Chapter Text
Leon
As Leon steps out from his car seat, he is nicked by sharp rainfall and haunted by echoes of thunder. An army of dull clouds roll across the sky, the sun imprisoned behind them. When he straggles out a breath it appears as a ghost past his lips. A numbing cold sneaks under his jacket and pulls at his skin until goosebumps form. His chest aches and his throat burns.
It would be easy to blame these symptoms on the weather. But he knows it’s not that. Not when they worsen as he stares down the street and only sees blood that decades should’ve washed away. Not even the thunder can drown out the rotting moans in his memory, or the gunfire, or the screams.
Behind him, the car engine rumbles. Leon tries to ignore his embarrassment at his jolt towards the sound. It’s strange that a car engine now shocks him more than the literal undead.
He reaches in and turns off the ignition. The low roll of the engine fades, and Leon is left in empty silence.
He wishes he left the engine on. In the quiet, his dread intensifies. After years of knowing bloodshed longer than he’s known peace, he told himself he’d never go anywhere near Raccoon City. He visits it enough in his nightmares.
But he never honours his fears. There’s something about the mysterious deaths that he can’t ignore. The corpses remind Leon too much of a virus he thought was buried underneath the remains of a village in Spain.
The link to a disgraced Umbrella employee makes him think of another corpse, one not buried but instead left to rot under the torched ground of his home.
Maybe that’s why, even after twenty years, Luis’ spirit still haunts Leon. He was never put to rest.
Before Leon can once again fall down that spiral of guilt and regret, his radio crackles in his ear.
“Leon? You there?”
It doesn’t help that this voice was with him in Spain either.
Leon forces down the lump in his throat. “Yeah. Yeah Hunnigan, I’m here.”
“Are you alright?” Though Hunnigan’s voice doesn’t waver, Leon’s known her long enough to know that she’s asking out of concern, not obligation. He’s not confided in Hunnigan about the events of Raccoon City, but she’s read all of his files. She knows what the city means to him.
Even if it’s not those traumas that Leon is thinking of now.
“I’m fine, Hunnigan. You’re not underestimating me now, after all these years?”
Hunnigan exhales a soft laugh. “No, I’m not. I just know that city might be… difficult to return to.”
“It’s only the outskirts.” Leon reassures. But even as he says it, he knows it’s bullshit. Being on the outskirts doesn’t matter. This place is close enough to inhale all the smoke, grief and torment that hangs over Raccoon City. It’s close enough that Leon feels it all.
“I guess that’s true,” Hunnigan replies. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”
Leon wonders if Hunnigan either doesn’t know him, or if she knows him too well.
“Never,” Leon lies. “I’ll keep you updated.”
“Thank you.” Hunnigan sounds genuinely relieved, and Leon doesn’t know what to make of it. But before he can disconnect she speaks again with more urgency. “But I think this looks to be about more than just those missing police officers, Leon. The FBI agent who was working on the case hasn’t responded in a few days.”
A pause. “Not that I’m telling you to go searching for her. It’s more of a warning, okay?”
Leon swallows. He really wishes Hunnigan kept that to herself.
He’s never seen the FBI agent, but due to their mutual interest in the case, he knows of her. Something Ashcroft. Besides the tragic story of her mother, Leon doesn’t know anything else about her. Even if he did, it wouldn't have mattered. In his mind she now appears as the young child wearing a plaid dress and a gap-toothed smile. She’s the girl with the orange blazer and the wide, terrified eyes who is still braver than Leon ever could be. She’s someone who Leon feels an innate urge to protect.
If Ashcroft is here, it’s only a matter of time before she becomes zombie chowder, or just another body in the graveyard Umbrella built itself.
He can’t let that happen.
“Yeah, I got it. I’ll just keep an eye out.”
He turns off his radio before Hunnigan can address the obvious lie. So much for just focusing on the apprehension of Victor Gideon.
Leon looks ahead at the Wrenwood Hotel. It’s not a bad place for a sleazy, disgraced scumbag to perhaps find refuge in. Unlike the city beyond it, it is almost untouched by decay. Every pillar clings onto its deep engravings as evidence of its nobility. Time has tinged the structure with hues of ash, but it remains able to tower over Leon and make him small. Around the entrance, yellow lanterns flicker, their flames drawing the moth in.
Leon tugs his jacket closer, but the rain still bleeds through. With a shiver, he makes his way towards the lights and the grand, heavy doors they hang above.
Just before he enters, he checks his magazine. His handgun is always loaded, but he has to make sure. It’s a ritual at this point, before every descent into uncertainty, into missions he might not make it back from.
His finger rests on the trigger as he shoves himself against the doors. With a deep creak, they open to a lobby too silent and empty for Leon’s liking. Like the exterior, the space is bordering on regal, with floors so polished they could be mirrors, marble carved statues, and delicately decorated hanging lights. Two staircases wind up to an upper balcony, beyond which Leon can’t see.
If the floors were smeared with blood and gore, it would be a haunting near replica of the RPD’s main hall. Leon half expects to see Martin bleeding out on soft velvet.
But he’s alone as he steps forward. He ascends the staircase to no corpses, dead or reanimated. All that can be heard is his own footsteps and heavy breath. No inhuman growls, and no harsh ripping of flesh. No maniacal scientist, and no scared agent.
In fact, there’s no proof of anyone at all. The hotel is abandoned, just as it was described.
But that doesn’t make sense. A trail of death led him here. He’s seen the files - knows Victor Gideon rented out this place. But there’s no equipment; none of the beakers, microscopes or burners that he’d seen in that shabby cabin in Spain, or in the underground laboratory he’d unlocked with a dead man’s key. Ashcroft was sent here too, but no trace of her remains. There’s no abandoned flashlights, no torn fabric, no toppled tables.
Leon rubs at his temples. Where the fuck was that Umbrella bastard? Where was Ashcroft?
Maybe, it’s because he’s lost in confusion and frustration. Or, being so close to Raccoon City has made him regress to a version of himself he thought to be just as dead as everything else in the wreckage. Back to the rookie who saw the good in everyone, even the wretched. The rookie who was young, naive, and ultimately foolish.
He doesn’t hear the growl until hands scratch into his shoulders, and the burning of an infection begins.
Luis
The last place Luis saw himself again was in Raccoon City. He’d be less surprised to find himself back in Valdelobos.
Well. He isn’t in Raccoon City. Rather, the outskirts. It just happens that a place once only for ghosts now attracts an entire police department. Ada, obviously, didn’t mention that.
So, Luis has to sneak through alleyways in a stale, torn lab coat, because one of those freakish monsters had charged at him with a guttural snarl, and it was either his new suede jacket or his skin.
Luis pouts. He seems to have a bad habit of wearing his finest jackets to near apocalypses. Now he’s stuck wearing some poor dead guy’s old coat so he doesn’t freeze.
Not that it does much but remind him of his shameful past. The streets are a cryogenic chamber. Every breath Luis exhales becomes mist, and his teeth chatter together in a harsh tune.
He thought Las Plagas is meant to make your body run hot.
As if summoned by the thought, an ache surges through his body. The alleyways are made only of faint shadows, but Luis doesn’t need to see the black veins twisting down his arms to know that they’re there. He grits his teeth. There are only a few suppressants left, and they can’t be wasted on bearable pain. He just hopes his theory is correct; the virus settling around the ashes of Raccoon City might stem from Las Plagas.
It was hard not to be sceptical when Ada first gave him the tip about Wrenwood Mansion and Victor Gideon. For all Luis knew, Las Plagas could only thrive and die through him. But she’d been insistent. He’d seen her concern when it started to take multiple doses of suppressant for the parasite to be satiated. As it was Ada, she’d smothered this care, telling him it would only be a shame to lose her loyal pet. But Luis knew they were more than that. He’d be hesitant to call them friends, but a bond had been forged through infection, guilt, mistakes, and redemption.
If there was a chance that Victor Gideon had the means to erase Las Plagas, Luis should take it.
Not that Luis wanted to rely on a vile man such as Gideon. By being in the Europe branch of Umbrella, he was fortunate enough not to have seen the man himself. But he’d heard whisperings, even before he ran away from his responsibility. Talks of a once bright, worthy mind that was destroyed by obsession. Luis had been too focused on his own project to care for what Victor lost himself to, but now he wished he’d listened. If he had, he might not have needed to make such a gruelling trip.
Though, Luis still doesn’t know where he’s meant to be. Ada, as always, had been cryptic. At first his plan had been to avoid Gideon entirely, and scavenge what might remain of the research left behind in Raccoon City. From lingering around the city edge, however, that was obviously futile. On the off chance Umbrella hadn’t scraped away all evidence of their crimes, the bomb would’ve cremated what was left.
More than that, it was foolish to hope that his younger self may have known something the wearied Luis of the present did not. That Luis didn’t know Las Plagas. He didn’t really know anything.
But Las Plagas still knows itself. When that zombie desecrated his favourite jacket, it wasn’t just Luis’ heart that struggled against his skin; the parasite writhed against every organ, desperate to consume Luis whole.
It was only when he’d grabbed a nearby pipe and turned the zombie’s head into a squelching, oozing pulp that the parasite stilled.
The creature didn’t look infected by Las Plagas. Its eyes were black, not red. It was more frantic and frenzied than controlled by a cultist. But Las Plagas was in there somewhere.
The confirmation felt like a firework in Luis’ chest; a burst of bright, beautiful energy, before it fizzled into nothing, as he remembered what this meant.
Las Plagas is still causing harm.
Luis tries not to feel too bummed about that. It’s not his fault this time. But it was still a string of responsibility that tugged him further into the city, towards the crime scenes and outlines of a body that might soon wake back up.
All he needs is one of those bodies to test. Even just a small sample of blood would be enough to start work on a potential vaccine.
Those cabronas aren’t giving me much chance to test anything, though, Luis mutters to himself. The officers linger in the streets, so unaware of the hell they’ve blindly walked into. Luis hadn’t expected to need his own medical supplies, so all he has is his Red9, worn and moulded to the shape of his thumbs and fingertips. But there’d be no testing without at least a syringe, and the dim, wet alleyways offer him nothing.
If Gideon is as much of a scientist as Luis, there would surely be equipment in that hotel of his. And, if he’s as insane as Ada’s intel suggests, he will have at least one of those creatures on a leash, ready for experimentation.
I’ll have to bother Gideon after all, Luis curses. He doubts, if Gideon is hiding there, that he can sneak in and out without detection. His ability to avoid capture is almost worse than his habit of ruining jackets.
Maybe he can fake allegiance with Umbrella’s values. There could be a falsified understanding formed between two scientists destroyed by their research. Luis didn’t want to compare himself to Gideon, but he could stomach it if it meant avoiding becoming his next test subject.
That is if he even makes it to the hotel without having a hand torn off or locked in handcuffs.
Silent, Luis slinks between the alleyways, melting into the shadows. But the officers don’t seem to be paying much attention anyway. To them, this is only a crime scene. Nonetheless, it’s careless. For their sake, Luis hopes he did kill the only corpse roaming these streets.
He must’ve, because he makes it to where the hotel resides without another ripped coat. It’s a vast, oppressive building that takes up more space than it needs to. Every inch is adorned with decoration or a window, as if the entire building is watching with glassy eyes.
Luis grimaces. He’s always hated places like this. Everyday in the Umbrella labs he would be mourning his childhood cabin, and how it was so small he could feel his grandfather's presence no matter what.
In the distance, a car revves. Sharply, Luis turns to watch it stop in front of the hotel entrance. The car is sharp and defined and new, and Luis is wondering who the hell would drive such a car here, until the door opens.
The man steps out, and Luis inhales so sharply the air nicks his throat.
Even after twenty years, all it takes is a moment for Luis Serra Navarro to recognise Leon S. Kennedy.
Leon’s hair is no longer the hue of a pale morning sunlight, but it still hangs over his face so Luis can’t see the storm rocking the oceans in his eyes. He’s shrouded himself in a dark jacket that makes him one with the shadows, disparate to the stark white of Luis’ own lab coat. He holds his gun in the same angle he used to, but his body is tenser, weighed down by countless more years of pain.
Luis knows all these differences because, like the parasite, Leon plagued him even after Valdelobos. Ada had reassured him both Leon and Ashley made it out of Valdelobos, thank the Lord, but Luis always wondered what came after. Would they remember him? Would they mourn? He knew he shouldn't hope for that, but Leon, both who he was and who he could’ve been, haunted Luis. A cruel, desperate part of Luis wanted to haunt Leon too.
There was a strange comfort in knowing that at least Leon could never follow him here, not after knowing what the Raccoon City disaster did to the agent. In the soft, vulnerable quiet of the elevator, after Luis laid bare all his sins and before those sins caught up to him, Leon had told him. It was in the short, blunt tone Luis had grown almost fond of, but he hid his face so Luis couldn't see the pain in his eyes, or the tears unshed within them.
But, despite it all, Leon chose to forgive Luis. To console Luis that he wasn’t like those Umbrella bastards. That he was worth comfort in death; a final smoke of his cigarette, and a warm hand embracing his cold one. That, before this death, he was worth a warm laugh, a shy gaze, a heated touch, a vow of trust. Leon made him feel like he was worth the possibility of something beyond his guilt and mistakes.
It was a feeling he never deserved, but one he never thought he’d have to confront. Luis would never return to Valdelobos, and Leon would never return to Raccoon City.
But the man that ran into the hotel is definitely Leon, and Luis, damn it all, is going to follow him.