Chapter Text
When Leon Kennedy wakes with a start, he’s not sure why. It was pitch black, the only light coming in through his bedroom window. God what time was it? He grunted as he rolled over to peek at the alarm clock on his bedside table, squinting at the dim red numbers. 1:46 AM.
It was then that he realized what woke him, his cellphone buzzing again next to the clock. He groaned and swiped a hand over his face, grabbing it and rolling onto his back before looking at the number. There was no caller ID, but he sighed as he lifted the phone to his ear.
“Hello?”
No response.
Leon sat up at this, pulling the phone away from his ear to look at the screen, wondering if he hadn’t hit the right button. But no, he had definitely answered the call, the seconds ticking up in the bottom corner of the screen. He frowned and brought the phone back to his ear, rubbing tired eyes.
“Who is this?” He asked, a yawn morphing his words nearly intelligible. Still nothing. He turned up the volume then, the beep beep beep of the button being clicked waking him up more. Then, so quiet that he could barely hear it, the sound of someone breathing filtered through the line. The hair along the back of his neck stood up on edge. There was another inhale, followed by another exhale, and the sound of rustling fabric.
He was standing before he even realized it, heart kicking into overdrive, wide awake now as he flipped the light on. He knew those breaths.
“Ada??” He asked, heart jumping into the back of his throat when he heard the line go dead.
“Hello??” He’d asked again, dumbly. He pulled the phone away from his ear to confirm that, yes, the phone call did in fact end.
“What the fuck..?” Leon groaned and sat back down on the edge of the bed, scratching his stomach while he yawned. He thumbed over the buttons on his phone, bringing up the call record to look at the number again. It wasn’t one he was familiar with, and wasn’t a local area code either. His heart had yet to get the message that he wasn’t in danger, pulse still thundering in his ears. Maybe he’d imagined it? No no, he was sure. Leon’s knee bounced with nervous energy as he dialed the number again. It rang once, then twice, and then three times before the call declined.
He stood up then, padding out of his bedroom and heading into the kitchen, flipping the lights on his way past the doorway. The bright incandescent bulbs flooded his senses with light, a grunt leaving his mouth as he squinted against the burn in his eyes. He dialed the number again as he leaned on the kitchen island, free hand drumming against the countertop. It rang twice this time before declining yet again.
Abandoning the idea of trying to call her back for the moment, he looked around for his notepad, finding it underneath his gun cleaning kit that he’d used the day before. He found a pen sticking out of the fruitbowl that held a box of ammo instead of apples and used that to scribble down the phone number.
Tapping his pen against the counter, he found himself at a loss on what to do. Stubbornly he tried calling the number a third time, only to get the same result, no voicemail, just declined. Was she in trouble? Or was it a simple butt-dial? Also, since when did Ada have his cellphone number? Leon was never sure how Ada knew any of the things she did, after all these years it still remained a mystery.
They’ve been doing this back and forth for the better half of a decade at this point. He’d be on a mission, she’d show up and somehow be connected. Leon would save her somehow, and then she’d save his ass ten times over. He’d write his report on his mission and wouldn’t include her in it, filling in the blanks of his story with something unrelated. He didn’t want her getting involved, or worse, caught. So he protected her. It’s just what you do for someone. It wasn’t like they had a close relationship or anything. Not in any traditional sense that is.
Sure, Ada’d sometimes text him from an unknown number, saying nothing except an address and a date. He always showed up. And okay, maybe she’d broken into his apartment a few times, but that was at his old address and also five years ago now. And no, that one time in Venice didn’t count because when he woke up the next morning she was already long gone.
And maybe he’d tried to kiss her after one too many glasses of wine shared over some shitty takeout he’d gotten for them, and she’d reared back like he had been trying to hit her. She’d looked at him like he was crazy for a beat before she yanked him forward to kiss him back. They didn’t talk about it, and she disappeared for five months afterwards.
Leon definitely didn’t think every person with black hair wearing red was her, that would be absurd. And no, Chris, It’s very normal to keep a box of the belongings Ada’s left behind over the years under his bed. And yes, okay, maybe he’s been lugging that same box through the past seven moves and four different states he’s lived in, but that’s totally not weird.
So no. He isn’t close with Ada, despite knowing about the mole on her left hipbone, he has a perfectly normal, totally sane relationship with a woman who he’s been in love with since he first met her at twenty one worked with over the past decade or so. So her phone call, while not out of the realm of possibility, was weird. And the more Leon thought about it, the more worried he became.
“Shit…” He sighs and scrubs his hands over his face with a tired yawn, setting his pen down. With a glance at the time on the stove, which cheerfully told him it was now well past two am, he abandoned any idea of going back to bed and made some coffee.
While he waited for the coffee to brew he found himself pacing through the kitchen trying and failing to come up with any helpful ideas on what he should do, let alone what he could. He tried to redirect this jittery energy into tidying up, but one look at the state of his cluttered counters had him deciding against that.
He had no idea where Ada was. That was the biggest issue at the moment. The number was an area code he didn’t recognize, and he doubted that the number was accurate to where she was anyways. The call itself didn’t show any data, at least not from his side.
He barely noticed when the coffee finished, too busy thinking about how angry Hunnigan would be if he called her this early in the morning. Knowing her, she was probably up late working on that novel she wrote in her spare time. Some fantasy romance thing that she told him about a few years ago when he’d bought her lunch in exchange for erasing his browser history; He’d accidentally used his work laptop instead of his personal for… things.
He was sipping on his mug of coffee, phone pinched in between his shoulder and his ear when Hunnigan finally answered the phone. There was a beat of silence before, “Leon? What’s going on?” Her voice didn’t have the tell-tale sound of sleep and he silently thanked whatever god was listening that his hunch had been right. He couldn’t help but pump his fist by his side in a little ‘yes!’ motion, sighing in relief.
“Ingrid! Glad you’re awake-” Leon rushed through his words, taking a sip of his coffee quickly before continuing. “I need to call in that favor you owe me,” he tells her, now pacing circles around the kitchen island.
“At two in the morning?” Came her reply, a hint of amusement in her tone.
“As if you weren't already awake.” Leon deadpanned and shook his head, a little laugh leaving him as he slid the notepad on the counter around to face him, looking down at the number.
Leon heard her laugh and type something on a keyboard, “So what did you need? More browser clearing?” She teased him and while he normally would have played along, now was not the time.
“No- no, not that. I uh, I need you to track a call for me? Find out where it came from?” He asked and pinched the bridge of his nose when that nervous feeling flared up in his stomach again. There was a pause followed by the sound of her looking up his phone records.
“The last call from your cell I’m guessing? You called the number… five times?” More typing followed. Leon bent over the kitchen counter and picked up the pen again to tap against the notepad.
“Yeah its the one that ends in-” He looked back down at the notebook and circled the number a few times. “-Forty five?” he clarified, knee bouncing again as he waited, listening to her typing. There was a pause, and he heard her hum.
“What? What is it?” He asked too quickly for him to seem unbothered.
“Nothing’s wrong, just-” Ingrid sighed and he heard her clicking at something with her mouse. “Who’s calling you for thirty seconds at one in the morning..? Is everything okay?”
Leon couldn’t help but smile a little, putting the pen down and picking his mug of coffee up again. Hunnigan and him went way back, she’d always been his eye in the sky, and has been watching over him for years. She always knew when something was up with him. It was nice, having someone to talk to about shit he couldn’t quite tell anyone else. Sure, he could tell Claire or Chris things, but Hunnigan was there with him in his ear for some of the worst times of his career-- and life. She saw through him, knew when he was lying, when he was upset, could tell when something wasn’t going right.
He’d told her about Ada of course. How they’d met, what she’d done for him and vice versa. She was really one of the only people who understood what the woman in red meant to him. She probably knew more about how he felt about Ada than he did himself.
“Is this about..?” Ingrid asked him quietly, hesitantly. Leon sighed tiredly and just took another swig of his coffee instead of speaking. He didn’t need to tell her, she already knew she was right. He wouldn’t have called in his favor if it wasn’t.
“Right. Well, it looks like the call is coming from somewhere in New York, looks like…” She trailed off as she clicked on something. “Looks like she’s in the city, I’m sending the coordinates over to you now.”
Leon felt his phone buzz against his ear, and something akin to a sigh whooshed out of his body. New York. That wasn’t too far. He could get there in what, two, three hours tops? He sagged in relief as he put Hunnigan on speaker phone, pulling up the message from her.
“Thank you so much-” He said to her as he scribbled down the coordinates, hurrying off into his bedroom as soon as he finished writing. “You’re a life saver!” He shouted over his shoulder, hearing her laugh a little from the other room.
“Just call me when you get to her? Let me know if you need anything else!” Her electronic voice was muffled as he flipped on the lights, shoving on the closest pair of pants he could find, hopping on one foot as he tried to not fall over while shoving them on.
He called over his shoulder and told Hunnigan that he would, and to bump any notifications about his speeding off of police channels, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull on socks. She laughs at this and agrees, ending the call without needing to say anything else.
Shoving a long sleeve shirt over his head, he grabbed his boots and stuck them under his arm, nearly eating shit when he tripped over the corner of his bed. He cursed, rubbing his shin as he sat down to pull on his shoes, tying them as tight as they would go. He hurried out of his bedroom, barely remembering to shut the light off in his hurry.
Get it together Kennedy.
Slowing down, but only a little, he slung his gun holster over his shoulders, adjusting the buckles so it would lay flat under his jacket. He grabbed Matilda off of the coffee table, shoving her in his holster and then hurrying over to grab a jacket from the coat rack by the door. Once it was on he shoved the ammo from the fruit bowl into one of the pockets, fishing his combat knife out from under a pile of junk mail by the door.
After patting down his pockets, Leon spun around and swiped his cellphone off the kitchen island, grabbing his mug with his other hand and draining the rest of the coffee in three quick gulps. He wiped off his mouth on the back of his hand, ripping out the page from his notepad, shoving that and his phone into his jacket pockets.
He paused, just for a moment, to look around his apartment to see if he was forgetting anything, humming when he caught sight of the pack of gum sitting next to his keys. He snatched them both up before flipping off the lights in the kitchen, grabbing his gloves and his helmet before hurrying out the door.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Leon was out of his apartment building in record time. He pulled his phone out and called Ada’s phone number again as he walked to his bike, feeling his adrenaline spike when the call-- once again-- declined.