A/N: I don't plan on writing a whole "story" around this infected!Leon AU, but I do enjoy this AU and will probably continue to write oneshots. For this reason, I'll list this as "ongoing," but each individual oneshot can be considered complete. I hope this works for you dudes! Thanks for reading and stuff.
Sherry felt a bit of a burning inside of her chest when Helena let it slip that she was keeping Leon and wasn't telling her where he was. She thought about it when she was sleeping, for nights, and waited, waited for her chance to see him.
When she had seen him, she had been terrified at first, because in seeing him in his new form, she was sure that she had lost him, just as she had lost others before. Soon, though, she was able to see in him Leon, not just the virus that was within him. He was still there, inside of that monstrous body, and he still cared.
She had been able to spend her time with him, and visit him, and she was so happy to have him, but she couldn't help but feel that there was something about him, something that made her feel regret. What if there was a way for her to have stopped what had happened? Why did this happen to people that were connected to her? Why did these viruses have to be around in the first place? She had a hard time keeping a straight face while these sorts of thoughts flew through her brain.
When she stroked Leon's wing and tried to update him on what was going on in her life, she had felt like there was something distinctly not him about him, and that scared her. There were two constants in her life, people that she was able to hold onto as her safety, and those were the two people who had saved her all the way back in Raccoon City. They had rescued her, and she had always felt that if need be, they could do it again. They always stayed as they had been in Sherry's mind: young, strong, and protective. They were the antithesis of her father, especially after his transformation.
And now, Leon was a victim of this viral infection, and he was no longer that young, naïve twenty-one year old who had saved her back in Raccoon City. He was this thing, and it unsettled her to think about. She kept on a good face for him while she was there, but she could not push the wrongness of it all out of her mind when she was at home, and alone.
Sherry was asleep, and she tossed and she turned. Her mind pushed itself in and out of deep sleep, but she was finally able to collapse into REM sleep, and her mind wandered.
She was back in Raccoon City. There was a stink in the air, the smell of burning things: cars, buildings, rubble. She could hear the screams of citizens and the moans of the infected around her, but she could not see any of them. The sky was dark and was tinted with red, with few stars permeating. There was a city bus on its side nearby, and she felt her hip for her gun, but there was no holster. She wasn't wearing any of the clothes that she was used to wearing. She was wearing a sailor suit, and she remembered putting it on that morning, that morning years ago…
That was when she saw the first of them. They were coming from the direction of the overturned bus, crawling, staggering, dragging themselves toward her, moaning like they always did. She stifled a scream and reminded herself of her training. She wasn't a little girl. She was not, anymore. She turned and found her way into the closest building.
She immediately recognized the place as the Raccoon City Police Department. She treaded carefully, her shoes causing loud, cracking reverberations on the tile floor. It was quiet in there, otherwise, and that unsettled her. She opened a door in the wall, not even realizing that she was at it, and found herself in a small foyer at the bottom of a stairwell. She started toward the stairs when she heard the slurping noises from behind her.
She turned her head and she saw the licker, its exposed brain dripping with a moist slime. Its long tongue flicked back and forth as it bared its pointy teeth. A low, guttural growl escaped from its mouth. Sherry took a few steps backward, softly treading. She felt vulnerable without a weapon, and she tried to remember how she was supposed to deal with the lickers. They could not see, because their eyes were mutated beneath their enormous brains. She just had to be quiet, carefully backing away…
She backed into a bookshelf, causing it to tip precariously back and forth. She frantically grabbed it, trying to steady it, and she was successful, but not before a book had fallen from it and thudded to the ground. Her eyes whipped to the creature, and it took a step toward her. She gasped, and it began moving more quickly. She turned and dashed up the stairs, away from it, moving as quickly as her legs would take her. She found herself in a hallway at the top of the stairs and threw herself into the first door that she could find, quickly slamming it behind her.
She breathed in big gulps of breath, trying to recover from running up the stairs, and trying to manage her heartbeat into something more normal, to recover from the terror. She remembered her training, and forced herself to take long, deep breathes instead of the short gasps she had been allowing herself. She soon caught her breath. It was then when she realized that she was no longer in the Raccoon City Police Department. She was in a small room with a fireplace, a desk, and a tea set on a small table between two chairs. There was a door on one wall. She remembered this room, from somewhere, but she couldn't remember where… maybe something that Claire had said? She couldn't place it.
She could hear the licker scratching at the door and she went to the other door in the room. Whatever was beyond it couldn't be as bad as what was behind the other door, she decided, and she went through it.
She was in a tower room, in a castle of some sort, and she could hear chanting off in the distance. It was colder, much colder than it had been in the Police Department or in the tea set room. It was dark, and the air smelled of autumn. Sherry drew her arms around her and crept through the strange room, looking down the balcony to the medieval-looking throne room below. She could her heartbeat quickening to match the rhythmic chant that she could hear, and she began to get more terrified. This room seemed familiar as well, but she had never been there before. She had heard of it that was all. From who, she couldn't place.
There was a door on the other side of the balcony that she seemed to be standing on and she walked toward it. She could hear the chanting, and she could feel it getting closer, and she couldn't imagine what it meant. She did know that the licker wouldn't be held back by the door for long. She opened the other door and entered, finding herself on a stairway, which she ascended.
She walked up it, slowly, taking her time and being careful. The last thing that she wanted to do was to trip down the stairs into the waiting jaws of the licker, when it inevitably made its way into the castle room. She looked upward and could not make out an end to the stairway, and could only see it going into the darkness. Below, she could only see the same.
A thud came from below her, and she felt a leap in her heart. She looked down at it, straining her eyes to see if she could make out what it was below her, but she could see nothing. Full of terror, she turned and made a break for the top of the stairs. She felt like she was running forever, her thighs burning with effort. She finally found her way to a plain gray door and burst through it.
She was on the Raccoon City Police Department roof. She could see the small fires burning throughout the city, and she could see the small fire on the back of the Department itself, where a helicopter had made a collision with the building. She took a step toward it and stopped herself. She felt a familiar weight around her chest and saw that she was no longer wearing her sailor outfit, as she had all of those years ago, but she was wearing her usual field wear, complete with her holster and handgun, which she drew immediately.
Sherry could hear the sounds of the city all around her. She could hear the fires, she could hear the sound of a couple of gunshots in the distance. She could not, however, hear any screams. She went to the edge of the building and looked down, and could see a few of the infected staggering around in the courtyard and the street. She took a step back and saw that the roof access door, which she had come through, was now not there. She was trapped on the roof.
Sherry held her handgun in a shaking hand and pointed it over the edge of the roof and down at the infected below, but could not push herself to fire. She instead brought the gun around and pressed it against her own temple. Tears welled up in her eyes and she shut them tight and pulled the trigger.
There was no gun in her hand. She opened her eyes, and there was no gun there. Was there ever any gun? She could have sworn that there was. More tears fell from her eyes. She looked around her, and she felt at her holster. There was no gun in it, and she was left without a weapon, again. She turned to the edge of the building, and she looked down again at the infected below. There seemed to be congregating, as if they were waiting for something, as if they were expecting something.
She got up onto the edge of the building, and she faced away from the building. She let her arms go limp, and she took a deep breath. Then, she let the rest of her body go limp, and fall forward.
Her body jerked to a stop, and her arm was pulled upward. She looked, and through the blur of her tears, she could see the form of a familiar person.
"Leon?" she asked. She used her free arm to wipe tears from her eyes. It was Leon, but not as she had thought she saw him. He was there in his full infected form, with claws, and meaty wings, and sharp fangs. His large claw-like hand was wrapped around her small hand, and his other claw was latched onto the ledge of the rooftop. He looked down at her, something sad in his otherwise empty-seeming eyes.
He gave a big haul, and lifted her upward, into his arms, and pulled her back onto the roof. He pulled her tight to him, and she wrapped her arms around him. He felt strange, different than he did when he was human, but he was warm, and he was Leon. Her tears dripped onto his chest, but she smiled as he wrapped his arms around her, as well.
She awoke and sat up in bed. She could feel the tears on her face, and it took her a moment to realize that she was not on a rooftop, but in her bed. Her heart slowed to its normal pace, and she reached for her cell phone, and dialed. "Helena," she whispered, wiping away her tears with her arm as she spoke. "I need to see Leon, soon, I need to."
Based off of impalallama's art on tumblr: post/73189641217/yay-finally-some-au-sketches