Orphan

Part Two:

-Legacy-

Chapter 17:

Of Gods and Men

2005

Leon hit the edge of the table and rolled, his body propelled by it's own momentum into a tuck and tumble. His bare feet hit the ground, his left shoulder dropped, and he skidded through the mud to find his balance as he rose to brace for the kick that nearly took his head. His arms crossed, blocking, and the sing of pain left his forearms throbbing.

That was the thing about monsters strength, it didn't stop the pain that came with a good kick to the solar plexus. He staggered, Wesker hip kicked him hard enough to send him to his back, and the staff in his hands was an inch from Leon's left eye. They stared at each other with matching silver shaded red irises as the former S.T.A.R.S. captain taunted, "...stop trying to hit me...and hit me. You're faster than this - smoother, stronger. Stop limiting yourself!"

His gloved hand caught his son's shirt and jerked, throwing the younger version to his feet. Leon whipped low, went for his feet, and got an elbow to the face for his effort. HE went to his back again, grunting, and feel the cooper taste of blood in his mouth. Defeat felt like being drop kicked in the balls. He'd accepted the training, but he wanted to kill the man offering it.

"Quick tracking me...you know where I'll be."

He kept shouting things like that. He kept commanding. He kept pushing, as if he knew more about Leon's skills than the man in question. He was demanding, dominating, and abrasive. He made no attempts to be friendly or supportive. He was a ruthless tactician offering cruel tutelage to a determined pupil. He kept knocking him down, and Leon kept getting back up.

Just like in that battle in the Spencer Estate, Leon's sheer fortitude never failed to impress his father.

Leon had opened the door to the skills without opening it to the truth. He didn't want to know his father. He had no interest in whatever story Wesker might try to sell him about who he was, what he wanted, or where he was planning to push his agenda. Leon didn't want to know him, but that didn't stop him from wanting to know what he could do. Learning from Wesker just might be what made the difference in controlling his strength and speed, and learning to maximize on his abilities.

Leon caught the wrist coming for his face, rolled under the arm, and drove two hard strikes into the sternum of the waiting Wesker. His father grunted, caught his throat for the effort, and threw Leon so hard that he hit the wall of the slaughterhouse, shook the stone, and slid to the ground on a groan of pain. "You're not human! Stop fighting like a human! Let go of what you were! Let go of anything but what you know! They trained you! Stop fighting the training! Stop fighting me...and just knock me down!"

That was the thing, he was trying. He couldn't win. Wesker was everywhere. He was fast, not like he'd been in that Estate, proving that he'd lost some kind of power in the interim - likely owing to the loss of whatever compound he'd been seeking in Spencer's care. But Wesker didn't need the goddamn speed of a monster to be better. He was faster, smoother, sleeker. He moved like water and used his body in a way that was impressive and utilized every muscle.

Serpentine - he moved like he was made of muscle without bone.

Leon came at him again, fluid now and faster than he'd been. Strike, reverse, parry, thrust and push - he fought with a feral rage that impressed his father, and got him nowhere. Wesker kicked him to his ass in the mud and slapped his face like a child.

Insulting, but powerful - it was a teaching technique that made men rise from the ashes of their own defeat since the dawn of time.

Albert Wesker was a man who was made to train men. He knew how to motivate, how to cultivate skill, how to necessitate attacks. He taught effortlessly, seeking the core of the completion of training that was inside of his son. He knew Leon was limited by the idea of humanity. He checked himself to avoid killing.

He needed the filter removed to maximize himself. To do that, it was going to be a matter of breaking down everything he thought he knew about himself - from bones to blood to brains. He needed a reboot, he just wasn't sure he was willing to let Wesker be the one to reboot him.

Father son bonding time for Albert Wesker was the equivalent of a slap in the face in the pouring rain.

The good thing? It made Leon push harder than he'd ever done in his whole life. Apparently, his trigger was being told he was weak and useless. That seemed to make his soul sing with the urge to prove himself.

Wesker was careful not to bring up anything emotional. Leon wasn't entirely sure, but he suspected his father was just as uninterested in a big emotional scene as he was. After the third time he went down on his back, Leon finally grunted, "...enough...fuck..."

His curse of frustration echoed like the grumble of thunder in the dreary sky above them. It had been gray and raining for three days. Three days of fighting like feral cats in the yard turned to mud with moisture. He was missing the sun, missing Sherry, and his body was letting him knows it wanted to bury itself in some pussy like a stud mounting a bitch to breed.

Wesker didn't even offer him a hand up, he just turned away as Leon gained his feet. The other man never wore anything but black. The black fatigues, the black t-shirt, the black glasses - these were all staples of a man who looked as monochrome as he didn't villainous. Leon, spitting blood, remarked, "You could try putting some fucking color in your wardrobe, ya know, if you want the world to stop thinking you're the most obvious bad guy in history."

Wesker paused. He turned and tilted his head, "...you think I wear the glasses for style?"

Leon shrugged, "Why else?"

Without a word, Wesker smirked and turned away. Annoyed, Leon limped over to sit on the small picnic table waiting in the drizzling rain. "What?"

Wesker shook his head and turned toward the other man. "Sometimes your arrogance rivals mine. It seems the traits I admire in myself are amplified in you. It would be foolish to assume anything about me, Kennedy, without knowing it for certain. Even before my conversion, I suffered from photophobia."

Leon sipped water and mused, "...sensitivity to light?"

The other blonde nodded and crossed his arms over his chest, "As a child, I was often kept indoors to help combat the strain to my irises. As I got older, they produced special glasses that blocked UV rays to a nearly entire extent. Part of what I am allows me the ability to exist in total darkness."

Interested now, Leon wondered, "...you have inherit night vision."

Not a question. The answer was obvious. Wesker remarked, "I didn't as a mortal. I just had better tunnel vision than most other men. The sunglasses, they allowed me to see when the light would blind me. Like sonar, but clear somehow. When I awoke...after my...death..." He seemed at a loss for what word fit the moment, "I no longer had to worry about sonar. I could see perfectly in the dark. Clear as I see you now. I'm nearly unstoppable in it."

He laughed lightly with irony, "The sunglasses were often a source of amusement to my colleagues. They accused me of being anything from a rebel to a drug addict...as if I needed to hide the whites of my eyes after partaking in a few good puffs on a joint."

Leon felt his mouth twitch with humor. He didn't want to find his father charming. He wanted, even less, to know this kind of thing. The strange part? The more Wesker talked, the more he heard a man and less a monster. He was demonized in the bioterror world to a nearly existential degree.

Curious about it, Leon asked, "...you still need them?...the glasses?"

Wesker tilted his head again. His mouth twitched, "It's been raining since you awoke...wait until the sun returns and ask me that again."

Great.

He was about to be Neo from the Matrix in more ways than one apparently. He was about to throw on sunglasses like his father and strut around at night looking conspicuous. Fantastic. The sarcasm in his head should have leaked out his ears it was so thick.

Leon sighed heavily and hesitated, but curiousity beat a lifetime of anger as he mused, "...how long were you being experimented on without knowing it?"

Wesker shifted and settled onto the table beside him. They both stared forward into the horizon as he answered, "...I was four years old when they took me from the orphanage in Raccoon City to the compound in the Black Forest. I don't remember much until I was older - nearly eight before I can harness my first memory of being a boy there. I was...it seems...always a bit different."

Leon arched a brow and Wesker clarified, "I was never the type to falsify feelings. I didn't befriend those in the program the same as others. Alex was always popular, but I preferred the comfort of my own companionship."

Leon nodded and mused, "You didn't know you were a test subject?"

Wesker laughed lightly, "Of course not. I thought I was at boarding school. They taught us. They trained us using an old Russian method of indoctrinating spies from a young age. We didn't even know we were being cultivated to become weapons. The others...some thrived and some failed. They would disappear one at a time...I always assumed they were adopted or going off to new homes."

He was silent for so long that Leon finally filled it, "...they were dying."

Again - not a question. Wesker just nodded, "Of course. The Progenitor virus was too unstable. It was eradicating their red blood cells at an alarming degree. Those who could harness the power, didn't survive the change. Their brains, it seemed, simply couldn't comprehend the mutation. If they lived, they burned alive with fever or they went insane and were put down like dogs."

Leon nodded, speculating, "That's why you needed the T-Virus to temper the strain inside the Eukaryota cell."

Impressed, Wesker glanced at him, "Yes. Progenitor is powerful, but flawed. Spencer knew it when we started to die like flies. Alex survived...but she's weakened."

Leon glanced back at him, "...weakened?"

Wesker nodded and added, "Dying. She's dying. The degeneration of the cells are slower, so she's simply degrading like anything else that breaks down, but she's aware her time is limited. Without the right infusion of T-Variant antibodies...or even a G related compound...she won't survive the winter."

He didn't sound upset by it. Leon suspected they were lovers - the Weskers- which might have been alarming if they'd been biologically related. As it stood, sharing the Wesker moniker didn't make them blood relatives. They were adopted to a program, not born to a bloodline. It was a surname, not a legacy.

Well, not for anyone but him apparently.

But he suspected Alex meant more than Wesker was letting on. He simply looked bored, as he always did, discussing human response. When Leon was quiet for a long moment, Wesker finally filled the silence, "You begin to understand why you're here."

Leon nodded, sighing, "You need me to cure her."

Wesker shrugged a shoulder, "I need your blood and Sherry's to even try. There's no guarantees. The rate of cellular degeneration may already be too severe. She will either mutate or die soon with or without intervention. I might be able to draft a stall, I might be able to concoct a cure...it's impossible to know without cooperation."

Leon arched his brows, "Why not just take my blood? I'm a prisoner here."

Wesker shook his head, "No. You've never been that. The door is open. Leave any time it suits you."

Wesker slid off the table. Leon, annoyed, invited, "Oh, yeah? Just walk right out the door and never look back? You're gonna let me do that?"

Wesker shrugged again as he walked toward the far side of the courtyard, "I saved your life. I have no interest in running it. If you want to run back to the fray and see your life wasted, I've done all I can for you. I want your cooperation, Leon, not your ire. I won't take what you don't offer. I'm a man of many things...but I remain one of my word. Offer, and I'll accept. Decline, and see yourself into your own future. I've done what I can for you...but understand this - if you walk out now, Simmons will come down on you like a rain of venegance that lasts longer than this one we're in."

He faced his son and added, "He won't stop until you perish. He has no interest in keeping you alive...but I do."

Leon snapped, "For my blood...because I'm useful."

Without compunction, the other man returned, "Yes. You've always been useful. Remaining so makes it clear why I worked to keep you alive. Your blood, your talent, your ability to adapt...those things are gifts that are cultivated into abilities you can't teach, Leon. Let me teach you, as you've done here, and I can promise to make you the weapon Simmons wanted you to be. I will give you the power to turn on the masters who've held your leash all these years and free yourself. Your blood...it's useful because it's mine. I will protect it, I will promote it, and I will use it to make you immortal...but only you can decide if a lifetime of hatred for me is going to stop you from a vengeance you've been chasing since the moment your own people turned on you."

They held gazes until Wesker finished, "You were born for battle...the question is what you're willing to risk for the power to win."

Voice gruff, Leon wondered, "What did you risk?"

Without missing a beat, WEsker answered, "Everything. I lost enough to remind me that every win matters. I was never meant to be your father, Leon, not the way you wanted...not the way Vera wanted. I tried. I wasn't made for it. I was always...different. But I gave you what you needed. I gave you a reason to push toward a future without fear. I made sure you knew I was out there, and that you shoved your way into the world where you could find me...so I could be the father you finally couldn't survive without."

Leon's jaw flexed as Wesker finished, "I was always aware of you. I was always around. I had my reasons for what kept me away, but I did the right thing by you with my absence. Some day...you'll understand why."

Leon shook his head. His voice resonated with pain, "...Kate died trying to find a glimpse of you...she died looking for you. Where were you then, Albert? Where?"

Wesker answered, voice calm and cool. "She was dead the moment that lightning strike hit the tree. She was clutching the bark and gone. I couldn't help her...but you awoke with a broken leg. You tumbled eighteen feet before I caught you, your knee hooked over the limb and snapped the bone...but your back and neck would have been next if I hadn't caught you."

Leon's throat seized up as Wesker nodded, "Yes. I was there. I've been there...most of your life...watching and waiting. When I discovered Umbrella had...experimented on me...I distanced myself further to allow you to live in peace as much as possible...and then?"

He laughed with such rich irony that Leon's brows arched as he finished, "And then you walked right into the city they'd made damn sure to see fail with my fingerprints all over it."

After a handful of seconds, Leon's laughter was high and angry, "You saying you were framed?! You were framed for Raccoon City? You had nothing to do with it?!"

Wesker answered, lips turned up in a smile, "Oh, I had everything to do with it's fall."

Leon leaped off the table and approached, finger drilling into his father's chest, "All those people! YOU made sure they all died! For what!?"

Wesker shook his head, looking unruffled and cool, "I had nothing to do with the city itself becoming a necropolis. How could I? That was William...the ignorant fool. He was always such a dramatic soul. I made sure I instigated the outbreak at that mansion...you're goddamn right I did. It was the only way to attempt to let the world know what they'd done."

Leon's eyes flickered, "You saying you were trying to expose them at the Spencer Estate?"

Wesker shrugged a shoulder, "I'm saying the S.T.A.R.S. were so far up Irons ass, I had to do anything I could to make the world aware of their betrayal."

Oh.

Oh oh oh.

Leon's lips twitched, "You son of a bitch...you fucking son of a bitch...you're playing me. You're trying to tell me what!?...what? That Chris Redfield is the villain in this story?! That the S.T.A.R.S., the people who were turned into pariahs and driven out of a city like Frankenstein for trying to expose the conspiracy...that they were just covering their own tracks?!"

Wesker shrugged, "Believe what you want. I don't know, I never did, if Chris and Jill were involved directly...but Burton was. He'd been involved from the start. I had some sympathy for him, I knew he'd been blackmailed by Irons by threat to his family. When the time came, I used the same tactic to ensure his complicity in covering my tracks as I worked to make damn sure Umbrella was exposed. When I suspected Chris and Jill might be innocent, I used them to find the crumbs I laid toward the truth - Burton took out Enrique when the other man turned on him. Burton made damn sure he looked guilty so he could point the finger of blackmail at me...he was right...I'd blackmailed him. I'd done it knowing it was going to come to light. I wanted them looking at me...I was hoping they'd find Spencer with his puppet strings above my shoulders and sever them to set me free."

Leon was so quiet that Wesker smiled a little, "I know...two sides to every story, aren't there? Chris wouldn't listen...when the tyrant awoke and finished me off...I tried to explain about things. I told him that Umbrella was to blame. I told him I had worked for them. I admitted that I knew what was happening in that mansion. I took the blame, because I was sure he'd see that I had no choice. I had to free myself. I had to be damn sure we all got out to bury Umbrella for good. I had to...it was the only way I knew to protect you and your mother. I had to bury Umbrella."

Leon shook his head, denying it, "You set Marcus loose...you cornered Chambers on that train with those fucking leeches...that was you."

Wesker laughed lightly, "It was. I admit it was risky. I was sure I could get Marcus to make his own mess and get him on that damn Express train to somewhere he'd be sure to expose himself...the risk of human life lost...it was worth it at the promise of exposing Marcus and showing the world what madness he'd been making with Spencer all those years. I knew the cost...and I paid it."

Leon shook his head, shaking with anger, "You had no right! You had no right to risk all those people! Why!? Make me understand why!"

Wesker shrugged, "Battles are won in blood, Leon. I couldn't risk Marcus finding his way to the Spencer Mansion. I needed him gone. I needed him found out. I was going to blow the lid on the whole thing - first his goddamn leeches, and then Spencer's fucking disgrace of a T program. The Tyrant...he was mine."

There was a flash of something on that handsome face that Leon wanted to call pride. "I created the tyrant. I knew what he was...he was capable of so much more...and then...then I found the data on Project W. I knew what I was...I knew what I could be...I knew...if I just risked it all..I would become the one thing they'd never be able to stop."

Leon waited for it and Wesker did disappoint, "I became the perfect storm. I became the tyrant. The first of its kind. Light years above the pathetic intelligence of Lisa Trevor. I was still me and yet I was now unstoppable."

When the silence expanded, Wesker finished, "...power gives us the ability to become anything we choose, Leon."

Leon, quiet and thoughtful now, digesting all the intel that was swirling in his head like madness, wondered, "...what did you choose to become?"

Wesker answered, voice cool and commanding, "Free."

They held eyes until Wesker smiled slyly, "Yes...we are alike, you and I. What drives us is the same thing, the same truth, the same need...freedom. You are beyond what they would limit you to...they limit you to punish me...reject their limitations...and find your power."

The rain drizzled around them. Leon said nothing, trying to find balance in a world that was suddenly full of truths and lies and limited access to the events in question. Whose side of the story was right? Burton's? Redfield's? Wesker's?

Had Chris turned so hard against Leon when he'd discovered his relation to Wesker because he'd tried to kill his former Captain to cover up his own duplicity?

Was Albert Wesker the unsung hero in the story of a city they'd all been telling since the day it became a crater in the Earth?

Had the S.T.A.R.S. been the bad guys all along?

There were so many holes in the story - in his, in Redfield's, in Valentine's, in Burton's, in Chamber's...whose story was the truth?

Did it matter? At the end of the day, what if he was right? What if Simmons was the man out there pulling the world down around Leon's ears and trying to destroy him? What would he give to free himself of that oppression?

What would he risk?

His teeth flashed in a wolfish flash of white as he finally answered the question on his father's face, and sold the final piece of himself he'd been trying to save from corruption. What would he risk?

The answer was simple...everything.

"...I'm in."

Wesker's smile flashed in response - a wonderful sly slash on a face lit with some kind of glee that felt frightening and exciting at the same time. "Pick up the stick, and prepare yourself."

Leon picked it up, twirling it in his hands. He braced and the world whittled down to the man in front of him, and the past behind him that burnt away on a wave of revenge. Freedom - he'd stop at nothing to get it. Simmons was the man behind Umbrella now. Simmons was the man pulling the strings.

It was time for the puppets to pick up their pieces and revolt.

If he wanted the power to free himself, he'd have to embrace the most hated man in bioterror.