A/N: I've seen enough clips of Death Island to know I'm not quite on the story, but I'm gonna keep going anyway with this tale and see where it ends. I'm doing that thing where I sorta parallel the canon while adding my own filler. I'm gonna jump through time as Jill remembers her time in captivity and highlight how she and Leon know each other (confirmed by DI as having happened before the movie, yay). Good or bad, it's how the story goes in my head, and I gotta see it through. Thank you for reading! As always, I don't own anything Resident Evil; all characters belong to Capcom.


Penumbra:

Shadows Collide


I:

First Contact


Three Months Prior...

Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts


The smell of stagnant water was foul. It lingered in the nostrils as her boots shifted through puddles of unfiltered waste. With a crinkle of the nose, Jill Valentine moved slowly - carefully - gingerly through the acrid odor of gray decay.

She hated sewers.

The goddamn dregs of the world waited at the bottom of oily shadows and the stench of rotten shit. She couldn't escape the rot even above ground; why not follow it into the darkness? It didn't take a therapist to explain how the world was when her eyes were open. She'd lived it for five years since her return from captivity.

She'd spent most of it chasing down those who'd played a part in her torture. The leads stagnated the further from Africa she went. After leaving behind the windswept heat of the Savannah, she'd found it more complicated than it should have been to locate those who'd left her stranded to be the handmaiden of a monster.

The smell of death tickled her nose and gave her a moment to pause. She waited for the flash of memory to hit behind her eyes. She watched the face of the man she gutted while he begged for mercy. There was nothing quite like the odor of an open body cavity and the feel of intestines spilling like greasy snakes over your hands as you pulled the knife down from the sternum like opening a zipper. He'd still been alive when she kicked him mercilessly over the rooftop's edge. She'd watched, dead-eyed from the P-30, while he'd tumbled into the sand and looked like a leviathan in a lake of blood. In her head...she'd been screaming with rage and regret.

For three years, she'd been the weapon of a madman - the harbinger of his evil will. Before she'd woken up in that room, she'd known that Wesker was a bastard. She'd learned quickly at his side that he was a megalomaniac.

He'd stood above her in those sunglasses, watching her lie there with a smile on his face, and he'd said, "I offered you a chance once to join me, Jill. Now I show you what it means to deny me."

"I will never join you."

"You will," he'd answered tonelessly, "because you no longer have a choice."

"Fuck y-"

She'd never forget the moment he'd stuck that syringe into her neck. She'd flinched, trying to fight back, but she was still so weak. She'd thought she was dead when she went out that window. She thought she'd finally done something to change the world they were trying to save. She thought she was a savior.

She was a fool.

Because dying hadn't saved anyone...and it had just given the mastermind behind the madness another weapon.

She'd died and handed Wesker the key to his future filled with fear.

The P-30 coursed through her. She lifted a hand like she'd fight him off, and he stated, "Stop."

And she had. She stopped. She just stopped like he'd flipped a switch. The horror compounded as he commanded, "Rise."

She'd done that too. She'd slid off the table and stood, a good soldier, a robot - looking at his face like a machine waiting for his next command. He'd tilted his head and demanded, "Move to the mirror."

She'd gone and found herself naked, pale, blonde - icy- and a stranger. She looked somehow ethereal and ghostly. She looked like an angel somehow, but she wasn't. She wasn't. She was a demon. If she was any kind of angel at all, it was a deadly one—the kind who showed up to reap your soul and take you away when you least expected it.

He stood behind her - blonde as she was- dead inside as her face suggested- and said, "See what failure looks like, Jill. See what it means to resist."

Her face was still and calm as he added, "Punch the glass."

And she did. She punched it, and it cracked. The glass cut her hand, but she showed nothing. It hurt. Her head screamed in pain. Her body stared lifelessly at the shattered reflection of herself stained in her blood. It wasn't her in that glass. It wasn't her.

But it was all she could see now.

She paused, skimming a hand through her short dark locks. The second she'd been able to, she'd dyed it back brown. She cut off the long Valkyrie-style blonde hair and returned to what she'd been before - a version of herself with dark hair but hopefully a brighter future.

She pulled out her old clothes. She knew it was stupid, silly even, to wear clothes from before - so old they should be falling apart. But putting on the familiar felt like her again. The old but faithful blue tank top, the jeans that still fit like a glove and were well worn, the boots broken in and loved. When she wore her faithful old attire, she was Jill Valentine again.

He couldn't take that from her.

He'd tried like hell to take everything else.

She was still trying to get it back after all these years without his memory hanging over her like a shadow she couldn't shake. When the sun was bright on her, she swore she could see two there beside her - hers and his - and sometimes? Hers, his, and who she used to be.

She'd taken every mission she could when they'd reinstated her to active duty. After months and months of rehabilitation, after facing a firing squad of those who wanted her to pay for her crimes, she'd been cleared because Chris had raided that damn volcano to bring up the rest of Wesker's stock of the P-30 on board. They'd seen the effects of it. They'd held her down while she fought and tested it on her just to be sure.

As much as she'd wanted them to believe her, she still fought them, putting it in her again. She couldn't help it. She'd panicked and screamed and lost. They'd shot her full of it and watched it work. They'd tested her and claimed it was for her own good.

He'd claimed that too.

It left her unable to trust anyone. It left her angry and hurt, and hopeless. She'd spent hours in therapy talking about what she'd done. She told them anything she could think of to help. She'd been the good soldier.

And they'd shot her full of poison for their own amusement.

The rift between her and Chris was so wide it was like standing on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon and shouting at each other. He tried to mend it. She knew that. He tried to understand what she'd been through.

But he couldn't. And every time she looked at him, she saw the subtle touch of condemnation and regret in his eyes. Or worse, pity. She couldn't stand it. She couldn't even be around him without it echoing like a shout down a mountain. Under the layer of aching loss, a roiling sense of betrayal loomed.

Because he'd left her in Wesker's hands for years. He hadn't known she'd survived, but they'd never found her body. He should have kept looking. He claimed he had. He swore he'd never stopped.

She didn't believe him. If he had, he'd have found her. He'd left her to rot. She'd died for him...and he'd left her to a fate worse than death.

After three years in the hands of Wesker, they were strangers. After five years of recovery, they still were. No more partners. No more pals. They were now coworkers in a fight they were losing daily.

That fight had brought her to a dirty sewer beneath a rotting former Umbrella compound in the middle of nowhere. She'd tracked a lead on a missing scientist linked loosely to Chris' time in New York. The death of Glenn Arias had opened more doors than shut them.

Wherever you turned, another of his connections looped through the leftover mess he'd made of Manhattan. The death toll there was in the thousands. It was a mass outbreak on a scale they were still trying to determine. A failure of the airborne vaccine distributed by Chris had seen only a handful of those turned returned to some semblance of consciousness. Those who'd managed to regain any humanity were perpetually poisoned by what they'd done.

They'd eaten friends. They'd killed. They'd turned and tortured each other. Their sanity was destroyed. Saving those they could had made a bigger mess than sanitation might have. There wasn't a single survivor who wasn't forever ruined by what had happened.

Bioterror had won again. Anything gained by that event was lost under the tremendous hopelessness and futility of a fight they couldn't win. The rumors now said Arias had sold countless samples of the A-Virus to black market contacts before his death. Even now, it was circulating the globe to be used in warfare and for political gain. Crops of horror had started in places suffering from unstable regime changes and were utilized to advance agendas.

They were further behind than they'd ever been because Chris had rushed into New York like a goddamn tank and nearly leveled the place with bad decisions and zero forethought for the fallout. Instead of evacuating, Chris had tried to save the day. He'd cost lives with rash action instead of levelheaded planning. His mistakes were haunting her as she moved.

She would find this fucking scientist she was hunting and bring him to justice to start correcting those mistakes. After all, if one good thing had come out of her time with Wesker, it was this - she was relentless, brutal, and efficient. She knew how to get the job done. She didn't flag, didn't stop, and didn't care who she took down to do it. She was still trying like hell to make up for what she'd done.

She wouldn't stop until she'd avenged every life she'd taken. She figured it would take the rest of her life to do it. She was ok with that. If she died this time, at least she'd die making a difference.

And after all, she'd died years ago - maybe this time she'd die a hero instead of a disgrace.

Jill stepped through a small opening in the sewer and listened.

The click of noises gave her pause. Her hands kept the knife ready as she watched the dark before her. She saw a skittering and lifted the weapon. As she hurried quietly toward the noise, a movement to her left had her spinning.

The hand swept the knife down at her wrists. She spun a kick and met air as he ducked and came into her attack zone. They grappled, hands and feet catching and sliding. He didn't hit her, which surprised her; he just tried to stop her.

She didn't bother. She tried to kill him. They dueled hard for a moment. Lots of strikes and sweeps. Tons of spinning and slapping. He didn't try to hurt her, but he didn't let her hurt him, either. He was fast and good. She hadn't had trouble with an opponent in a long time. Her training was top-notch.

His was better.

She let him come in close as they locked arms, and he swung her around with her back to his front. Jill stepped on his instep, threw an elbow at his face, and swept the knife toward his belly. His hand caught her wrist, hyperextended her arm, and spun her again until the blade was aimed at his face with his wrist braced against hers.

Jill lunged with the knife, and his foot swept behind her ankle as she came. It spilled her forward against him, and the blade sliced over his left biceps as she went. He bled, his arms pinned hers around his torso as he clutched her, and against her ear, he hissed, "Stop."

A handful of moments - less than thirty seconds and over. She was winded. He was winded. It was a good fight.

It might have looked like they were hugging to anyone that came along. Jill whispered back, lips brushing the shell of his ear, "No fucking way."

And she tried to head-butt him.

He used his body to jerk her up and bend her backward as the head butt missed. Her foot kicked into his shin, he stumbled, and he bodily lifted her again against his front, turned, and shoved her hard into the wall to their left. The rushing water muffled the impact as she hit. Her back sang with pain as the water gushed over her face and head. Jill went to hook her ankle around his and trip him, and he jerked her away from the wall, slammed her back again, and stunned her with the force of it.

Temporarily dazed, Jill couldn't stop him from spinning her back to his front again. He ducked into the water, and it showered around them as his gloved hand slid over her mouth, and his mouth hissed at her ear again, "Stop, you stupid woman. And look."

She saw what had been clicking around through the veil of the waterfall. Lickers. Three, at least, maybe half a dozen. They moved beyond the waterfall with blind eyes and bulging, exposed brains. Their tongues lingered, licking the dirty water as they went - inside out, muscle and tissue exposed over their exoskeleton.

Into her ear, his voice stated, "You almost shot one and rang the goddamn dinner bell."

It hadn't once crossed her mind that he was there to help.

Who was he?

Shaggy dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, muscled build - a spark of familiarity zipped through her brain as she waited in his arms, watching their death beyond that watery filter.

She couldn't place his face until her eyes shifted to the little cleft in his chin on his stubbled jaw. Then she remembered because the first time she'd met him, Claire had remarked - "You can't mistake him...he's got the fucking buttchin of a comic book hero."

Leon S. Kennedy - super agent, perpetual badass, the golden boy of bioterror. Also, they said, a notorious drunk. But it didn't seem to stop him from saving the day. Hadn't he been with Chris in New York? Maybe he was here chasing down the same lead.

"Leon." She murmured in surprise.

"Jill Valentine." He answered in a dull tone.

Jill whispered, "I see them. You can let go."

When he didn't, she added, "I won't hit you again."

He let go of her reluctantly. She slid away to stand beside him against the wall. They glanced at each other for a handful of seconds before he nodded. Jill scanned in his tactical vest and blue shirt, noting he was a little bloody and just as dirty as she was. However, they both looked like drowned rats after their trip through the falls.

Luckily the falls obscured their voices enough they could get their ducks in a row here before they moved.

She glanced at his arm, still seeping blood from the shallow cut she'd given him. He followed her eyes, shook his head, and gave her a pass on it. Jill flicked her eyes back out into the sewer, and he whispered, "Schematics for the sewers suggested the lab is east of here."

Jill nodded and returned in a quiet voice, "This tunnel should take us to the ladder leading up to the alley behind the building."

She'd gone through the sewers to avoid detection by the patrolling guards. In a way, it had been smart. In another, here they were - beneath the streets of a city turning to shit from infection. Someone had set loose bioweapons in these tunnels. Why? Accident or design?

How had it gone unchecked before this?

But, of course, the little island off the coast of Massachusetts wasn't heavily inhabited anyway. It was mostly there for tourists looking for fun after visiting Salem. The average Joe wouldn't know what waited on this haven. It wasn't safe here, it wasn't fun, and it wasn't meant to be enjoyed as a vacation.

Unless your idea was to vacation in the mouth of hell.

Jill nodded and breathed, "Let's move."

He swung the assault rifle he had strapped over his back into his hands. They ducked through the water. They moved. It was quick and efficient. He moved as he fought, with no wasted gestures.

They used the water like a silencer as they went. It muffled their boots and movement. They were almost to the ladder leading up someone screamed.

A voice echoed down the tunnel. A woman, no doubt, based on the wailing. There was a rush of claws on the ceiling in the water. Leon hurried for the ladder with Jill fast behind him.

A woman was being torn apart by them about ten feet from the ladder. They could easily use the sound as a distraction to make their escape. There was no saving the woman anyway. Even as they moved, she gurgled with her throat ripped out.

Leon was four rungs up with Jill hot on his heels when something wrapped around her ankle. It looped. She felt the pull, and it ripped her off the ladder with a squeak and squeal of metal.

Airborne, she went up and came down, landing in the water and rolling over the stone floor. Another tongue looped at her wrist as she fired, the bullet winging off into the dark and the gun flying from her grip from the strength of that tongue. She slashed the tongue with her knife, and it retreated, the licker roaring with pain and denial.

She scrambled to her feet, and another tongue looped at her ankle again. It jerked her to her face, she rolled to slash the tongue, and it threw her against the wall for the effort. That tongue held on, the licker smacking her into the concrete like an angry toddler with a broken toy. She hit on her back and felt it pull her toward it. She slashed, it jerked harder, and she was suddenly racing through dirty water on her face without hope of stopping it.

Her hand flailed wildly as she lost her knife in a rush. It pulled her in, crouched over her, and roared, and she smelled the fetid stench of death again. A pulse of fear shot through her - making her breathless as Jill couldn't stop the shout of denial. Its dripping teeth came for her face, the tongue whipping at her as it went, smacking her arms that she threw up to protect herself.

And a hand caught one of hers and slapped, palm to palm, holding on. It jerked on her, she let Leon rip her free of her death, and he fired with the other hand as she went with the rifle braced against his side. The one trying to kill her was blasted back as Jill rolled with her hand in his, caught sight of the thing dropping from the ceiling atop him, and jerked his sidearm from his vest.

She shouted, "Down!"

And his head and shoulders jerked to the left, her hand lifted and aimed, and she fired.

Blood rained down on them as she blew the one inches from his head out of the sky.

Leon jerked on her hand, slinging her up in a single movement, and Jill used the momentum to land on her feet and keep on firing. They let go of each other and stood back to back, circling, shooting, circling, shooting. He aimed into the dark like a man who'd done it a thousand times before.

Jill could hear the sound of their heavy breathing as the last body fell into the water with a dull splash.

She lowered his gun and felt him do the same.

After a moment, Leon remarked, "So much for stealth."

Jill shook her head, "Stupid woman. What was she doing down here?"

"What?" Leon mused while they both scanned shadows for more threats, "You don't hit the sewers on your vacations?"

"What's a vacation?"

His mouth twitched. "I don't have a clue, but I hear they're nice."

"Not hers, apparently."

Leon snorted and glanced over his shoulder at her.

Jill shook her head. "Wanna tell me what you're doing here?"

"Wanna tell me what you are?"

She eyed him before stepping away. "What else? Taking a scenic tour on this fine evening."

"Some fucking tour. I'd ask for a refund." He met her eyes as they turned to face each other. After a moment of considering each other, he remarked, "You move like a well-oiled machine."

Jill arched a brow. "Makes two of us."

She stepped through the bloody water toward the tunnel they'd left behind. Leon followed, eyeing the darkness. As they approached the ladder, she caught sight of the dead woman in the water. She wore a lab coat and floated in a sea of pink and chunks.

Jill crouched at her badge and took it off her jacket. She looked at the name and sighed, "Sorry, Marian, I need this more than you do."

Leon shook his head. "Just once, I'd like to get sucked into this shit and not end up eyeball-deep in the dead."

Jill started up the ladder, deciding, "In the wrong profession for that, Kennedy. Besides, who would save the girl without you?"

He snorted. He watched her ass climb. It was a nice ass, admittedly. He'd heard the stories, but he hadn't ever seen her in action. She was swift and merciless, but he could see the enormous chip she carried on her shoulder even below her on the ladder. He should know. He had his own.

And like any good cross-bearing redemption hound, eventually, she'd collapse under the weight of the lives she'd taken and failed to save.

He followed her up the ladder anyway, content to finally be in this damn nightmare with someone he could trust at his back. Maybe they could compare notes on all the dead bodies they'd left behind them. He was still climbing the mountain of the lives he'd lost and figuring out there was no summit.

Jill? She was probably at base camp one with little hope of ever going higher.

So, here they were - two people ass deep in undead and monsters, swimming in a sea of regret and redemption, trying like hell to find a way to make right all the people they'd failed. It was a hopeless quest. But it all started one life at a time.

At least in their eternal push for absolution, they could keep the other from dying before they found it.

God knew it was better than swimming in the dead alone.