Chapter Text
There has been a pit in the middle of Grace's stomach since the moment she saw that fresh blood on Emily's nightgown.
It grew and grew with each wasted second that ticked away while Grace snuck around the water treatment facility and desperately ran from the Girl, and she thinks it finally swallowed her insides whole as she watched Leon kill Emily. Kill the thing she had turned into. Emily was already gone— and that was Grace's fault.
We're still alive. We have to keep going.
Grace doesn't want to keep going, not like this. Not with all these people dying when they shouldn't, not when she keeps failing.
She's not even present enough to feel nauseous when Gideon and that man— Zeno, Gideon calls him— lead her onto a helicopter, so soon after the last one she was in crashed. All she can focus on is the hole in her chest. They give her a headset with a mic attached, but no one says a word the whole ride. Under the cushioned earpieces, the thudding roar of the rotors is muffled into something softer, and her hearing starts to ring faintly at the distinct lack of gunshots or inhuman screeching or explosions.
Grace hugs herself and stares down at her boots and pretends she can't see the blood spotting the leather.
When they land in the ruins of Raccoon City, Grace numbly registers Gideon going down a different crumbled street than the one Zeno leads her towards. This leaves her alone with Zeno. Grace swallows, eyeing the broad width of his shoulders, the single silver earring. He's tall. Tall and terrifying, all severe black-and-white, except for the unnatural glint of yellow behind his sunglasses. Grace follows behind him and keeps her mouth shut.
Raccoon City smells overwhelmingly stale, like there hasn't been wind or rain in all thirty years since the missile. Everything is decaying under thick grey ash and rust, a film of concrete dust coating the rubble. It's almost suffocating. The whole city is a graveyard.
Broken things crunch under her shoes as she picks her way over the fragmented asphalt, a mosaic of shattered windshields that have spilled out onto the road, bottles, bullet casings, unrecognizable trash.
Zeno takes her to a building, not far from where the helicopter set down. The remains of a wall and a gate, and above it, rusted bronze letters that mark it as the old Raccoon Police Department. The building is half collapsed into itself, but the front doors are clear of obstruction. What still stands looks like it's going to keep standing for a long time.
"What are we doing here?" she manages. Her mouth is dry, voice faint and stammering like it always is when she's nervous.
Zeno doesn't bother turning. "All in good time," he says, pushing through the doors. "You'll see."
They pass by evidence of an old makeshift barricade, then skeletons. Grace clenches her fists, fingernails carving half-moons into her palms, and looks away. Everyone has heard of Raccoon City. Grace has read articles about it, she's read people's conspiracy theories and official chronologies and government statements.
But this is different.
She doesn't pay attention to where Zeno leads her, only takes care not to trip on the refuse. The brightly lit-up computer screen stands out in the dingy office remnants like a beacon, and finally, she gets her explanation. She wishes she hadn't.
Elpis. A virus. Emily, and countless girls just like her, and… And Grace too. All of them clones.
Grace steps back from the screen without realizing. It's stuck frozen on the old security footage, two men and a little girl, dead a long, long time by now. Emily and not-Emily. Grace's head starts to fill with a dizzy heat that's hard to think past. The pit inside her grows impossibly bigger, pressing on her ribs, compressing her lungs.
"S-so it really was all my fault?" Her jaw stutters on the words.
"What was?" Zeno asks. His voice sounds far away, like reality is turning to putty and stretching into a long tunnel and she's on one end and everything else in the world is at the opposite end.
Mom. Oh, no no no. "Th-that Mom was murdered. And—" And Emily's dead too, because of her, and Mom—
"Was she even really my mother?"
And then she's seeing it again, that image of a machete buried in the side of Mom's neck and arterial blood spraying everywhere and her eyes so wide and shocked, that image Grace has tried so badly and failed even worse to forget.
Grace gasps against her rapidly closing throat. A sob bubbles its way up, clashing with her desperate attempts to inhale so that neither of them really happen. She clutches at her too-tight chest. The wound under her collarbone suddenly aches more than it has in hours, pain flaring through every one of her nerves, and she can't breathe. There are voices around her, but she can't hear their words anymore. Someone says her name, the single syllable cutting through the static, and she turns and sees Leon at the doorway for a split second before everything goes black.
The voice is still there when she wakes up. Grace doesn't know how much time has passed, but every muscle in her is aching and her brain is pounding against her skull and the inside of her mouth is like sandpaper. More words, but they don't manage to pierce through the cotton in her ears. It's Zeno, she guesses.
Except, the voice doesn't have the same tone. It's not nearly as deep. Younger, she thinks, but still masculine.
"Miss?"
Grace pries her eyes open. They're dry and itchy and probably pretty bloodshot. She hasn't had any water for almost a day, and she's been crying too. Above her is a neat expanse of white ceiling tiles. No cracks, or gaping holes, or mold or ash. There's barely even water damage. The suspended fluorescent lights are suddenly intact, no longer hanging by their frayed and rotting wiring.
"Did s'meone clean up?" is the first thing out of her mouth. Which is stupid, she knows, but nothing else makes sense. Her reasoning is coming back to her in pieces. Why else would the ceiling be clean?
Also, it's dark. The room is bathed in the blue of night rather than the washed-out grey daylight from before.
"Miss?" The same voice. "I think you have a concussion."
A hand is resting lightly on her shoulder. Grace turns to see someone next to her, kneeling with a flashlight pointed down so it illuminates the floor. Her eyes go straight to the light. The floor is clean too, green speckled linoleum.
"What happened?" she says, brain still lagging. Where's Zeno? And oh no— more importantly, where's Leon? Grace bolts upright, twisting around to scan the room. Did she get someone else killed? This is definitely the same place, but the doorway is empty, and—
"Whoa, whoa, hey! Calm down, you're okay."
Grace finally narrows in on the person next to her. Definitely not Zeno. He's young, and dressed in a police uniform that's spattered with blood. Something about him is very familiar. Grace squints, then presses a palm against her temple. Her head is still throbbing, vision spotty around the edges. It's making it hard to think.
"W-where am I?" she asks, more than half-afraid to hear the answer.
"Raccoon City Police Department," he says. "I'm Leon Kennedy."
Grace's mouth falls open. She stares. And stares, and keeps staring.
That's why he looked familiar. Because that's Leon's face, minus maybe thirty years. He looks like he's her age.
What the fuck?
"Are you alright?" he asks. "You seem kinda confused. Did you hit your head?"
"Um," Grace says. "Y-yeah, I think. I might have."
She must have. She passed out and hit her head on the floor and this is a coma dream. Or maybe she's finally dead. Maybe Leon's dead too, and that's why this is happening, that's why they're together and in this long-condemned building.
Leon's hand is still on her unbandaged shoulder, the other holding the flashlight. "What's your name?" he asks her. His voice is so young and gentle. This Leon and the other Leon— the real Leon, the 2026 Leon— are like two puzzle pieces her mind can't quite put together. One piece has jagged edges and the other piece is smooth and they absolutely refuse to fit. The man in front of her is more boyish than anything. He's got a light in his eyes.
"Grace," she says, eventually. "Uh, Ashcroft."
"Grace," he repeats, and then smiles. "Are you dizzy? You'll be safer back at the main hall, if you're good to walk."
Main hall. RPD. Grace shudders. They're in the middle of the Raccoon City outbreak, aren't they. That means a missile is headed their way in less than twenty-four hours— if this is actually real. After everything that's happened to her, Grace doesn't think she's safe to assume it isn't.
Back in the Wrenwood Hotel, the first time, Grace had stayed and stayed, hugging her dead, bleeding mother until the smoke inhalation finally made her pass out. The dreams she had in that unconsciousness were strange and hazy. They weren't like this.
This is crystal clear. Not a dream.
She gets her legs under her. "I'm okay," she says, voice weak and shaky. Leon helps her up, a steady hand on her elbow. The hand stays even once she's on her feet. "I'm okay," she repeats, because that's what she's supposed to say, even if she's not at all okay. Leon lets go of her elbow with a little nod, and moves towards the door.
The office looks like… an office. There's blood all over the floor, making the air smell like a handful of sweaty coins, and one shattered window has been clumsily nailed over with jagged planks of wood, but it's no longer apocalyptic. The desks are organized and the clunky old nineties computers are all working. Rain thrashes outside, seeping a wet chill into the room. Grace goes to follow Leon.
This is the last night this city will be a city. The thought punches her in the chest.
They don't speak as Leon leads her down a dark hallway, illuminated only by the sweeping cone of his flashlight. No zombies, only corpses, laid out on the floor with their heads caved in and leaking rotted brain matter. Grace hugs herself. Leon glances back to check on her four times.
Grace hadn't paid much attention when Zeno led her to that room, but they're not far from the station entrance. It's just as strangely grand as it was before, the dual staircases overlooked by a marble statue of a woman, Grecian and holding a pale flag towards the ceiling. It's a very beautiful room and it makes the blood and gore that's staining it all the worse. On the floor is a fresh body, but unlike all the others she's seen, this one is covered with a sheet, a rorschach test of blood on its obscured face. Grace catches the tailend of Leon's glance towards it, and she can tell immediately it was someone he knew.
"I've almost got us a way out," Leon says. He gestures with one hand at the statue. At its base, a door leads underground. Grace hadn't noticed it immediately, dimly lit as it is. "I just need a key card for the parking garage shutter."
"O-okay," Grace says quietly. She doesn't have the energy to conjure a real reaction. Inside or outside the station doesn't matter, she's trapped in an entirely different way, one she has no idea how to puzzle out. She's still stuck on Elpis, on Zeno, on those girls, created and then put down like lab rats all because of her. There's no room in her brain for… for this.
Leon fidgets for a moment, looking at the door, then back at her. Uncertain in a way she's never seen in the present version of him— not that she's seen much of him at all. "Do you have a weapon?" he asks.
Grace feels along her belt. She'd tossed Leon's revolver onto the ground in front of him, back at the treatment facility, but she still had her small pistol with her when she passed out. Her fingers find the grip. It's there. Grace breathes. "Yeah," she says.
Leon nods. "Good. I'm headed upstairs," he says. "Stay right here, and I'll be back soon."
And then he starts to go.
Grace jolts. "W-wait!" She can't be left alone, not again, and especially not in this place with nothing but a corpse for company. And she thinks maybe her best chance of getting out of here lies with Leon. Whatever magic, whatever universe-altering wormhole, whatever higher power put her here, it's obviously connected to him. "I can help!"
He shakes his head though. "You're a civilian, I can't allow you to come with me," he says. Grace can tell he's trying to use the tone of someone with authority, but he isn't quite landing it. His voice doesn't have that same gravelly depth anymore. "It's not safe."
Civilian. Grace pats at her pockets, hands jerky with nerves. God, it feels like she's been on the verge of a panic attack for a full day. Every muscle in her body is exhausted just from the non-stop shaking.
"H-here," she says. Her badge. She still has it, for all the help it's been. It labels her as an intelligence analyst, not a special agent, but the bold FBI lettering next to her photo is impossible to miss.
"FBI?" Leon says, eyebrows shooting up. "Are you here with Ada?"
There's an actual FBI presence here in 1998? Grace doesn't remember reading about anything like that, but she's far from an expert on the Raccoon City Incident. "No," she says. Lying probably isn't a good idea, she thinks, not when Leon is undeniably an ally to her, even thirty years ago. She wants him to trust her. And, anyway, she's never been good at keeping a story straight. "I… don't know an Ada."
This, of course, makes him tilt his head at her. It would be strange for two FBI agents to be in the same city during the same outbreak completely independent of each other.
"I'm from the, the Midwest Field Office?" She says it like a question, which she's sure is no help towards her credibility. "I'm not usually out in the field. B-but I have firearms training!"
Leon's mouth twists. Not exactly convinced, but not saying no either.
"I'll watch your back," Grace tries, managing for once to suppress her stutter. "I promise."
He blinks. "I'm more worried about your back," he says, "But… fine. If you're sure."
Grace lets out a breath. Whatever feeling washes over her, it's not relief. But it's close.
Leon heads towards the nearest west-leading door, Grace in tow. Pulling her pistol from her belt, Grace checks the magazine. Loaded, like it was before, but she doesn't have any extra ammo to replace what she's about to spend. Her supply of bullets at the Care Center was always verging on empty, a delicate balancing game she was only winning about half the time. She eyes the shotgun slung over Leon's back. Hopefully he has shells for that.
The blue, lacquered emblem of a spade gleams in the overhead light as Leon swings the door open. The space beyond is dark, and Grace pulls her flashlight out from where she'd been keeping it tucked into her belt. Twin beams of light rove the room. Something glints near the ceiling and Grace turns her flashlight towards it.
Party streamers and shiny paper stars and a handmade banner reading 'WELCOME LEON' hang over the middle of the room.
Grace's stomach drops. "Oh," she says out loud, unintentionally. "This… It's—"
Leon keeps his flashlight pointed resolutely away from the banner, lighting up the lockers on the far side of the room. In the dark, Grace can't quite make out his expression. "Technically, my first day was last week," he explains. "I just didn't get here 'till today."
Zeno didn't take her into the west side of the building when they arrived. Grace wonders if this is still standing, a welcome party that never happened. There's a dead cop on the floor by the desks, skin corpse-blue, face half rotted away.
"I'm sorry," she says. She's not sure what else there is to say.
"Me too," Leon says quietly, almost too quiet to hear. Then, "Don't worry, I'm new but I still have training."
A surprised sound slips out of her mouth. It didn't even occur to her that Leon might not be as good with those guns as he is in 2026. Now, neither of them have experience on their side. A pair of rookies, running blind. "I wasn't worried," Grace says, eventually. If Leon can't protect her like he would've before… they'll just have to protect each other.
Emily's face flashes through her mind, the last person she promised to protect. Grace squeezes her eyes shut tight against the sudden welling of grief up her throat.
"You okay?" Leon asks.
Grace clenches her jaw. "Yeah," she mumbles after a moment, and steps forward. She won't fail again. Please, please don't let her fail again. "Yeah, I'm okay."