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“Thank you,” Grace breathes, quiet and relieved. Her eyes hold something incredibly distant, avoiding Leon altogether and refusing to let him see the ache inside of her for what it really is: brokenness.
She was just barely holding it together, before. Being kidnapped by Victor had scared the living daylights out of her bones, leaving her shaken and panicked and unable to process much other than the fact that she had been rescued by someone else. But she managed to stay alive after they were separated. She somehow escaped the horror in the police station all on her own, with nothing but adrenaline and Leon’s firearm to guide her.
Now, she doesn’t think she’s holding it together at all. Because that thing back there—whatever it was—that she thought Leon had killed when he rescued her, wasn’t anything like what she had ever expected it to be. At some point, she had thought it may have been her mother. But she knows now that it isn’t true. Not even close. It’s worse, so much worse, and the mere thought of facing it again terrifies her so violently she thinks she would rather die than do so.
Crouched before her, Leon’s dim eyes stare a hole into the side of her skull, contemplating something she doesn’t understand. Careful palms finish tending to the deep wound on her arm, cold air replacing that warmth when he removes them completely.
“I know you found out something, Grace,” he murmurs, as if talking to her like a scared and cornered animal is going to make any of this better. It won’t. “And I know, okay? I know you don’t want to come to terms with it, or talk about it, and that’s fine. The truth can sometimes be unbearable. But I need you to tell me what that is.”
Grace turns her head further, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms around herself. She can’t do it. She can’t go back out there like he can, calm and collected and unafraid, and just kill that thing like it’s another day in the office. She isn’t Leon. She isn’t like him. She isn’t like him at all.
“Grace,” he tries again, his voice soft and kind, so unlike his almost frightening exterior appearance. She knows he won’t hurt her, or force her to answer, but at the end of the day he is an agent. He’ll get the truth one way or another. Even if he has to manipulate her to get it.
But the gentle hand that finds her shoulder tries to convince her that this isn’t manipulation. Not even close.
Leon shuffles a little, briefly standing up only to plant himself back in the path of her closed off gaze, and crouches again. On her shoulder comes a gentle squeeze, steady and forthright. He doesn’t say anything else at first, letting the silence pass until she opens her eyes to find those of someone who is no longer an agent, but a man with weight on his shoulders and one too many ghosts in his closet. Someone trying to be soft, when the world has hardened their skin into stone.
There’s a sense of empathy in the way he looks at her now, so different from the way he had before. Like she’s a present reminder of something he had spent so long trying to learn how to forget and let go of.
“I know you’re scared,” he starts, slow and careful but honest. “This place, it’s… it exists as the home for so much fear and ruin. There are things that exist here that shouldn’t. People have committed terrible atrocities beneath these streets and ruined so many lives because of it.”
Of course. Umbrella is the whole reason for all of this mess.
“They’ve ruined mine,” he admits. Something dark and haunting passes through him with his words, then vanishes as fast as it appeared. Desolate and a whisper of something that once was. He looks and sounds like he’s forgotten how to do this. How to be open. How to be human. “But regardless of what happened, I didn’t run. I couldn’t, not when there were people out there that needed me. I am alive because I learned to face my fears head on, even if it crippled me. Running never did anyone any good, and it certainly never did for me. Believe me, I tried, once.”
Grace shakes her head at that, trying to look away. Trying to run like she always had because if she just didn’t look at it for long enough, it would no longer be there. It wouldn’t be able to hurt her anymore.
But Leon is persistent, leaning with her to keep her eyes trained on him. “Take it from me, you can’t live your life like that. It’ll just catch up to you eventually. And when it does, you won’t have any idea what to do.”
“No,” she shakes her head again, “you don’t get it. This isn’t something I can handle, Leon. Victor, he’s…”
Leon’s brows raise at that, leaning forward slightly. Looking her so deep in the eye it’s like he can see all of the pieces which make up her very soul. “He’s what, Grace?”
Grace sucks in a quick breath, biting the bullet and hoping it’ll be enough to kill her. “That thing from earlier, it isn’t just a B.O.W like you thought, or… my mother like I had almost believed. It’s—it’s me.”
“It’s you?” Leon’s brows furrow in confusion, his palm dropping from her shoulder to his knee. “What do you mean?”
She heaves another breath, her brain forcing her to recall her last encounter with the creature after it seemed to come back to life despite having an exploded skull. It had almost eaten her, and torn her apart with its bare hands. And the way it looked at her…
“Who knows how many more of them he has,” she gasps, looking around in a panic that she cannot seem to stop or control. Her lungs burn as she tries to suck in enough air, wild eyes scanning the door and the windows over and over again until the room begins to blur. “Or what he’s going to do. He’s—he’s cloning me, making more of me like I’m—I’m… like I’m some sort of p-project and—and…”
“Grace,” Leon says.
“He has my blood,” she realizes, her eyes widening as she finds his again, exasperated with the idea. “He’s going to release them, or something, and—and more people are going to die and I can’t—“
“—Grace,” he tries again, rising a bit to grab her arms in an attempt to make this better, but he can’t make any of it better. Thousands of people are already dead and more are going to die and Victor Gideon is going to use what he obtained of her blood to create something impossible to stop and she has no idea how the hell she or anyone is going to possibly to do anything to stop it and the whole world is going to end because of her if she doesn’t— “Hey.”
“Everyone is going to die because of me,” she cries, lurching forward with the weight of her words until her body crashes against the solid warmth of Leon’s shoulder. Sobs erupt from her gut with every breath she attempts to take, desperate fingers clutching at his shirt even though she knows it will do nothing to make her feel any better about the pain. But she doesn’t have anyone else. She hasn’t for a long time.
Her mother is dead.
And the man who murdered her is still alive and she has no idea how to stop him.
Leon’s arms catch her as she practically collapses with the weight of her trauma and grief, his body stiffening briefly. Grace knows that under any other circumstance, she wouldn’t be doing this. She barely knows Leon, even though he saved her and has helped her out of a lot of messes so far, and there is not a world out there where he could ever be the person to replace her mother and fill the hole inside of her that her murder left. But right now, he is all she’s got. He is the only one who has protected her, and who has given her a reason to fight, not out of duty but out of personal conviction. A safe place. Something she has not had in far too long.
“Hey,” he whispers, the tension leaving him suddenly and all at once. “It’s okay, Grace. We’re going to make it out of this. Victor isn’t going to get what he wants if I can help it.”
“You don’t know that,” she sniffles, hot tears dripping from her face down onto his shirt. Her hands tremble where they rest against his back, her fingers fiddling with the strap of his leather carrier. “It’s all my fault.”
“No, it’s not.” Leon’s reply comes serious, his deep, stern tone reverberating against the hollows of her bones. “Victor’s actions are his own and they have nothing do with anything you’ve done. You aren’t to blame. I’m going to kill him, Grace. I’m going to put a stop to all of this, but I can’t do it alone. I still need your help. I need you to be strong.”
“I’m not, I—“
“—You are,” he interrupts, leaving no room for argument. “You’ve made it this far. You can’t go giving up now. I imagine your mother wouldn’t want you to either.”
Grace pauses at that. Memories of hard work and daily disappearances flow like sequences in her brain, reminding her of a past she had almost forgotten amidst the horrors of this terrible place. It was the one thing about her mother that she swore she would never let herself forget: to never, ever give up on anything. To keep pushing when everything around you screams at you to. To dig in the places kept hidden, where no one else wants to look.
To fight for something that means everything to you, even when no one else will.
“Strength isn’t always about the physical, you know. You’re a technical analyst, right? That means your strength is in here,” he touches her temple with his fingers, then slides his palms to her shoulders where he can ease her back to look her in the eye again. Grace goes easily, now finding herself feeling quite embarrassed for her outburst, but finding no excuse for it. She needed it. She needed to do that if it means moving forward. Better here and now, safe just for a moment, then later when she’s in trouble again. “Leave the heavy stuff to me, alright? I think there are other ways you can help.”
Grace nods, composing herself with an unsteady breath. “What—what do you want me to do?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him smile before. “Something totally not illegal.”