inch as Leon turned into its attack zone. His knife drove up into its open jaw, pinning bottom to top, forcing that tongue to curl around their bodies like a hug from hell.

In a desperate move, Leon kicked them both to the surface, gasping for air as the tongue wrapped him closer, fetid breath skittering over his face, claws digging along his back. One pierced the skin of his left hip as the licker leaked brains and blood in chunks around them. If he'd been wondering that the virus they carried mimicked the control of the A-Virus, the answer was right here. It was dead, or as dead as undead could be, and it was still moving. Someone was controlling it. Someone was killing him with a dead f*cking licker.

How did he fight that?

He jerked the knife free of its chin, his body compressing as if he were in a trash compactor. The pain joined the cold and turned numb. He rotated his wrist and slashed into the tongue at the curve of jaw, sawing as he died. Sawing as his body burned. The water splashed behind him, signaling he was no longer alone. Resigned to death, he hoped Oksana stayed hidden as he'd told her.

The water sloshed around him as it split and welcomed another licker. The licker touched his back and then swam left, seeking the other. And then it put a heavy muzzle to the head of the one grasping him and instructed, "Lean back!"

Leon did. He leaned back as the licker became Jill, and Jill pulled the trigger on the heavy weapon pressed into his assailant. It blew the head apart in a burst of noise and blood. He went deaf momentarily as the tongue became chunks in the water by his face. The pressure eased. The water turned black with blood.

As he shirked the swirling pieces of tongue still clinging to him, Jill grabbed his arm and jerked, dragging him into stroke beside her. They angled for the landing, and she leveraged herself up, throwing down a hand to pull him free. He must have looked worse than he thought because she gave him a worried face as she dragged him back against some boxes. "What the f*ck were you doing out there with it? Dancing?"

Leon chuckled weakly. He leaned on the cold wood and answered gruffly, "Sure. That's what I do. I dance with monsters."

Jill touched his arm and answered. "I know. I've seen that first hand."

Quietly, Leon murmured, "I don't see any more monsters."

Jill skimmed her eyes over his face. "Then you're as blind as you are stupid."

He laughed lightly. "A drone got me."

She nodded. "I know. Rebecca is coming. Hold on." Her eyes flicked to the boxes as one rustled. She turned her gun and aimed, and Leon grabbed the barrel, pushing it down.

"Not a monster."

"What?"

"Girl."

"Girl?"

He nodded at her. "Girl. Little. Needs help. Get her help, Jill. Get her out of here."

Jill started to say something, and the water bubbled again. It burst upward in a geyser. Water splattered around them as two lickers landed on the ground. One headed right for the rustling boxes where Oksana had hidden. Jill hesitated, knowing she'd draw attention to them if she shot.

Leon whispered, "Go. Get her. Go help her."

"What about you?"

He held her eyes. "She's just a girl, Jill. Go get her."

Jill pressed the rifle into his hands and breathed. "Don't die."

She hesitated again, and he breathed, "Go. Now. Save her."

She slipped silently away, looking at him with a look of harsh regret. Leon turned the gun toward the second licker. He watched the first get too close to that box where Oksana hid, and he made his choice.

He fired into the squishy brain and drew the attention of both of them. As they raced toward him, he steadied himself. The fever beat in his bones, and he thought, "Worth it." Even as the gun echoed like thunder in the quiet room.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Penumbra:

Shadows Collide

XIV:

Failure

Penumbra -the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.

Alcatraz Island- Early Fall, 2014

There was a scuffle of boots on stone. Someone was grunting softly. The pain that radiated from head to toe was nearly all he could focus on. Everything hurt, hurt, hurt - burning through bone and blood like poison. It took a moment to realize the grunting was him.

Was he a zombie? Was he somehow still in his head but undead? The likelihood of that seemed unreal. Of course, all of this seemed distinctly unreal. Against his side, the person carrying his weight murmured into his ear, "Keep going. We're almost there."

We?

His eyes turned, trying to focus. Jill had him leveraged against her side, shouldering him up as they moved. The little girl beside her was sticking close, afraid but determined. Leon's voice came out - dragging from his lips as if he were a dog trying to talk, deep and pained. "You should've left me."

Jill rolled her eyes. "You big hero. You nearly died back there."

Had he? He didn't remember. The memories came in flashes, trickling through his fevered brain in chunks and swirls. Running out of bullets. Fist fighting lickers. Had he? How? He wasn't Chris Redfield - he didn't go fist to face with something twice his strength and speed. But he had. Somehow. He'd leveraged up his dying body and flown into the fight like a thing possessed. A demon, it seemed, unleashed out of desperation and survival. That thing kept happening - that thing he tried to ignore- that told him that whatever he was, he wasn't human.

Jill turned a corner and spoke softly to the little girl. Her impeccable accent surprised him again. As if sensing the question, she said, "Wesker made sure I could speak the languages he needed for his missions."

His tired ears determined it was Russian she was speaking. Apparently, Oksana spoke both. It was, of course, only Americans who felt that they needed to go through the rest of the world expecting everyone to speak English. It was easy to forget that most of the free world surrounding them spoke multiple.

A voice behind them followed a clicking sound. "Damnit, Jill, why do you make this harder than you need to?"

Jill hesitated. She finally leaned Leon against the wall to her left and turned to face Carlos in the hallway. She didn't bother to aim her empty weapon at him; she just faced him down. "Carlos...there's still time to set this right. Stop the spread. I know you."

Carlos laughed softly. "We spent one night together years ago trying to survive, and you think youknowme?"

Jill nodded. "I do. Because you don't survive something like that and not learn who you're beside. You nearly died to do the right thing then. I gotta believe that guy who risked himself is still in there."

Carlos eyed her quietly. "You think it's OK for everyone, anyone, to get away with what they've done, Jill? Is that it? After what happened to you. After what they did to the guy beside you. To the city, you loved once. To the people, you've lost. You think it's OK to just let them get away with it? Is that it?"

Jill flicked her eyes over his face. "No one here is to blame, Carlos. No one on this island. No one in this hallway. Unleashing this punishes the bad, maybe. Maybe it does. But mostly? It punishes the innocent. That doesn't make you a guy seeking justice; it makes you a monster."

Carlos laughed again. "Takes one to know one, Jill, doesn't it?"

She replied softly. "You know the answer to that."

"This cleans the slate, Jill. This wipes the board and evens things. It's the beginning, not the end. First payback for those who f*cked me, then payback for those who f*cked the world."

"I'm sorry for what happened to you, Carlos. But if you blame me, if you see me as the monster, then end it with me. Just me, just you - right now, here. And let everyone else go."

Carlos raised his gun on her. "First you, then him, then everyone else. That's how this goes. You can't bargain with bad guys, Jill. You know that."

"You're not a bad guy, Carlos. You're just a guy who made a lot of bad choices."

"That ends here."

Jill lifted her arms to the side and stepped in front of Leon and the girl. She invited in a cold tone. "Then do it. Finish it."

The gun went off. Her body was thrown to the side, and the splash of blood smeared up the wall behind her. She hit the far wall of the hallway and waited for the pain. But there was no pain because she hadn't taken the bullet.

Leon grunted as the little girl whined in fear and crouched, heading around the bend in the hallway as he stumbled. And the heat of his hot blood spilled over Jill's side. She grabbed him and gasped angrily. "Why!?"

But it didn't matter why. He'd dove. He'd taken the bullet. It wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last. Carlos was already aiming again as Leon commanded, "Take her. Go.Now!"

And he ran down the hallway toward the man with the gun.

The fever flushed through his system. But the thing inside him met it, mated, and made him something else. The gun went off but he was too fast this time. He jumped left, legs pumping as he used the wall like a springboard. He went up, spun out, came down behind Carlos, and kicked him in the back.

And the sounds of battle began. They swung punches. The gun clattered over the floor. There was the thunk and crunch of fists and fury. Trained by the same man, it was impressive to watch. It was a handful of moments but felt longer.

Jill hesitated. She wanted to grab the gun but was afraid to leave the girl who waited beyond the wall. Finally, Jill dove and grabbed the gun from the floor. She went to one knee, aiming. And Carlos grabbed Leon in a tackle and took them both through the glass wall beside them.

The sound was enormous. It echoed. The glass sprayed like water in chunks of painful rain. Jill rushed toward the shattered mess with the gun raised. But it was too dark in the room where they battled. Only slivers of light cast them in the heat of battle.

She couldn't shoot one without risking the other.

On the floor at her feet, something crackled. Jill knelt to grab the little earpiece Leon wore. She poked it in her ear as a voice stated, "-Kennedy! Come back!"

Jill spoke, "He's fighting. He's here. This is Jill Valentine."

The line was quiet momentarily before the voice said, "OK. I'm being blocked on assistance. Hartwell, the new Director of Bioterror Operations, is giving us no assistance. I can't get anyone to move on this side, but I'll keep trying."

Jill returned quietly. "We're on our own."

"...yes. I'm sorry."

Jill shook her head. "I don't know any other way."

She clicked off. She watched in horror as the light shifted in the room. The glass of the window to the far wall shattered. A body was thrown through and plummeted out of sight. She aimed the gun as the shadows converged and the survivor lumbered toward her.

"Identify yourself!" She demanded loudly.

And Leon limped into the light of the hallway. "I told you to run."

He was bleeding everywhere. She didn't know what was his and what was Carlos. He stumbled, and she rushed forward to grab him against her side as she urged, "Tell me what's bleeding."

In a gruff tone, Leon answered, "My pride, mostly. The rest of me will live."

Jill anchored him against her and started back down the hallway. "Your handler said it's a no-go on backup."

Leon returned with a tone laced with irony and pain, "Story of my life."

Jill signaled to the little girl as they kept going down the hallway. The trek down the hallway was filled only with shuffling shoes and Leon's heavy breathing. They were near the stairs when the building shuddered around them.

They kept going, Jill fearing that the building would collapse with them inside it. As they reached the landing, the click and clack of claws on the stone had her pausing. Lickers lined the hallway before them. They had no ammo. They had no chance.

Leon whispered into her ear, his breath hot. "Let me draw them off. Get her out of here."

Jill turned her face, and their lips brushed as she answered, "Stop being a f*cking hero."

Holding her eyes, Leon admitted, "I'm done, Jill. I'm almost gone. I want to eat you."

Two shades of blue stayed locked as she promised, "You will. When this is over."

He almost smiled, lifting the left corner of his mouth. "...don't make me laugh, Valentine. It hurts."

"Well," Jill whispered, "I'm known for my humor, clearly."

She turned them at the base of the stairs. She slid quietly along the wall behind them and diverted out of the main hallway toward a door. Easing it open, she led Leon and Oksana through into an office. She let him rest on the desk and moved to the window beyond.

It overlooked the ocean and a steep drop toward death.

Leon's gruff voice filled her ears. "Any hope of escape there?"

"No." Jill turned back to face him.

"No hope left, huh," he chuckled, "same old song and dance there."

"You need a vacation."

He grunted. "I might get a lobotomy before that, Valentine."

Jill searched the office for a weapon. She found a broom in the closet and snapped it over her knee to make a sharp-pointed spear. "I'm going to see if I can clear the way."

Leon arched a brow at her. "You, a broken broom and ten lickers? Seems impossible."

Jill eyed him and returned cheekily, "Story of my life."

She instructed Oksana to hide under the desk. The little girl did as she was bid without a word. Leon tried to move, but the world swam with heat and nausea. He grunted, annoyed at his weakness.

Jill touched a hand to his shoulder and urged. "Stay here. Let me do this. Please?"

He didn't say yes. He didn't say no, either. But he stayed.

Leon said to the little girl under the desk when she was out the door, "Keep the chair in front of you. Don't come out until Jill returns."

He moved away from her toward the window. If he felt it was too much and was too far gone, he'd jump before he turned. His hands splayed on the glass. He touched his forehead to the cool surface and shivered at the fever in his body. His usually steady hands shook as he stared at his reflection in the glass.

His heart beat so loud he could practically hear it echoing back from the window when he opened his mouth. The thing inside of him activated to save his life. He was sure of that. He'd been sure of it for a long time now. Apparently, it wasn't enough to stop the spread of the virus in him. Curious.

His hands slid in the red of his blood, smearing it. He'd either bleed out or turn. He was almost sure of it. The bullet wound didn't even ache anymore. It was either rapidly healing, or he was too far gone to feel it anymore. One meant he was a monster; the other meant he was dead.

He wasn't sure which was worse.

He slid to his knees, breathing hard. The cool glass felt good on his tilted face. He laid his cheek against it, seeking comfort from the fire in his flesh. His blood smelled like pennies. The darkness crept around his vision, and his tongue emerged to lick the blood smeared on the glass beside his mouth. It smelled like pennies.

It tasted like heaven.

Afraid like he hadn't been in a long time, his first pulled back. He co*cked his arm and prepared to shatter the glass with his elbow. And the little girl he'd told to hide caught his fist in her hand.

He looked into her face, his voice thick with fear, "Let go."

She didn't. She ignored him. She pulled his arm back from the glass, and he struggled to stop her. But he couldn't. He couldn't stop a little girl because his body was too weak. He was too tired.

With what little strength he had left, he commanded her. "Find something to tie my hands and feet. Hurry."

She obeyed. She came back with a scarf from the coat rack. She tied his hands behind his back as he instructed her. He walked into the closet against the wall and sat on the floor. She tied his feet, and Leon told her to block the door with the chair. It was the best he could do. And it wouldn't be enough. If he turned, he'd bound out of this closet and kill her without caring about the damage to himself. The undead didn't feel pain.

Through the door, he collapsed in the corner of the closet like a coward; he called to her, "If I come out of here and I'm not me...use that hanger on the coat rack to stab me through the eye."

The little girl said nothing. She was too small for this. She was too young. She would panic. She would die. It was suicide for her to keep him alive. He was going to kill her. He was going to murder her and eat her.

The darkness came closer. It beckoned. It felt good to embrace it. He sank deeper and heard the first sounds of gunfire. Someone had joined Jill in the fray out there, good guys or bad guys. He struggled to stay awake.

The darkness wouldn't let him. He went under, listening to the twin symphonies of survival and death.

His blood smelled like pennies.

The thought had the world snapping into focus. Jill crouched over him, a knife to his carotid, her voice echoing like a shot around them, "-stay down!"

Had he been up?

The wildness of her face and form, the power of her position, and the pure wrath on her face all had him gusting out at the following words: "Hard to stay down with a beautiful woman atop you."

She froze. Her gaze slashed across his face. It locked onto his eyes. "Leon?"

"Seemingly."

She kept the knife at his throat as she bellowed, "Rebecca!"

The medic came running. She slid on her knees beside him. They were somewhere cold and damp now. His back was soaked with water. Had he gone swimming?

Pieces of nothing warped wildly through his head - half-forgotten glimpses of things that made no sense. He'd come out of the closet like a thing. He'd gone after the first person he'd seen. But it hadn't been Oksana. It was Jill.

She'd caught him around the middle and tossed him. He'd gone through the office window and plummeted, down, down. He should have died. But he'd hit the water beneath and sunk instead. Deep in the dark, he'd freed himself of his bonds...and the things inside him had sent him to the surface to fight.

He'd come out of the water like a madman. He had glimpses of Redfield - Claire first and then Chris. Claire had shoved him away. She'd run from him. She'd thrown a trash can at him. Trying anything to keep him from killing her.

Chris hadn't bothered. He'd punched a feral beast in the form of Leon so hard that the former rookie had been thrown back again into the water. Even now, lying here, his face ached from the blow. If he'd been mortal, the punch would have shattered his f*cking skull.

Claire had shouted, "Chris! You killed him!"

"Better him than you!"

He'd come out of the water again, and Rebecca leaped on his back like a monkey, drove something into his neck, and leaped off again before he could toss her. She'd landed, smashed a chair into his back, and sent him to his hands and knees on the ground. Chris roared, "Shoot him! End this! It's too late!"

And Rebecca had cried, "Wait, goddamnit! Just wait!"

Leon had made some sound like an animal and whipped around toward her. He'd gotten to his feet and run for her. Jill tackled him around the middle and took them both to the ground, riding his body like a Valkyrie. She'd put the knife to his throat and gave him one more chance.

His hands latched around her throat and started squeezing.

And whatever Rebecca had shot him full of kicked in.

On the ground, Leon wondered, "Am I dead?"

Jill kept the knife to his throat. "Not yet. Let go of my f*cking throat, or you will be."

Right.

He let go.

His hands flopped as he hoarsely demanded, "Oksana?"

"She's fine." Jill lifted off his body, keeping the knife aimed at him. "She's with Claire."

"Did I..." His voice broke a little as he encouraged, "Did I hurt her...or...?"

With sympathy, Jill answered, "No. She was fine when I came back with Rebecca and her men. She's ok, I promise."

Leon nodded rapidly. "OK. We should-"

The building shook around them. Jill grabbed his arm and urged, "No time. We gotta movenow!"

Right. There was no time for any of this. They scrambled and moved. The little boat Rebecca had come in could only hold so many. Claire, Rebecca, and the two men who'd brought Rebecca were on the boat waiting. Claire was trying to get the little girl in the boat, but she wouldn't.

Leon commanded, "Jill - get in the boat. Get out of here."

"You f*cking kidding me?"

He shook his head. "Of all of us, you're the lightest. If you go, Oksana might go with you. Redfield and I can...find another way."

Chris agreed. "Go. Now."

Leon urged, "We'll take the tunnels. We'll head back toward the Western edge of the island. Maybe the ferry is still there."

Jill hesitated, then jumped on the boat and opened her arms to the little girl. The girl denied it, shook her head, and latched onto Leon's leg, refusing to let go. And there was no time to convince her otherwise.

He snatched her up against his side and commanded, "Go."

Jill started to get out of the boat, and Claire grabbed her arm to keep her there. Leon backed up with Oksana. The building shook again, raining rock and debris down on them. Chris roared, "Go! Get the hell out of herenow!"

And the boat fired up, circled widely in the water, and shot out through the raised gate into open water.

Redfield looked at him and shook his head. "First time I've regretted being so f*cking big."

Leon snorted out a laugh. "You should ask my face who regrets it more."

"You had it coming," Redfield returned, "now show me the goddamn way out of here. Almost dying once is enough for a day."

Leon turned and ran with the girl on his hip. They didn't look back. They didn't argue. They just moved. And the building shook around them like the end of times.

The ferry chugged forlornly through the choppy water. The fire raged as the island burned, casting shadows and light around it like a beacon of failure. They couldn't know if the drones had been released or if anyone else had survived.

They'd been blocked from getting helped and averting anything. For all they knew, the drones were in California now, decimating everything they touched. The horror of that was almost as terrible as the fire that raged behind them.

Leon stood in the darkness lit only by flames and failure and wondered at the loss of it all. It wasn't just bodies burning or people turning that haunted him. It was his own. Whatever he was, he wasn't just a man. He'd bonded somehow to plagas in Spain. He'd bonded somehow to the virus in his body.

How much of what was left of him was human?

Enough to hurt at the failure that fire represented. He felt each life like a bullet lodged in his body. It ached. He ached. His blood, his bones, his soul - it ached at what was coming. It ached at what was lost. It ached at what was impossible. He'd been fighting for so long he'd stopped trying to understand what it meant when the battle was over.

It was never over.

And the age-old demon of regret lingered on his shoulder, whispering taunts into his tired ears.

He couldn't save anyone. He couldn't change anything. He was fighting without hope. He was fighting without end. He was so tired. He should just give u-

The little girl in his arms laid her cheek on his shoulder, bringing his whining misery to a halt. She clutched him, breathing softly against his skin. This was why he fought. This. This girl. This one girl. This one life. Maybe it wasn't enough. Perhaps it would never be enough.

But it was something.

And it had to be worth it.

He held her close as the fires bathed them in shadows and light. And he watched the circling lights on the distant shore come closer, calling him home. People were waiting there, people who needed help and hope and someone, anyone, to fight for them.

It had to be him. It had to be. Whatever he was, he was still the guy who fought for that one f*cking life that needed him.

And tonight...it had to be enough.

Because without that, he had nothing left to remind him he was still human. And humans never stopped fighting.