Chapter Text
Walking the halls of the BSAA’s hospital was strangely… peaceful, Ashley thought, even if she was stuck there pretty much against her will for the time being and had to have an agent with her at all times.
It was a lot different from the civilian hospitals she had seen; devoid of soullessly tasteful landscapes and potted plants and drop ceiling tiles, and instead comprised near entirely of sleek white and blue and steel edges and frosted glass rooms and unmarked doors. It was more like an ultramodern lab than anything, but she’d still found it comforting in its own way for the last few weeks she had been here – even if she eagerly counted down the few days left before her discharge papers would finally be approved.
She’d taken to doing laps around the commonways and through the courtyards per her doctor’s advice, eager to finally stretch her legs again after so long on bedrest following her surgery. Eventually, though, those routes got a little bit old. She wanted to explore a little more, and if there’s one thing she’d learned well in her 21 years of life as an only child and as the daughter of the US President and now as a kidnapped hostage, it was how to sneak away from people tasked with your surveillance.
Which is how she found herself stowed away in an observation room in one of the restricted recovery wings of the building while she took a brief rest. More specifically, the observation room designated for the room that currently housed one Agent Leon Kennedy, if the fact that the man was visible among the small crowd gathered in the room beyond the one-way window.
She would swear she ended up there just by chance – Ashley only really knew that Leon was still here too because Jill visited on a few occasions, as did Chris others, and told her what they could when she asked – but she wasn’t about to pass up the chance to see him again outside of the operating room.
He honestly… wasn’t looking great. Considering he did just get out of yet another major surgery, though, she supposed she could give him a pass. He was barely conscious; only holding himself up with the assistance of the large brace that kept his torso aligned and Chris, who was sitting on the bed behind him and acting as a sort of backrest, she guessed. He was awake, though, and that’s what she focused on immediately – that his eyes were open, albeit only a little bit. Still, that little bit was enough to get confirmation that his treatments were working despite everything, that that awful sharp red color was reduced to only a few streaks through his irises instead of consuming the blue like it had before.
Under the stark white lighting, that blue looked far more vibrant than it ever had in the never-ending drab of that village. She couldn’t help but give a small cheer.
They were testing his nerves it looked like – doing that awful prick test on his fingers and toes and tapping the hammer thing along his limbs the same way they had done for her. Chris was in charge of manipulating his body while the doctors and technicians did their thing, ever so gently helping him reposition himself as they directed and whispering what she assumed were assurances close to his ear.
Ashley watched with intent as she noticed the older agent’s smile tick upwards with every twitch and spike on the monitor Leon produced in response to the jabs.
As she excused herself from the room just as they finished the testing and began to pack up and get Leon re-settled, she wondered if the Captain knew how obvious he was.
…
The only reason he hadn’t died from blood loss before they got to him was because the Plaga didn’t want him to. The only reason he hadn’t lost complete control of himself to the damn thing sooner was because the G-virus antibodies he’d developed after Raccoon City half ate him alive mutated it into submission before it got too mature.
Chris dropped heavily onto the bench of the operating theater’s observation deck with a sigh. Sometimes he really fucking hated his job.
The sound of the door opening to his left drew his attention as someone decidedly not in a white lab coat or carrying a heavy clipboard came through.
“Miss Graham,” Chris said, surprised. He rose again to greet Ashley, moving protectively between her and the viewing window. “What brings you here?”
“I… just wanted to see how he was doing, I guess.”
Her voice was uncharacteristically quiet compared to how he’d seen her bounce back to what he assumed was her usual self after her recovery stint in the hospital, and he felt a pang of pity. She probably felt as guilty about all of this as he did, even though she had no reason to be.
“He’s doing as well as we can hope.” Chris looked over his shoulder down at the room through the glass, where about dozen doctors and researchers alike were pinching and poking away at the prone body and taking pages and pages of notes, just as they had been for the last however many weeks. He beckoned Ashley towards the bench he previously occupied, the both of them happy to rest again in their vigil.
“There’s a ways to go left before he’s in the clear, but… he’s a fighter. Actually won the ‘most stubborn asshole’ award few years ago too,” he snorted, smiling at the memory of Leon’s indignant acceptance of the sharpie-drawn certificate and subsequent speech. “He’ll be fine.”
Ashley smiled back appreciatively settling in next to Chris as they lapsed into silence. Until a few minutes later, that is, when Chris noticed where her eyes had gotten caught.
It wasn’t exactly unexpected, if he was being honest. Last time she was in here, they’d been doing yet another operation on his spine to remove the plagas’ arms from around his nerves. Now that he was on his back so they could remove the actual thing form his ribs, well, everything was up for show. Chris was just surprised she hadn’t mentioned or maybe even noticed anything earlier
“It’s rude to stare, you know.” He said, arching an eyebrow and smirking down at her. He couldn’t help but laugh as she flushed brightly in shame at being caught and her sputtered apology.
“I wasn’t – it’s not – I just – is that why when –”
“It’s fine, Ashley,” he cut her off with a wave of his hand and ruffled her hair. “He doesn’t mind; gets a kick out of catching people off guard sometimes, even. He’s still just Leon.” She sagged in her seat, patting her cheeks as if it would will the blood from them.
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” she giggled. “He’s his own kind of special.”
“…Yeah, he is.” Chris’s voice was nothing short of fond.
They went quiet again as they resumed their observation.
…
Ashley swung her feet idly as she sat in one of the chairs by Leon’s bedside, the scuff of her boot’s heels on the ground keeping time with the steady beep of the ECG. The two of them were waiting for Chris to get back, in the meantime watching was she was pretty sure was Wheel of Fortune on the quiet little corner TV, but it might have also been Jeopardy – she wasn’t really focusing on that.
Her attention was more on her companion, who was finally, actually awake and more-or-less coherent. Granted, he’d been awake for a few days now, but those had mostly been comprised of him whining about only getting to eat ice chips and not being allowed to sit up. Now he was kind of fun again, graduating to having his bed inclined enough to satisfy him along with his choice of Jell-O as a treat.
The guy picked orange. Out of every color being an option, he picked orange. Seriously; who in their right mind likes orange flavor? At least it hadn’t been green. If he had picked green she might have had to leave.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as he fastidiously shoveled it into his mouth with a whole-handed grip on the spoon, barely holding back giggles every time he moved too fast and the cubes threatened to jiggle away. He pouted at her every time she let one slip and had to muffle it behind her hand.
“Hey, Leon?” she asked, breaking the silence they had slipped into after he’d finished. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure? Saying no never stopped you from asking anyway before.” Leon’s cheeky smirk and the tease loosened the tension from her shoulders, and she brought her legs up to hug her knees.
“Who’s Sherry?”
He paled, his earlier expression blanking in an instant, and Ashley flushed in embarrassment at asking something obviously personal. “Ah – I’m sorry to pry, you don’t have to ans-”
“It’s fine. Just caught me off guard.” He cut off her apology, waving a hand dismissively as he collected himself. “Where did you hear that name?”
“You called me it, a few times. Back on the island before the others got to us.”
“She’s my daughter.” He replied eventually, quickly continuing when Ashley blinked at him owlishly at his declaration. “Not like, literally. It’s more of an unofficial adoption?” Maybe he wasn’t allowed or able to physically shrug, but the verbal inflection was still there. Ashley just looked even more confused.
“Are you saying you like, kidnapped her?”
“What? No, shit, not at all!” Leon snorted out a laugh. “She was with me and another friend though some ah… stuff… a while ago. We stuck together afterwards, looked after each other; that sort of thing. She got a new family before long, though. A real one. We used to visit, but I haven’t been able to see her in a few years.”
They were quiet again as Ashley thought over his words. Her voice was soft when she spoke next.
“What’s she like?”
“A bit like you, to be honest,” he replied after a moment. “About your age too, just a little younger; she should be starting college soon.” He smiled lightly and settled back against the bed. “Never let anything get her down, no matter how bad. Brave too, and smart and protective as all get out. She used to have a habit when she was still little of trying to pick fights with anyone she thought was being mean to someone else, even Chris when she first met him and he was still suspicious of me. But she’s sweeter than anything too. Always a ball of energy. ”
She smiled at his rambling, even as he got progressively quieter as he tired “She seems nice, I hope I get to meet her someday. And you know… this probably sounds rich coming from me, but government paperwork isn’t always everything. Your family can be whoever you want it to be – your friends, pets, partners, actual siblings, kids – doesn’t matter. I think you and Sherry are a real family, if you love each other that much. You and Captain Redfield seem close too, maybe he’s in your family too.” The last sentence was added in a rush.
Leon just blinked at her for a long moment before blushing. “I mean, yeah, we’re close. Been together for a few years through a lot of stuff. I don’t know if he wants to be called family family just yet, though. Did he-”
He was interrupted by Chris’s arrival, which made his blush darken, and the chime of Ashley’s phone notifying her that one of her dad’s agents was here to pick her up. As the two passed each other on their ways in an out of the room following salutations, trading a smile and nod, she clapped a hand on his shoulder and stood on her tiptoes, leaning in close to his ear.
“Hope you heard all that. You should ask him out, he likes you too,” she whispered, her grin blinding when she stepped away a moment later. She dashed off with only a wink and a wave in his direction, leaving both men bewildered in her wake.
…
“Hey can I ask you something?”
“Well hello to you as well, dear brother; it’s been too long! I’m great thanks for asking. Work’s been going well, and actually I met someone just-”
“Claire.”
“Jeez, fine, you spoilsport. What’s up; is Leon doing okay?”
“He’s doing fine – great, actually, all things considered. He’ll be running around as his usual self in no time if he can help it. You know remember how he was after Raccoon when we had to lock him in to keep him from doing anything too stupid.”
“Chris, your question?”
“Right, right, sorry. It’s about him, actually. And me. Us.”
“Out of everyone you’ve told about you guys, I’m hardly the person to go to about relationship advice. You know that.”
“Yeah, but you know us better than anyone.”
“That’s because all you military-types got Pavlov’d into way too readily divorcing yourselves from your feelings. But fine, ask away.”
“…Do you think we should tell our CO’s about us being together? Like officially?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that? ‘Yes’? But what if…”
“What if what.”
“What if they split us up because of it. What if it means we aren’t allowed to work together and people suffer because they couldn’t let both of us out into the field.”
“Your Commands are smarter than that; have a little faith. They want to end all of this as much as you guys do working for them. You two are among their top agents, if not the top. They’d only split you up for your own good, so you don’t get a repeat of what happened this time.”
“This time was just a mistake.”
“But it might not be in the future, Chris, and you have to think about that. Your work is dangerous, and all information is pretty much air-tight. You getting sent it for rescue, not knowing if he was going to even be alive still by the time you got there? You having to nearly bribe your way into the hospital to see him under the notion you’re the only one able to keep him calm? You not even knowing he was being deployed, much less where to and what his backup was? His handler vaguely knows you guys are close, but she can only do so much without documents. What about in the future, when one of you doesn’t get to come home, and your agencies can’t tell you or him anything?”
“A lecture isn’t really what I called you for.”
“Then pray tell: what were you looking for when you called me? You gave me a yes or no question and asked what I thought.”
“I… I just want to do what’s right to keep him safe.”
“And that’s exactly why I’m talking to you about all this. You and I have each other to stick around for, but Leon Scott Kennedy is going to disappear when his files tell them that no one is around who would care. Saying something would put it on record that he’s got you, even if it has consequences.”
“…”
“I’ve never once seen you as happy as you are when you’re with him, Christopher, even when you’re arguing like idiots. Not even that time Mom and Dad snuck you in to see the new Star Wars for your tenth birthday, or when I graduated. And as long as I’ve known Leon, he’s the exact same around you. What you two have, and how long it’s lasted, that’s not just something born out of codependency and desperation and loneliness; not even in your line of work. It’s special. It’s worth being protected, and I know that neither of you are stupid enough to not realize that you want to make sure it is.”
“…I think you’re right.”
“Damn right I’m right. Now go talk to him about it. And give him my best for me.”
“Will do. Thanks, Claire.”
“Anytime. I was serious about it being too long, though. Call me after you’re done; I wanna catch up for real.”
…
Ingrid dropped her forehead into her hands, hunching in on herself in the chair. “I was the one who called in the bombing, Leon. Mike was already on his way to come get you and Miss Graham, and I was the one who told him he was to neutralize the island instead.”
“Sure, maybe. But that’s part of your job as an agent. You’re supposed to look after me, but you have your own orders too – ones that take precedent over my safety, or my recovery if I’m assumed dead. I may not know your clearance level, but I’m pretty sure an air strike is beyond you to initiate.”
“I could have disobeyed.”
“And what, gotten fired? You do remember that you’re the one who saved our asses in the end, right? You were my only point of contact, and you were there for me when I needed you. I put my trust you for reasons past being required to, and you haven’t given me reason to take it back yet.”
She opened her mouth to retort again but stopped short of actually saying anything, thinking back to the events that had led them both to this point.
This had been far from her first case under the DSO’s leadership, but it had been her first case with Kennedy as her assigned agent to manage. She had known he was competent and would hardly need her. Everyone did, given his track record and notoriety among the agency. That just meant that the pressure was on to keep him alive through all his bullheadedness.
For the twenty-six hours that had passed between their connection going out at that castle and when she had answered and responded to Leon and Ashley’s SOS call, she thought she had failed.
For the nearly two and a half months of radio silence that had passed between Redfield confirming to her that they had located and extracted the two and were headed back ahead of the rest of Reclamation, and the call she had received out of the blue that she had been a approved to visit BSAA Research Headquarters, she thought she had again.
So she’d dawdled in accepting the invitation, thinking she didn’t really deserve to be there – or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to face what he might think of her.
And now she hated herself for doing so, when she’d arrived to find Leon’s room empty and the man slouched under the stairwell to the next floor, shaking and sweating, his face pale but cheeks flushed with exertion and anxiety. Leon S. Kennedy and hospitals did not mix. According to Redfield, who she had dragged in from the courtyard outside to help her carry him back to the room and get a nurse to administer more sedative, Leon S. Kennedy and months of barely-there memories and declined physical ability didn’t mix either.
But… she was still here. She had still been there. And not once, even when she had been working other cases with dozens of other agents, had Leon’s fate ever left her mind. And Leon was smart enough to know it without her admitting she’d kept his files open, clinging to a paper copy so he couldn’t be erased and monitoring the digital one in hopes that the KIA would turn back into and ALIVE.
“Also,” he waved his hand dismissively and smirked, interrupting her thoughts after perhaps a little too long of being stuck in them. “I really should have expected it when you said they were sending a second chopper. Always knew Mike was a trigger-happy son of a bitch. He probably would have shot at me anyway even if he did stay on rescue. Village people are one thing, but the place was crawling with infected soldiers.”
He carefully didn’t mention the fact that Krauser had been one of them, knowing that she would have to add it to her report when she left. Besides, the snort of a laugh she gave at his commentary as she wiped her eyes was too good to be bogged down by that information.
“I’m going to tell him you said that.”
“I’m right. And I’m in the hospital. He’s not allowed to kick my ass even if he was capable of it.”
She laughed again, and he grinned. It was nice when she relaxed.
…
Leon looked doubtful, avoiding Chris’s pleading gaze and instead staring resolutely at the monitor next to his bed.
“I want to be selfish, Leon, just this once. I want to keep you. I don’t know what I would have done if you really had died this time, and I don’t know what I’m going to do if there’s a next time.”
This had been going on for almost an hour, a one-sided conversation between the two of them that began when Leon asked Chris to finally say something, anything, about what had been so obviously plaguing him since he ever started visiting. To both of their surprise, Chris had gotten talking pretty quickly about all of it. To no one’s surprise at all, Leon immediately clammed up and looked like he wished he could retract his question the second actual emotions and their relationship were brought up.
“You talked to Claire, didn’t you. She told you we should say something.”
“To be fair, she did most of the talking. And she raised some good points.”
“When does she not? Between the two of you, she’s got the brain cell at least eighty percent of the time.” Chris managed a watery smile at the joke, but it quickly fell.
“Please, just think about it, Leon.” The older man leaned forward in his chair, bracing his crossed arms on the edge of the bed. “We should have a paper trail or at the very least someone ranking on the inside who can verify us being important to one another. We’ve known each other for six years, and been serious almost half of them. I don’t want you to go out there someday and not come back and that be the end of us, just like I’m sure you don’t want that for me.”
“This was just a mishap; they happen. Hunnigan already explained the situation, and it was justified given the circumstance.” Leon swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up to face Chris fully. He stretched his arms out, rotating them in full view of the other and wiggling his fingers. “And see, look; no lasting damage. Just a few scars, and those are hardly new to us. It’s not like I died, and even if I had it would have been a small price to pay for getting rid of what I saw on that island.”
That was, apparently, the exact wrong thing to say. Chris could only look at him in open-mouthed shock for a full minute before he clenched his jaw shut and glared at him, planting his hands on the bed and shoving himself up fast enough to make Leon flinch backwards.
“Can you take your life seriously and think of the people around you for one. Fucking. Second?” he hissed incredulously. “You did die, Leon, in the chopper on the way back. Twice. Jill had to be the one to resuscitate you both times after she’d already taken control of getting you out of there in the first place because I was too much of a mess to do anything myself.”
His voice cracked sharply at the end of the sentence. Whatever mental dam had been keeping Chris calm in his conversation with Leon earlier had broken, leaving him to get louder and louder as he paced the room and vented his frustrations.
“It was fucking hell bringing you back here, you know that? The not knowing if you would even make it or not despite everything we threw at you to try and help? The first month when they were just letting you recover enough to have a chance at surviving surgery, they couldn’t even give you blood past the bare-fucking-minimum above what would keep your body from shutting down. They were too concerned about feeding the Plaga-whatever to the point of it waking up fully.
“Even when they were just taking the out the damn metal and stitching you up – god, the things that came out of there. We thought they were tearing you apart. You were unconscious for hours, you barely had a pulse and weren’t responding to stimulus tests, but you woke up out of nowhere just screaming and fighting and your eyes – your eyes were so red and they thought you had turned. There was no blue, nothing of you, left in them. They thought you weren’t human, Leon. They wanted to put you down before you even had a chance and we had had to beg to convince them you needed one.
“You don’t know what it was like Leon, because you don’t remember. You didn’t see what you looked like. You weren’t the one being sent to some god forsaken island to clear out the bodies and take samples like it was just some routine downtime mission. You weren’t the one who got a call from some woman you didn’t know claiming to work for your boyfriend’s agency telling you to prepare for medical evac. You weren’t the one who thought your boyfriend was safe and fine and at home just hours before you felt him go completely limp in your arms, who thought you fucked up so bad you killed him trying to save him.”
Chris took a deep breath. Then another. He scrubbed the tears that had escaped down his face away with the back of his hands, and turned to look at Leon. The man looked smaller than he’d ever seen him before – hunched in on himself with his knees pulled up to his chest, washed out and near swimming in his oversized white scrubs, staring back at him openly as he digested every word Chris spouted off.
They were both more vulnerable and raw than they ever had been before around anyone, around each other.
It hurt.
“You weren’t the one who had to watch you barely survive the night, Leon, every night, for months. You were going downhill, fast, the whole time. I had to watch you die slowly and painfully and entirely out of reach from me in every way for fucking months. The only reason you’re still here now is because Ashley was alive and able to remember enough of Sera’s notes to let the engineers build half a cure, and to volunteer to go first to make sure it worked for you.”
It was silent aside from Chris’s attempts to get himself back under control for a long minute.
“I…I’m sorry.” Leon’s voice was quiet. He unfolded himself from his position and stood, picking his way carefully over to where the other was standing rigid. “I’m sorry,” he repeated as he took one of Chris’s shaking hands in his own to guide him back toward the bed so they could both sit on it. “For being an asshole. I didn’t even think about what it must have been like for you. I’m sorry.”
Chris went willingly, half curling into the younger man but hovering just out of reach as if he feared Leon would truly shatter and disappear if he touched him. Leon wrapped his arms around him and hauled him into a real hug after barely a moment of hesitation, turning his head to press his face into Chris’s hair and just holding him as he started to sob.
“We should tell someone.”
…
“You can shuffle your skinny ass all the way to the front desk if that’s what you want to do to try and prove yourself, but you still have to take the wheelchair out, Leon.”
Chris sounded entirely done, but Claire just laughed as she walked along next to Leon, who was intent on doing just that.
“This is far from the fastest way to get out of here Mister ‘Can’t-wait-to-leave’.”
Leon looked over his shoulder and smirked at where the other man was following behind them. He was pushing the chair along close enough to threaten him with falling into it if he slowed down in the slightest. “Oh, is that my name now? And here I though you wanted me to be the second Mister Redfield. I’ll have to let Hunnigan know about the change in plans.”
“You two are ridiculous, you know that? Absolutely ridiculous.” Claire muttered to herself.
“Don’t make me run you over with this and have them keep you another week.” The threat in his words was lost to the look on his bright red face.
The group made it to the lobby a few minutes’ walk and an elevator ride later, by which point Leon had resigned himself to accepting the chair and settled into it with an exasperated groan.
The siblings’ assurances that there wasn’t any need to be shy about needing it after everything he’d been through were only slightly thrown off by the fact that they were rather obviously recording the nurses cooing over him while he filled out his discharge papers, asking if he needed help out and how he was feeling and, well, someone to look after him while he finished his recovery. At least Chris was as embarrassed as he was about all the gushing attention, and helped fend them off so they could get out of there as quickly as they were allowed.
They were in the car not ten minutes later, Claire hopping in the back after returning the wheelchair and Chris and Leon sharing a conspicuously public kiss in the front seat.
They were broken up suddenly by Claire slapping her hand on Chris’s forehead and shoving him back into his seat, clearing the area above the center console for her to then lean into. “Get that shit out of here, Christopher, no one wants to see that.” She planted a kiss of her own on Leon’s cheek, sharing a twinning grin with him before they both turned back towards their driver.
Chris had the dignity to plant a hand over his heart and gasp in faux offense, gaping at them in shock while they laughed at his expense before subtly clearing his throat and smiling.
“It’s good to have you idiots back. Both of you.”