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“With who?”
Your heart had just been shattered on the spot. Ripped out, chewed up, torn apart, smelted into glass and quite literally stomped on. Your body flushed into fight or flight but instead you froze, unable to process anything other than the burning question on your mind as you stared across at the flinching man in front of you.
“Please,” you stated, your lips wet with tears, “please don’t tell me it was her.”
Leon had barely opened his mouth, but his face spoke a thousand words before his voice did. You could tell, even past his dark, tired eyes, you just knew. It was her, Ada, it had always been her. The femme fetale, the mercenary, the woman who’s name you hated hearing on Leon’s tongue. The very woman he swore to you had only saved his life and just that — she was nothing more, nothing less to him. Until now.
You couldn’t bear to look at him and you turned away, feeling your lungs squeeze as you started to hyperventilate. Your entire future, your home, the bed you shared with him, your life — all for him just for him to lay with another woman. The thought flared alight a rage you’d never experienced, which seemed to focus entirely on the photograph you and Leon had framed when you’d moved in together. A Polaroid from Raccoon City — a sour memory shared between trauma-bonded lovers, now just a joke.
You gripped the frame between shaking fingers, and turned towards him. You tossed it with such a violent anger that even he ducked with fear, his arms shielding his head as it crashed and smashed and splintered behind him against the wall.
“Fuck you, Leon,” you stated shakily, trying to maintain some of your dignity by not breaking down in front of him. “Fuck. You.”
That was the last conversation you’d shared. His desperate texts and calls had been unanswered by you, but not necessarily ignored. You’d certainly read and listened, but for your own sake you’d refused to respond.
When you’d left, you’d taken a piece of him with you. He could never comprehend what compelled him to sleep with Ada, and he fought and bargained with himself over the reason each day and each night. And with those timeless days he would drown himself in his sorrows, drinking far more than his liver could probably cope with. Ada held his affection in the palm of her hand like putty, and he’d succumbed to her manipulation for his own self-gratification, as if it were worth it.
Claire and Leon grew distant. Initially she’d tried getting him back on his feet (after a good talking to, of course), but he’d only retreated inside the hardened, guilt-driven shell he’d formed following your breakup. He was more reckless on missions, putting himself in near suicidal situations as if he’d just stopped caring about the outcome. Claire couldn’t support that, and ceased contact with him.
He’d seen Ada again because, frankly, he was desperate to feel something. But even when sleeping with her he’d failed to reach his finish, her touch far too tarnished by precious, poisonous memories for him to even enjoy the simplest pleasures of the flesh.
You’d bumped into one another at a coffee shop. It was bound to happen since you were both regulars, and for a brief moment he felt a spark of warmth, so much so that he’d even smiled for the first time in months. But you’d quickly run away, and his smile soon cracked upon really noticing your appearance. You’d lost weight and looked pale in the face, which was adorned with such a pained expression that he’d nearly burst into tears on the spot.
The next time he’d seen you was at a bar, approximately a month later. You were glowing, having gained back the unhealthy weight you lost, and you genuinely seemed happy. When you’d spotted him, instead of looking horrified, you looked sorry for him. You pitied him, and that made him feel worse.
Why had he done it? Why had he gone and ruined the most pure part of his life? For the sake of an orgasm? To indulge in the fantasy of another woman? None of it was worth it. Nothing was ever worth it anymore, not now that you were gone.