"Planes aren't your thing?"

Leon Kennedy's deep voice cut through the whine of jet engines revving, startling Ashley Graham into opening her eyes. In the seat across from her, her protector for a few more hours was watching her with distinct concern in his eyes.

She tried to smile—a weak attempt, she was sure—and forced herself to release her death grip on the armrests. "Let's just say I didn't exactly fly the friendly skies to get here."

If she hadn't felt like simply breathing was taking all her concentration, she might have been pleased that this prompted a glare on her account.

"Damn. I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Or it wasn't, but she didn't want to admit that.

The last time she had heard plane engines, she'd been terrified, helpless, ignorant of both where she was and where she was going. Of course she was safe now and on her way home, but that knowledge didn't stop the tightness clenching her chest like a vise. Her stomach did a flip, and she felt like she was going to be sick. Funny, she'd never thought she'd be the kind of person who needed one of those airsickness bags, if they even had those on a fancy private jet like this.

Leon said, "It's not your fault, so don't feel bad."

"Yeah."

As the plane lurched into motion, she clutched her arm rests again. How many hours was this flight? Seven? She could only pray it got better once they were in the air.

Leather upholstery creaked, and she glanced up to find Leon crossing to sink into the seat beside her. He didn't say anything, but held out his arm, palm up.

Ashley gripped Leon's hand, grateful. Then she forced herself to breathe slow and deep. That was what you were supposed to do if you were panicking. Really, she should have remembered that advice before now, since there had been ample opportunity to apply it.

By the time the plane was finally cruising and the jet engines had quieted, she felt a little better. At least every muscle wasn't straining from her jaw down to her toes, and she had decided she probably wasn't going to be sick.

She loosened her grip on Leon's hand—to his credit, he hadn't seemed to mind that she'd been crushing it. Not, of course, that there was any way she could have inflicted any real damage on that big hand of his.

He also didn't seem in any hurry to make her let go of him, so she left their hands linked. Now that she wasn't in acute distress, she could appreciate her position, with his forearm tucked against hers and his bicep pressing her shoulder. His fingers were rough, but the skin of his inner arm was soft, and, good God, he was muscular. She was glad he wasn't looking at her face, for then she surely would have turned a very revealing shade of red.

Maybe—probably—it was inappropriate to find her bodyguard so attractive, but he was handsome and capable, and saving her had required that she land in his strong arms more than once. Honestly, she had been a lost cause from the moment she had jumped out of that church window.

It was an equally lost cause to feel this way about him, of course. After they got home, he would go back to those dangerous and important missions that had originally earned him the task of rescuing her, and she wouldn't have any reason to see him again.

That thought brought the prick of tears to her eyes. She'd been able to face fiends and monsters and even her own infection—or perhaps possession was a better term for it—because he was there and he believed in her. While physically, those things were now behind her, she knew she wouldn't forget them for a long time. For a moment, she felt alone again.

Ashley tipped her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. For now, Leon was still beside her, and she could pretend he wasn't going anywhere. She squeezed his hand, and he brushed his thumb once over the back of her fingers. She smiled. No, surely there wasn't any harm in pretending.

Some indefinable amount of time later, Ashley opened her eyes. Her arm was still tucked through Leon's, and her head leaned against his shoulder.

"Sorry," she murmured, straightening hastily. She hadn't meant to be quite so familiar with him, and it was embarrassing to think she'd been lying slack-jawed on his shoulder. "At least I didn't drool on you."

"Wouldn't be the worst thing I've been covered in this week," he said.

She laughed. "I don't want to know."

Ashley rolled out her stiff neck, then stood for a full-body stretch. She must have been asleep for at least an hour. Her head felt lighter than when she'd boarded the jet.

"I didn't sleep at all last night," she confessed as she sat down in the seat facing Leon. "I just sat up with the light on."

His brows tensed in sympathy. "It gets better; I promise."

"That's right, this is all . . . normal for you."

She thought his smile was a little ironic. "It wasn't always. Do you remember the Raccoon City incident? You must've been in high school then."

She nodded. She hadn't paid a lot of attention to the news, but it had been impossible to miss a national headline story. "There was some sort of outbreak and a bomb strike. God, you were part of that?" She should have put two and two together before, given his singular qualifications for this rescue mission.

"My first and last day on the Raccoon police force. I was your age."

"Oh, Leon." Of course he couldn't always have been so cooly efficient and unshakeable, but she'd never stopped to think about how he'd gained his experience.

"It was hell," he said, that dark, rough note coming into his voice for a moment. "But I can sleep through the night again. I can go back into places like that and face monsters like—" He gestured toward the rear of the plane, clearly indicating the entirety of what they'd left behind in Spain. "I won't lie and tell you it's easy, but it does get better."

"Do you wish that had never happened? Sorry, that's stupid. Of course you do. I wish this hadn't happened to me." Ashley wished she could erase every moment alone in the dark, every pair of rough hands that had dragged and forced her, erase—worst of all—the feeling of her own body betraying her.

Leon huffed softly, a laugh she knew wasn't directed at her. "Yeah, I've wished that. But it's not all bad. What happened to me—it made me someone who can help you, right?"

"That's a good way to look at it."

"You're gonna be okay, Ashley." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, so that his blue eyes were level with hers. "I'm sure. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met."

"Really?"

"Really."

She held his gaze, honored by his estimation of her. "Well, I knew I couldn't let you down after you'd gone through so much trouble to find me."

"You did great."

She smiled softly. "Yeah, I think so."

Ashley had been silent for some time, her gaze distant while she fiddled with the silver eagle on her necklace. Whatever she was pondering wasn't too troubling: while there was a slight stitch between her brows, Leon noted that her posture was relaxed. That was good; it hurt to see her suffering from the traumatic events of the past few days. He wished that he'd never been forced to leave her side, that he could have shielded her from more of it.

"Oh shit." She flicked the eagle off her forefinger and sat up, stiff.

"Ashley?" Despite all they'd faced, this was the first time he'd heard her swear.

"I've missed at least a week of classes!" she wailed. "This is a nightmare."

Leon tried to stifle a smile; thankfully she had retained enough innocence to find that an appropriate metaphor for a problem so mundane.

"I'm serious! I have bad dreams about this kind of thing: forgetting to go to class for weeks and then realizing I'm hopelessly behind." She groaned and put a hand to her head, then suddenly began laughing, not quite wildly enough to qualify as hysterical but certainly hard enough to indicate emotional exhaustion. "I guess the upside is that I've probably replaced those dreams with a whole new batch of nightmares." Still quaking with laughter, she let herself slide low in her seat.

"Easy there. I think homework is the least of your worries right now."

Ashley wiped a tear from her cheek. "You haven't met my English professors."

"I think people will understand, give you extra time—"

"But that's just it," she blurted, laughter abruptly done. "I don't want people to think I'm getting special treatment just because of who my dad is. I earned my scholarship, and I'm going to keep it on my own merits!" Her hazel eyes were sharp, defensive. "Everyone's going to ask where I've been, and I— What am I supposed to say? 'Oh, I was in Spain nearly getting murdered and initiated into a cult.'" Tears welled in her eyes. She tucked her face down against her knees and began to sob.

Leon watched her wretchedly, feeling the twist of his own helplessness with every tremble of her slender shoulders. What did she need him to do?

He put a hand on her arm. "Ashley." He stopped there, unable to think of anything to say that wasn't trite.

She didn't look up, but she took a deep breath, quelling her tears. "I'm sorry, Leon," she said roughly. "I don't mean to sound like some spoiled princess. I'm glad to be alive, and I'm really grateful for everything you've done for me." She sniffed.

"I don't think you're a spoiled princess," Leon said. "A spoiled princess wouldn't have been scaling walls and driving a bulldozer. As damsels in distress go, you're practically self-rescuing."

He thought her answering sob was really a laugh.

"Okay, so . . ." She sniffed again. "I'll say I was in Spain because my dad's best agent wasn't tall enough to reach the ladders."

His breath of laughter shifted a few strands of her hair. "You can tell them anything you like."

She lifted her head then, her tearstained eyes working toward a smile. She stared at him, clearly caught on the edge of indecision. Then she launched herself on him, burying her face in his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him.

"I need a hug, dammit," she mumbled.

"Yeah, me too."

He closed his arms over her, careful to keep his hands in appropriate places. He felt too much protective affection for her to be tempted to take advantage of her vulnerability, even in a moment like this.

"I'm going to miss you," Ashley said, her voice muted against his shirt. "I don't think I could have got through this without you. You know, if Dad had sent someone else. So, thank you." Muffled as her voice was, he thought he heard tears edging into it again.

Her unhappiness wrenched at him, stirring the ghost of his own pain. He knew what she had ahead of her as she worked to sort the scraps of shattered innocence into something that fit back into normal life. He supposed he'd given up on innocence for himself and chosen something else instead, but she deserved to heal and be normal and happy again. And right now, she was facing that process alone, because nobody back home—not even the best therapist her father could find—really knew what she'd been through.

Leon tucked his head against hers for a moment, all the protective urges of an elder brother roused as they hadn't been for a long time—his own little sister was married now and hadn't needed him like that for years. This young woman in his arms had trusted him through what was surely the most difficult experience of her life, and he wasn't going to let her down when she still needed someone to rely on.

"Hey." He patted her shoulder. "I'll come visit if you think you can fit me in between all of those English classes."

She let go of him at last, and he was rewarded to see that a spark of happiness had returned to her face. "Thanks, Leon. I think I can." Sniffing again, she reached out to straighten his shirt.

"Oh snap. Leon, I'm so sorry," she said, mortification coloring her voice and her face. "I got snot all over your shirt."

He shook his head, unconcerned. "Still not as bad as the—"

"Hey!" Her eyes were truly smiling now. "I said I don't want to know."

"Okay, okay. Just keep smiling, then."

"Yeah." The smile reached her lips at last. "I will."

Author's note:

I really loved the original Resident Evil 4 when I played it back in college, and I've been delighted by the remake. Ashley and Leon's dynamic is perfection.

I ship them, though not during the timeline of the game. I see Ashley having a crush on him from the start—who wouldn't?—but I imagine Leon being too professional and protective of her to think of her in anything but a strictly platonic way. He knows she's in a very vulnerable situation, and he wouldn't dare take advantage of that fact. Let's give them a few years…

This fic establishes why I think the two of them would keep in touch after Spain. I've got ideas for what happens next. (I'll post any continuations of the story separately, so look for that on my author page.)

And yes, I know that Krauser's plan for Ashley's abduction involved putting her on a ship. I have to posit there was a plane involved at some point, though. The Ashley we meet in the game doesn't look or act like she spent the last week or more in a shipping crate on the Atlantic, and I'm totally fine with that.