- PART 2 OF SEPT 24 UPDATE -
If you've been following the fic before this update (in which case, welcome back and thanks for dropping by yet again!) and skipped directly to the most recent chapter, please be aware that Chapters 5 and 6 were both uploaded on the same day. They were originally one chapter but ended up getting divorced due to the word count. (IMO this half definitely kept the house and the kids btw.)
Content warning: things get a little uhhhh steamy in a flashback. Just a tiny bit, nothing explicit. Also there are mentions of the miracle of life ifyougetwhatimean, and a weeeeee little bit of a reference to non-consensual dirty times. And there's a line in there about um… products of unhappy unions that might upset some readers, so I apologize in advance for that. We're goin' full M just for this chapter, baby!
Chapter 6 - The Professional Has a Secret Rendezvous
The medical records room is vast, but eerily quiet; the countless folders stacked on row after row of wooden shelves deaden any sound that would otherwise fill the space. It doesn't take much for Leon to bypass the passcode-secured door, and less still to track down what he's looking for. The absence of any staff in this particular wing of the hospital allows him to peruse the files at his leisure.
He's seated in the far corner with four small piles of paper in front of him when he hears the click of the latch from across the room. A pair of dainty boots and the steady drip of water on linoleum enter.
"I hope for both our sakes that you didn't leave tracks coming in here," he calls, barely looking up from his work.
The only response he gets is a low, sultry laugh.
"I was wondering when you'd show up," he says as Ada Wong steps around the bulwark of shelves to face him. She's dripping like a melting popsicle, her chin-length raven hair plastered to her scalp, makeup rinsed to the point where only the faintest streaks of running mascara remain. A glimpse of her signature red peeks out from under the collar of a heavy grey parka glistening with rain. Before he can make a wisecrack about her wetness, she produces a towel out of nowhere (freshly lifted hospital linens, no doubt) and begins to dry herself off.
"Waiting for a dead woman? Careful, this place might become your tomb," she teases. After Lanshiang, she'd had to explain to Leon the truth of what happened: that it was Carla Radames, not her, whom Chris had witnessed falling to her death on the aircraft carrier, and that Neo-Umbrella's movements were Carla's attempt at revenge against Simmons for his betrayal of her. At Ada's insistence, Leon had withheld this information from his reports, allowing her to put her old name and its miles-long rap sheet to rest and continue operating under a new alias—one he hardly ever mentions her by so as to avoid prematurely wearing out its utility. She would always still be Ada to him, anyway.
"It's peaceful in here. At least I might finally get some decent sleep."
She laughs again.
"Looks like I'm late to the party," she continues as she sits across the table from him.
He snorts, silently taking in the rosiness of her cheeks and pallor of her lips, both a product of the vicious weather. Under better circumstances, he might find himself acting on his desire to restore color to her with his mouth and hands and body; she wouldn't be needing that bulky jacket to keep her warm. Here and now, he can only yearn from a distance and hope she's invested in thermal underwear. "I got started without you," he says.
"Well, I hope you've been having fun in my absence." Her eyebrows twitch in concern at the sight of his sling, but the look passes almost as quickly as it appeared.
"Oh yes," he mutters, "you won't believe the kind of antics I've gotten into already."
His tongue almost betrays him with that tired routine of What are you doing here? but experience tells him he's better off saving his breath. He knows what she's doing here, in this very room, and he'll get around to that once he's finished probing her about the other issue. "Some vacation this is turning out to be," he ventures, knowing she'll catch the hint.
Leaning back, she props her rain-soaked boots on the table, prompting him to move the files out of the way. "It sure is," she laments. "Completely impromptu, I must admit. I would have preferred a cruise, to be honest. I'd even booked a reservation, but… well, that got cancelled due to some unforeseen events. It's too bad, really. We could've had so much time all to ourselves… just the two of us."
Leon's eyes narrow. "And should I assume you called me as soon as your original plans fell through?"
A coy smile plays at the corner of her mouth. "Naturally. After all, dawdling wouldn't have uncancelled anything."
He scoffs. "No offense, but you should be more selective about your vacation spots next time. The other tourists here are god-awful."
"It's all the same on cruise liners, I'm afraid. What can you do?" She turns her palms upward in a gesture of defeat.
"Also," Leon snaps, "I didn't realize you had family in town."
Her casualness falters slightly. "Oh?"
"Don't play dumb with me. I saw your pendant. How many other L.K.s in the world could there possibly be who commissioned a piece of jewelry with that exact design and that specific date?"
Ada merely folds her arms with a quizzical smirk and waits for him to continue.
He seizes the leftmost stack of documents. "Let me show you what other interesting things I've found here," he says through gritted teeth. "Exhibit A. Hospital records for Matilda Leigh Henriksen, born on December 7th, 2011 to Janet and Tor Henriksen. They're listed as her birth parents."
He moves on to the second pile, then the third. "Exhibit B: Tor Erik Henriksen, born in 1964. Immigrated in 1992; early records were transferred from Norway. Died on October 24th, 2016 of severe head trauma caused by a car accident. Exhibit C: Janet Turner, formerly Henriksen. Born in 1967. No record of a pregnancy anywhere, or medical procedures relating to such. Died November 16th, 2019 of ovarian cancer."
"How tragic," Ada says evenly, her eyes locked on him. "But surely you didn't come here just to poke around in some random family's personal files?"
A dry laugh escapes his throat. "Which brings us to Exhibit D." These papers he slaps on the table right before her. "December 6th, 2011. An unknown woman, name expunged—we'll refer to her as Jane Doe—was admitted to the maternity ward. Her baby was born the following day—a girl. Stillborn. Didn't even receive a name."
He leans forward, elbows propped on his knees. "This Jane Doe," he growls, "might have been able to sway the hospital staff into going along with her devious plot, falsifying some documents to hide that baby girl of hers with another family, but there was one thing she could never fake."
Ada's expression is unreadable.
Leon singles out one particular document from each group and presents them to her. "I'm no expert on blood types or heredity," he says, his tone steady despite his anger, "but I know enough to tell that it's impossible for a child produced by Tor and Janet to have the blood type Tilda does. Now, Jane Doe, on the other hand…"
He sits back and watches her skim the records. When she looks up at him again, her face is rigid with a mask of polite indifference.
"This is why you called me here, isn't it," he accuses. "When you heard the B.O.W.s were coming, you were afraid your daughter would be in danger, so you used me as a safeguard. It worked, but unfortunately for you, I also discovered her connection to you along the way. And so you came here hoping to destroy these records before I learned the truth. Except you were too late."
"Sherlock has improved since his last great deduction," she remarks. "You would've made a stellar cop, Leon."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," he harrumphs, slightly stung by her reference to his former career path—to a life that could have been. "Who is she, Ada? How could you hide her from me this whole time?"
"You never asked. I didn't think it was necessary."
"'Didn't think it was necessary'—Ada!" He snatches Exhibit D from her and waves it in her face. "Five units of blood? Postpartum fever? You could have died! You didn't think something this serious warranted letting me know? You—you didn't have to go through all that all by yourself… what if something went wrong? What if I'd lost you?"
His hand goes slack; the papers flutter to the floor. Her eyes are shining far too brightly in the sterile white glow of the room.
He recalls a time early in the summer of 2011 when he and Ada had seen each other, their last night together before she'd vanished for over a year. Looking back now, he should've clued in to all the signs: she'd passed up wine at dinner, and in the hotel room later she'd complained of feeling sore and sick. Nevertheless, they had made love with such fervor that night, her movements filled with a feral desperation he'd never seen in her before or since. Then he'd overslept, and when the late morning sunlight spilled rudely upon his face, he'd gotten up feeling every bit as exhausted as he'd been before bed.
He'd expected to wake up alone, as he usually did, and nearly jumped out of his skin when she came morphing out of the shadows to kiss him. When the time eventually came for them to part ways, she had cried, and cried, and cried, the first and last time she'd displayed such fragility in front of him. Holding her in his arms, he'd begged her over and over to tell him what was wrong—but all he received were more tears and stubborn shakes of her head. In the end, he'd had to write it off as grievances from her work, the one subject on which she would divulge nothing to him, but he couldn't help feeling that something was amiss as she disappeared down the street with her eyes still red and swollen.
She must have known even back then that she was pregnant. Why couldn't she have told him? Why couldn't he have been just a little less dense and figured it out himself?
He'd been just as clueless, too, when they reunited in 2012. Her face was still the same, but her normally wanton demeanor seemed muted somehow. She was tense beneath him as he laid her tenderly on the bed, almost reluctant to let him undress her. He'd noticed the changes on her body right away; a man who knew every inch of Ada Wong like he did would have to be blind and daft to overlook them. She'd explained it away as a debilitating injury she'd sustained on a mission. He, sensing her insecurity, had decided not to harass her anymore with prying words, and instead showed her with his actions that his feelings for her were the same as ever. She was gone when he awoke the next day, the only evidence of their tryst a lipstick mark on his cheek and the sweat-dampened sheets coiled around him.
They met again the following week, and it soon became clear to him that she would not entertain any further attempts to find out where she had been, or what she'd been doing.
"You didn't trust me to help you?" he whispers, a lump rising in his throat.
"I did," Ada says with a sad smile. "I do. I knew you wouldn't hesitate to get involved. But I couldn't drag you into this."
"Until now," Leon counters.
"I was really hoping I wouldn't have to."
He slumps into the chair, his mind racing with furious thoughts and confused emotions.
"I just want to know one thing," he says finally. "Who is her father?"
At this, a change seems to come over Ada. The somberness that had gradually settled in her face over the course of their dialog suddenly lifts, replaced by something resembling cool nonchalance. Rising from her chair, she bends over him, tracing her fingertips along his stubbly jaw.
"Just… forget about her, Leon. It's better that way."
He leans into her touch, wrapping her hand with his own.
"I can't," he tells her.
The shininess in her eyes threatens to spill over.
"Tor and Janet are dead," he explains. "Her stepfather's a real piece of work. I can't let her struggle through that kind of a life."
"Oh, Leon…"
She kisses him, their lips caressing with all the pent-up longing of their three-month separation.
"This is exactly why I wanted to keep you out of it," she breathes, when lack of air finally forces them to pull apart.
"Because I think your kid deserves more than the misery she's being given?"
Her expression hardens. "And you think you can do better, hugging your whisky bottle nearly every other night, working out of state for weeks at a time? Dabbling in dangerous business that could easily put anyone associated with you in the crossfire?"
He scowls. Her words infuriate him, not only because she's right, but also because she's deliberately made a gibe about his liquor habit.
"You have no legal standing to take her. As far as the world is concerned, you're just a government agent who happened to rescue her in a moment of need. Once Dundee is rid of B.O.W.s, you'll go back to your normal life and she'll go back to hers. Leave my affairs for me to handle myself."
"What, are you going to report me to the neighbourhood watch if I don't? Pen a hundred-foot no-go zone for me around every school and playground?" he sneers.
"That does sound pretty tempting, now that you mention it."
He gapes, horrified, but she just sniffles and forces a laugh. A tear clings precariously to the corner of her eye; without thinking, he reaches up to wipe it away. "Why do you want to keep her from me so badly, Ada?" he pleads despondently. A sudden thought occurs to him. "You never answered my question earlier."
She straightens up with a shake of her head. "I have to go," she says, smoothing out the front of her coat. "You beat me to the records, so I'll concede them to you just this once. See you around, Leon."
"Ada, wait!" He jumps to his feet as she starts for the door, managing to grasp her wrist before she can leave. "I have to know! Who was it? Did something happen? Did he… hurt you?"
The anguished look on her face makes his breath hitch in his throat. For one terrifying moment, he dreads she'll confirm his greatest fear. Instead, she heaves a long, shaky sigh, and simply glares at him until he's forced to let her slip her arm out of his grip, and when she speaks again her voice wavers with such emotion it makes his heart bleed:
"Leon Kennedy, do you think I would pour so much heart into a child that was conceived out of my suffering?"
Then she is gone, her footsteps beating rapidly down the hall, the door hanging wide open in her wake.
"Ada!"
He's about to give chase when an insistent ringing explodes from his hip pocket. Cursing, he checks his phone. It's Hunnigan.
He peers in the direction Ada left. The entire wing is silent. He'd have better luck trying to catch a ghost.
"Impeccable timing," he grumbles, retreating to answer his handler's call.
Thanks for reading! :3
Disclaimer: Google only takes me so far when it comes to how stuff like hospital records, patient registration, etc. works. I ended up taking some liberties with it because this fic is supposed to be fun. So I must apologize for my ignorance if I screwed something up badly enough to obliterate anyone's suspension of disbelief.
As much as it pains me to say this, it's looking like the next chapter might take another 2 weeks. Hope to see y'all then! In the meantime, I appreciate your patience!
