Well here it is, my Leon story for everyone who liked the Ada oneshot. Thank you to everyone who commented and favourited it. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
This was originally going to be a oneshot as well, but I've decided to make it into a two to three part mini story instead. Sorry for not getting this out sooner; I wanted to have the first part posted before Halloween but have been busy with other things. I hope you all enjoy this first chapter. And as always, I don't own Resident Evil.
Caught Within The Mist
Chapter One
No one ever called at this time, not to Leon's fairly reliable memory. Not once during the late night hours, during the dark half of the clock, had he ever experienced this kind of out of the blue occurrence. And yet here it was, real and unflinching, and also at ten minutes to midnight.
The knock on his apartment door had pulsed out from its wooden frame; its subtle but at the same time blatant intent rang out through the air, slithering through the calming rainfall of his shower; it called him to attention in one solitary beat of his unsuspecting heart. The only thought that crossed his mind at that point, as he ceased the rush of warm water to listen, was: that's never happened before. No one had ever knocked his door at this time.
It couldn't be work, he knew that much: Hunnigan would have called if that were the case, so that was out of the question. And currently he lived too far from any friends or family for that to be considered a possibility. Someone he didn't know? It was looking more and more to be the case as the seconds rolled by, as Leon grabbed a towel, hastily tying it around his waist before stepping out of the bathroom, oblivious to the dampness of his feet as his swift steps moistened the carpeted flooring.
There was a handgun sitting within a small cupboard just next to his front door. A little bit on the paranoid side? Perhaps. But Leon had no shortage of enemies, especially these days; caution was something he had learned the hard way, and nowadays was second nature.
A second knock came just as he was moving through his hall, just as the front door came fully into view. This one was more urgent in its force than the last.
'Just a minute,'
Leon's hair was drenched. He swept dripping strands out of his eyes with one hand as he neared the door, reaching for the small cupboard with the other. Within a couple of fluidly quick motions Leon had the gun in his hand. He slid a full clip home, thumbing back the hammer. He then stepped over to the spy hole, leaning in close, taking a look through the tiny circle of glass; there was no one there, or at least no one that he could see.
The faintest of frowns crinkled against his eyebrows. Someone might still be there, he thought? He kept to the right of the door as he grasped the handle, his gun securely in his other hand, ready and waiting. A short breath was pulled ever so gently into him as he turned the handle, slowly opening the door. As the gap increased in size, and his view of the hallway beyond came further and further into his focus, Leon's vague spell of tension slowly departed. There was no one at his door at all. Even after peeking his head outside, surveying both ends of the long stretch of hallway, he saw nothing, nothing except a dimly lit area that was swallowed in an almost numbing silence.
A deep sigh of realisation escaped him as he slowly closed the door; in hindsight he only had himself to blame for his slipping up. He'd been so absorbed as steaming water cascaded over and around him, and as that same heat clung to his senses of awareness, that he hadn't even considered that the knock hadn't come from outside his apartment door. It had come from within his apartment.
It was at that moment that he felt it, someone behind him; the tables had just flipped against him, performing a very awkward and somewhat embarrassing one-eighty in the simple margin of a few seconds. However a faint smile flickered across his lips for a moment, as a familiar scent brushed across his nose.
'You know, we're going to have to stop meeting like this eventually.'
'Why is that?' a female voice purred in response. 'Isn't it more fun this way?'
'That all depends on your definition of fun, I guess,' Leon said, slowly turning around. 'Though, I shouldn't really be surprised anymore. Should I?'
'Yes, I think it's a little late in the game for you to make that mistake.'
She was standing right there, almost mirage-like in nature but at the same time existing solidly in his reality. As Leon turned fully to face her his mind, his body, every fibre of his existence down to the very essence of his being was emptied out, refilled with a seductive and swirling red awe. It was a deepening fascination that was electric. It sparked through his arms and legs in feverish jolts per second at the sight of her. Leon wondered if things would always be this way with her? Mostly likely, he thought.
She was dressed – surprising him somewhat at first, since he hadn't seen such a change in her wardrobe colour – in black of all things. It was shaped in the form of a long cocktail dress, very much like the one he had seen her wearing years before; it hung on her by two thin fabric strands, exposing her slender shoulders. A slit ascended the left side of the dress, revealing the majority of one leg, and Leon thought that he might have lingered on this detail for a little too long before he finally corrected himself. Her intense and entrapping eyes seemed to notice this, as he saw the barest taunting of a smirk fly across her face. It was as if she was fully aware of the power she wielded, and the effect it produced in him; it was an ability she used to triumphant effect, and he doubted that he could fight against this power for long – if at all. Even on her worst day she was truly a spellbinding sight to behold.
Leon could exercise a guess if he wanted, could analyse this situation ceaselessly until his head fell from his neck from exhaustion, but he was certain that any attempt would be fruitless. No amount of effort on his part could conclude the question of what she was thinking at that very moment, or what she might have been feeling. At any rate Leon hadn't expected this, certainly not a second time. Was he happy about this, he asked himself? Maybe he was. No. A part of him certainly was pleased, and always would be. Deep down, somewhere in the lowest pits of his brain, he thought that maybe that was the worst part.
'So what's the special occasion?' he asked. 'It's a little late to go out to dinner.'
Ada raised an amused eyebrow. 'Not this time, Leon. I was just passing through and thought I'd drop in.'
'Oh,' now it was Leon's turn to be amused; somehow he wasn't convinced that she had just happened to pass by. This was deliberate. 'So outfits like that are just part of your everyday life then?'
'I suppose you could say that,' a sensual sort of joy slipped into her expression. 'That, and its less to take off.'
Leon's blood was suddenly propelled by his accelerating heart, kicking into a perpetual sprint at her response; of all the things he had expected from her, all the little quips that seemed to always flow out from her like liquid velvet, her choice return hadn't been on the list. Was she playing with him, he wondered? Or had she really just dropped in for such an encounter?
The last time she had decided to show up in his life again had only been a few days ago, and was to be sure the single most breathtakingly explosive night. It had taken the entirety of his life, snatching every other event from the day he was born to this very moment and rendering them all miniscule by comparison. It was quite simply a glowing fire, one that raced with emotion and sensation within that vastness of murky and uncertain waves of a violent ocean.
'Well,' he said, pausing for just a moment to fully catch his breath. 'I guess I should be flattered.'
'You guessed right,' Ada's eyes shifted, moving down to the towel, and the fullest smirk swam over her. 'Though I can already see that you were expecting me.'
Leon couldn't even fortify the barest fraction of his usual strength of character in preparation for her words, and the wave of embarrassment that they created within him. Ada's smile of verbal victory could be seen easily enough, so he supposed that his sudden awkwardness must have shown on his face like a giant bright zeppelin of exposed feelings. He would have wondered how she always managed to somehow be so dominating, but then again since he was just standing there with nothing but a towel covering his dignity then he guessed that his reaction was understandable – at least to him, and to her.
He had picked up a faint chill on his skin when stepping out of the shower, but now he felt the oncoming rush of warmth, of the kind that he hadn't expected to experience tonight. It was a good feeling, but at the same time it wasn't, and Leon only held this mixture of happiness and regret for one reason and one reason only: he wanted more than this, so much more than this that sometimes it pained its way through his thoughts and through his heart like some dreadful disease, like an addiction that held no trace of a cure, and probably never would.
'Are you going to put that gun down?' she asked.
'Oh,' he said. 'Yeah, sure,'
'This wasn't the kind of welcome I expected, Leon.'
He placed the loaded gun on top of the small cupboard before resuming his place in front of her. 'I didn't know you were coming,'
'Well where would be the fun in that?'
'Again,' Leon shrugged. 'That depends on your definition of fun.'
'Ok then,' Ada crossed the short space, coming face to face with him, a simple and breathless inch holding them apart. 'I suppose we do differ on a handful of things.'
Leon felt the raising of his eyebrows. 'Only a handful?'
'But,' she went on. 'I think its safe to assume that my definition of fun, in this case at least, matches yours quite nicely. Or perhaps the shape of that towel is telling me lies?'
Leon didn't speak at first, but instead had to clear his throat as an almost strangling but euphoric shudder took hold of his lungs. He saw the deep pools of wanting in Ada's eyes; those sinking pits without end, full of a near timeless mystery that now held a hunger that looked almost ravenous, one that consumed him in that moment with equal strength.
'Do you enjoy this, getting the better of me?' he finally managed to say.
Ada leaned in close, and as this happened Leon's breath escaped him, drawing out in a short gasp as her breasts pressed softly against him. He felt the ghost-like gentle touch of her fingers, coming to a stop at the sloppy knot he'd tied with the towel.
Finally she said: 'What I enjoy, Leon, is everything that involves you.'
And then her lips met his, and with a force that seemed more invasive than the first time. The taste of her, this incredible woman, was the most delicious thing he could ever know. It was a paradise – a Shangri-La in human form in that staggering point in time that should have been so much longer. Leon prayed, as he circled his arms around her, that it would never stop.
As her mouth fully invaded his with its masterful grace, he felt the towel fall, but never heard it touch the floor. He was taken, trapped within the ecstasy of Ada's touch; held captive by this one person, who at that point in time, could have willed him to do anything at all. He would have obliged without thought or protest to her every whim or wish, and he would have rejoiced in all of it.
The barest fraction of a frown suddenly touched his face, sending a vague strain though his brow. Something was wrong. For the first few seconds of noticing this new sensation he wasn't all together sure what it was. It invaded the rushing well of his hot and overwhelming frustration little by little. It seemed to suddenly bring a ruinous halt to everything as it made itself known, but at the same time keeping its meaning completely at bay.
And then things changed further. What should have been one of the most engaging moments, where Leon should have been swept away and lost, was instead met with an element that was all together different in its very nature.
The taste of Ada's lips was suddenly rank with a repellent new addition, a taste that mirrored that of stale water; it forced him to recoil instantly, and when he looked at her Ada had fallen completely out of focus. The details of her image were now ambiguous, blurred and softened around all the various edges of her face, as if she was standing behind a rippling sheet of glass, like a window being drenched in falling rain. She didn't move, didn't react to what was now happening; she remained there, trapped, unable to speak or even comprehend, just frozen as Leon watched with a bleak amazement that clouded every corner of his mind.
He attempted to call to her, to reach out with his voice, only to be struck with further complexity still when he realised that he no longer had a voice. To his further surprise and growing shock he found that every time he tried to speak, every time when his mouth would open, water would enter, obscuring his speech as that filthy taste defiled his pallet yet again. He then felt it all around him, freezing water that encased his body as he began to thrash, with no intelligent thought as to what was taking place, only knowing that he needed to escape it.
A threat had made itself known, and he had to get away. Ada had evaporated into the flowing swell of a darkening abyss, one that grew more and more as Leon's eyes truly opened. He had just regained consciousness.
Ada was gone, but that icy chill of water was still welded unflinchingly in reality. Leon did the most natural thing in response to this abrupt and unforeseen turn of events; he began to swim upward, hoping for a breathable surface to greet him before he ran out of breath all together.
Already he felt exertion, his lungs near spent and depleted; he knew that he had maybe a handful of measly seconds left before fighting for his life became the very measure of absolute futility. His limbs felt an overbearing weakness; his head throbbed with a migraine-like drumming, the origin of which couldn't be known or even speculated on at this fleeting but also endless moment.
Just when he had become convinced of the horrible truth, that things were over and done with, when every inch of life meant more to him than anything else, his head broke the surface. A huge shrieking gasp exploded out of him as he swallowed air, taking in as much as physically possible.
Within the next few seconds, as Leon occupied the pitch-black space around him, his breathing returned to some weathered form of normality. He had no clue as to where he might have been, and only after a few more moments did he finally latch on to some recollection; a memory of falling slid into the photo album of his thoughts. He remembered the explosion, the floor giving out like paper beneath unsteady feet, and then falling, plunging and twisted through the air as everything around him lost all shape and form, blurring his world away from him as darkness came to meet him. Now he was awake, after a shade of what may have been a dream, a dream he only possessed a fraction of remembrance toward. It was a dream about a woman. He knew it was a woman, but that was all.
Above all else Leon knew he had to find out where he was. Reaching up toward his ear, he clicked on the small flashlight that was connected to his com-link, and a pale beam of light shot a white path through the dark, cutting through the deep shadows, glimmering across the declining flutter of the water's surface. He tried, with a slight chattering of his teeth, to call in to his team. The communication seemed to be down at present; his com-device was no doubt damaged from the fall (on the plus side he was more than grateful for the intact state of the flashlight) so calling for any kind of help was in no way an option.
Bringing his head around, throwing the light about the area, Leon tried to ascertain what kind of place he'd awoken within; it was a reasonably small chamber that he could see, flooded almost to the ceiling. Leon found an uneven opening above him; it's size suggesting a heavy impact, which answered the question of why he ached all over. It appeared that he might have accidentally located the lab. All he had to do now was finish what had been started. The condition and whereabouts of his team couldn't be known; for the time being he was on his own. He had to get moving.
A further search of the room uncovered the sight of a staircase. It was half submerged, but thankfully led upward, into one of the facility's upper levels. Even now Leon couldn't believe the manner of his entry into this place; the intervention of mercenaries in the sewers had been expected, but not the RPG that had taken out most of the tunnel. Leon couldn't have imagined what they must have been thinking to do that, to pull a stunt that threatened to kill themselves along with their enemy. But still it had brought him to the source of his objective, which lay somewhere in wait, hopefully close by. Dumb luck wasn't how Leon would have described it. This was a higher level of stupidly convenient than even he was used to.
He paddled toward the stairway, and as he travelled the short distance he recalled it fully, remembering the dream he'd had before waking in his previously submerged state. The bright spark of recollection sprung into his mind as he moved through the water, and he knew every detail, all as if it were real. Of course the dream itself, with all its visceral and fevered pleasures, had been very real. It had really happened. It had taken place in the realm of vibrant reality one year ago, and had continued on from that point to an even greater and welcome plethora of realised desires, of all consuming fantasies made flesh. The woman he couldn't forget, even if he wanted to or even tried, had been there; she had come to him that night, just like the night a week before that. And then she had left, vanishing from his life, dropping off of the earth until finally resurfacing only three weeks ago in the Eastern Slav Republic, just as tormenting in her beauty and seduction as she always had been. An enigma rapped in the angelic casing of humanity, and the one thing in Leon's eventful lifetime that he couldn't let go of for anything.
'Ada,' he murmured as he reached the stairs.
Thinking about this now, mulling over the various intricacies involving Ada Wong, was something that he really couldn't afford to be doing. The predicament presented all around him offered very little margin for daydreaming. But he found, as he emerged from the freezing darkness, that he couldn't help but come back to thoughts of their latest meeting, where Ada had openly mentioned their last night together. Of course he had been angry at the time, although perhaps not quite so much as she had suggested. But still, she had called his mood that day, just as she did on every other occasion when they happened to have the strangely mystic fortune of crossing paths. For better or for worse, worse being the case at present, she had worked her way back into his restless dreams.
His feet squelched against the insides of his boots, hissing quietly as water dripped onto the dryer steps further on, spattering them with tiny black dots. A thickening and oppressive silence clung to the air, corrupting Leon's ears with its eerie nothingness, wrapping itself around every inch of the chilled dark. His body faintly shook as his breath blew out in small white clouds within the light of his torch.
Not a thing stirred in the shadows. Nothing lived within the walls of this place, and hadn't for some time. Leon had known since before the mission briefing that the lab had been abandoned for at least a solid decade, but its dank and tomb-like quality gave the illusion that it had been deserted for much longer than a mere ten years. As far as he knew there were no threats that he should be concerned with, and with some stretch of luck there wouldn't be. That was of course if no one else showed up.
The mercs who had faced them in the sewers had been known, even if their drastic measure of insanity hadn't been completed by anyone, not even Leon. It seemed, at this time, that he had inherited the responsibility of fulfilling the objective alone. This was unless linking up with his team was still remotely possible at this stage; they would have had to have been alive for that, and at this uncertain point in time Leon just didn't know for sure if they were.
He tried to clear his mind of any obstructions as best he could manage, focussing on the task at hand. He had almost reached the top of the stairs. The fact that he had no weapons, other than his knife (everything else had surely been lost; even his sidearm was gone) didn't hinder his steps, nor did this latest challenge weaken his wealth of confidence in any fashion. He had a mission goal to achieve, and nothing was going to deter him now, not even the keen and intoxicating memories of the woman he couldn't deny his true feelings for. He would have to entertain those thoughts of Ada later. He had the feeling that "Later" wouldn't be very far into the night.
I'll try to get the second part out as soon as I can. I'm also working on the latest chapter of Secrets Revealed, so that shouldn't be too long either, hopefully. I hope you all like this first chapter. Bye for now.
