Chapter Text
It was a dream that he’d had before. Too many times.
Dead eyes fixed on him for a single-minded purpose. Bloodied teeth seeking his throat. Cold bodies surrounding him and coming close. Too close. Close enough that he had to squeeze his finger, firing the weapon in his hand. The sound of gunfire was one that he would never escape, in or out of his nightmares. Reliving it while he tried to rest was just salt on the slow-bleeding wound that had become his life.
Each night when he went to sleep, he prayed that he would be spared the reminders of those hurts he’d endured.
Tonight, it seemed, there was no such mercy to be found.
⧫⧫⧫
It was a dream you’d had before. Too many times.
Blue eyes taking you in through the shadow of desire. Hungry lips against the side of your neck. A warm body pressed close against yours. So close. Close enough that you could wind your fingers through golden hair, feeling the softness of the strands. You earned a groan for your efforts, one that you would give so much to hear again in the waking world. Reliving it in your dreams - and only your dreams - was a fitting punishment, you supposed.
Each night when you went to sleep, you prayed you would be spared the reminders of the hurts you’d caused.
Tonight, it seemed, there was no such mercy to be found.
⧫⧫⧫
It all felt so real, as his heart sped up in his chest. He could feel claws reaching for his back, eager to bring him down. To tear into him. Fear, genuine and heavy, wrapped around him even as he fought. As he tried desperately to keep himself alive in a struggle that could only end one way.
On and on he fought, through waves of twisted limbs and deformed bodies. He was sure that the violence would go on forever, until-
“Leon . . .”
He couldn’t even place the voice, at first. As he turned to see who’d spoken he realized that it didn’t matter. A dozen faces awaited him, all different people from all different walks of life. A man in a bloodied police uniform. A little girl with dark hair. A soldier in training fatigues. Another in dark tactical gear. All of them were faces Leon remembered - that he would never forget. That he recognized now, even if they stared at him with white, lifeless eyes.
They lunged for him, his shot went wide, a body crashed into his, and those bloodied teeth sank into Leon’s throat.
⧫⧫⧫
It all felt so real, as your heart sped up in your chest. Blunted nails dug into your hips, vying for purchase. For pleasure. Desire ran through you as you moved, as your lips met another’s. As you waged a gentle war that ended with you rolling in tangled sheets.
Closer and closer the two of you moved, through waves of little bliss and rising pleasure. You weren’t sure where either of you began or ended, until-
“You fucking coward.”
The words, whispered in your ear, shattered the perfect construction of the memory you’d been in. You pulled away as much as you could with the weight of an entire body above you. You braced yourself to see contempt in blue eyes. The disgust that you’d come to nurture as your own. Instead, you saw no face at all. Just a shape leaning over you, featureless and inescapable.
The form above you shifted, its weight pinned you down, and two hands wrapped around your throat.
⧫⧫⧫
He was going to die.
The bloodied wound in his neck all but promised that much. He was going to die just as they had all died - all of the ruined faces that stared down at him. The ones he couldn’t save. The ones he’d failed. They loomed over him, ready to gorge themselves on the blood of the man who’d failed them.
Too many faces.
Too many lives lost.
Maybe Leon deserved to be among them.
But still, when he felt a hand reach for his own, he took it. Gunfire thundered overhead and blood splattered as Leon was pulled to his feet. He leveled his gun at the shapes before him, firing shot after shot. With the help of whoever had saved him, he fought his ghosts back inch by inch . . . until he turned and was faced down with a final specter that left him hollow.
⧫⧫⧫
It was going to kill you.
The cold hands at your throat all but promised that much. It was going to kill you, just as you’d killed so many yourself. As you struggled to breathe, you saw their faces. Each and every one. Some lives that you'd taken, some that you’d been too late to save. Either way, they all condemned you as they loomed above you. They took shape in place of the figure strangling you, shifting and changing to carry the branding iron of a hate-filled stare.
Too many faces.
Too many lives taken.
You knew you deserved to be among them.
But still, when you felt the weight of a knife in your hands, you used it. Flesh parted overhead and blood splattered as you brought your weapon up. You rammed your blade into the creature’s side, striking blow after blow. With a savage ferocity, you carved into the shape atop you until at last, the body went limp. It slid off of you . . . only for you to still when you saw the final face it had settled on.
⧫⧫⧫
He’d had this dream too many times . . . but you had been mercifully absent from it for so long.
Your eyes - eyes that he’d seen glimmer with a fireside warmth so long ago - were empty as you looked at the wound on his neck. Your hand was steady as you raised your pistol, putting the barrel between the two of you. The rest of the world vanished but for you and him.
“I’m sorry,” you said. As if that would make things better.
⧫⧫⧫
You’d had this dream too many times . . . and it always seemed to end with Leon’s lifeless body before you.
His eyes - eyes that you’d seen light up like shooting stars so many times - were empty as they gazed up at you. Your hand shook as you dropped the knife to your side, its blade wet. The rest of the world seemed suddenly and completely empty.
“I’m sorry,” you sobbed. As if that would make things better.
⧫⧫⧫
He didn’t get the chance to feel forgiveness as the gun went off-
⧫⧫⧫
And you didn’t get the chance to beg for it further as you forced yourself-
⧫⧫⧫
Awake.
Leon’s eyes snapped open and he pushed himself upright in the dark. An unremarkable room greeted him, empty but for the sound of his swearing as the real world returned to him. Mostly bare walls, sweat-soaked sheets that only he occupied these days . . . a gun in the bedside table drawer. Just in case. Taking inventory of his surroundings helped him to focus. To recenter. To remind himself that there was no wound torn into his neck, and that you . . . you were God-knows-where, not pointing a gun at his head.
Even so, it was little comfort to him as he buried his face in his hands.
He hated this feeling. He hated feeling like he was made of glass each time he gasped awake. He hated being overpowered by nightmares that fractured his memories into knives. Seeing the faces of those he’d watched die, being forced to imagine the bloody ways he might join them . . . he would forsake sleep altogether, if he were able.
That wasn’t an option, though. Leon knew there were precious few solutions to his problem.
One of them sat in his bedside drawer.
He tried not to think about that solution.
Instead, he rose to his feet and all but shambled out of his bedroom door.
Sometimes he would go for a ride, when he woke up like this. The motorcycle he kept down in the parking garage was waiting, he knew, for exactly that. For a time, it had been a good distraction for him - feeling the wind rushing past, knowing that, so long as he could keep the thing running, he could go anywhere. He could drive and drive and only stop when he didn’t recognize his surroundings. An escape built on two wheels. Lately, though, the bike hadn’t seen much use outside of sheer utility. Leon tried to tell himself it was because he didn’t want to wake up the neighborhood with the roar of that engine in the middle of the night.
In reality, it was simply because his whiskey was closer.
Down the little hallway and to the right - it was a path he knew all too well since he’d moved into this apartment. It was a good space, all things considered. Tall ceilings, plenty of room - someone who was home more than he was would have had a field day decorating. Someone who had an eye for normalcy, rather than for the spots that would make for good choke points.
Someone who didn’t leave for weeks at a time to kill monsters, and who didn’t wake up almost every night because of the bad dreams they brought.
There was little relief to be found in the burn of alcohol, but Leon drank all the same.
It felt good to swallow it down, to let the liquor drown out the memories that kept him up. Or try to, anyway.
There were few things that brought him comfort, these days. Six years of fighting would do that to a person, he supposed. Six years spent across the world, in places Leon never thought to find himself, fighting things that he’d never thought to see. Things that shouldn’t exist. Things that took lives, no matter how desperately Leon tried to save them. Six years fighting the creations of the Umbrella Corporation, and what did he have to show for it? A network of scars inked across his skin. Nightmares that kept him from ever truly resting. All of that, and it wasn’t his efforts at putting down bioweapons or even his attempts to save lives that had laid Umbrella low.
The evidence he’d helped to gather over the years had helped, but it wasn’t what defeated the company. It was trials. Legal teams. The deathblow wasn’t struck by some hero in a last stand, but rather it was the monetary artery that a judge’s verdict had opened.
Liable of malpractice.
Bankruptcy and bad press had killed what Leon had put his life on the line to fight against.
He might have been amused by it, if it had meant that his part in the fight was over.
He’d held onto hope, when he heard that Umbrella was going under; that he would be able to hang up his gun. To try and pick up the pieces and return to a somewhat normal life.
He should have known better. He’d fought for six years, and he’d continue to fight for as many more as could be squeezed out of him.
And so, he drank.
His government-appointed shrink had tried to give him better coping mechanisms. She’d told him that he should try and fill his time away from the field. His time and his life, both. She’d said that it would make it easier to handle it all.
Find something you like to do.
Try new things.
Meet new people.
Make your home really feel like a home.
He’d even tried to take that advice, at first. God, he’d tried. It didn’t matter how much he worked on his motorcycle, or how many times he tried to talk to someone new at a bar. It never erased the fact that he would wake up screaming, sometimes. Or that he would get a call and then he would drop off the face of the earth for who-knew how long. Or that he would have to suffer the looks of concern when he inevitably returned home with bruises or broken bones.
So, he’d learned to live his life day by day. No plans long-term. No commitments he’d have to worry about being pulled away from.
Because when that call came, there was never any guarantee he would come back.
It was the reason he kept his apartment relatively bare. The reason he’d found more comfort in taking apart and putting back together his motorcycle, his guns, anything that he knew could be fixed. The reason, on those rare occasions when he met a woman with a sweet smile, or a man who made him laugh, he’d long-since stopped giving out his number. Sometimes, even when Claire would have the time to give him a call, he’d let it go to voicemail, and a letter from Sherry had been sitting on his table for days now, unanswered. He felt like shit doing it, but it was easier that way.
It was easier to know that, when the phone rang, it wouldn’t be for anything good. That he would have to prepare himself.
The cruel irony of that was that it sounded so much like you. It sounded like the justification you’d used to push everyone in your life to the sides - to push him out, all those years ago. Maybe that was why he’d dreamed of you tonight.
So long as we care for people, we’ll never stop losing them. You’d told him that, once. He’d tried so hard to fight against those words, to not let them take root.
More and more, it felt like a fight he was losing.
So, Leon sat alone in his empty apartment, pouring himself another glass of whiskey and hoping that it would be enough to offer him some peace.
⧫⧫⧫
It never was.
It would never matter what you did, it would never be enough to overcome the memories that assailed you. That came for you in the night to drag a blade across your throat. You’d tried alcohol. Cigarettes. You’d gone to bars and taken strangers to cheap motels and you’d left them each before morning. When that hadn’t worked, you’d stopped picking bedfellows at bars and started picking fights instead.
In the end, it only ever made you feel worse.
So, that night, across the city from the very man you’d dreamed of, you sat under the water of your shower and tried to wash it all away. The temperature was scalding, heating the metal of the dog tags around your neck and burning where they touched your chest. Sometimes, you thought about turning the temperature up hotter and hotter, until it all but boiled the skin from your body.
Sometimes you thought about a lot of unsavory things.
Ultimately, though, you didn’t act on those thoughts.
This was just a momentary feeling. It would fade just like all the others had.
You had chosen this life. This purpose. You'd delivered the vengeance you could for those that you'd lost. Even if Umbrella’s downfall had left the lines of that path blurred.
You took some solace in knowing that you’d helped bring them down. That most of your deeds, however bloody, had delivered justice.
As for those that you couldn’t justify . . . you would let your dreams dwell on them. That was all you could afford. There were still enemies out there. Still people who profited from Umbrella’s corpse, who continued their butchery.
Life was easiest when you were sent after them. It was then that you had a purpose. A drive. Something to keep those more dangerous thoughts at bay. You hated the people who set you on those bloody paths, but you always found yourself following down them anyway. Even that night, as you eventually emerged from the shower to haunt your living space once more, you found yourself longing for a call. For a mission. Anything to keep your mind and body occupied, no matter how dangerous. If you had a mission, you had a reason to keep going. A reason to let yourself forget, if only for a handful of moments, the feeling of a warm body pressed against your own. Or the look in a person’s eyes as they realized you would be the death of them. Or the feeling of your own blood leaking out of you, spilling into the snow underneath you. A mission would keep all of that at bay, for a time.
And if that mission proved to be your last?
Then so be it.
So, you waited for that call. For the next mission. There was one good thing about the sort of life that you were living: you never had to wait for long.
⧫⧫⧫
The sound of the phone ringing made Leon close his eyes. He’d learned long ago that the call could come at any time. Anywhere. The ones that came in the dead of night were always the worst.
If it couldn’t wait until morning, then it usually meant that things were completely and irrevocably fucked.
He took a moment to prepare himself - to organize the thoughts that had only just begun to untangle. He deserved at least that much. He was only one glass in - not nearly enough to dull the sickness his dreams brought about. Just as well. The peace of whiskey was always short-lived anyway. He never put much stock in the meaning of dreams, but he could only hope that the one he’d just suffered didn’t give him reason to start.
So, with a deep breath and a second more to listen to the call, Leon finally found it in himself to rise and answer it.