A/N: A little something I wrote on the spur. We'll see if this goes any further depending on how well its received.

...

Helena Harper threw back another mouthful of the cheap beer. It was her third, and she couldn't tell whether it was simply her high-tolerance for alcohol or the watered-down content of the drink, but she was as sober as when she'd wandered into this beaten up old dive. She didn't know its name, it was the same as about a hundred or a thousand others, scattered around the chaotic maze of streets that made up New York City.

So the global bio-terror crisis was over, and had been for…was it weeks? Months now? Already things seemed to be getting back to "normal", and Helena only found that as despairingly hard to deal with as she did her increasingly directionless existence.

There was a new President, with a largely new government and a new way of doing things. No place for a former member of the Secret Service who, however unwillingly, betrayed her nation, her government and her president.

And despite it all she could live with all that, she could almost bear no longer having a goal in life, she could get up each morning knowing she'd have as little to do as the day before if…

…if she could go back and save her sister.

Deborah was all she had…used to have. Mum and dad were long gone, no other family to speak of, no friends in what she considered the…normal sense. Her sister hadn't deserved any of this, it shouldn't have happened to her, she should have found a way to-

"You're gonna crush that bottle if you grip it any harder." A voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

She turned quickly, but wasn't overly surprised when she saw Leon Kennedy pulling up a stool beside her and resting his arms on the bar. He shrugged off the beaten old dark brown biker jacket and hung it over the back of the seat. She wondered idly whether he went anywhere without it.

"Maybe I was trying to." Helena held up two fingers to the barman as he wandered by, glaring at her briefly before placing two more drinks on the side in front of them.

"So how's it going Harper."

From anybody else, it would have been a question, with a reasonable expectation that it might not be answered, but Leon didn't do that. It was a statement he expected a reply to. And this guy, she chuckled slightly.

Leon, her only friend.

"Oh, great." She finished the last of her the other bottle and started on the second while Leon took a mouthful from his. "My mission to find scummiest bar and the wateriest beer in New York continues. This one is pretty bad, but I think I can find worse."

The barman glared at her again, but she only smiled back belligerently. Out of the corner of her eye she thought she law Leon's lips curl in a small grin.

"I'm sure it's keeping you…busy."

She eyed him warily.

He was looking straight ahead, fixedly. Leon was a hard one to read, but she wasn't surprised given the things he'd seen and done. He was hard, she'd mistaken it for cruelty when they first met, but it wasn't that. He was a survivor, and it was largely due to him that she'd survived at all, she thought sometimes.

"So, how'd you find me this time, Kennedy?" She mimicked his gruff voice and referred to him by surname.

This was…well…it was almost a game they'd been playing for the past few weeks. She wound up in some rusting old hole that sold crappy drinks on the verge of getting dangerously drunk, though she was loathe to admit it, and he'd show up.

Sometimes they'd talk, sometimes they'd carry on drinking, sometimes he'd just sit there and be company.

He appeared to consider her question for a moment as he rolled the sleeves up on his navy blue shirt and her eyes couldn't help but note how it stretched across his formidable chest and arms.

"You know Hunnigan." He answered, simply.

Helena bit back her reply, gesturing a finger to her ear. Leon shook his head.

"Is Hunnigan…uh…" She tried to find the words.

"Think she likes you." Leon answered, for her.

"…ah." Helena murmured, awkwardly. Hunnigan was nice, she liked her. But not like…

"Doesn't do it for you, huh?" Leon took another swig. "Too bad."

She tried not to balk at his bluntness, wishing she was more used to it by now.

"I…uh…not exactly." She replied. "I…experimented in college though." Helena felt herself blushing as she down the dregs of the bottle.

"Oh?" To his credit, Helena conceded, Leon's expression flickered only briefly at her reply.

"I was always the black sheep in our family." She barely noticed as she waved at the barman and he bought her another drink. "Deborah was daddy's little girl, but me?"

Leon said nothing, only sitting patiently.

"I wasn't jealous of her, I didn't hate her. My sister was the only one who loved me, the only one who really understood. We used to joke about how I'd have made a much better boy. Still wished though sometimes…I dunno, that I could have been more like her."

Helena had no idea why she was telling Leon all this, but it just seemed to want to come out now.

"Christ, I sound like some butch amazon." She laughed a little and even Leon joined in, then looked down at herself. Even now, she was wearing her dad's old leather bomber jacket, a pair of slightly tight, faded jeans and a grey t-shirt. "…still…maybe there's something in that." She gestured to herself vaguely, hitting a mental wall.

"Deborah's funeral was nice." Leon continued, suddenly. Her struggling mind clung to the new thread of conversation. "You said some good words."

"There was nobody else." Helena replied quietly, wincing slightly as she took another swig and her head spun. So the drink was finally catching up with her? "Thanks for coming though."

"Least I could do for a friend."

Her eyes wandered to his, but they radiated nothing but a plain honesty.

"Are we friends?"

"I've made a few, not many." Leon replied. "Lost some along the way, but I count you among them."

"Why?" She found herself asking. "Why? Why do you keep doing this? Why do you keep coming after me and checking on me?"

He waved over the barman, who brought over a bottle of some kind of whisky and two glasses. Leon filled the two, setting one in front of her and one for himself.

"You had my back, Helena." She flinched as he used her first name. "I don't care what you did before we met, you stuck with me and did your damnedest to set things right. Not many do."

She looked at the glass before her, feeling her stomach rebel slightly.

"Sometimes I think I do this just to see if you'll turn up again." She confessed, hating how weak it made her feel.

"Want me to stop?"

She turned her head and looked at him and in that moment, she understood.

Leon had been through a lot. He'd told her of some of his past, Raccoon City, Spain…so much of it alone. She realised, in a roundabout way, he was trying to…reach out too. They survived things, they saw friends and family die and carried on, they did what needed to be done and when it was over they never really felt…they never really fit back in. Home was never quite in reach, never feeling wholly safe, truly at peace. They were flotsam, wandering and lost until they were needed again.

"No." She replied, picking up the glass.

"You're not alone, Helena." He raised his glass. "To the lost."

"To the lost." She repeated, the glasses clinking as she held up her own.

She felt a wave wash over her as she downed the drink, body objecting strongly to her treatment of it. Helena must have wavered slightly because she felt Leon's hand on her shoulder, steadying her.

"Think it's time you went home."

She shook her head a little numbly, sending her dark oak tresses tumbling about her face, but tried to get up anyway. She nearly fell as one of her legs refused to work, only for Leon to catch her arm, holding her up. How had she gotten so drunk? She was sure she'd been fine only a minute ago, and she'd only had…

"Oh…" She mumbled, mildly surprised at the number of bottles on the bar.

"I was beginning to think you'd drink me under the table, Harper."

She allowed Leon to wrap an arm around her, under her arms. He then pulled her left arm over his shoulder and shifted slightly, securing his grip.

"It'sss Helena." She corrected, slurring slightly.

She watched as Leon chucked a handful of bills toward the barman and began half-carrying half-dragging her to the door. The cold air outside hit her like a hammer as she shrank slightly, pressing herself against him.

"Where's home then?" He asked, politely.

"As if you don' know by now." She snorted, finding something about all this suddenly amusing.

Helena sighed comfortably as he gripped her hand tightly, and wrapped his arm around her a little firmer and began the walk home.