Chapter Text
She’s standing in a dark room, and Derek Simmons is there, and Leon Kennedy is laying crumpled at his feet.
Implicitly, inextricably, her eyes go to Leon and lock there, unable to move anywhere else. He’s facing away from her, body twisted into a fractured parody of the fetal position. It’s how he sleeps, but he’s not sleeping now. No, he’s twisted into this position as if dumped down from some height. His ash brown hair covers his face. He is not breathing.
And Ada tells herself not to panic because Simmons has tricked her before, and she knows that that’s what he wants her to do. Derek Simmons wants nothing more than for her to crumble, for her to cry, to beg. She will not give it to him. But when she finally tears her gaze from Leon and back to him, he’s fixed her with such a look of mock sympathy that she knows he knows, knows he can hear her thoughts, knows he sees her pulse beating against her temples. And she hates him so much in that moment that it feels like a hot flash, like a million stage lights hitting her all at once, like she’ll burst into flames with how angry she is.
Then Simmons raises his hands, as if to show they’re devoid of weapons, and steps backward. He walks until his boots hit the back wall, squeaking slightly. There’s fifteen feet or so between him and Leon’s unmoving form now. Ada is still. Ada knows Simmons wants her to go to Leon, and she hates him even more for it, but she wants to more than she wants her next breath. The stand off lasts about three seconds, and then she makes her break, landing on her knees by Leon’s side. She touches his arm. He rolls over.
Leon has a distinct scent. It’s human and musky, a little sweet. A little like oak wood. Leon smell; warm and comfortable. Ada breaths in. She does not trust herself to move her hands from her knees. Her jaw is locked in place. She does not allow a single muscle in her face to move, not to twitch or to blink. Leon smells cold. Wrong. This, more so than the clay-like set to his skin, the blue settling into the corners of his mouth, the glassy vacancy to his pretty grey eyes, allows her to take in the fact of the situation. Leon Scott Kennedy is dead, and she is sitting by his corpse.
A nauseating wave of adrenaline travels, tingling, from the top of Ada’s head to the tip of her toes. She feels like she’s sinking into the floor. She does not allow her face to move. She controls her breathing. Far off, Ada can hear buzzing in her ears. The slight upturn to Leon’s nose, for some reason, is the sole thing she can seem to focus on. The way it curves over the bump of his nose bridge, coming up back to a flat tip. It’s always been her favorite of his features, though his eyes are so pretty as well. She’s always wanted to kiss the tip of his nose, and never indulged. The feeling hits her again with the horrible, toxic weight of an overripe indulgence.
“He called out for you.” Ada looks up slowly. Simmon’s face is almost apologetic. Apologetic. It’s so insulting that it’s almost unbelievable. “Before it ended. Wanted me to … well, I suppose we’ll never know now.” Ada can only stare. She steels herself as a wave of tremors hit her. This man will not see her shake, will not see her cry. Her eyes feel too wide, feel as though they must be bulging from her skull. She looks back down. Leon’s face is so perfectly still. Ada reached out instinctively to brush a strand of hair off his cheek, overthinks it, places her hand back on her leg. She had, over and over, told herself that she wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t go through the mourning throughs of a widow that she isn’t and has never been. People died, and Leon was a person, so he would die. Still, still, something she was caging away screamed insistently that something was wrong, that Leon should breathe, should speak, should look at her. Part your pretty lips and breath, she thought desperately. Stupidly. She’s so stupid. Her eyes wandered lower, stop at his throat. Lovely, slim throat. She loves his neck, loves planting kisses there, loves feeling him shiver when she whispers into it. A pair of black handprints are wrapped around Leon’s lovely throat now. Bruises. She slowly looks up again.
Simmons is watching her intently, that stupid expression still on his face. “You choked him?” She asks simply. Something should follow, she thinks, far off, some quip that is birthed in her throat but dies there as a quiet gust of air. Didn’t think that was your style, Derek. What happened to all your lackeys? Wouldn’t a bullet have been faster? Simmons is still, as though not quite knowing how to respond, before sighing.
“He was in my way.” God, how his voice grates. Ada is not furious, not angry, not sad. She is burning to death from the sheer size of the loathing that’s taken a hold of her. It is going to eclipse her. It is going to destroy her. Simmons smiles, he smiles, and takes a tentative step forward. “My way to you.”
Ada does not break. She does not snap. She does not shatter into pieces.
Ada combusts.
She’s across the room before she has the thought to move. Simmon’s eyes barely have time to widen before she’s slamming him into the ground. The crack of his skull on stone is sweet. Utterly gratifying. She grabs ahold of his lapels, his stupid fucking lapels, and slams him down again, again, again. A third time, a fourth time, until there’s red flying through the air. All semblance of training in her muscle memory is gone. Her hands go to his face, clawing, tearing. He turns his head sharply to each side, but Ada snatches his cheeks in each hand and slams him into the ground again . The crack this time is a wet crunch and Simmon’s mouth opens to cry out. Ada barely hears it. She can’t hear anything but blood rushing through her skull. Her thumbs find sockets and plunge into them; Simmon’s eyes burst apart in two wet pops and he shrieks. Far off, Ada can hear herself chanting something, a low, primordial growl crescendoing to a shriek as she forces her thumbs deeper and deeper into his skull.
“ Son of a bitch, you son of a bitch, I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll- ” Simmons thrashes. Ada is unperturbed, bringing a fist back and jackhammering it into his nose. “ You stupid motherfucker, you stupid ugly FUCK! ” She can’t stop. She doesn’t want to stop. Simmons has ceased struggling. He twitches oddly under her. His bones shatter. His cartilage reduces to a formless sludge. Ada keeps hitting him. She wants to turn his head to strawberry jam, to reduce his body to ash under the heat of her fury, to bring him back to life and kill him again a thousand times, a million times, until the sun burns out and the stars fall to dust. She is a black hole of fury and grief and she pounds Simmon’s head into the floor. All consuming.
An odd wave of nausea hits Ada as she pulls her hand back, and she grinds to a halt. The room is dark, and a fine pink mist now ghosts the air. She blinks. When did she start crying? Where am I? Ada doesn’t know how she got here. Her knuckles are split in a dozen places. Her forearms are slick and shiny with bright red blood.
Then, as she watches, the blood begins to lift and dissolve. She blinks once, then again. It’s finally happened; she’s lost it. But no -sinking familiarity hits her- she’s seen this happen before. Fuck. I'm in a training simulation. All around her, the walls begin to flip, like game tiles. Leon’s body dissolves slowly. She scrambles toward it, some latent instinct wanting to hold him one last time, but he is gone by the time she gets there. It wasn’t real. Just a training simulation. It’s not 2012, and Simmons was already dead. She is kneeling in an empty room, her hands groping around the ground for nothing. Who did this to her? Like a caged animal, Ada’s eyes dart about. The rage evoked in her is still there, still burning hot in her gut. Whoever did this to her is going to pay. The new room, the real room, is white and shiny. There’s a small viewing window in the far corner. On the other side there’s-
There’s-
She locks gazes with Leon and a horrible choking sound leaves her lips unbidden. He’s wide-eyed, staring. He just saw all of that. Ada’s distinctly aware, all of a sudden, that she has not stopped crying. Her mouth opens and closes. She’s never lost it that badly before. And Leon just saw all of it. Pain splits her skull; God, how her head hurts. What is happening?
Ada sways. Whatever drug they gave her to make that seem real is hitting her all at once. She keeps her eyes on Leon, hoping her expression, for once, conveys what she’s thinking. Jackass. Traitor. See what I would do for you, you fucking jerk? He only stares back. Leon, always wearing a transparent brave face over his obvious feeling, is utterly unreadable to her in this moment. Over the intercom system, a series of commands issues that the simulation is over. Then Leon turns to speak to someone else, someone Ada can’t see out the window. She hears the low murmur of his voice over the intercom.
“See how much she loves you?” whoever it is says.
Ada sways again, and this time, she falls. She is out before she hits the ground.