- The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round-

Tall Oaks Cathedral

His cry was lost in the madness. His hands grabbed for her, missed, missed...missed. She slipped through his fingers and was gone.

The force of the bus smashed him hard, hard, hard into the seat three times.

And everything went black.

He awoke to the soft sound of crying. His head rang, and nausea rolled in his stomach. The smell of fire and burning flesh was acrid. His eyes fluttered and opened. The storm was in full force now. It was trying like hell to drown them and failing to extinguish the fire they'd left behind. It sizzled, popped, and smoked in the steamy air when the rain hit.

Helena and the boy were kneeling on the ground beside him. The boy was patting his cheeks gently. Helena was crying softly.

His head swam. Leon shifted his body to check for broken bones. He was bruised and sore but otherwise seemed intact. Helena, the boy, and he were clear of the burning bus. It was a bonfire of light and death. It licked red and yellow flames into the inky darkness.

They were at the base of the canyon now, in the cemetery. Leon sat up slowly, feeling the world tilt a little. The boy was wiping his hands over Leon's jacket and face, dusting him off. Touched by it, Leon patted his head gently.

And then he realized something.

It was only the three of them.

They were the only ones sitting there.

There was no one else. No one.

No one else.

No…Jill.

Gruffly, he asked, "Where is Jill?"

The boy shook his head. Helena shook her head, still crying.

Leon shook his too, denying. He rolled to his feet, staggering a little. "Where…is…Jill?"

They stared at him. The boy was somber. Helena was in tears. No.

Stupid faces. Stupid lies. He turned to the burning bus. No. She was around here. She was here. She wasn't dead. That was just stupid.

But she'd been sucked out of the bus.

He said, "No." He just said it like it would change anything.

His stomach knotted. His head swam. He moved toward the fire, staggered, went to one knee, and put his hand on the ground, breathing quickly. He was going to vomit. He was going to throw up from it. The pain? No. The fear. Where was she?

Where was Jill Valentine?

Leon advanced on the fire like he'd walk through it to find her. He would. He would walk through fire to find her. He'd never met anyone like her. He'd never felt anything like he felt when she was near him. He didn't know what it was. Love? A stupid word. A simple word. A girly word. It poured from the mouths of teenagers who stood in the rain, giggled and groped in dark seats, and made goo-goo eyes.

This wasn't love. You couldn't love someone you'd met less than a day before. That was stupid.

It was something else. Something. It was instant. It had taken a bite of them both in a single afternoon. She made him laugh, touched him and stole his breath, kissed him and stole his soul. What was it about her? Was it the taste of her? The sound of her? He didn't know a damn thing about her. Not really. Not at all. Was it witchcraft?

It was. And it wasn't. And it was more and less and everything. And that laugh in the tunnel. The hope. The healing. The steadfast solidarity spilled from her eyes, hands, and smile. She would never leave him.

And he wouldn't leave her in that fire to roast. He wouldn't leave her there to die.

He rushed toward it now at a limp.

The fire flickered hot and too close. He was too close to the blaze of it. Hands grabbed him to pull him back. He shook them off and shoved them away. He tried to rise and stumbled.

Those hands grabbed him and turned him. He went to shove them away, and it was ok. It was ok. Because it was Jill grabbing him, it was Jill trying to stop him from leaping into the fire to find her.

She grabbed his jacket in her fists. She was bruised and bloody and breathing. And that face of hers. That look. It was horror and hurt and healing. It was all three somehow. It was a reflection of his; he was sure of it.

She breathed his name, "Leon..." Like she could say it a thousand times and day and have it be anything less than everything. Would he ever tire of hearing it from her? Would he ever tire of feeling her there beside him? The pain of the night would wear on. It would test them, drain them, take them places they'd never recover from...and it would be ok. It would be ok because she was there. And they would never be alone while the other rushed into the fire to save them.

He dragged her to him and spilled to one knee to hold on to her. She crouched, holding on to him. She stroked his hair. "It's ok. I'm ok. Are you? Are you ok?!"

He put his face to her neck. He breathed. "I'm ok. I'm ok now."

Touched, feeling the shift in her chest for him, Jill couldn't remember the last time someone had noticed she was gone. Had anyone...ever? His communicator beeped, and he opened it. Hunnigan held his eyes on it.

"Leon! Oh my god! Are you trying to make me die a spinster?"

Leon informed her brokenly. "We lost…most of the survivors. It's only a little boy and us."

"….Leon, the infection rate for Tall Oaks is 90%. That's…over 70,000 infected. That's how many hostiles are there. You need to move. You need to move now. And you need to get out of there."

Leon nodded and rose. Jill kept her arm around him. He said softly, "We're going to the cathedral now, Hunnigan. Whatever is there? We'll find it."

"Hurry! And stop trying to scare me to death. And Leon...Neo-Umbrella is claiming responsibility for the attack on the President. You know what that means?"

Jill and Leon held eyes in the flickering firelight. He spoke softly, "It's another Raccoon City."

Hunnigan answered him, her lovely countenance set in lines of concern, "You know how that ended, Leon. It won't be long before they order sanitation on Tall Oaks. Hurry."

She clicked off. Jill curled her fingers into his dirty shirt. "They'll blow this town apart, Leon. We need to find the answers and get out of here. We need someone to evacuate all the people that may have survived. Give me a minute, and let me put a call into the B.S.A.A."

Leon nodded and watched her move away from him. He heard her speaking quietly. She was adamant. She was animated. She glanced at him and held his gaze. She spoke again.

There was a tugging on his pants leg. It drew his attention. The little boy took his hand and held it. Leon glanced down at him. He was dirty and pale beneath his coppery skin. He was coffee with three creams in coloring with bright green eyes. There was too much intelligence on such a little face.

It made Leon's heart hurt looking at him. Where is your mommy? Where is your daddy? How did you end up here with me? And what can I do to keep you safe? How can I protect you from something I can't see?

He said softly, "I'm Leon Kennedy."

The boy said, "I'm Ben."

He was maybe five years old. Helena took his other hand. Jill covered them as they moved through the pouring rain toward the cathedral at the back side of the cemetery. The dark made it dangerous and slow. The rain washed away the stench and blood on them with its cold fingers. Thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed.

In silence, they reached the far gate to the courtyard of the cathedral. It was locked, but Jill leaped over it to pick the lock. With a rusty sound of metal, they were through the gate into the courtyard. The doors opened, and a woman gestured, "Hurry!"

And they did. They hurried inside.

Leon saw all the eager faces around them and said softly, "I'm sorry. We're not rescue aid workers."

The doors sealed at their backs. The inside was clean and warm and quiet. At least thirty people were there huddled and waiting. Helena took Ben to the closest person offering water and medicine. Leon shifted to another aid station, and a little teenage girl had him slip off his jacket while she checked him over for wounds.

She treated him, patched him up, and moved to Jill.

When they were fed and watered, patched, and tended to, they sat near the altar, taking a moment to relearn how to breathe. Jill shared a bottle of water with him.

Ben had fallen asleep on the floor beside them with his head on Leon's thigh. Touched by the way the boy stuck to him, Leon stroked his soft hair while he slept. Jill kept watching his face.

"What?"

"You said children don't like you."

Leon laughed a little softly. "They don't, usually."

"He likes you."

"It's the savior complex."

Jill studied his face. Leon held her eyes. "What is in that beautiful head?"

She lifted a hand to stroke his face. His cheek had a little butterfly bandage on it. She could see the fine hairs of a beard starting on his chin. She touched them now. "You. I'm on to you, Leon Kennedy. The Star Wars nerd. The Jim Henson nerd. The guy who likes kids and lies about it. I see right through you."

He turned his head and kissed her palm. She put her head on his shoulder.

Helena was talking with several other survivors. After a moment, he realized that Jill had fallen asleep against him. Touched, he cuddled her against his body even as he felt something warm and soft shift inside his belly. The little boy sleeping beside him, the girl cuddled against him…a good picture…if it wasn't for the zombies and the destruction that blazed all around them.

Helena crouched in front of him. "There's an entrance to the lab down there behind the statue."

Leon blinked and rotated his head. He glanced at the statue. Helena nodded a little at him.

"You're not kidding." He remarked, drolly. Of course not. Why not put a lab in a church? Fucking Umbrella. It never failed to surprise him how truly soulless the last gasps of that perverse Frankenstein could be.

"Yeah. Exactly. What you want? It's down there."

He held her look. "What about what you want, Harper?"

Helena said softly, "It's down there too. Help me, and I will tell you everything. All of it. Every ugly detail."

They held gazes again. And he asked, "Did you get the President killed?"

Helena answered gently, "You'll have to decide that for yourself…when I show you."

She glanced at Jill and Ben. Leon shifted them against him a little. Helena picked up Ben in her arms and cradled him. He curled against her.

She said, "For now? Take a minute. Take a nap. I'm going to put him over here and try to figure out how to get the statue to move. Reboot. It'll be a long night."

Leon shifted and settled back against the wall. Jill curled more against him, snoring softly. Amused, he turned his cheek to her head and closed his tired eyes. Just a minute, he mused, just a second before the world came back to kill them.

Her arm curled around his back and over his hip. He lifted one knee, and she looped her ankle over his. And he slipped into a dreamless sleep.

He awoke to the sounds of people speaking softly. The dream of her swirled around him, soft and pleasant. Her hair smelled like lilac and lavender and summer. The spill of sunlight on her skin turned it into a golden tan. Her eyes were so blue beneath the dark waterfall of her hair that it stole your breath to look at them.

He lowered his mouth to kiss her, and the dream fractured and broke apart. His gritty eyes opened, and he was alone, leaning against the wall. He shifted, and Jill wasn't next to him anymore…but Ben was. Ben was curled up under his arm and sleeping against his dirty jacket.

Leon had curled his arm around the boy and held him close in sleep. Ben's hand was tucked around his waist, and his soft cheek was on his chest. Leon lifted his other hand and smoothed the dirty hair off his forehead. He was a handsome boy. Did he have a family to take him? Had his family been on that fucking bus? A baby that had seen his family eaten. How would he come back from that?

Across the room, Jill and Helena had been discussing the lab beneath the cathedral. They knew they needed to solve the puzzle to open the way. They'd found one Madonna statue and were trying to locate the other. Jill glanced back to see Leon had awoken. She watched his face as he looked down at the boy…and she saw the moment he stroked a finger over his little snoring cheek.

Something in her belly shifted hard and lodged there. Children don't like me, he'd said, but it wasn't that at all. Had he ever, in the whole time he'd been fighting, stopped to look at one? Had he ever, in all the years since Raccoon City, stopped to consider them at all?

She was relatively sure she couldn't have them. Even if they survived this, she couldn't give him children. Did he want them? She'd known him barely a day. It was impossible to know what kind of man he was. And yet it wasn't. He was noble and funny and charming and handsome. He was sexy and selfless, and strong. He was a god with a weapon and brilliant at thinking on his feet. And he was soft.

Soft.

It was all over him as he leaned there against the wall holding a little kid against him. He was soft. She doubted there'd been much time for softness in his life. She wanted nothing more than to give it to him. She wanted nothing more than to share it with him. She'd only known him for less than a day.

Leon Kennedy: Raccoon City survivor. Warrior. Wounded soul. They were the same.

She'd only just met him.

She'd known him all her life.

Jill said softly, "Give me a minute, Helena. Ok?"

And she moved toward him.

He glanced up as she crossed the cathedral. His smile was utterly charming and disarming and sheepish. "Is it wrong to not want to move? If I move, I'll wake him up. Seems like someone should get to sleep peacefully, right?"

Jill crouched over his leg. He had one up and bent at the knee, the other flat on the ground so Ben could hug him. She slid her hand over the one that rested on his bent knee. She slid the other into his hair at the back of his neck and turned him to her mouth.

It was, in a way, their first kiss. It was backed by something real and very scary. It wasn't lust or need or fast. It was softer, scarier, and more complicated than that. They were both dirty, both smelly, both exhausted. They were nowhere near the end of their harrowing journey and tired, hungry, and lost. They had no answers and no hope and no guarantees…and they had each other.

Leon's hand shifted off his knee to slip around the back of her neck and echo her touch on him. No tongues. No greed. I was just a soft press of lips. Almost innocent. It was the beginning of something so much deeper than that.

Love?

It was something.

They were strangers.

But it was something.

They separated to look into each other's eyes. Jill said softly, "I like how you look with a kid beside you, Leon Kennedy."

And that smile. His smile. It warmed her heart to see it bloom. "Yeah? Biological clock ticking, huh? You want to have my babies, Jill Valentine?"

Her face was so serious. It stole his breath for a moment. She seemed to be considering it. He realized, maybe, he'd like her to have his babies. He'd never given much thought to babies. He'd never considered, until two days ago, what came after the sword. Was it her? Was it her and babies?

She said, "I think we should try making dinner together before we talk about babies, you devil. You in a hurry for puke and diapers?"

He laughed softly, "Can't say I am. How about we survive this, find a nice dark corner…and pretend to make babies instead?"

She sparkled with humor. "Hmm. That's the best idea I've heard all night. I'd love to let you sit here all night with an adorable toddler curled against you…but I think I need your help to get into the lab."

"Right. Duty calls. No time for baby-making." She looked so sad it actually made him laugh. "We get a two-minute window; I'll show you how I make babies, Jill Valentine."

And now, the humor on her face eased something painful between them. "Oh. Two minutes? You sweet talker."

"Two minutes...two minutes is all I have to play with you."

She rolled her eyes, "I'll take my panties off in anticipation and be ready for you."

She was in that little dress and boots. He shifted his gaze and pictured her in that little dress without panties. His laugh was a little breathy. "Deal. But you go up every single ladder first. Got it?"

Jill snorted out a laugh, grateful for it. His humor. It was almost as gorgeous as his face. Almost…but not quite. "Enough dirty flirty, Kennedy. Come do your job."

He shifted Ben to lay him gently on one of the pews. Ben kept right on snoring. He got to his feet, and his knee creaked.

Amused, Jill lifted a brow.

"What? I'm old. My shit pops and creaks. I'm like the tin man. I need oiled and rubbed down occasionally."

The second he said it, he knew what she'd say back.

"I would love nothing more than to oil and rub you down, old man. I promise you."

It was so good to laugh. So good. He still could, which was saying something. It was her. She made him laugh. She gave him the ability to do that in the middle of the worst possible situation. She lightened the load of it. They kept each other laughing. The flirting was light and fun. It was her.

How could he do this without her?

Helena was waiting atop the second-floor balcony that ran the length of the cathedral. Leon made a cradle from his hands, Jill stuck her boot in it, and he tossed her up the broken ladder. She swung up and moved to kick the emergency ladder down to him.

Helena was holding the Madonna statue in her hand. It looked sad. Why was it sad? It was red. Jill was stepping into a room on the top floor. He could hear her digging through a box.

Helena queried, "You get some sleep?"

"A little. You?"

"No. But I'm fine. These red statues clearly go on those red bases there and there," She gestured to the far sides of the balcony on either end, "Why? Hopefully, it opens the door to the lab. Jill and I have been looking, but we can't find the other statue."

"These fucking people. Always some stupid puzzle." Leon held the little statue and stared at its sad face. Who could blame it? He'd be sad, too, if he were trapped forever in a place with nothing but puzzles and death. Who was he kidding? He kind of was.

Jill emerged from the room with the little statue. "Boom. Had to pick the lock on the box in there. But this is it."

Leon eyed it. "Don't these people know there's only one Madonna?"

Helena nodded, "The virgin Mary. Naturally."

"Actually, I meant the one that sang Like a Virgin and had me pretty much sleeping in wet sheets for most of my adolescence. You can thank that cone bra of hers for helping usher a boy into manhood. I certainly did…pretty much every night for a year."

Helena blinked.

Jill snorted out a laugh.

And Leon coughed a little, "Right. Focus. Seems I'm having a case of verbal diarrhea. Let's blame the lack of caffeine, the adrenaline, the horror, and the beginnings of some pretty awful PTSD."

He turned to take the statue to the far side. Helena, smirking, ran to the other on the closest end. Jill went with Leon, lips pursed and amused.

He studied the little statue in his hand and sat it on the pedestal that waited, red and eager, before them. Jill said, as something clicked and rolled close to them, "For the record?" She leaned close to his ear as he watched the alter on the main floor shake and begin to separate, "…I had that cone bra."

Leon turned his face, holding her eyes. "…how in the hell do you expect me to concentrate on anything when you throw that out there? You know where it is?"

Jill was grinning. "Maybe."

"You will get it when this is done. You will wear nothing but that cone bra for like….a hundred days."

Jill laughed, delighted with him. "Deal. But only if you wear only a shoulder holster and boots."

Amused, his face lit up. "Fucking deal. Thigh holster too?"

"Oh yeah. That works. That works. Deal deal deal."

Someone on the main floor shouted. There was a garbling, chittering, wet snarfling sound from the open altar. Horrified, people began to scatter, shouting.

Leon glanced at her. "Ben!"

There was no more time for cone bras or banter because horror didn't give a shit about laughter.

And evil had risen once more.