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It first happened sometime after Spain.
After training under the United States government during the years following Raccoon City, Leon wasn’t nearly as oblivious as he pretended to be. He knew about the tracker that Ada had placed on him; but yet, for some inexplicable reason, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it.
Maybe he wanted to live with the illusion that she cared. He’d spent six years haunted by her “death”, tormenting himself every day with the belief that he had failed her. He couldn’t for the life of him understand why he grieved her so deeply, this woman he had known for only a few hours who betrayed him in the end.
For a while, Leon could believe it was because he was a lovesick 21 year old who’d been kissed by a beautiful woman that was fluent in manipulation and acting. It was easy to pretend he was just one of many men who’d fallen victims to her wiles.
Eventually, he realized that he missed her. He had only known Ada for a few hours, but in those few hours she had woven herself so deeply into his being that her absence felt like losing a limb, a part of him he’d never get back. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t figure out why he felt like a grieving widower.
Being pulled in by the government was a blessing, in only a few ways. The work was gruesome and tiring, more exhausting than anything he’d endured during his police training, but it at least served as a distraction. Visions of Ada only came to him at night, rather than every waking moment of the day.
He recognized her voice the moment he heard it for the first time again in Spain. For a fleeting moment, he thought that a blur of red had sent all his progress over the past few years down the drain. But he recognized those dark eyes, ivory hair, and uptilted lips: he’d been visited by the appearance of her enough times to realize who she was.
The gun to Leon’s back was what made him acknowledge that Ada was real . His more romantic daydreams of seeing her again didn’t involve her holding a weapon to him. Though, in later years, this would become standard fare for their reunions.
He remained focused on his mission, despite all the questions swirling around in his mind. How are you alive? Why didn’t you find me and tell me? Why are you here? Ashley needed him, he didn’t have time to revisit long-buried crushes. He still kept his eye out for her, though, painfully aware of circumstances that seemed to act in his favor. Every tip she gave him only confused him further, had him wondering why she was suddenly so eager to help him out after so brutally betraying him all those years ago.
It all came back together when Ada took the amber from him, leaving Leon on that island while she fled into the helicopter that would take her away from him again. He didn’t have the energy to be hurt, knowing better than to expect anything less, but he still couldn’t help but feel that she’d taken another piece of his heart with him; just as she had when her hand slipped from his back in Raccoon City.
But something was different this time. Leon hadn’t known Ada when she first saved his life, not really. He knew a version of her she pretended to be, a role of hers demanded by her job. This time, though, he did know her. He knew she was there for some mission of her own, one that likely conflicted with his, and she still went out of her way to help him. Giving him tips on Ashley’s location, buying them time to get out of the crumbling church, and helping take down Saddler.
She didn’t have to do any of that for him. But she did .
Leon had been puzzled over his feelings and revelations when, against all odds, Ada found him again. This time in his motel room, on the outskirts of Spain and far away from any threats of Las Plagas, waiting for his extraction back to D.C.
He’d run out for some dinner and nearly had a heart attack when he walked back in and found her lounging on the motel couch, absentmindedly reading one of the magazines that came complementary with the room.
“You know, for the man responsible for saving the President’s daughter, you’d think they would’ve put you up somewhere nicer.”
Leon put the food on the table and cocked an eyebrow in her direction. Instead of addressing his clear question, she simply put the magazine down and made direct eye contact with him as she continued, “I mean, I’ve had clients put me in much fancier hotels with much less money than your employers.”
“Ada, what are you doing here? Better question, how did you even find me?”
“I have my ways.” She said it like it was answer enough; which, for a world-class spy, he supposed it likely was. “Besides, it’s been a long six years. Can’t I want to see you without the threat of viruses coming in between us?”
Now she was just antagonizing him. “You know as well as I do that it’s not the viruses that always get in our way.”
Ada stood up and crossed the room to join him at his side. “I suppose you’re right, it’s usually our employers getting in the way.”
That wasn’t it either, but Leon didn’t give her the satisfaction of more banter. Instead he laid the takeout on the table, swatting her hand away when she reached to steal a fry.
They sat in awkward silence, Leon eating his food and Ada standing at the other end of the table, observing him. It wasn’t until he’d finished that she spoke up with a rare tone of vulnerability in her voice.
“Maybe I just wanted to check on you, see how you were recovering from the parasite. I know it’s not the easiest thing to fight off or remove.”
“You know ?”
Something about the way Ada said it scratched at something in his brain, telling him to pay attention to the deeper meaning. Under the crappy motel room light, Leon only just started to make out the fading red at the corners of her hazel eyes and the subtle discolored lines extending down the angles of her face. To the untrained eye, neither of those things would’ve been noticed.
But Leon had seen it in Ashley, and had experienced it himself. And Ada...
“You were infected with the virus too.” It wasn’t a question, and the way she averted her gaze that had been fixed on him until this moment spoke volumes.
“Holy shit, Ada.” Questions swirled in his head, making him feel sick with realization. How long had she been helping him and Ashley, trying to finish her own mission, while being infected with the same parasite that nearly rendered him and Ashley incapable of doing anything ? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ada shrugged helplessly, still not meeting Leon’s eyes. “You had your orders, and I had mine. Besides, I handled it and got rid of it. It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?! You were guiding me and Ashley to the lab, I could’ve helped you out. You didn’t have to go through it alone.”
“I would’ve been a liability, Leon, I only would’ve slowed you down. I was already dedicating too much of my mission to helping you , I had to handle the rest by myself.” Finally, Ada looked back up at Leon and met his gaze, and her eyes were soft in a way he hadn’t seen them in over half a decade. “Besides, you proved back in Raccoon City that you weren’t capable of leaving me behind if the choice was yours. So I made the decision for you.”
He was reminded, then, of the last time that Ada had used the term “liability”. When her leg had been impaled, and she had begged him to leave without her. I’m a liability now .
“That’s not your decision to make for me.” Leon stood up, so he and Ada were nearly chest to chest. He was hit, suddenly, by how much smaller she seemed than she had six years ago. “I would’ve helped you if I had known.”
“I’m not worth the help, Leon.” Despite the heaviness of her words, the statement was void of any emotion. Instead she sounded resigned, like she was stating a fact. “I never have been. Why do you think I tried so hard to get you to leave me behind in Raccoon City?”
“To be honest, for a long time I hoped it’s because you never wanted to betray me for the sample if you didn’t have to.”
“Well, there’s that, too.”
During their conversation, Leon noticed that they’d both slowly gravitated toward one another. He could feel Ada’s breath on his face, could count every one of her fluttering lashes as she looked up at him with those beautiful eyes that had haunted his every waking thought for years. There was very little space between them, but yet, it also felt like there was entirely too much space between them.
His hands found her waist, pulling her flush against him. He half-expected her to pull away, but instead, she leaned up on her toes to press her lips against his.
They kissed in a hurried frenzy, teeth clashing with the force of their need. Leon moaned when Ada’s hands twined in his blonde locks and tugged, so different from the kiss they shared in that cable car. Their first kiss had been soft and tender, almost nervous, exploratory of a blossoming spark brought about by the most terrifying of circumstances.
This one held six years of pent up emotion and desire, and Leon suddenly had no doubt that for those years apart, Ada had thought about him just as frequently as he thought about her.
In an almost choreographed move, Ada jumped just as Leon palmed at her thighs and lifted her up, her legs wrapping around his hips. He carried her into the bedroom, ramming into the doorframe a few times as he was loath to leave her lips for even a second. Ada’s delighted giggle only filled his chest with warmth and love for the woman in his arms, and they spent the rest of the night making up for lost time.
Leon fell asleep with Ada in his arms, and it was the most peaceful sleep he’d had in years. When he woke up to an empty bed and a hastily written note with a washed-out lipstick-marked kiss on it, he didn’t have the heart to be disappointed. Ada was nothing if not a creature of habit, after all.
Thanks for the company. See you around, handsome.
- A
–
“Do you ever think about leaving it all behind?”
Leon had been settling in for the night when his window slid open, and a blood-soaked Ada stumbled her way into his living room. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for her to come to his place when a mission took a particularly rough physical toll on her body, but he knew it was never her first option. If there was one thing she hated, it was vulnerability.
He learned long ago that vulnerability was forbidden in Ada’s line of work. To do what she did, one had to detach themselves emotionally from any and everything. Connections created distractions, and distractions created poor mercenaries.
A bullet had grazed her hip, thankfully not doing more than causing some damaged skin, but seeing the blood pooling out of her hands as she held the wound scared the shit out of him. He’d let her into the bathroom, pulling out his first aid kit to fish around for gauze and stitches. He was no miracle worker, but it would be enough to keep her wound closed until it properly healed.
Ada was silently sitting on the counter next to the sink as he gently stitched her skin back together, trying to ignore the awful twist in his gut at the sight of her wounded form, when he asked the question.
“Leave what behind?”
“Everything.” Leon shrugged, apologizing softly when she winced as he pulled the stitches tighter together. “Your work, your identity, your life.”
“Something tells me that
you
think about leaving it all behind.” She pointed out, gracefully dodging and redirecting his question. Rather than chastise her for it, he opened up.
“How could I not? One minute I’m late to my first shift at the police station, and the next I’m being dragged into government operations as their secret weapon against my will. Over time, you grow disdain for the people taking away your chance at a normal life.”
“And how exactly would you leave your life behind, Mr. Presidential Lapdog?” Her tone wasn’t condescending but curious, like she genuinely wanted to know what his plan would be.
“Fake my death on a mission, erase any trace of Leon S. Kennedy. Move across the globe and take on a new identity, start a new life. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of doing the same.”
Ada was silent for a moment, her gaze settling somewhere over Leon’s shoulder. He could tell that she was deep in thought, and he gave her all the time she needed to search for an answer. Finally, she decided, “No, I haven’t.”
“Really?”
She shrugged, reaching down to play with a loose thread on the sleeve of his navy sleep shirt. “This life is all I’ve ever known, Leon. I’ve never had anyone care enough about me to want me to leave it.”
Leon was hit with an indescribable sadness at Ada’s words, and the resignation at which she said them. Like it was a fact that she had accepted long ago... and maybe she had. He couldn’t understand why nobody had cared as deeply for her as he did, why nobody had ever bothered to tell her that she deserved a better life than the one she’d lived under the thumb of so many powerful people who took advantage of her and her skills.
Leon may not have known Ada as well as he wished that he did after all these years, but he knew that underneath her carefully curated persona, she was a lonely and vulnerable woman who just wanted something permanent in her life. Her mercenary work was as permanent as she’d gotten, up until that fateful day in Raccoon City.
He saw it in the way she pulled him to her, kissing him in a desperate frenzy as though he were the one at risk of disappearing. He saw it in the way she clung to him like a koala when she thought he was asleep, not fully succumbing to a peaceful sleep until she was settled in his hold.
Those small moments were what kept him chasing after her all these years, despite everything. It had taken him a while to really see their relationship for what it was, when Ada was less prone to fleeing and ended up finding her way to him more and more. She needed him just as much as he needed her, she just had a harder time of showing it.
Her words were a testament to how foreign this whole thing was to her. She wasn’t familiar with someone caring about her, with someone loving her. No strings attached.
“I do.” Leon was speaking before he could think about the honesty and vulnerability of his words. There was still that lingering fear of spooking Ada, of sending her running; but if she did, he at least wanted her to know where he stood.
Ada smiled; the rare, soft smile that she only seemed to reserve for him. She leaned down, pressing her forehead against his before pulling him into a sweet kiss. She broke from him sooner than he would’ve liked, but she didn’t stray far, choosing to keep her arms looped around his shoulders.
“I can see it, you know. You, with a normal life. You always did strike me as the white picket fence kind of guy.”
“What do you mean?” Sometimes, Leon indulged in whatever ramblings Ada chose to go on about simply to hear her talk: because if he was hearing her sweet voice, it meant she was still there. But he was genuinely curious into her insights on what she perceived as his “ideal life”.
“I can see you coming home from a shift at the police station, after a day of playing hero. A few kids jumping into your arms and a wife in the kitchen making dinner for your family. Awfully mundane, in my opinion, but I could see it suiting you.”
Maybe under different circumstances, if he hadn’t lived through the trauma of the Raccoon City incident and hadn’t been swept up against his will by the U.S. government to be their go-to man for dealing with bioterrorism, that would have been the life Leon saw for himself. But the person he was at 21 was so different from the person he was now at 38, and he no longer thought he was built for a life of normalcy like that.
No regular woman would be able to comprehend the inner workings of his brain or be able to break down the intricacies of his trauma. They wouldn’t understand how finding his way to the bottom of a beer bottle was the only way to dull his senses enough for him to sleep without seeing the face of every undead foe he’d ever killed, every person he’d ever failed.
Maybe that was why, after all this time, he always found his way back to Ada.
Despite the lies and betrayals, Leon felt like she was the only person who really saw him for the damaged man he was and loved him in spite of it. She’d been there with him that day in Raccoon City, had been infected with Las Plagas down in Spain, had been present for nearly every major bioterrorism event he’d been sent to deal with since the D.S.O. got their claws on him.
At the beginning of their relationship, whatever that relationship may have been, Leon found it difficult to overlook the simple fact that they were on opposite sides. But the more he experienced and discovered, the more coverups orchestrated by the government he unraveled, he learned that things weren’t as black and white as he always thought they’d been. Ada did what she had to do to survive, as did he. And despite what may be best for herself, he always found Ada saving his ass time and time again, even if it put her in a tough spot with her employers.
Maybe he would enjoy a life of mundanity if it were Ada by his side.
“I don’t know.” Leon teased, his fingers gripping Ada’s bare hips as he finished with her wound dressings. “As it turns out, I’m rather fond of women with a tendency to throw me rocket launchers and place trackers on me.”
The beaming grin that he was met with was so beautiful, so authentically Ada , that it made him feel so full of love that his heart may have burst.
–
Ada changed after the events involving Derek Simmons; which made things difficult, because he still had no clue what the hell even happened.
Leon’s head spun with questions, wanting so desperately to put the pieces together. But none of them made sense on their own, and their jagged edges made it hard for him to complete the puzzle.
What is Project Ada, and who was in that tape that looked identical to his own lady in red? How did Chris have eyes on her dead body, only for her to show up and save him and Helena? Why was Simmons so obsessed with her?
If Ada didn’t want to answer a question, she didn’t. It was something Leon accepted long ago, and he had learned to live with the mysteries that she left in her wake. But somehow, Ada was at the center of whatever happened that day in China. He could claim it was because the events directly affected his line of work, and they did , but the truth was that she was hurting more than he’d ever seen her. She had always been composed, even in the most dire of situations, and had perfected her emotional mask. But the mask was slipping, and he was useless as to how to help.
The first time he noticed it was a few days after returning home from China. He was asleep, and in his post-mission exhaustion, he had somehow forgotten to lock his window. But rather than a criminal or a B.O.W. breaking in, it was Ada herself.
Quiet as a mouse, he didn’t even notice she was in his room until she was crawling into bed beside him. Despite his half-asleep stupor at the feeling of her body settling next to his, he made space for her on the mattress like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe, in an ideal life, it was.
“Ada?” He muttered, surprised by the vulnerability in her movements as she curled her body against his, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Even through this confusion, he winded his arms around her to pull her closer to him. “What’re you doin’ here?”
Instead of some cryptic message or teasing comment, she mumbled against his skin, “Needed you.”
Leon knew Ada in all the ways that matter. He may not have known her background or her real name, but he knew the beat of her heart and the wirings of her brain. For her to come crawling into his bed and collapse against him with verbal expression of needing his presence, she was worse off than he could have expected.
Treading lightly, but still trying to get her to open up if she was willing, Leon asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Ada shook her head, pushing impossibly closer against him. Like she wanted to crawl into his skin and live inside his heart, where she’d been protected since September 30th, 1998. “Just hold me.” It was a plea, not a demand, and it was one he was all too happy to answer.
There were a few more times after that, when she’d slip into his bed with dark eyebags and a far-off-look. She never spoke about it, even though he knew exactly what the problem was. He’d suffered through nightmares long enough to know what they looked like.
It wasn’t until one night a few weeks later when he had no choice but to beg Ada to let him in. Leon wasn’t proud of it, but he felt helpless against her blatant trauma. It was after one of their makeshift “dates” that ended with them tangled up in bed together in ways they hadn’t been since before the events in China. They’d fallen asleep together afterward, and he was later woken up by panicked breathing.
“Ada?” Leon’s hands were on her face, stroking her cheeks as she wheezed and cried. “Ada, sweetheart, look at me. I’m right here.” Her hands came up to rest over his, gripping his skin almost desperately. Hazel eyes looked into blue ones, grounding her, and a few heartbeats later, her breathing was back to normal.
Leon’s heart broke at the sight of his beautiful, strong Ada reduced to frantic tears over something he wasn’t privy to. She fell into his embrace, her nails scratching his back as she clutched him in desperation, whispering soft apologies against his skin.
“Don’t be sorry. Never be sorry for being human, my love.” He didn’t commonly use pet names with Ada, the woman convinced most of them were cheesy and stupid. But she seemed to relax at the endearments, settling against his side as they both laid back down.
They lapsed into silence, with Ada’s maroon nails tracing the scar along Leon’s shoulder where he had taken a bullet for her all those years ago. Now, even that felt like too small a testament to how deeply he loved Ada. He’d spent nearly two decades letting her play with his heart and using his feelings for her to her advantage, all for the quieter moments where she silenced the demons in his head and the exhaustion in his heart. She seemed to be contemplating something as she ran her fingers down his bare skin, taking note of every scrape and bruise and scar.
“I worked for Derek Simmons, once upon a time.”
Leon’s head snapped up, realizing what was happening, but said nothing. He only caught Ada’s hand with his own and gave it a comforting squeeze to urge her on.
“He worked for an organization that infiltrated world governments and took them down from the inside. I got involved with him before Raccoon City, simply seeing it as another means of being paid. He, however, saw us as more than just business partners.
“Like I did most of my employers, I left him. He wasn’t the first, and he definitely was not the last either. He thought he loved me, but he only loved the me I was while working for him. He wanted me to bow to him, to serve him and do his bidding, and he was furious when I left.”
Ada Wong was not one to be kept by any man, Leon knew that better than anyone. While he could understand falling for Ada, could even understand falling for an idea of her, he couldn’t understand wanting to own her. Leon himself had contented himself with the pieces of herself Ada had given him over the years, he couldn’t fathom taking that for granted.
“I found out that he’d been carrying out something called Project Ada. It was exactly as it sounds, he was using mutations to try and create a carbon copy of me. Or at least, one in face and name. One he could turn into his idealized version of me, one that would do his bidding without question.”
“Is that what was on that tape?” He thought of the stomach-churning video from the lab, of someone who looked like Ada bursting free from a cocoon like an undead butterfly.
Ada grimaced, disgust evident on her face. “I was hoping you hadn’t seen that. But yes, that was Carla Radames; the first and only successful Ada Wong clone. Or, the dead version of myself that took out all of Chris Redfield’s men.”
Well, that answered Leon’s biggest question.
“But if she worked under Simmons, why did she betray him?”
“He tried to erase any prior existence of Carla, both physical and psychological. But Carla’s real self broke through, and she wanted revenge on Simmons for what he’d done. To her, that included taking me and the rest of the world down with her.”
Part of him pitied Carla. Every ounce of her autonomy was taken from her, and she was turned into some creep’s fantasy woman. He couldn’t imagine the pain she’d been through, but couldn’t sympathize with her wanting to take it out on innocent people. Unbidden, another realization hit him.
“So Deborah, Helena’s sister...“
Ada’s face fell, and her grip on Leon’s hands tightened ever so slightly. He leaned forward to press a kiss against her forehead, showering her with praises about how strong she was and promising that he was there for her no matter what.
“Simmons ended up using over 12,000 people to create the perfect clone of me. Helena’s sister was one of those casualties.”
“Oh, Ada...“ Despite her questionable alliances, Ada had a good heart and fought for what was right. When Wesker revealed his plans for the amber, one that would result in billions of deaths, she hadn’t hesitated to turn her back on him. For thousands of women to die because of one man’s obsession with her, he couldn’t imagine the guilt she had been fighting all this time.
When Ada finally broke again, Leon pulled her into his arms and whispered sweet nothings into her ear while he finally relished in the fact that Ada trusted him with her deepest vulnerabilities and darkest demons. All he’d ever wanted was to be there for her, to be the one she comes to when she needs comfort. And though he wanted to revive Derek Simmons and rip him limb from limb for what he’d done to Ada and all those women, he instead focused all his attention on the love of his life.
I’m so sorry, you’re so brave, I would kill him again if I could, it wasn’t your fault, I love you. She finally fell asleep to his whispered musings, and Leon wiped the tears from her reddened cheeks long after.
She was gone in the morning, like always, but a note hidden under his pillow expressed her thanks. A single sentence at the end caught his attention, and had his heart soaring.
“I love you too, rookie.”
–
It was one of the increasingly more frequent moments that Ada stayed with him until morning, opting to bask in the warm embrace of his arms rather than slip out of them at daybreak. Leon was well aware of her habits, but it never stopped him from accepting her company whenever he was blessed with it.
He admired her sleeping face, bare of any makeup and peacefully content save for the occasional crinkle of her eyebrows as she dreamt of one thing or another. It was painfully adorable, and Leon couldn’t fight the joy that swelled in his heart at the realization that he was the only person who got to see Ada like this.
To some, she was an asset, a legend in the spy world that many were desperate to have on their side. To others, she was a dangerous foe, one who could don any identity needed and easily get her hands on important information that many struggled to obtain.
To Leon, she was the woman who had saved his life on numerous occasions, often at the risk of her own mission. She knew she had some sort of sway over him, they wouldn’t be where they were all these years later if that wasn’t true, but he didn’t think Ada knew just how much power she had over him.
He could spend months swearing he was done with her, done with her half-truths and her tendency to flee whenever he asked questions she didn’t want to answer. But one look from Ada, and Leon came undone at her feet.
She was the woman he’d loved for as long as he’d known her, despite everything. She fascinated him just as much as he infuriated it, but the clandestine meetings they always found themselves reuniting in gave him a reason to keep moving forward with a job that seemed to slowly take everything from him as the years went on.
“See something you like?” The object of his affections spoke up, pulling him back down to Earth. He didn’t realize that he’d zoned off staring at her, but couldn’t find it in him to be ashamed of being caught.
“Maybe.” Leon mused, reaching down to gently trail his knuckles along Ada’s cheeks. He delighted in the way her face scrunched up, and didn’t bother fighting the urge to lean forward and tangle his fingers in her hair, pulling her up into a kiss. It only lasted a moment, but Ada didn’t stray far; she pulled back just enough for her to run her fingers through the strands of dirty blonde locks falling into his eyesight.
They laid there for a moment, basking in the moment. Ada’s fingers traced the lines of his face, the curve of his cheekbones and jawline, and her nails gently scratched along the stubble growing around the area.
Leon groaned, turning his face away to instead bury it in the crook of Ada’s neck. “Thanks for reminding me to shave.”
She hummed, rubbing his shoulder blades before interrupting, “No, don’t. I like it.”
“Really? Never took you for a facial hair kind of gal.”
“Now, don’t plan on growing a full beard or anything. But it suits you, separates you from the baby-faced rookie you were when we met.” Leon laughed, but let Ada continue to run her fingers along his face as she pleased. He’d never been able to say no to her, after all.
“I was not baby-faced.” Yes, he absolutely was. But so much of his and Ada’s relationship depended on banter, so he couldn’t let the comment go.
“You were. But it’s okay, I think you’ve aged beautifully.”
It reminded Leon of just how long Ada had been a part of his life. He met her at 21, and now, at almost 40, she was more important to him than he ever could’ve fathomed back then. They’d spent nearly two decades growing apart, and then back together again.
“So have you.”
The scene was so domestic, something out of his deepest fantasies. It was something he’d come to experience more and more since Ada’s “death”. He silently thanked Carla Radames for the small blessing; with the world thinking she was dead, she had more room to take a step back from her work and try to create as normal a life as she could with Leon.
It wasn’t perfect, but after so many years, it was theirs .
Ada had once said she never had anyone care about her enough to want her to leave her life as a mercenary. Now, with her in his bed and his home and on his lips and his skin and imprinted in his heart, Leon thought she couldn’t have been more wrong.