Chapter Text
Chris doesn't find out that Leon is in Spain until after Ashley Graham is home. That's almost always how it works. Usually, they can at least tell the other when they're going on mission, but not even always that. An American agent being married to a BSAA captain is full of legal and ethical intricacies.
And in this case, Chris hadn't known that he needed to be worried about his husband until the news breaks across the world: the president's daughter had been kidnapped by a cult, ransomed home, and when she had arrived, red eyes glowing, she had transformed into a BOW and bitten her father's head off.
Near simultaneously, the BSAA receives the entire report from the United States: Agent Leon Kennedy had been sent down to retrieve Ashley. He had arrived. He had made contact with Ashley even. But when it had come time for evacuation, only the mute Ashley had been on scene with no sign of Agent Kennedy. Advisers had warned the president to wait to bring Ashley home until they heard from Agent Kennedy. But his love for his daughter had blinded him to any potential dangers.
Ashley Graham is dead. The president is dead. And no one has heard from Leon Kennedy.
Chris can feel his heartbeat in his entire body as he reads the report. They know this is the reality of the work that they do. It's why they had gotten married so quickly, because they knew that neither of them was really made for the long term. They're made for this fight.
And even knowing that – despite loving Leon the best that he can each and every time he sees him, and despite the fact that they have both prepared for this eventuality – Chris isn't fucking ready for it.
The BSAA has been requested to clean up this mess, and Chris is scared for a moment they're not going to let him go. That this is going to be a circumstance where he's going to be seen as too blinded by his relationship with Leon. He is consumed by it, but that doesn't mean his interests don't align with everything else right now. The mission is to find out what happened in Spain. To find out what happened to Leon.
And thank fuck that the BSAA and the American government agree with that.
They set Chris loose in Spain.
…
To be fair, he doesn't quite go down as Captain Redfield. He is sent by himself with Leon's handler, Hunnigan, in his ear. A separate BSAA team is also sent. The idea is that if Chris isn't leading men, he won't put them in danger if he does become compromised by whatever happened to Leon.
Chris understands. He even agrees with the decision. But as he drives himself out to where Leon was dropped off, everything is too quiet. It leaves too much room for thoughts and emotions. Chris is used to running on instincts and he's used to the cloud of camaraderie to surround him when tensions aren't running high.
Now, it's just him and his worry.
Worry doesn't serve him. Worry won't find Leon.
“Chris, you're approaching the path,” Hunnigan says over his comm.
“Understood,” Chris answers, bringing the jeep to a stop in front of the almost unnoticeable path aside the road. He gets, checks his gear over again for something to do, and then sets off.
“I'm on foot, Hunnigan,” Chris reports in.
“All right,” she answers solemnly in his ear. “Remember that locals are considered hostile. Approach with extreme caution.”
Chris grunts. From the sounds of it, there had been a single person who Leon had made contact with who hadn't been hostile, which should make it interesting to try and track him. But then, Chris is used to following paths of destructions and bodies, so maybe the lack of witnesses won't be a problem.
He steps into the village, and everything is utterly silent. The village is splayed with carnage, a tableau of human bodies just everywhere. Most are still entirely human, but a few signs of change. Chris steps around carefully, keeping his 9mm in hand.
This part of Leon's journey had been the most well-documented – the village in a surprising state of ruin, livestock neglected, rotting food and fetid water.
He has to clamp down on the instinct to imagine Leon moving through this mess on his own, racing up stairs and breaking through windows to evade a seemingly ever-growing army of enemies.
Despite the sheer number of bodies, he still expects to find someone. But as he moves cautiously forward, there's nothing.
“Hunnigan,” Chris says quietly, “there's no one left.”
Hunnigan pauses and then answers, “Okay, Chris. Keep moving.”
He does. He grows ever more alert and tense. But step after step through the dank landscape shows nothing more but bodies – some examples of extreme changes that his throat clenches when he sees. There's signs of gun shots everywhere, proof that, at some point, Leon S. Kennedy had been here.
Leon is good at his job. Chris knows that better than most. But he doesn't understand how there is nothing here. And some of these BOWs show no obvious signs of trauma – no neat headshots, no torsos riddled with bullet holes, no shattered bodies from grenades. Some of them look like they merely tipped over and stopped breathing.
There's something at play that he doesn't understand. And it's either that there's some way to kill these creatures that Leon didn't get a chance to report in or there's something that came in after Leon and killed whatever was left.
Chris is starting to think it's the latter. Which may mean he has no idea at all what he's up again and also may give him some indication of what might have gotten Leon.
He almost wishes for the simplicity of shooting an upright, human-sized BOW.
He reaches the castle at the fringes of the village.
“Careful,” Hunnigan warns. “This is the last place where I had transmission with Leon. He reported that whoever was occupying the castle was also hostile and related to Los Illuminados, but I don't have much beyond that.”
His answers are possibly behind this door. His husband is possibly behind this door, dead or alive or somewhere in between. Christ. Not the last one, he hopes. He'll owe it to Leon to put him down if he's become something beyond monstrous, but Chris knows he'll carry it with him to the end of his days. He thinks he'll be ruined for anything else. And he won't even let himself be, because he'll owe Leon fucking better than that.
He steps inside. And there's the same yawning quiet.
The castle is massive, a literal winding maze of opulence and absurdity. It's littered with the corpses of priests and blinded men with parasites in their backs and dogs and enormous insects that make Chris' skin crawl. He begins to see the true extent of what Las Plagas can and has been used to do.
Throughout it out, he is able to report to Hunnigan. Despite her warning and previous experience, his comms never falter. He hears her loud and clear the entire time. He suffers through the endless puzzles and stupid mechanisms, once again wishing for something he could fight.
He feels like he's covered every goddamn inch of the castle when he steps into an expansive room that is just stacked with bodies. Something happened here. Something big. There have been loads of priests everywhere, but this is a veritable army – this was a final stand of some sort. He steps gingerly over bodies, looking for signs of movement.
At the center of the mass are two people, splayed and markedly different from the throngs of interchangeable foot soldiers. The first is a small man, shrunken and pale, wearing what Chris would consider to be an old-fashioned costume. Half of the top of his head is gone, a shocked expression still painted on what's left of his face.
The man beside him is older still, clad in purple robes that are ripped from one side of his body. Underneath, Chris can see that the man's skin is half shifted – as if he had begun to be affected by the plaga and was killed while still transforming.
“You seeing this, Hunnigan?” Chris asks.
“Affirmative, Chris,” Hunnigan answers. If she's shaken by the images she's seeing – that Leon could be somewhere in this mess – she doesn't show it. “From the information Leon sent us and what we've put together since, I believe that is Osmund Saddler, the leader of Los Illuminados.”
The leader of Los Illuminados. Which begs the question that, if the cult leader is dead and the cult is gone, what destroyed them?
It would be a goddamn relief if Leon would just look down at him from a railing above right now and shrug off the work as a part of his carnage. Leon would never forgive himself for not managing to save Ashley, but Chris doesn't give a fuck about that right now. That they could deal with, because at least Leon would still be alive and every other threat would be neutralized.
“Leon?” Chris calls across the room, keeping himself poised and ready to start shooting if necessary. He keeps scanning the room. It's a grim fact that he's going to have to go through each of these bodies to make sure that none of them are his husband.
There's no answer, further confirming that there's nothing left alive in this castle.
“Kennedy!” Chris shouts, allowing himself to become a little louder. He starts to actively look through the bodies, searching for a sign of a leather coat or the ashy blond of Leon's hair. He nudges bodies over with his boots.
And none of them are Leon, which is fucking amazing and terrifying.
Above him comes the flash of movement that Chris has been waiting hours for. He's refocused in a second, hands clenched around his gun. His body is singing with the near relief of a rush of adrenaline.
But what steps out in front of him is not a plaga-ridden body or Leon or anything that Chris had been expected.
Instead: a woman.
Dark hair shorn into a neat bob, red dress that seems not entirely practical given the situation. And a touch of coyness around the mouth and eyes that makes Chris realize who this is.
Chris has heard the stories of Ada Wong from Raccoon City. But in those stories, Leon had always believed that Ada was dead. Chris narrows his eyes and doesn't take his gun off of her.
“Hello, Captan Redfield,” she says, unflinchingly.
“Where's Leon?” Chris asks sharply. He doesn't care how she survived Raccoon City or why she's here or how she survived whatever the hell happened here. All he cares about is that she is the only possibly person who might have any intel on what happened and where it has left Leon.
For just a second – just one – Chris swears that he sees a flicker of something beneath that enigmatic mask. He pays no heed to it, because from all the stories that Chris has heard, even if Ada did care about Leon, Ada cared about her own motives more. Trust is a black-and-white issue for Chris, and he knows what side Ada Wong falls on, no matter what Leon might have meant to her or what she might have meant to Leon.
“He's alive,” Ada says first. Chris would go dizzy with relief if he could. He maintains a firm hold over himself, though, because he's not going to let any cracks in his guard right now. And they all know well enough that “alive” isn't a guarantee of anything these days.
“Our boy's in a bit of trouble, though,” she continues, and Chris nearly snarls at the use of the word our.
With a flick of her wrist, she tosses something in the air. In a wide arc, it descends toward him. Chris so nearly shoots it. If this had been any other situation, he probably would have. But he doesn't, and he knows this is the same reason that he's alone in the castle in Spain and not leading a BSAA team. The case lands a few feet in front of him, sliding to a stop just before the toes of his boots.
Chris eyes it warily.
“Open it,” Ada encourages. “It won't bite.”
Chris kneels, half his attention still on Ada, ready to spring up and defend himself if need be. He snaps open the case and, inside, are – glasses? He glances at them and back up at her.
“This way you'll see,” Ada says, “what happened to Leon. Why you're the only one who might be able to save him.”
Chris stares at her for a moment longer, but if she's bluffing, he can't tell. They both already know that he'll put the glasses on at the scantest promise that it might help Leon. And he does.
In front of his eyes, the lenses play out the scene that must have happened not so long ago. It's the same room, devoid of the army of bodies. In the center of the room is the leader – Saddler, Hunnigan had called him.
He is approached by the shorter man that Chris had found beside him, preening and evidently self-pleased. Chris can tell just by the look of him that he was a real shit. Flanking either side of him are two massive figures in imposing black and red robes, their faces hidden, but their mass suggesting they're beyond human and heavily plaga mutated.
And behind the three of them is Leon.
Chris' heart leaps into his throat. The tiny screen isn't enough. Leon is so close and seeing him like this makes him feel further than ever. Chris can't make out the expression on his face through the blurred pixels but what he can see quite clearly is that Leon's eyes are red with the infection of the plaga. His normally graceful gait is more akin to a befuddled shuffle.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Chris is squeezing his hand so hard he can hear the leather of his gloves creaking.
This was a possibility, he tries to reassure himself. But through the BSAA, he has connections to the best scientific resources. He just needs to find Leon. He'll get him out of fucking Spain, and they'll get him cured. Everything can still be okay. Otherwise, why would Ada show him this? He doesn't trust her worth a damn, but he can't see the benefit in letting him think that Leon could be saved if he was beyond such.
The little shit of a man does a twirling bow before Saddler and then takes a step back to present Leon as if gifting him. Leon steps forward, and Saddler smiles faintly. He inspects Leon, circling him, while Leon remains unmoving. Chris hates this: he knows that Leon Kennedy would never be so relaxed with an enemy at his back.
When Saddler has made his way round, he issues some quiet order to Leon, his staff slightly tilted toward Leon. Obediently and without pause, Leon drops to his knees, kneeling to Saddler.
Chris is almost upset that this man is already dead, because he'd love to put another round of bullets inside that skull. It's clear that he's pleased that he has command over Leon – and Chris bets he is because Leon was a huge pain in the ass when he showed up on the scene. But Saddler doesn't even know what he has. Leon is so near perfection in his missions, graceful and smart, able to rely on his instincts without fault. He has a heart full of compassion still and the actual ability to make the world a better place – and there aren't many people in this torn world who can say they have both of those assets. It's not right that some small-time cult leader has been able to ensnare Leon and treat him like a toy. It's fucking infuriating that this might be how Leon meets his end. He deserves better.
He's so caught up in the rage surging through his veins that he forgets that this is the only beginning of this particular chapter.
Saddler's gloating is cut off. He looks up, frowning, to someone who is outside of the screen. There must be a discussion that Chris can't hear, but it's short. Saddler waves a hand and begins to turn away while Leon takes off toward the outsider, clearly gearing up for a fight. For a moment, he's more familiar. He moves fast enough that Chris can't see the blur of red eyes, just the long lines of Leon's body moving in a fluid arch.
He's out of sight for only half a second before he comes back into frame, knocked onto his ass and sliding across the floor. He's moving for his gun in the same breath, but someone barrels toward him – a hulking monster of a man.
“The fuck,” Chris breathes out loud as he recognizes Jack Krauser – another ghost risen from his grave. He knows Leon's old partner at least by sight and name. He can't say much else because he doesn't know the intricacies of whatever missions they went on together, but Chris knows he's supposed to be dead.
Krauser gets one massive hand around Leon's neck and keeps him pinned to the ground while Leon bares his teeth and struggles beneath him. Krauser pops Leon once in the face with his other hand. Leon sprawls underneath Krauser, dazed, and Krauser pushes his way to his feet and slings Leon over one shoulder. With a shit-eating grin, he says something to Saddler and then turns away and walks out of Chris' line of vision.
Saddler's companion is screaming, and that's when the army of plaga-infected flood the room. Chris waits, heart in throat, to see if Leon appears back on the screen. He can see the priests dropping one by one, bullets piercing through their skulls and destroying their bodies until they are incapable of functioning.
Saddler has gone from bemused to irritated as his cult is taken down with an easy determination.
When it is only Saddler left, transforming and snarling, the being who has taken the room apart steps into frame.
Wesker.
With the fluid grace of a predator, Wesker steps up to Saddler. With alarming speed, he's directly in front of Saddler, gun to Saddler's forehead. He fires, and Saddler drops. Wesker keeps firing until Saddler stops moving entirely. Then he leans over, rustles through Saddler's robes to pull out several vials, and then also retrieves the odd-looking staff that Saddler had kept near himself with a religious fervor.
As Wesker stands, he looks over at wherever Ada's camera must have been. For a second, it's like time has fallen away. Wesker is looking right at him, and the world narrows down to the two of them – Wesker, the betrayer, and Chris merely trying to right that wrong. One of them trying to set the world ablaze and the other trying to stop him. How the fuck was he also still alive?
Wesker walks out of frame, and the glasses power off, leaving Chris with a view of the grim room. He looks up, but, of course, Ada is gone. Chris growls.
Wesker – out of all the fucking people in the world, of all the monsters that have crawled out of their graves – has an infected Leon.
If Chris had only known that Wesker was alive, Chris would have walked through hell to put him back down again. Knowing that he's alive and has Leon puts Chris in a dangerous amount of rage. It clouds his judgement, and he knows that this level of angry isn't going to serve anything.
He takes a steadying breath and when he opens his eyes again, there's a map on the glasses, a red light blinking ominously. Leon. He doesn't know what else Ada would possibly want to show him. And it's the only clue that he has, and he'll take it, gladly.
“Hunnigan,” Chris says. “I have a lead.”