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"Kennedy?" Static washes over the radio line. "Do you read me? Leon?"
Hunnigan's voice cuts through the unconsciousness clouding his head, and Leon pries his eyes open.
"Fuck," he mutters, although the way his mouth is glued together makes it come out more as a garbled groan.
Concerningly, he can't quite remember the series of events leading up to where he is now. Like waking up from a nightmare, disoriented and shaky and sweaty. Above him is a ceiling of mildewed concrete. His breath fogs in the air. That's right, it was snowing. He dragged himself to shelter in the entrance of a hollowed-out apartment building. Guess he must've passed out immediately after.
Another quick burst of static. "Leon?"
Hunnigan sounds concerned, putting a careful weight into the syllables of his name, which means he probably hasn't answered for a while. Leon fumbles for the radio at his belt. His fingers are numb and stiff like twigs.
"I read you," he says.
There's a moment of silence, then the crackle of her response coming in. "Oh, thank God," she breathes. "You went dark for hours. What's your status?"
Leon blinks slowly. His entire body aches, with cold and with injury. In the face of the giant gash on his thigh, slowly emptying his blood out onto the floor, all his winter gear suddenly seems very, very thin. "Been better," he says. A shiver wracks through him. "Remind me to never—" He has to stop to catch a breath, which doesn't bode well. "To never take another mission in Siberia."
He can practically hear Hunnigan frown. "How badly are you injured?" she presses.
Leon takes a deep breath and props himself up on his elbows. His whole body protests the movement, muscles aching with a corpse-stiffness. He's lying in a dark red puddle from his leg wound, which is still bleeding sluggishly, and there's a gouge carved into his upper arm that pulses with a throbbing pain. He shifts his weight to stop bracing on it, and the throbbing goes down. The air smells like iron and snow.
Leon eases back down, clenching his jaw. The BOWs had been few and far between, so he got careless. No one to blame but himself.
"Don't think I can walk," he says. "Mostly out of first aid. Ammo's low, too."
A long silent moment passes, and Leon starts to wonder if the radio signal cut out completely, leaving him stranded for real.
"I can get help to you in four hours," Hunnigan says.
Four hours. Can he do four hours? That feels like an eternity from now, bleeding like he is.
Hunnigan clears her throat on the channel. "Was the mission successful." Discomfort tightens her voice. Leon doesn't blame her for asking— this is a job and he is an asset and she needs to report to people above her— but he can't help but feel rescue will depend on his answer. If he'd failed, would his superiors bother expending the manpower to bring him back?
Leon nods, even though Hunnigan can't see him. "Got the samples," he breathes. They'd been a pain in the ass to get, too, locked up in the depths of a decaying lab no one's set foot in for close to a decade.
"Copy," Hunnigan says. "DSO agents have been dispatched from Anchorage."
Leon nods again. "No rush."
"Hold on, Leon," Hunnigan says. "I… I'll be in contact again soon. Out."
And then the radio hum cuts off, replaced by snow-smothered quiet. It's still light outside, white gleaming in from behind the grimy street-facing windows. This place has been abandoned long enough that there aren't any supplies to be found, and Leon already ran out of first aid spray, so all he has left is some gauze.
Bone-deep exhaustion has settled over him like a heavy blanket, but he forces himself to sit up. If he doesn't do something about his leg, he might not even make it an hour.
Blood has thoroughly seeped into his pant leg around the wound, plastering the fabric to his skin. It's the warmest part of him by far. He doesn't bother trying to do anything except bandage it— he doesn't have the materials for a tourniquet, doesn't have the strength for prolonged pressure. So he's pretty much fucked.
Thigh wrapped, he lies down again. He doesn't try to move somewhere more comfortable, still appreciating the warmth of the blood pooling underneath him. There's nothing to do except stay conscious, and Leon's not even sure he can do that much.
The sleep pulling at his eyelids is darker and softer than he thinks it's ever been before. It's goddamn terrifying. Which comes as a shock to him— Leon has always thought he was ready to die, thought he'd found peace with the inevitability of his early end. Dying is part of his job description in all but explicit terms. It's not exactly something he can afford to run from. For most of his life, he's gone back and forth on wanting it, half-convinced he's got no reason to suffer this fucking much when it could just be over anytime he decides.
Why bother fighting it now?
Don't fall asleep, Kennedy, says a voice in his head that doesn't sound a thing like him. It sounds like a lot of people all at once. Something in him listens to it. He blinks hard and stares up at the ceiling, tracing the fine cracks that web through it.
When his eyes drift shut for the third time against his will and he jolts to disorienting consciousness again, Leon curls his hand against the wound on his arm and digs two fingers down into it.
White-hot pain shoots through him, a heartbeat pulse searing its way up into his shoulder, down to his elbow. He bites down on a sharp gasp. Tears prick behind his eyes.
Well, it worked. He's awake now.
The cold stings at his face, his nose and ears gone almost completely numb. He can only barely feel his fingers where they hover above the laceration, coated in blood now. As soon as heaviness swoops over him again, he prods at the open wound until he's dizzy.
Leon couldn't even guess at how much time passes before his radio beeps to life again.
"Kennedy, come in."
"I read you," he says. His voice sounds tired even to him.
"Listen," Hunnigan says. "I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm putting you on an encrypted line for a bit, okay?"
"Huh?" Leon's brain lags a couple paces behind her words. "With who?"
But Hunnigan's connection has already cut out. In its place, there's suddenly a voice that Leon is almost sure is a hallucination.
"Leon?"
"… Chris?"
"There you are." Chris' voice is veiled under the distance of the signal. He's probably somewhere on the opposite side of the planet. "Heard you ran into some trouble."
Somehow, Leon laughs. "You could say that. Hunnigan tracked you down?" So she thinks those four hours might be too long. "Thanks for the vote of confidence," he mumbles, though he doesn't blame her for it, not when there's blackness at the edges of his vision and the only way he can chase it off is by shoving his fingers inside the gash opening his arm up.
"Yeah. She couldn't give me any info," Chris says. "Sorry I can't be there to kick your ass into gear."
"Me too," Leon says. The thudding palpitation deep in his thigh doesn't seem to have slowed, even compressed by the bandage. "Y'know a motivational speech can't make me not bleed out, right?"
"I'll try it anyway," Chris shoots back. "First of all, you know Claire will kill you."
"Mhm." He does know that. And Leon doesn't want to die without seeing her again. He really, really doesn't.
"You also owe me a date, remember?"
Leon hums. "Other way around."
"Don't pull that," Chris snorts. "I bought dinner last time."
"Yeah, and I got your coffee."
"That doesn't count."
Leon's pretty sure getting coffee is the definition of a date, but he doesn't have the energy to argue. He's so tired. Chris is talking, but he suddenly sounds too far away to hear. Still conscious enough to recognize that as a bad sign, Leon forces himself to jab a finger into his arm wound. Too slow to muffle it, a strangled yelp escapes his throat.
"You okay?"
Leon can only pant for a moment, breath shallow enough to make him light-headed.
"Leon?"
"Fine," he manages. "S'ry."
Blood oozes up around his nails as he curls his fingers as much as he can bring himself to. Is that bone he's feeling?
"Fuck," Chris breathes into the radio. Leon tries to picture him, wherever he is, alone and hunched over, elbows braced on his knees. Maybe he's someplace warm, wearing a t-shirt. "You're gonna be fine. You… We've been through so much. Can't let it end here, right?"
"I know," Leon whispers. "I know."
"Don't fall asleep, Kennedy," Chris says, and Leon realizes that Hunnigan probably didn't mean this as a goodbye call. It's a lifeline.
"I'm trying," he says, fingers digging deeper, and he swears he'll keep trying, no matter how much it hurts.