Stage Fifteen: Regression
She dropped the katana and grabbed him, pulling him free. Her hands brushed aside all the soot and smeared black everywhere. She slapped his face, gently.
"Leon…Leon…LEON!"
The third time he shifted…and opened one eye.
Sherry smeared more soot around on his face. Damnit. She just couldn't tell how bad it was. But those eyes…those she could see in all the black. They were STARTLING amongst the darkness. Four shades of blue and beautiful.
"Are you alright? You're safe now. He's dead. I killed him. I won't let him touch you again."
She was comforting him. She was comforting and protecting him. She was…stroking his face and soothing him. She had him held with her arm around him, his head in her lap, and she was taking care of him. He was the girl.
He was the girl in this moment.
Leon blinked. And then he cupped the back of her head and drew her down to him.
She made a little sound and he kissed her. He drove his tongue into her mouth and stole her breath. She shifted to put her arms around him more and he craned his neck to thrill them both with the endless spill of it.
They came up for air, panting.
"…is that a yes?" Her voice was hoarse and wonderful.
And it made him laugh. He pulled her into him and laughed.
The front door of the mansion was kicked open. He heard the sound of boots and Sherry shifted. She shifted her body…and she covered his body with hers to protect him. She put him behind her, just a little, just enough to use herself like a shield.
While she aimed her pistol at the people that came into view.
Leon felt something shift hard and painful in his chest. The brave little thing. That dirty fucking bastard had stabbed her no less then thirty times out there. And she was still sitting there, crouched, on one knee protecting him.
He was fucking in love with her.
Which was a problem…because the dragon at the gates was standing there.
And Sherry shouted, "CLAIRE!"
And that was good. That was good. Claire thought…THAT was how her name was supposed to sound. THAT was how Claire was supposed to sound.
And it was supposed to be followed, always, by the hug that came behind it.
Claire held Sherry and stroked her hair. And Walsh, standing beside Piers, exclaimed, "Leon, what the FUCK happened to you!?"
There was no time to answer.
Because somewhere outside the mansion, someone was firing up some chainsaws.
He somehow doubted she was going to just smile and give her blessing over. Once they were free of this mess they were in, there was a pretty uncomfortable conversation that was going to be had between the three of them. Best friends or not, there was history here that was muddy.
History between a girl and a woman that was like her sister. History between that woman and the man who'd loved her once. And history between the girl and the man who'd found their way to each other through obsession.
It was messy.
But there wasn't time to dwell on it now.
Now was for STAYING ALIVE.
Leon put on his shirt, he slid on his holster and his jacket. He grabbed his Magnum and the sword from the floor. There was no time to do anything about the drama that would erupt. There was no time to do anything but fight.
He said, authoritatively, "Walsh, you go secure the rear of the mansion. Piers, upstairs, find a vantage point and take them out when you can. Go for the chainsaw fuckers. We have to try to thin the herd before they break in here. Or we're all dead. THE BSAA should have boots on the ground soon. Let's try to hold out until they get here."
He turned to Sherry and Claire. "Find a window, find some cover, and keep on shooting. If they break in, try to be somewhere where you can escape. Barricade what you can, stop who you can, and keep on fighting."
Sherry turned to run. Claire grabbed his face and kissed him, hard, hard…hard. And stole his breath. She said, "You're late. And you sent a baby to save me. But you came for me. You came for me. I won't forget."
She ran off to follow orders. Leon took a deep breath and turned. He braced, watching the door shake with the assault on the other side. It wouldn't be long before they were over run with the enemy. There was no time, not now, to think about anything but staying alive.
The fight began. It was bloody and swift.
The door caved in and the hoard followed.
He swung the katana and took heads and arms and legs. He fired the gun and blasted blood on the walls and brains on the floor. He ducked, he rolled, he came up to eviscerate. He fought and retreated when he was over run to another room.
He kicked over the table there to use as cover and started picking them off.
From the top of the stairs, he heard the fighting. He heard Claire and Sherry fighting. He heard Piers and Walsh fighting. Leon swung the sword again, again, again. He was thirty deep with them everywhere. He heard Sherry shouting for him.
One grabbed his face and pinned him to the wall. One grabbed his legs and another his arm. He struggled and they took him to the floor. He kicked. He hit. He punched.
One came down like they'd eat his face. He waited for it. Waited for it…waited to die…
And the cacophonous blast of gunfire filled the room.
It was murderous. It was loud and fast. It sounded like thunder and fireworks and death. Screaming, steaming, bodies dropping on him and weighing him down. Shouting, growling, grunting as the bodies were pulled off him.
Sherry was pulling him free. She pulled him up and pushed.
She pushed him behind her as she went hand to hand with a chainsaw man. He rushed in to help her. The katana came down…the chainsaw hacked loose in a spray of blood and bone. Sherry grabbed the weapon and it roared to life. She went to town making mince meat out of the enemy. Blood and bone, flesh and organs…she painted the room like a Jackson Pollock.
Leon drove the katana into the face of one that tried to eat her from behind. He ripped it clear in a burst of brains and severed the head of another. The katana caught on their spine and cost him. He was thrown back into the wall.
And his poor, poor, poor head. It took the hit. It took the hit so hard it stole his breath.
And everything went black.
It was wet inside the tank. Wet in the tank. Wet in the tank where he was floating.
His eyes popped open. He had a respirator in his mouth. He was in his boxers and floating in gelatinous goop. The goop was pink and warm yet somehow cool. He turned in the liquid, like Neo in the cocoon awakened outside the Matrix, and Sherry was there.
She hit a button. There was a WHOOSH and a sputter of sound as the goo drained. The respirator popped out of his mouth. A mechanical hiss sounded and he was sucked, literally sucked like a vaccum tube, down out of the tank where he'd been held. It got dark and cold and hot water blasted him. It was followed by a gust and gush of warm drying air.
Leon let out a gasp of shock and the lights came on.
He was sitting on a table in an empty room.
Around him were what looked like morgue drawers and steel. He was assuming they were other bays where people were being…kept? Something.
There was a hiss of sound and Sherry came in.
She was in some kind of tiny white…something. It was probably a hospital gown. But it looked more like a torture device meant to make men crave her. It was held together by loops and ties. It barely covered her breasts and ass.
She moved toward him. "You're awake! You're ok? You had a fractured skull, Leon. Fractured. By the time we got you here, you had a brain bleed and swelling. You stopped breathing. You stopped breathing and they put you in the restoration tank. Thank GOD for it. Thank god. Oh god…"
He was fine. He wasn't just fine…he was AMAZING. He felt like he'd slept for a hundred years. He wiggled his nose, his toes, his shoulders. He didn't have so much as a tight muscle.
She was still talking, "The BSAA is INCREDIBLE. They have things I would have never expected! I can't believe what they can do. That TANK. INCREDIBLE. Amazing. It saved your life!"
Sherry hesitated when she was close to him. She hesitated to touch him. He was so perfect. So beautiful. And she'd been so afraid she'd lose him. She'd held him while he bled all over her. It was terrifying. Claire had come running. Piers had come running.
She'd tried to carry him and her leg was broken. So, she'd fallen.
She couldn't lift him.
But she hadn't needed to. Because Chris Redfield had.
He'd swung his assault rifle to his back, dressed like GI Joe in fatigues and more armor plating then a knight, and picked up the other man like he'd weighed nothing. He'd carried him to the chopper and put him inside to be air lifted to the U.N. Headquarters for the BSAA. Sherry and Claire, both wounded, had gotten on as well. Piers had stayed with Walsh to finish the clean up.
Sherry whispered, softly, "I thought I was going to lose you."
She reached out to touch his hair and he caught her hand. They held eyes.
He said, "Claire is ok?"
Sherry nodded. "She's fine. She's ok. We both woke up in the tanks. She's with Chris now. She's ok. We're ok."
Leon nodded. She shifted and her could see the side of one of those perfect breasts of hers. The relief, the rush of adrenaline that came with survival and knowing they'd found her. They'd found his best friend. They'd found her…it rushed through him like fire.
Sherry said, "Do you want to go see her now?"
He slid off the table where he was sitting. She moved like she'd help him stand up. Her hand slid across his chest.
And he murmured, "...not yet."
He watched it shoot across her face, the want, the need, the risk. "Leon...not here."
"Here. Now. Sherry...don't fight me."
She shook her head, denying, but aching for it. "...it's a bad idea."
"I know that. I need you."
Jesus. She whispered, "Please..." And killed him. Her and that please. It owned him. He should stop. He should stop.
But he grabbed a handful of her hair, pinned her down on the table with a hand on her collarbone, and kept on going. He put her on her face on the table, hiking up her little gown to see the plush heart of her ass. He kicked her feet apart to touch her. His fingers sank into the moist core of her.
Sherry gasped, bucking against his fingers. "Oh! Leon, not here!"
"Here." He repeated, "Now."
His hands rolled her up. She almost pushed on his hip to stop him, "Someone could see us!"
"I know...stop fighting me, Sherry. Tell me you don't want me."
God. She couldn't. It would be a lie to say it.
He pushed against the wet of her and she slicked him, welcoming, gasping. She grabbed his ass in her hand to shove her toward him even as she tried to deny it. "I want you...I want you...but not here!"
Again, hissing it, "Here. Now." His hand grabbed into her hair to turn her upper body toward his mouth. He tongued her, fast and deep. She mewled, almost squealing, and sucked his tongue into her mouth.
And he shoved into her body so hard it audibly slapped into the room. She screamed into his mouth with it, jerking, bucking against him, into him, around him. Sherry took him like a glove even as she knew it was wrong. Bad. Wrong. Desperate. ANYONE could see them.
But he rolled himself inside of her...and she was done.
She let out a cry of desperate need as her sucking little body consumed his. The door whooshed with sound to open and she gasped, "Leon…stop…oh god!"
They were no longer alone. And neither of them cared.
She was there. He was there.
He flicked her clit, felt her cum all over him despite herself, fighting against it the whole time, afraid of being seen and caught and dying with the want of it…and it was enough. He grunted, grabbed her hips to slap her down on him so hard it rang in the room and she squealed…and he pumped her full of the heady, sticky, needy spurt of his release.
Her back bowed, her spine shifting as she milked his spurting body like a fist with her own greedy spasms, and he ground her against his body to take all of him.
And a voice in the doorway said, "Cheese and rice, Kennedy. This isn't a fucking no tell, motel. Put your cock back in your pants and get off her."
And there was Chris Redfield watching them and looking incredibly irritated.
It might have been funny. It might have been comic.
But he wasn't alone.
Because the dragon at the gates was standing behind him. And her face? It wasn't irritated. It wasn't even laughing.
It was pissed.
Sherry was REALLY shoving him now. She was really pushing at him. Leon, shivering, shuddering and still shaking from trying to blow his load out the back of the girl beneath him, slid out of her eager little body and poked himself back in his pants.
Sherry closed her legs and rolled off the table, thighs quivering.
Chris had his arms crossed on his chest. Claire? She came in the room like a red haired storm.
"I should KILL you!"
Naturally, he was the target.
She shoved his chest. He let her. She smacked his face. He let her. He couldn't blame her. He'd been caught, literally red handed, fucking Sherry Birkin. It was not his finest moment.
Sherry leaned on the wall, panting. And his sticky released dribbled down her thighs.
The man in him loved that. THAT was his finest moment.
Chris said, "Sherry – Simmons is here waiting. You probably want to clean up and hurry. He's royally pissed."
Whatever was happening between the idiot Kennedy and his sister, he wanted no part of it. He gestured with his head and Sherry hesitated. She said, "Claire? Claire, stop. It's ok. Claire, I wanted it."
Claire turned her head. And her face…oh her face. She looked so hurt.
Sherry wanted to hug her. But she was so mad. So mad.
Finally, Claire said, "Go, Sherry. Just go. Just go now."
Hurt, scared of what it meant, Sherry glanced between Claire and Leon. She didn't want to be the reason they hurt each other in this room. She didn't want to be the reason for any kind of pain like that.
But her aching body said if he'd asked…right then if he'd asked her to bend over the table and let him fuck her…she'd spread her legs for him and let him. And it was frightening. Because it meant he owned her. He owned her enough to strip away her soul and make her his fuck puppet. His play thing. His toy.
And she simultaneously hated herself and loved the greed for that kind of soulless possession that whispered like madness in her blood.
Sherry whispered, "Claire…I'm so sorry."
And she fled from the room. Chris let the door whooshed closed on the battle beginning there in her wake.
Claire turned back to him. He held her gaze, cool, so cool. Mr. Fucking Cool and Collected. The Ghost. Was he even really in this room?
She hissed, "What did you do?! What have you DONE, Leon?"
Wryly, he answered, "They call that fucking, Claire. You know what that was. We used to do it all the time."
And she slapped his face again.
He grabbed her wrist and held it. "That's enough of that. I took it because I get it. I get it. Sherry's your little sister in a way. You caught me plowing your sister. That sucks a lot. It's gotta. But you don't hit me. Not again."
He shoved her hand away.
Claire felt the roll of anger in her blood. The pound of it in her veins. It was more than betrayal here. It was pain. Because she'd protected Sherry. She'd let Wesker touch and use her. And what had they done?
They'd rolled naked together while she'd traded her soul for their safety.
Her best friend and her sister.
It felt like a punch in the face.
"She's a baby, Leon. A BABY. Did you consider that before you stuffed her full of your fucking cock?"
Leon shifted, calmly, "She came on to me. I didn't know who she was at first. But it didn't matter once I did. She's not a baby, Claire. She's a woman. And I'm not using her."
Claire laughed now, harshly. "You aren't? Jesus Christ, Leon, you're the fastest zipper in the West. You throw that huge dick to any girl that blinks at you. Does she know that? Does she know you're a fucking man whore? Is there a girl who survived Raccoon City that you HAVEN'T fucked!?"
Admittedly, it was a fair question. And she wasn't entirely wrong. He loved the ladies. It was true. He didn't shy away from a good deep dicking with one. He never had.
But there was no way for her to know the difference here. And no way for him to explain it.
"She knows all about me. Everything. I haven't lied to her or used her. She knows. Ask her yourself. It's not like that."
Claire searched inside of her for why she was so angry. What was the anger here? Was it jealousy?
Yes.
And no.
And yes again.
Of course she was jealous. They had a bond now that didn't include her. She was the odd man out. She'd lost them to each other somewhere along the way. It wasn't jealousy that he was fucking Sherry. Not exactly. He'd fucked anything in a skirt plenty as long as she'd known him.
Part of her liked hearing his dirty stories about it when they got beers together or hung out. She knew who he was. She liked who he was. He was an open book about girls. Always had been.
He didn't commit. He didn't linger. And he didn't stick around. He didn't shy away from a girl unless she pushed for more. And he didn't play games usually.
Usually.
Unless it mattered.
His face said Sherry mattered.
Claire asked, quietly now, "Do you love her?"
And he didn't lie either. Leon Kennedy never lied. He might dance around the truth until you thought the moon was made of green cheese and the sky and the sea were interchangeable…but he didn't lie. So he said, "I do. She humbles me. She snuck in and stole something. I can't get her out. She scares the holy fuck out of me with it. But I'm trapped with wanting her. I am sorry like hell I didn't tell you. But I didn't know you were missing. When we did, we did nothing but search for you. I swear to god neither of us was trying to make this a secret."
Claire stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she said, "What the fuck are you gonna do? If Simmons finds out, he'll have you killed."
And now Leon laughed. He laughed. And it was mirthless.
"I have no fucking clue. I'll bounce. It's what I do." He hesitated now. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Claire met his eyes. He felt it shiver between them. Whatever it was, it had been bad.
Finally, she said, "It was Albert Wesker, Leon. It was Wesker. And he's not done."
Leon nodded, holding her gaze, "I know. His perverted sidekick spilled the beans before Sherry lopped his ugly head off. What do you know?"
She gestured to the table…and her eyes filled with tears.
Leon felt the stirring of rage in his guts for Albert Wesker. Claire NEVER cried. Ever. She was the strongest woman he'd ever met.
For the tears alone, he was going to watch the son of a bitch BLEED.
And Claire whispered, "You better sit down for this."
For just that moment, they forgot to be mad at each other. They sat on the table and she told him. She told him all of it. And they were just two people that had been friends for a decade. He put his arm around her and she spilled all of it.
And Leon knew, in his bones, that the only way she'd ever find peace from it would be with Wesker dead.
And he began to plot revenge in a way he hadn't in a long time.
Revenge for Claire. Revenge for Sherry. Revenge for Jill, trapped in his web and suffering.
He was a mad good at revenge. It was his bread and butter. It was his motto. He didn't commit to women, not easily, not usually…but he committed to revenge.
It worked itself into his bones and ached there. Ached. Like Sherry had. Like his need for her.
Revenge.
It was one more obsession.
