Work Text:
Jack Krauser had watched from the parapets as the slow moving flames of the procession down in the courtyard proceeded.
The leader of the cult, Lord Saddler, flanked by his crimson and black robed cultists, heading the sway. All in preparation for sending the infected Graham girl back to her none-the-wiser father back in the States.
Once upon a time, Jack might’ve felt that patriotic urge to declare himself the break-out hero of the final act. Step in and put a bullet in the girl’s head before she had a chance to screw up the rest of the world with Saddler’s insane scheme. But now he felt nothing in his heart but the dull beat of it, and the contemplation that at the very least he had been given a dominant strain of the plaga. Besides, the minute his employer got hold of the amber, it wouldn’t matter whether the Graham girl lived or died. None of it mattered now to Jack.
His eyes were settled on one of the cultists up at the front of the procession, just a little behind Saddler. Dressed in deep, rusting red, like the drying of blood. Hood up. And still the mercenary knew precisely what the cultist’s hair colour was. His eyes, before the parasite took command. And what voice he’d whisper his prayers tonight in.
The minute Wesker called him to take his leave he would do so without hesitation. But there was still some personal closure he had to pursue, before he could leave this chapter of his lifetime far behind him.
He found him later that night in one of the chapels. Gloriously flickering with candlelight and foggy with strong incense, if only to mask the stench of dead animal slung up on the wall above the altar. The castle was always silent, and even the thinning red carpet leading down the aisle toward the altar did little to mask his heavy footfall and the clink of his gear.
The figure at the altar must’ve heard his approach, and lifted his head from where he had been bent muttering away to himself. And when he turned, the pale face peering out from beneath his hood was that same one Jack had kept in a little photograph in his wallet ever since their last fateful parting.
“Not sure if the religious schtick is your calling, Rookie,” he called to him, voice low and crass as ever. He stood before him, taller and wider and stronger, and looked down into Leon’s blank face with a strange blend of contempt and biting disappointment. Jack flicked the hood from his head, to witness the pale blonde hair glimmer like threaded gold in the candlelight. “Thought I trained you better than to follow religious nuts.”
Again, Leon stared at him, blank and uncertain. Not quite angry, not quite sad. Poised and too pretty for a government dog. It was no wonder he had been sent of all people to save the President’s daughter. What a mistake that had been.
“You listening to me?” Jack barked, giving Leon a rough shove and forcing the man to stumble back and fall on the steps up to the altar. He watched as Leon got up to his feet again, only to return to that blank, disquieting stare.
“Clearly you’re getting too big for your boots, Rookie,” he growled, “who do you think you are, ignoring me, when you’re the kid who failed the whole of the U-S-fuckin’-A.”
He unsheathed his combat knife and grabbed a fistful of Leon’s hair. The man winced with a small gasp, but didn’t struggle, even as Krauser lifted him up almost onto his tip-toes, and brought the serrated edge of his blade to his pretty little throat. Leon’s eyes, soft and soulless, gazed back at him. Uncannily like the eyes of the castle’s taxidermy. Only reflecting Krauser amidst the candlelight.
“You get one little parasite and you lose all my hard work, huh?” Krauser murmured, voice dripping in his visceral disappointment. “You’re a damn embarrassment, Kennedy, you never did take me seriously enough. It’s your own damn fault you’re in such a fucked position now.”
He slid the blade lightly down Leon’s throat, a tiny hairline cut appearing and oozing out a single drop of blood, black in the dim light.
“What’re you gonna do when I’m gone, huh, Rookie?” Jack breathed, “gonna rot here forever as Saddler’s little fuckin’ American doll? Or are you just waiting until I’m outta the picture before you make your move?” He brought the knife to the neckline of the robe, and halted. “I could even take you with me, Rookie, if you begged nicely. I'll bet my employer would love to tear you apart.”
Leon hesitantly parted his lips, and muttered something. Voice coarse and thin.
Jack frowned, and leaned in closer. “What’d you say, kid?”
Leon repeated, weakly; “g-gloria las plaga.”
Jack’s face melded into utter disgust and he yanked Leon up again by the hair. “Ah, yeah,” he grunted, “they gave you the submissive plaga, huh.”
He contemplated this for a moment, before slicing down through Leon’s robes and letting them slip from his shoulders to pool at his feet. The mercenary stepped back, and looked upon the man he had once trained to utter perfection. His Kennedy, pale and slim in the candlelight. Demure in his posture, hands and feet together, looking straight ahead with his expressionless and beautiful face.
He felt again that curling spike of revulsion for the boy. How anyone so weak could’ve possibly become so reviled by the same government that ousted him for his sacrifice, even despite his loyalty. Revulsion too, that Leon now stared at him as if he’d never seen him before in his life. And hated him all the same.
Moving in closer again, he could see the black veins in Leon’s throat, arms, thighs. And he brought his knife to the boy’s lips and pushed it into the lower. Blood drooled down his chin, and ran down the centre of his chest – Krauser chasing it idly with the tip of his blade as he decided what he’d do next.
“You finally lost, Rookie, how does it feel?” He asked, tipping Leon’s face to the side with his blade and dragging it along the pale skin ever so lightly, just to burst the upper layer and fill the serrations of the steel with blood, which he brought then to his scarred lips. Just to dab it upon them, and feel Leon’s pain dry to his skin. And when Leon did not even hiss from the pain, Krauser felt the frustration rise again.
What good was it trying to bully a guy who wouldn’t even look him in the eye.
“Look at me!” He barked, his voice echoing about the empty chapel. And when Leon met his gaze again, he grabbed him by the throat and squeezed, heart pulsing quick and hard in his ears and in his veins. “Say my name, Kennedy,” he spat, “don’t you fuckin’ pretend I’m nobody.”
Leon parted his lips, and choked out softly as the bigger man’s fingers crushed his windpipe. He did not raise his hands to defend himself.
Krauser threw him down again onto the steps, and kicked him hard in the gut. Leon wheezed, rolling over to protect his belly as the mercenary kicked him again between the shoulders, on his back and hips, before getting down behind him and tugging his hair back hard and bringing the blade back to his neck.
He was breathing heavy, angry that Leon was going so far to forget him.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten I was the one who even got you this far,” he growled, pushing the blade into Leon’s neck until the man made a soft sound of dissent in his throat. He wrenched the boy over onto his back, and pinned him down with his knees on his thighs, and drew the blade to Leon’s heart, digging into his flesh a little just to see the pale face wince again in pain.
“You really gonna let me gut you alive, Kennedy?” He was pulling the blade down now, splitting the flesh a millimetre deep, enough for blackish blood to spill down his stomach and drip from his hips to the stone of the steps. “After all you did to ruin my fucking life, you’re not even going to fight back?”
Leon’s eyes vaguely left Jack’s face, and he stared up at the tall ceiling of the chapel. Palms beside his head. Muttering the same cultic chants as he had been when Krauser first entered the chapel. Even with his belly almost split open and a knife larger than his cock sitting upon his pubic bone. Even with Jack Krauser, more muscle than man, bearing down upon him in all his scarred fury.
“LOOK AT ME!” Jack barked again, tugging Leon up to his feet and punching him hard in the face before Leon had a chance to straighten. The man stumbled, clutching his cheek, before Krauser hit him again. Pummelling him as hard as he had back when they had trained before half a decade ago. Back when Leon had been all careful grins and snide comments, back when he’d had the guts to call Major Krauser an ‘asshole’ to his face. “Don’t look away,” he spat, holding Leon’s head and driving his fist so hard into his stomach the boy spat up the cult’s communion wine, and it dripped down his body and mingled with his black blood.
He beat him over and over, until Leon was crumpled on the top step and his skin flowered with bruises as black as his blood all over.
Krauser stood over him, starving for air, knuckles aching from laying in so hard on his ex-trainee. He felt sick with spite for Leon to keep up his charade for so long now. First off taking the humiliation of losing to a bunch of losers like Saddler’s cult. That he hadn’t been able to resist the parasite within him, allowed it to consume him and much of his free will. But could Jack even find it within himself to admit how sick with hurt he felt. To realise then as Leon coughed up blood and wine onto the step, shaking, that this was no longer that same man he’d trained? To think the last remnant of his past had been snuffed out, the last remnant of his name before he’d become only the hand to a bioterrorist.
The large man spat out his fury and stepped his heavy tactical boot down on Leon’s cock. Crushing it to his pelvis. And as he did so, drew his magnum and trained it to the younger man’s heart.
“Say my fucking name, Leon, use it to save your pathetic little life.”
Leon looked up at him. And as he opened his lips, Krauser felt a sudden leap of nervous anticipation in his gut. He had to hear it. If Leon did not say his name now, he might cease to exist. And all the experimental torture he had gone through since Javier would account for nothing but to mark him as a useless expendable who ought to have died in the line of his duty. Rather than waste away, a shell of his former self. A man driven only by his spite for this one man before him now.
But Leon never did form a word, as only a soft whimper emerged from his lips.
Krauser’s scarred face formed a deep frown, and he lowered his gun a little. And all of a sudden he understood. Leon wasn’t playing some psychological long-game, the son-of-a-bitch really did have no idea who he was.
He moved his boot slightly, and another whimper of pain passed from Leon’s bloody lips.
Jack lifted his boot and saw to his grim surprise that Leon had dared to stiffen under the well-worn leather of his shoe. And his cock lay now on his belly, excited by something.
“I always knew you were a faggot,” the larger man muttered, holstering his gun and stepping down on Leon’s cock again, rolling it with the sole of his boot with just enough pressure to force the reaction from Leon. His whimpers and soft groans of agony, his fingers twitching, the brief screwing-up of his soft eyes. “But really, Kennedy,” he mocked, “getting hard from getting the shit beaten outta you? Fuckin’ embarrassing. No fucking wonder you failed.”
Leon’s pretty little sounds and his inability to fight back as Krauser rubbed his cock painfully under his boot had the large man stir in his own creeping interest. If a regular beating and intimidation wasn’t enough to force Kennedy to remember him, perhaps another method might work wonders.
“Hnh…” Leon turned his face away, eyes closed and cheeks flush as at last he tremblingly raised his hands to try and push the boot away from his cock. But the sight of his slender fingers on the supple, black leather had Krauser snap into action again. He pulled his boot away, and sneered at the appearance of sticky precum as he did so.
“Get up,” he spat, dragging Leon up by the arm and pushing the smaller man up against the altar. He held him there as he undid his belt, cursing and breathing heavy all the while, as Leon apparently seemed unaware of what was coming next. “I’m not gonna fuck you, I’m no fuckin’ faggot like you,” the older man growled, tugging out his cock that had gotten hard from the pathetic display of Leon Kennedy. He slotted it between the younger’s thighs, and felt Leon freeze as if he finally understood.
And yet when he moved to begin frotting between them, Leon gave a little moan and pressed his thighs tighter together, eager to receive such a large and warm offering from a dominant plaga. Jack could’ve vomited at the very consideration, but he spat again at his disgust, gripping Leon tight by the hair and dragging his head back to force him to look him in the eye as he fucked his pretty thighs in sharp, rough thrusts. Enough to wear down the soft skin and grind up against the boy’s own genitals.
He'd have been lying to say he’d never once thought of Kennedy in such a capacity before. In his line of work there were so few women, and more than enough nights sharing a tent with the slim man, watching him in the showers, or back when he’d be picked on for his pretty face in bootcamp. That nauseating interest, one that turned his stomach. The very idea a man like Leon could bring about such vile thoughts in Krauser’s strict, disciplinarian head, was a crime in itself.
“You know who I am now, Rookie?” He spat, winding his fingers in so tight he’d begun to pull strands of gold loose from Leon’s scalp. But the pale body pulled taut to his did not resist him, and Leon’s face looked up at him in only a little pain as he breathed out his whimpers. “Don’t you dare forget me, after everything you fuckin’ did to me.” Krauser snarled, gripping Leon’s hip so hard it must’ve begun to ache, pounding between Leon’s thighs as the smaller man was held to him, and all he saw in his eyes was his own sad reflection. A fragment of a man defined and dismissed by all he had ever been.
“Leon,” he said his name before he could help it. Soft, almost scratchy, clutching the smaller man so tight to him it was as if their flesh had become one in that moment. And he cursed and grunted as he came, and watched with self-disgust at the sight of his semen spilling down the altar, and spreading itself up against Leon’s cock and balls. Looking elegant and artful resting atop the slowly softening thickness of his own brute-like cock.
He didn’t move. He couldn’t. Grunting for air and counting the thin veins visible on Leon’s face, how they crept into his eyeballs like infectious roots.
He let him go once his cock fully softened, and took a step back.
Leon turned to face him, standing lithe and strong even flowered in bruises and smeared now in his own blood and Jack’s semen between his thighs. His cock still stiff and hanging in the cold chapel air. And still his face was blank, as if Leon Kennedy had been gone now for a while.
Jack Krauser felt his pulse sluggish in his veins. Felt the surge of bubbling anger to clench his fists and drive his knuckles into the pretty-boy’s jawline and knock his teeth from his skull, and snap every bone in his body. And he felt the overwhelming desire to scream into his face, and make clear to somebody who might’ve vaguely understood what it meant to be forgotten and unwanted. After all he had sacrificed, after all the abuse he had done to his body, and all his determination to serve without needing a medal for participation. To have lost it all in one moment of weakness to the plea of this man, and offer him up that one shred of his heart the government had not owned.
And when Leon had been consumed by the plaga, it had eaten that up too. And Jack Krauser was nothing, and nobody, and all he had imprinted upon Leon in some form of brutal affinity had failed.
“You’re still in there, Leon,” he muttered, dark and grim. “I know you are.” He stepped in closer again, and put his hands on Leon’s shoulders. They dwarfed them with their size, scarred and so rough from years of use he had no fingerprint left to leave behind on Leon’s smooth skin. “Just say my goddamn name,” his grip tightened, “and I’ll let you rot away here in peace, if that’s really what you fuckin’ want now.”
Leon’s split lips dripped, and Krauser felt the sudden insane urge then to kiss him. And suck away the blood, and taste that man he’d been closest to above all others – even if it had taken him so long to realise it. Instead he raised his hand and smacked him hard, forcing a soft grunt of pain from the smaller man.
“Stop that,” he hissed, “that’s never what we were, Kennedy, so don’t you try and confuse me now.” He shook him, hard. “My name, Leon, say my fucking name.” He was snarling his words, desperate and raw, shaking the boy as if it’d roll his brain back into place, and he’d find himself lost in those bright eyes he’d always hated for being filled with such sly energy. It struck him now it was too late to ever see it again – and the longer he looked at Leon’s mannequinesque face and body, the more he was overcome with bitter grief.
“Pull yourself together, Rookie,” he spat into his face, “I won’t let you end things like this. I won’t… I won’t let you let me disappear.” He shook Leon hard again, before stilling and looking at his sad reflection once again in the Rookie’s eyes.
And with a moan of visceral disgust at himself, he fell to his knees. He clasped Leon’s hips, and pushed his forehead to the boy’s stomach. He did not care about his genitals or the grotesque film of human fluids drying upon him. His beret tipped to the floor. And he clutched onto the only shard of mirror he had left.
He flinched as he felt cold, slim fingers on his scalp, threading through his hair. And when he looked up, Leon was staring down at him, and at last he spoke.
“Jack.” And he smiled, faintly, his eyes dead buttons sewn into his skin.
Jack stared up at him, his jaw falling open. Try as he might, it was hard to ignore the burning stream dripping from his eyes and down his face as realisation set in. That the voice that parroted Leon Kennedy was the same as making a corpse breathe by blowing through its airways. And the boy he had trained into a man, one whom he had seen within himself, and saw himself within, and wanted to be above all others, was dead and gone. And all he had left now was this pretty shell that no longer knew Jack Krauser as anything more than a four-letter-word.
But he could not move for a great while. Kneeling on those steps as Leon’s puppeteered body stroked his head as he racked in guttural sobs for himself, and for all he had failed to preserve, and clutched onto it until it seemed there was nothing left to hold.
At last the large man peeled himself away, and turned to leave the chapel. There was no reason left to stay to mock or play, when Leon was as good as gone. But as he almost reached the arch, he heard the soft thud of feet on carpet, and turned to see the lithe man stood, presenting the beret he’d forgotten on the step.
Jack looked at it, then at the mess he’d made of Saddler’s pet. Leon wasn’t smiling anymore, but there was a strange frown tilting his brow, as though something inside him was fighting to break out, that had perhaps grasped some slim memory of the scarred blonde who had violated him and wept at his feet within one breath.
He took the beret, and inspected it, before placing it on Leon’s head.
“Keep it,” he grunted, “I got no need for it anymore.”
And he turned, and walked into the shadows of the castle. And knew he was nothing left.