Work Text:
2010.
He catches sight of Leon around the street enough times that Chris is fairly certain he’s not hallucinating him. He had considered it, at first, since his mind’s so focused on Leon’s continued survival and finding his whereabouts—it could just be Chris’s wishful thinking manifesting images of Leon into reality.
But. Well. If that were all, he figures his imagination would at least give Leon better clothes, a less starved appearance, less of the look of someone sure he’s being hunted. So that means that Leon is here, in New York, hanging around Chris’s street for some reason Chris hasn’t been able to fathom just yet. He hopes it’s because of him. He hopes it’s because Leon remembers him on some level, knows he’s safe to come to. He hopes, anyway.
The first time he puts out food and clothes and a couple pulpy crime novels on the fire escape, he leaves a note on top of the clothes: If you need anything else, just ask. I can’t guarantee I can find it, but I’ll do everything I can. Then he leaves his window unlatched, an open invitation for Leon to come inside whenever he wants to.
Leon doesn’t pick any of it up, so Chris takes the food and the books and the clothes back in the next day so the neighborhood’s stray cats don’t descend on his fire escape in droves. He puts out a new dish in the evening, and the same old books and clothes, but kept in a basket to keep them safe from the weather. The note he sticks to the side of the basket, where Leon can see.
It takes three days, but eventually he comes back from an inter-company meeting with TerraSave’s staff and the BSAA to see that the basket is empty. The dish he put out has been picked mostly clean, with only traces of what used to be chicken pot pie with mac and cheese remaining. There’s no response to his note.
He puts out another basket, with clothes and a literary novel about a woman’s first months living in the city after her divorce. He puts a hearty bowl of beef and potatoes stew out, and attaches the same note again to the basket. Then he goes back to sleep.
When he next wakes up, the stew’s gone, and there’s a response scribbled onto the end of his note, the handwriting spiky and shaky: I need you to lock your fucking windows. That’s it. That’s all.
But Chris collapses to his knees holding the note, something in his heart finally easing after so, so long spent all tensed up, wound up like a crossbow string.
--
Redfield locks his windows. Good.
Redfield leaves a key out in the next basket. That’s—what the fuck is wrong with you, Redfield. Leon—that’s your name, they can’t take it from you anymore—very nearly breaks the window just to yell at him for the utter stupidity of the move, because surely he’s noticed there’s other people besides Leon spying on him, right? Right?
Well, there used to be other people, anyway. Most of them are fish food in the Hudson River now, and Leon’s taken their equipment and their clothes and their money. It’s not like they’re using it now, after all.
The dish on top of the basket today is some sort of gingery chicken soup with wedges of papaya and little green leaves scattered throughout. His stomach growls when he unwraps the plastic around it, and in a little less than fifteen minutes, all that’s left of it is some chicken bones. It’s warm and filling and comforting, and he carefully wraps the bowl back up in plastic and puts it to the side. Then he opens the basket and starts unpacking it.
Clothes, again. No tactical gear, just—soft cotton and wool, fleece and flannels, nothing that could serve him well in a fight. But he digs out the sweaters and runs his hands over them, marveling over how soft they are, how well-loved. There’s a black leather jacket with a pattern of red roses and a lyric on the back: just one more day forever.
That, he shrugs on. It’s a little big, but he imagines Redfield’s going off the measurements of a healthier man.
There’s also two books sitting on a blanket underneath. Leon picks them both up, checks the insides for any coded messages or something, and comes up with absolutely nothing. They’re just—books. One’s apparently about the private lives of reporters at a failing newspaper in Rome, the other’s a collection of short stories from someone named Le Guin. There’s no real significance to either of them, other than Redfield is apparently just off-loading excess books on him.
He puts them both carefully away, to join the growing stack of books near his go-bag. He’ll read them closer once he’s done with Winter Kills—he’s almost halfway through with that one and the protagonist is finally making some headway in the case of who actually killed his brother the president. There’s no code there as of yet, but that’s fine, there’s still a lot of pages left.
The blanket is soft to the touch, so soft it’s like he’s touching a cloud, with a pattern around the border that looks hand-sewn. He unfurls it, and it looks so pretty, feels so luxurious, that he almost tosses it out the window back to Redfield, because what the fuck. You don’t give something like him a blanket this expensive, it’s—it’s a waste of money and resources better spent elsewhere. He doesn’t need it. It looks out of place here, in this abandoned, dingy little apartment, where there are holes in the walls exposing the pipes and the floors are littered with the debris of other people’s lives, used needles and candy wrappers and other things.
He lies down, resting his head on his go-bag, and experimentally pulls the blanket up over himself.
Oh.
God, this feels good. He curls up underneath it, warmer now than he was before. It’s cold outside, the winter hanging stubbornly on in the earliest months of the year, refusing to cede ground just yet. He can’t throw this blanket away just yet. It’s still useful, and it’s better than the threadbare blanket he stole from a man now wearing concrete shoes in the Hudson.
He shuts his eyes, just for a moment, just to rest them.
When next he wakes, it’s long past nightfall. He scrambles to the window and puts his binoculars up, for a moment panicking when he doesn’t see Redfield, but then—oh, there he is. And he’s wearing a shirt with a faded university logo on it while he’s beating together some kind of mixture in a bowl, shoulder up and pinning his phone to his ear while he talks.
Leon scrambles back to the radio and flicks it on, just in time to catch Redfield saying, “—course I’ll go see the preview with you, Jill, but I gotta say, this sounds like it’ll be an impressive flop.”
The woman, Jill, says something that makes Redfield snort out a laugh. “No one wants a musical about Andrew Jackson, duh,” he says. “How do you make the guy sound like not a piece of shit?” He pauses, then says, “A rock musical? About Andrew Jackson? This makes it out of previews, I’ll be shocked.”
Leon leans against the wall, grabbing for one of the laptops he’d stolen and booting it up to search for the musical he’s talking about. Okay, it’s at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. That’s a little less than an hour if he takes the N train. Redfield will likely get picked up in a car if he’s going with Jill Valentine, she apparently prefers a car to taking the subway on account of all the things that can go horribly wrong on a train car.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Redfield’s saying now. “This Saturday then? Yeah, should be free and clear unless some dumbshit decides it’s a great time to unleash a virus strain on some unsuspecting population.” He pauses. “Hm? Oh, I’m making cookies. Found the recipe on the Internet, figured I’d try it.”
Cookies? Is Leon going to have a dish full of cookies in the next basket? Jesus.
“Some of it is,” Redfield says. “Yes, Jill, the rest is for you. I’ll be sure to bring them next time we meet. Mm-hmm.” His eyes flick towards where Leon’s planted a bug on the windowsill, and he says, “Not yet, no. But—he’s got a key, he knows he’s welcome to come in whenever. All I can do now is let him decide if he wants to. I just—I want him to be okay, Jill. I want him to know he doesn’t need to do anything he doesn’t want to. That’s all.”
Leon pushes a hand through his hair, his eyes stinging at the corners. He swipes at his eyes and his fingers come away wet with tears.
“See you on Saturday, Jill,” says Redfield, turning away from the windowsill.
Leon breathes out, slowly, and flicks the radio’s power switch down to the OFF position. Then he pulls his knees up to his chest and just breathes—in, then out. In, then out. In, then out. Who is he to Redfield? Why would the man be so concerned for him? Why would anyone? He keeps leaving food out for him and he clearly wants him inside, clearly knows the location of at least one bug, but he’s not—he hasn’t blown Leon’s location to demand he come in from the cold, or to arrest him for working with bioterrorists. All Redfield’s doing is leaving out food and clothes and books and little luxuries for Leon to pick up.
It doesn’t make sense. You don’t—You don’t do that for a weapon, and you don’t do that for someone you’re planning to arrest. You do that if—if you care about someone, and Redfield cares about him.
Why?
--
“That—could’ve used some improvements,” Jill says, bundled up in a grey winter coat and sipping from a Coke as she and Chris step back outside into the cold New York night. They’d hung back to let the crowds get out first, and now they’re the last ones out, Cokes in hand and scarves wound around their necks to keep the chill off them.
“It was shit,” says Chris, scrolling through his text messages. It’s just Claire and Carlos and Piers, and quick glances at each of their messages tell him there’s nothing urgent that needs him to book a flight to Europe on short notice. “I don’t know how they’ll make it work once they’re out of previews.”
“You don’t know, maybe they will,” says Jill.
“I’ll believe you can make a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton before I’ll believe these people can make an Andrew Jackson musical work,” says Chris. He glances up, then catches sight of dirty blonde hair casually passing him by on the street.
It’s Jill who says, “Is that who I think it is?”
Sure enough, the guy falters in his step, then speeds up.
Jill looks up, and says, “Should we go after him?”
Chris shakes his head, and says, “No, just…let him be. He’s not you, he wouldn’t appreciate being chased down.”
Jill nods. “You know I could track him down, right?” she asks. “I got very good at that, over the past few years. He might be a ghost, but…” She lets her voice trail off, but he gets it—if you want to hunt down a ghost, you send someone who used to be one, who knows the tricks and knows how to get around them.
“No,” Chris says. “No. He’ll come if and when he wants to.” He turns away again, though it kills him to do so, and says, “You wanna do this again next week? My treat. We’ll watch the Lizzie Borden musical.”
“You’re shitting me,” says Jill, delighted, falling in step beside him, the way they used to back when they were just a couple kids fresh out of their teens, before Spencer Mansion happened to them. “They did a musical about Lizzie Borden? Really?”
“Yeah, far as I know it’s a work in progress,” says Chris, “but if you liked this crap-ass musical you’ll like that one much better.”
Jill knocks her knuckles against Chris’s shoulder in response, says, “You be quiet and give these people a shot. Maybe once they actually premiere it’ll at least be watchable.”
--
It’s 3:16 AM when Leon hears someone knocking on the door to his apartment hideout. He comes awake fast, yanking a knife from under his pillow and scrambling to his feet. Fuck, fuck, fuck, has someone found him? Shit—
“It’s me,” says Jill Valentine on the other side of the door, “it’s Jill. Don’t worry, I’m alone, Chris doesn’t know where you are.” She pauses, then says, wryly, “But he suspects. Those bugs you planted don’t work over long distances.”
Leon doesn’t respond, instead flipping the knife into a ready position and eyeing his go-bag, then the things scattered around the little apartment. With a pang, he realizes he’s not quite ready to abandon this place, not even now that Valentine seems to know he’s here.
“Open the door, Leon,” Valentine says, with a sigh. “I’m not here to fight. We both know it wouldn’t turn out well for either of us, and especially not for Chris. Just—let me in.” There’s a pause. “You realize I can let myself in, right?”
Leon presses himself against the wall, then opens the door just a crack. Valentine stands there, carrying a grease-stained paper bag and still wearing the woolen coat from earlier, and raises an eyebrow at him. “Well?” she says. “I bring burgers. Let me in.”
Leon opens the door the rest of the way, and Valentine steps inside and hands him the paper bag. He catches the glint of a knife concealed in her belt, but she hasn’t gone for it and indeed only gives him the briefest nod before she comes to a stop in the middle of the room. She circles around with a small frown on her face, before she turns to Leon and says, “How long have you been staying here?”
“A couple of months,” Leon admits, his voice hoarse, rusty from disuse. Less so now, though. “Cleared out everyone else spying on Redfield. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Valentine looks freaked out by the idea, and surveys the room once again. “Is that where all this equipment came from?” she asks. “I was wondering what you were doing with such a wild variety of tech. And what do you mean everyone else?” She jerks a thumb to Redfield’s apartment, and says, “There’s a reason why Chris’s apartment is classified all the way to the top.”
“Someone at the top’s leaking the location, then,” says Leon. “You should do something about that.”
“Well, clearly,” Valentine mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “You actually live here?”
Leon nods.
“There’s a homeless shelter—” she starts.
“They’ll find me,” he cuts in. “If I go to a homeless shelter. They’ll find me and everyone—anyone else who gets in the way is dead, and I—don’t want that to happen.” He rubs one hand over a forearm, and says, trying it on for size, “I don’t want that to happen. And Redfield’s security is total shit.”
Valentine says, deadpan, “Well, gee, I wonder why. He’s usually better at it.”
“I don’t believe you,” Leon scoffs.
“Top BSAA agents,” Valentine says, which, okay, fair. She runs a hand through her hair, white-blonde strands catching on her fingers. “This isn’t sustainable. You know that. We’ve both been on this side of things, this is not a situation you can be in long-term.” She waves her hand to indicate the hideout, the dingy, grimy little apartment he can’t quite bring himself to call home. Where even would home be, anymore? “Sooner or later you’re going to need somewhere else to stay.”
“I don’t have anywhere else,” says Leon. “I can’t—I’m no one, I have nowhere to go that isn’t, that wasn’t—back to a cell.” His breath, the traitorous thing, catches in his throat. “I can’t leave either,” he says. “I—Redfield’s pissed off too many people from where I was. They’ll want him dead. I know how to keep them off his back, but I have to be here.”
“You could do that better,” says Valentine, “if you live in the same place he does.”
“You don’t get it,” says Leon, “I could hurt him—I don’t want to, but I could. I—I could.”
“I do get it,” says Valentine. “What do you think Wesker wanted me to do with Chris, take him out for a tea party? He wanted him dead and he thought it would be ironic if I killed him.” She never raises her voice once, but there’s a real anger there, directed at Wesker rather than at Leon. “You could. I could, too. Neither of us have lost that ability, it’s not something that’ll just go away even once you’ve been deprogrammed of every last fucking command—but we can do better, now that we have the choice to.”
“What happens if I lose that choice again?” Leon asks her. “What happens if—if someone says the words and you or I or both of us turn even if—even if we don’t want to?”
“They can’t turn me anymore,” says Valentine. She taps her temple with a manicured finger and says, “I’m trigger phrase-free. It took a while, but my therapist and I defused all the time bombs Wesker left in my head. You can too.”
“A while?”
“Months of work,” says Valentine—Jill. Her name’s Jill. He ought to start calling her by name, if she’s going to meet with him like this. “I won’t lie to you, it won’t be easy. But it’s better than living out of a hideout and thinking you’re too dangerous to be around.” She pauses. “You are a danger, that’s true, but not so much of one that isolating yourself is the best call to make. Believe me, I’ve tried that, and all it did was hurt me and the people I care about.”
Leon scratches over his forearm, and says, “Even if I’m not dangerous—he doesn’t want me. He wants…” He stops, sighs, and says, “He wants someone who’s dead and—and whose face I happen to have.”
Jill watches him for a long moment, and there’s a shadow behind her eyes that makes Leon think of—of ghosts, somehow. It’s like there are ghosts lurking inside her skull, dancing close to the surface now. Then she says, “You would not be the first person to tell him something like that, you know—that the person he knew died long ago, and you just happen to look like them, that’s all.”
Leon opens his mouth to ask what the fuck she’s talking about, before he remembers: Wesker’d had Jill for three years, trapped in much the same way Leon had been held captive by Los Illuminados. Maybe their circumstances weren’t exactly the same, but if there’s anyone in this damn world who would know what it felt like, what it still feels like, it’s her.
He says, “Yeah, but—you remember, right? Being that Jill Valentine.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wonder,” says Jill. “Just—think about it, Leon.”
“Why’d you come here?” he blurts. “You’re not here on the BSAA’s behalf, are you?”
“What?” Jill says. “No! No. I’m here because I just wanted to check up on you, see how you were doing.” She lets out a breath, and says, “I know I could’ve used someone who understood, when I was going through this.”
He doesn’t ask if Chris understood. This thing between Leon and Jill, this private, horrific thing, shouldn’t be understood, because once you do understand, it means you have horrific, intimate, first-hand information on how the brainwashing process works, how hard it is to get out. Instead he says, “You turned out fine.”
“I’m only fine now because I burned through a lot of therapists,” Jill responds, droll. “Trust me, at the start, I was just as screwed up as you. I still have his voice in my head.”
Leon doesn’t ask who he is. There’s only one person Jill would refer to with that much venom in her voice, that much utter hatred. “He’s dead,” he says.
“And I saw him die,” says Jill. “What’s left is a memory, but it’s a damn strong one, because I was under his control for so long.” She lets out a breath, and says, “Too fucking long. But you’d know.”
God, he does. “There’s one difference between us,” he says. “You remember. I don’t.” There is so much missing, so much he only knows from reading about, so many gaps in his knowledge. He’s gone long enough now without being wiped clean that some things have come back, but they’re mostly—dying screams, the moans of the living dead, the voices of the cultists whispering in Spanish. White lab coats, the scratching of pencils on paper.
Jill nods, like she’d figured. “Yeah,” she says, softly, “Wesker wanted me aware the whole time.”
“Wonder who got luckier between us,” Leon says. “From where I’m standing, at least you know your name.”
“From where I’m standing,” Jill counters, “at least you don’t remember every single thing they made you do.” She tucks stray strands of blonde hair behind her ear. “Luck doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she says. “They screwed us over according to what they needed. Wesker wanted to really fuck with Chris and me, and Los Illuminados just wanted your skillset, not you.”
That—He remembers the lab coats saying something like that, somewhere in the ruins of his memory. Careful, he bites. If he wasn’t so valuable—
“—he’d be dead,” Leon absently says out loud.
Jill says nothing, just raises an inquisitive eyebrow.
“You’re not wrong,” he says. “They didn’t want—questions. Just results.”
“Yeah,” says Jill. “He was like that too.”
--
Jill leaves him with a phone number. “It’s connected to a burner phone,” she tells him, “so if you need anything you don’t have to give a fake name in case anyone’s listening, the way you would if you called my actual number. Just call it and give me an address to meet you at.”
“You’re gonna bring Chris if I do, aren’t you?” he asks her.
“I’m not gonna lie to him,” says Jill, “but if you don’t want him to come, I’ll tell him not to.” She reaches a hand up as if to touch his shoulder, but seems to catch herself and drops it to her side. “The burger’s from Shake Shack on Broadway, by the way. If you wanna get one for yourself without a middle man, sometime.”
“Shake Shack,” says Leon, a little horrified that he liked the burger now. There’s—Somewhere in the wreckage that used to be a whole lifetime, Leon vaguely remembers having a deep, deep dislike of anything Shake Shack. Someone used to make fun of him for it. He can’t remember who they were now, only that they had red hair, bright eyes.
“Don’t knock it,” says Jill, stepping back toward the door. “And, listen, Leon, I won’t force you into anything. God knows it didn’t work for me at this point, last year, but.” She pulls the door open, and says, “If you think you’re too dangerous to be around Chris, just remember—the man once punched a boulder. He can take care of himself.”
“Yeah,” Leon says, quietly, when Jill shuts the door. “I just don’t know if he will.”
--
The thing about having been a brainwashed assassin for five fucking years is that it does a number on your social skills. Leon vaguely recalls that he used to be better at it, used to at least play at being a charmer, but right now the idea of interacting with members of the public? Makes him want to fucking throw himself into the Hudson River and just stay there for a bit, because the fishes and dead bodies won’t ask too much of him.
Cults, y’see, don’t like their members interacting with the outside world very much. Los Illuminados were no exception, and Leon had been the asset they had blown a lot of resources and time on turning into their own little fucked-up attack dog. He had not been allowed to talk to other people in the cult, beyond making reports and confirming shit and answering questions posed to him. If they even suspected he’d had interactions with someone on the outside—
Leon touches the side of his neck, half-expecting a ring of metal around it. Nothing. He hasn’t been shoved into a chair and wiped in months.
He can do this. He has money, and he needs—necessities of survival. Chris apologized in the last basket, that he was running out of clothes in Leon’s size so he was giving him an old college hoodie instead. It’s the hoodie he wears now, a soft fabric against the skin, but he needs—clothes, new ones, ones that are warmer and more fitting for him now. Something brighter than navy blue.
Something new.
You could be more than this, Leon.
He breathes in, then out. Just—all right, this is a mission, like any other sans the murder at the end: buy some new clothes. He has some distant idea what his sizes are, but it may well be outdated after five years of food insecurity, he’ll have to buy a size smaller. He isn’t sure what kind of style he likes, but hey, maybe something will catch his eye if he heads in there.
He pushes through the store doors. The little boutique is a cheap one, clothes sorted vaguely by age category with no real regard for presentation, and the decorations sitting atop the shelves don’t really give a coherent sense of the place’s aesthetic. He drifts through the aisles, unsure where to go, what to do, which to choose, when—
“Well!” comes a cheery voice, with a vaguely Irish brogue. Leon startles, turns to look and sees an androgynous person with a shock of purple hair and some piercings, wearing a coat that’s somehow both ostentatious and homemade. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen someone more in need of a good time in my life.”
“Um,” says Leon. “I don’t—I don’t. Need that. I just need clothes.”
“Agree to disagree, you absolutely need a good time,” says the—uh, the clerk, probably? They seem like the clerk. “But right, I almost forgot.” They stick their hand out, and Leon takes note of the rings—all fancy-looking costume jewelry—and the painted nails, trimmed into points. “I’m Mollymauk, Molly to my friends. What’s your name?”
“Like—the bird?” Leon says. “And—Leon. It’s—It’s Leon.” The name fits him like a well-worn, well-loved coat.
“Like the seabird,” Molly confirms. “Good to meet you, Leon! You’ve come to the right place if you need clothes.” They look Leon up and down and say, “A new set’ll get you a long way. Where’d you get these?”
Stabbed someone. He’s pretty sure Molly would be put off if he just confessed that outright, so he just says, “They. Uh. They weren’t using it anymore.”
One carefully plucked eyebrow goes up. “Oh-kay,” they say, sounding a little skeptical, but Leon breathes a sigh of relief when they turn their back on him and gesture for him to come with them. “Before we start,” they say, “any preferences I should know about first?”
Jesus, there’s preferences. “Not navy blue,” he says. “I just—I need something that’s a little brighter than that. Everything else is…fine, I guess.”
“What are you shopping for?” they ask. “Winter clothes, casual clothes, first job interview?”
A laugh bursts out of Leon at the thought of that last one, and he shakes his head. “Definitely not a job interview,” he says, wryly, “I have a—I used to be a, uh, a specialist.” It’s not quite right, because specialist implies it had been a job and not the one thing he’d been good at for a very long time. The one thing he’s still good at. “There’s not—There’s not really a whole lot I can do outside the field I was in.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” says Molly, turning on their heel and somehow walking backwards. “Haven’t you tried?”
“This is me trying,” says Leon.
“Well, no time like the present to find out,” says Molly. “So casual or winter, then?”
“Casual works,” says Leon, a little relieved. “Maybe something durable. Easy to wash.”
“Durable, washable, casual,” Molly lists off. “Hm.” They spin back around on their heel and veer off to the side, leading Leon to a rack full of absurdly colorful clothes. They grab a few shirts from the rack, and Leon’s eyes fix on a black cotton shirt with NIRVANA printed across the front, and a hot-rod red and gold shirt with a light blue circular symbol printed on the front. “Which one?”
One? Shit, he has to actually choose. Leon rocks back and forth on his feet, eyes darting between the shirts being held up. He swallows the lump that’s grown in his throat, stuffs his shaky hands into his pockets, and says, “Which one do you think looks better?”
Molly raises an eyebrow, and says, “In my expert opinion? Either would look better on you than the hobo look, Leon.”
Looking better was never a concern back before Chris Redfield called him by a name he couldn’t remember then. Leon scratches at his forearm, and says, “I—um. Well. The red one?”
“Didn’t peg you for an Iron Man fan,” says Molly, but they sound pleased he picked it. Some tiny part of Leon relaxes at their tone, the part that’s still deeply wary of other people and all too vigilant about keeping watch on them.
“Who?” he says.
“You—didn’t see the movie, then,” says Molly, surprised. But if they’ve got any suspicions, they don’t show it. “Well, I commend you on your sense of color.” They toss the shirt toward him, and say, “Pay what you want, don’t mind the price tag. Shit, if you don’t have the money you don’t even have to pay.”
“I have the money,” Leon hurriedly says, pulling some cash from his pocket. “I can pay.”
“You sure?” Molly asks. They’re so goddamn kind. “Might need that money.”
If he needs any more money he’ll just find a bioterrorist cell and steal the money from their corpses. But he doesn’t say that. “I’ll be fine,” he says, then, “d’you have any hoodies?”
He buys the shirt, then a bright yellow hoodie with a cartoon frog stitched over the breast pocket, then a tie-dyed fleece jacket. On Molly’s recommendation, he buys a blue polo shirt (“you’ve got nice eyes, this’ll make them look much nicer”) and four pairs of good, sturdy pants. The whole thing costs almost all the cash he’d brought with him for this, but that’s fine, he’d brought this much cash because he knew he’d be spending most of it, if not all.
Molly rings it all up, then passes back more cash than the register says his change is. “Buy yourself a snack, Leon,” they say. “On me.”
Leon leaves the boutique with his head still spinning a little. Chris he gets. The guy chased him across Europe to save him because Chris knew him when he was a different person, one who was worth saving. Of course he’d be kind, it’s not as if he knows better. Molly’s just a random clerk in New York who doesn’t know Leon from the next dumbfuck to walk through their doors, but they still—
Leon breathes out, slowly, clutching the paper bag with his new clothes close.
Next time he drops by he’ll have a snack in hand, pay them back for their kindness. But for now…
He veers to the right, ducking into an alleyway and checking one of the phones he’s scavenged from a bioterrorist’s corpse. The guy’s got a meeting with his supplier coming up in a couple of hours. Won’t it be unpleasant for that poor supplier, if a ghost showed up to ruin his entire day.
Leon tucks the phone back into his pocket, then continues on back to his place, pulling the hood up over his head.
--
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: FUCK THIS [unsent]
Hansford,
“Highest security” my goddamn ass. Some motherfucker showed up at the meeting instead of your man and mowed down everyone in the fucking warehouse! EVERYONE. They’re all DEAD. Yes, even the high-quality security detail you hired on, those fucking ex-Navy SEAL assholes, they’re fucking dead too! Got killed by some masked dipshit with a knife and a bad haircut! I’m only alive because everybody else got in the way, and I swear to god the fucker is still stalking me!
If I make it out of this alive I am going to fucking rip you a new one, see if you really shit gold. And if I don’t, then by god Hansford you greedy penny-pinching motherfucker I’m gonna make goddamn sure you’re ne
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: [no subject]
ATTACHMENT: hi.jpeg
turn yourself into the bsaa and call off all surveillance on redfield and valentine. or else.
i still know exactly where your panic room is.