Work Text:
Ashley feels disgusting.
Her hair is greasy, her clothes are soaked with blood and sewer water and god knows what else, and her face and arms are covered in dirt and dried blood. The way her clothes are sticking to her skin is making her restless, and all the dirt and grime covering her body is making her skin crawl.
She wants nothing more than to wake up from this nightmare, feeling clean and safe in her bed. Instead, she’s stuck sitting on the ground in front of a campfire while Leon paces around the area, constantly paranoid about nearby hostiles.
Leaves and sticks crunch beneath Leon’s feet as he paces, and the sound is starting to become grating. Ashley wants to tear these disgusting clothes to shreds, wants to scream at Leon to stop making so much noise, wants to curl up in a ball and just disappear because this is all too much to bear and she can’t do it anymore.
She doesn’t realize what she’s doing until she starts feeling a dull throb in her head, but she can’t bring herself to stop. She’s frustrated and terrified, and it feels like her entire world is caving in on itself.
Out of pure instinct, Leon grabs Ashley’s wrists to stop her from hitting herself, and before she can process what’s she’s saying, Ashley screams for him to let go of her and screw off.
Entirely unfazed, Leon simply lets go of her wrists and kneels down in front of her, giving her as much space as he feels comfortable giving her in her current state.
“Sorry— I won’t touch you again. But please stop hurting yourself.”
Leon’s words are not helpful at all. Ashley is falling to pieces here, and the only way she knows how to self-regulate right now is to keep up the repetitive motion of hitting herself. If she stops, she’ll start to feel the stickiness of the blood and dirt again, and she’ll hear the crunching of the leaves, and that’s somehow worse than the bruises she’s giving herself right now.
“Please just shut up,” Ashley begs, tugging at her hair in stress. “Everything is too much— Just shut up. Please.”
Leon sighs, giving Ashley the quiet that she needs. He doesn’t like seeing her like this, hurting herself, but he also knows better than to physically try and stop her.
“Do you want a distraction? Something to do with your hands?” Leon offers quietly. “You can, uh—“
He glances around frantically, but comes up with nothing. As a last ditch effort, he simply offers out his own hands to Ashley. Ashley finally ceases her relentless attack on herself, grabbing onto Leon’s hands and squeezing them to let out the last of her frustrated energy. Leon winces in pain, but lets out no complaints.
“I wanna go home so badly,” Ashley mumbles, voice cracking as tears well up in her eyes all over again.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I just—“ Ashley loosens her grip on Leon’s hands, opting to instead fidget with them. “Everything is too much— It’s too loud, and I feel so dirty, and it’s all too scary and weird, and I— I just want to go back to normal. I feel like I need to tear my own skin off to get rid of all this filth, and— God, I’m such a drama queen about this, aren’t I? We’re in a life or death situation, and all I can think about is how much I want to take a shower.”
Leon thinks back to Raccoon City, how much he wanted to tear himself to pieces wandering around that police department with zombie viscera in his hair and blood soaking his uniform. He thinks about all the times he hid in the dark room, picking at his nails until they bled because it was the only thing he could do to keep himself from delving into a complete meltdown.
“I don’t think you’re being dramatic,” Leon says gently, watching idly as Ashley plays with his hands. “I think you’re a kid in a terrifying situation, and I think you’re allowed to feel however you want to about that.”
“I keep trying to make sense of all this in my head,” Ashley says, “but I can’t. All I can think is that I just want it to be over.”
“I know. I’m sorry, kid.” Leon’s heart breaks as Ashley devolves into sobs, squeezing his hands again. He wishes he had more to say than ‘I’m sorry’, but he can’t think of anything better. So he repeats it again and again as she sobs, still clinging onto his hands for dear life until she has no more tears left to cry.
When Ashley is finally done sobbing, she lets herself collapse against Leon in exhaustion, burying her face in his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, voice muffled by Leon’s jacket. Leon hesitantly wraps his arms around her, rubbing her back in what he hopes is a comforting gesture.
“Sorry for what?”
“I don’t know. Being a burden on you. Crying hysterically every time something goes wrong. Complaining all the time.”
Leon signs, resting his chin on top of Ashley’s head.
“None of that. Just— Stop being so hard on yourself about this. This— This isn’t a normal thing to go through. You can be upset. Stop apologizing for it.”
Ashley goes quiet at that, slumping into Leon’s embrace.
“…you should take your own advice one of these days,” she mumbles after a long moment of silence. Leon doesn’t dignify that comment with a response— He simply swats at her arm. Ashley giggles, and Leon cracks a tiny smile despite himself. It’s nice to hear that she’s still able to laugh despite everything.
“You,” Leon says, pulling away from the hug so he can properly look at Ashley, “need to get some rest. We need to get up early and get moving tomorrow. I’ll keep watch.”
Ashley stares at Leon for a long moment, eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She wants to tell him that he needs rest too, that he needs to stop prioritizing her over himself, but she knows it’s no use arguing with him. She sighs in defeat, nodding.
“Alright. Bedtime it is.”
Leon nods, shrugging off his coat and setting it down on the ground for Ashley to lay on top of.
“‘Night, kid.”
“‘Night,” Ashley replies as she curls up on the jacket, wrapping it around herself to keep warm. After a moment of silence, she glances up at Leon. “Uhm. Thank you, by the way.”
Leon simply ruffles her hair in response, and for the first time in a while, Ashley feels… comfortable. She feels safe with Leon sitting beside her and the warmth of his jacket surrounding her. Her world may still be caving in, but Leon is here to pull her out of the debris, and that makes the weight of it all a bit more bearable.
“Get some rest, kid.”
“Mhm,” Ashley mumbles, closing her eyes. “‘Night. Love you.”
Leon freezes at the words, not used to hearing them and not expecting to hear them from Ashley of all people. After a long moment, he relaxes, ruffling her hair again.
“Yeah. Love you too, kid.”