A/N: Everyone's playing Village while I'm still catching up on the series, but have a slight AU from RE4, presuming RE2R as the preceding canon.
Ada Wong has been here before. Not physically, perhaps, but it feels the same—Leon's body in her arms, growing heavy, breaths rasping, and everything is red. Her dress, her hands, the floor, crimson pouring from the hole in his chest as he clutches a trembling hand to the wound.
She'd patched him up last time. (And left. Leaving used to be easy.) This time she doesn't know that she can.
"Leon, stay awake."
Words fail him, replaced instead with blood as his mouth opens and closes like a fish on land. Ada crushes her palm to his chest and curses that she's never once in her life deigned hurry on Leon Kennedy's behalf.
"Enough talk. Die, comrade!" Krauser's voice had sounded, snarling threat, and still she'd walked so calmly, approached the edge of the platform, took aim.
There was Leon, struggling beneath the might of Goliath arms forcing a knife point ever closer to his chest, and for all his skill and agility, a battle of brute force was not one he could win.
Ada was too late.
Krauser's blade pierced Leon's skin in the same instant that her finger squeezed the trigger.
It was shock more than poise that kept her from crying out, Leon's silent, breathless gasp a cry for them both. Her bullet found the blade, knocked Krauser back. It didn't matter.
"He's already dead," the mercenary snarled, "You'll be next." And leapt away.
Ada dropped down from the platform to witness the damage her hubris wrought.
Kneeling beside Leon, she presses one hand tight to the wound while the other searches futilely for bandages (or maybe a miracle) in the pouches at his belt. Her dress pools around them like the blood seeping across the rusting floor, blooming scarlet, life ebbing with each fresh pulse from his veins. Ada feels the hot spurt of it beneath her fingers—an angry, fierce throbbing that jolts her stomach with dread. It's coming directly from his heart.
"I've got you, Leon." A lie. She's good at those. "Just don't go to sleep."
There's no point in pleading. Whatever medical supplies he has aren't suited to this, even if she had the skills. This is how Leon Kennedy dies: on a miserable Spanish island far from home, the collateral damage price on a mission failed. Not by her hand, in the end, for all the difference it makes.
All that's left to do is ease the passing. (What does she know of comfort?)
Ada slides a hand beneath his shoulders and pulls him closer. Leon's head lolls back, his chest shudders, and he turns still.
Something pangs beneath her own ribs, dull and painful, and she blinks fiercely as she tries to shake the sensation away. Now isn't the time to grieve for a man she barely knew. Ada Wong doesn't grieve assets, won't (shouldn't) waste tears on him at all, yet still the thought enters her head. Had he cried for her? Little more than a stranger to him when he first thought her dead. Probably, she concludes, bleeding heart that he is…
Poor choice of words.
Something moves beneath her palm.
Not his heart—though she feels that too, still thumping faintly through the damage with the last of its strength. Something stranger; rippling, slithering beneath her touch like a coiling viper.
It touches her skin and Ada jerks her hand back.
Through the wash of blood, Leon's torn clothing and rent flesh, Ada watches with fascination and no small part disgust as something emerges from the wound. A tiny limb, spindly and keratinous, creeps out to twitch briefly twice in the air. Something swells inside Leon's torso, a fresh ooze of blood gushing over his chest, and then the plaga retreats. Its narrow claw hooks the edge of his flesh as it burrows once more into his chest cavity, and with a squelch, the wound seals shut.
Ada stares.
She knows why she's here, crystal clear on what she came for, but seeing it played out so starkly in front of her…
This never bothered me before. It's true, if she had a dollar for every BOW she's witnessed without batting an eye, but when it's him...
Leon draws a sudden straining, rasping breath.
Ada startles, and in an instant she's back in the present, cradling him as he shakes and coughs and claws his way back to consciousness. One hand clutches at his chest, fist balled, and she eyes it warily as she wonders what horror is writhing underneath.
"Leon…"
"I'm alright." He coughs hoarsely and tries to stand, unsteady on his feet. "Looks like that thing was good for something after all."
She gets halfway to putting a hand out to steady him before she stops herself. "Not how you imagined your reunion with Krauser going?"
"Not exactly." He grimaces, fist unclenching to knead at his sternum as he looks down to inspect the damage. "You going to tell me what it is you're doing here?"
"I think you have more pressing things to worry about."
He grunts, lowering his hand as he goes shakily to retrieve the knife he dropped, and stumbles again.
This time her restraint fails. She reaches out to touch his shoulder. "Leon."
He looks back at her. It takes a second longer for her to register that his eyes are red, stained crimson like everything else around them. He still has more than just blood to lose.
"You know that thing can't stay inside of you," she mutters, and doesn't know whose benefit she's saying it for.
"I know. But Ashley first."
The what then? goes unsaid. She feels his cooling blood on her dress clinging to her like dread and wonders if he could survive separation now. Worse, wonders what would become of him without it.
The same fear playing out on Leon's face is interrupted by the beeping of his radio. He blinks, startled back to his senses, and turns away to answer. She hears the angry growl in his voice. "Saddler."
That's her cue. She has a job to finish.
(A job that doesn't involve saving Leon Kennedy, though nor can she say she ever truly paid that debt.)
Ada steps to the edge of the platform and slips away.