Run Like Hell

RUN LIKE HELL ==============================================================

Author: Daggerino of ff.net, with further joint-written content by Imago.
Summary: Takes place after RE2 and before RE4, non canon, Leon/Ada.
Rating: NC-17.
Pairing(s): Leon/Ada.
Feedback: desired.
Betas: Imago, Daggerino.

Disclaimer: All Capcom game characters and organisations are the property of Capcom. This fic is copyright Daggerino, all additional rewrites copyright Imago. We are in no way profiting from the publication of this story on this website, it is intended to be used by fans as a fanwork only.

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One Last Time

"They'll come soon
I keep waiting
And I wait
Won't somebody save me?
And if you're feeling lucky, come and take me home..."

1

The streets were eerily quiet after the storm. A post-apocalyptic calm settled on the desolation of what had once been Raccoon City like a heavy, pungent shroud. For Leon, it felt like stepping back into the nightmare. Fat, verminous crows were still gathered on rooftops and wires, croaking loudly in their obnoxious voices. But there was no other movement, no sign of zombies. The streets were empty; overturned cars and trashcans littered the streets, nothing stirred in the darkness of the alleys or store windows, shattered and gaping vacantly like the mouths of corpses. The City itself had become a corpse, a dusty, empty shell: a lifeless, rotting testament to the destructive power of the new G-Virus.

But he had to go back, to Raccoon City. He had to make sure. One last time.

He went back with the first contingent of U.S. Army troops, government investigators and what remained of the Raccoon City Police Department; those that had been on leave at the time of the incident, but that knew the City bounds well. There were one or two press photographers, but for once they didn't need to be herded back from the barricade. They stood behind the barriers, surveying the unsavoury picture like nervous children.

It was like déjà-vu. The places, the signs, the smells.

How could he ever forget?

The Army had set up strategic blockades along the city limits, now guarded by heavy infantry - even tanks - in some places. Leon was one of the first to go back in, along with several Marines and a risk-assessment guy named Walker - no one knew exactly who he was with, but they didn't ask questions. He was tall, dark-haired, with slightly sunken features; the look of a man who'd spent far too many hours under artificial light, behind a desk, keeping himself awake on expensive caffeine. Walker climbed awkwardly out of the infil truck, looking pale and wan in the late September morning. Blinking like a displaced mole, there was barely a flicker of emotion in his ashen face as he surveyed the carnage with the air of a mortician.

Leon never did like the look of Walker.

"Was this where you came in?" the Marine major asked the rookie cop.

"There," Leon answered, motioning his head towards the street where he'd first stopped his car on that fateful night. The 29th...

"There was a body in the street, so I stopped to check it out," he went on, looking over to the spot where it had once lain. "There were these crows..." But there was no sign of it now. The street looked barren and strange by day, like one of those old ghost towns in the westerns. Dust was blowing down it - not red dust and tumbleweeds, though - it was the dust of ash and smashed concrete, mingled with debris, papers and cans and crow's feathers. There was a stale stench of smoke and something worse; the air pregnant with decay.

He wondered very much what had happened to the groaning husks - the denizens of this pitiable carnage; why the streets were so starkly peaceful, telling only of disorder and disarray, but not of slaughter...

What the hell was he doing, standing there, under that watery sun and the eyes of the crows on the rooftops watching and cackling at him? Why did he come back... back to this place of death?

...Because.

He had to make sure; he had to make sure she was dead. To find her body... or at least something. In all this time he hadn't stopped thinking about her, wondering. Wondering if she too, had somehow escaped the nightmare. He'd hoped. God, how he'd hoped.

"Those crows," Walker said, turning to Leon, his voice sounding thin and ill-used. He motioned one of the soldiers over. "Get the Vector Control Team in here with some gas. The infection can't be spread through the air, but all potential vectors are to be neutralised. Starting with those sorry-looking sons-of-bitches."

"What about the Station?" the major asked.

"Overrun," Leon answered. "I met a cop there, but... he didn't make it."

"Anyone else?"

"Yeah, a reporter. He's dead too. They said there were survivors in there, but I didn't find them."

Leon thought back to that night. The cop... and that reporter, Bertolucci... locked himself in a cell because he thought it was safer. He couldn't have been more mistaken. He was probably still in there, his tormented corpse being gnawed on by those rabid, suppurating creatures that had once been police dogs.

But what about the others...?

Oh yeah, there were others. Brian Irons, Mr. Nice Cop Nineteen-Ninety-Eight... and the Mayor's unlucky daughter. The Birkins and their little girl, Sherry... and Claire Redfield, the girl who rescued and adopted her after the Birkins' untimely - though by no means unmerited - deaths. And then there was Ada Wong...

The mysterious woman who'd walked into his nightmare, and never walked out.

But he said nothing about Claire and Sherry. They had their own things to take care of, and unlike him, they weren't drawn back to Raccoon. He wanted to see the City again for himself; he wanted closure. He'd urged Claire not to follow him; not to stick her neck out just yet. But Claire wasn't happy... desperate to find her brother, only Sherry's dependence was holding her back...

"Shall we?" Walker asked him, jerking him out of his thoughts and back into the midst of the company, already heavily armed and kitted out with NBC gear. Walker nodded his head in the direction of the Station and the Marines went on ahead. The rookie tightened his own gear up around the shoulders and patted the Desert Eagle snug in his belt.

It was only the beginning of the long haul... of the burial of an entire city.

2

"I told you, I don't know anything about the disease," Leon insisted, gazing from the FBI man at the table in front of him to the one-way mirror in the wall of a painfully white room. He knew Walker was behind that mirror, and he was tired. "It just turned everyone in there into these... zombies."

"I see. Zombies," the man answered, faint sarcasm seeping into his stony voice. "And what were these 'zombies' like?"

"Some were human, but there were other things too - I don't know where they came from. And there was this other creature - it was big. Kind of like a man, but about seven - maybe eight - foot tall. It was looking for something... or someone."

"Do you have any idea what?"

"Just cut the crap, okay? I was there. I saw this... this 'thing' being dropped from a chopper and it started following me. I don't know what it was, but it was put there. I'm telling you, it wasn't a regular zombie... someone flew it in for a purpose."

"Then what was it?"

"I don't know, dammit. But I'm telling the truth."

"Yet you managed to survive, despite this 'thing' hunting you?" A barely perceptible smile touched the corners of the FBI man's lips.

"I got out through the sewers... I was lucky. And I had a shotgun."

"Mr. Kennedy, the Raccoon City Disaster was one of the worst in global history - worse than Chernobyl. And yet you were the only survivor out of, what - a hundred thousand people?"

Leon looked blank. "I didn't see anyone else who wasn't infected."

"I should imagine that if anyone else involved were to escape Racoon City - like you - then they'd have to be routinely quarantined. This disease is undoubtedly the deadliest known to mankind. They would need medical help."

"I thought you said it was only spread by contact," Leon answered sharply.

"Mr. Kennedy," the man said, languidly disregarding the question, "you understand, of course, that you ought to be in quarantine also. Or at least government custody - for your own protection."

Leon stopped short. He sensed a change in the tone of the man's voice, a warning note, a shadow of malice, or a threat; something flickering excited in his black eyes, flexing his bony hands on the table in front of him... Was this man questioning him for information about the incident... or the virus? So far, Leon had played safe and played dumb, remembering to keep calling it a "disease"... to keep pretending he knew nothing about Claire, the Birkins, or Ada Wong. And indeed he knew little about the outbreak proper, but enough to keep them intrigued, enough to make sure they kept their hands off him... for now. Long enough for him to come up with some kind of... plan.

They had pressed him for information on other survivors, especially in the sewers; probably to ascertain the whereabouts of the ill-fated Alpha team who's tattered corpses he'd found strewn in there like chaff. And maybe to find out just how much he really knew: how much of a risk he himself presented...

...So he told them about the Tyrant.

The FBI man's ears had pricked up at this; they swallowed it hook, line and sinker... but Leon had hooked no tiddler, this was a garpike. It was a dangerous game, and the object was not to get dragged under too.

So he offered his help, in return for his freedom - for the time being. A chance to re-enter Raccoon City again... a chance to search secretly for Ada. There was still time if she was alive somewhere in that crumbling, festering place. And Walker went with him that day, but not to assess risks. The blasted remains of Umbrella's secret lab was cordoned off. They even concealed the clean-up operation from news reporter helicopters with a large white tent as they carried out the charred remains of the zombified scientists for cold storage. Somebody was probably combing the place for the G-Virus sample down there too, no doubt.

But they did not find Ada's body. They must have been looking for her, too, because the questions continued. Walker took personal charge of the recovery operation and Leon was called back from Raccoon City. They re- assigned him temporarily to another police department thirty miles away, but he immediately took leave under the pretext of suffering from PTSD. Within the hour he was AWOL.

3

It was getting dark outside, and the garish green vacancy sign of the Nevada Haze Motel was flashing onto the open curtains. Leon slept, laid out on the bed in his clothes, overtaken by fatigue and dark thoughts. He was in Raccoon again, dreaming, living the night again... the night of the Death of Raccoon City.

...He was on the bridge, suspended over the chasm of the vent shaft. Annette was dead. He had the vial, the G-Virus; he didn't know why he had taken it from her limp grasp, perhaps because she was crazy, bloodstained and brandishing a gun. He held it up - a little blue vial, Birkin's precious legacy - so much death in a tube.

Then Ada appeared.

"You know what this is about, so just hand it over," she demanded, pointing her Browning HP in his face. "Don't make me shoot you."

In that moment, all feeling fell away from him.

"I can't do that," was all that he could find to say in the sudden void of emotion, the vacuum of feeling that swiftly opened up and devoured him.

A shot rang out. He expected to feel the rush of crippling, mortal pain.

But he did not.

Ada's shoulder exploded as a single bullet ripped through her sinews, tearing the fragile flesh asunder; her blood was on his face and in his eyes as the gun slipped from her grasp, and she fell towards the chasm in a surge of shock, eyes wide with agony. Annette Birkin too, in her final throes, had tried to get the virus back, but her strength failed - her gun clattered across the floor, the sound of it as empty and final as the sight of the blood running from the gleaming new hole in Ada's chest.

He couldn't save her.

She fell, and was swallowed up by the yawning darkness below, without a sound. It was more than he could bear after so much fight -

He woke in a cold sweat to the sound of his cell phone ringing. Fumbling drowsily for it, he blinked at the number on the screen. Familiar...

"Yeah," he answered, his voice gruff from sleep.

"Leon, it's me, Claire."

"You safe?"

"Fine," she replied, somewhat bluntly. "Did you get my present?"

"Yeah, thanks for minding it." He glanced briefly at a large brown envelope on the bedside table, addressed only to "Room 10".

"No problem," Claire continued. "So you're staying?"

"I have to, for now. What about you?"

"I'm going underground. I have to find Chris."

"Give me five days. I'll meet you then. We can go together -"

"I... Leon, I can't wait that long," she half-whispered urgently.

"Don't go alone, for God's sake."

"Trust me. I'll be fine," she insisted. "Just watch your own back."

The line went dead. He dropped back on the bed and inhaled deeply. Five days. Less than that... four days before they dropped a second nuke? Another bomb to vaporise what was left of Raccoon City, to wipe its pestilent carcass from the face of the Earth for good.

He reached for the envelope without getting up, opened it carefully using the combat knife he'd carried in Raccoon City: the blade stained with carbon where he'd passed it through flame, but its edge was still keen. From inside the package, he pulled out a handful of papers and photographs, some heavily creased and stained with grime.

It was all there.

All the evidence they had. All the files and photographs they had managed to gather during their escape from Raccoon City. He glanced again at the photographs... gruesome tableaux of Umbrella's illegal human experiments. Nothing else had survived the explosion. The files were hardly incriminating evidence, but the photographs were solid proof. The G-Type experimental arm... a human victim pumped with the G-virus, face contorted in pain as he watched his captors taking notes...

Leon laid them on his chest carefully, like precious things, and stared at the gaunt ceiling.

"Just like a honey pot," he whispered aloud. "But for the vultures..."

Glancing out of the window, he saw the silhouette of a car not fifty yards away with its lights off, crawling by. The vultures were gathering already.

"If you're alive..." he thought, "you'll come for these, I know it."

He slept the rest of that night with his Desert Eagle close.

4

The doorknob of Room 10 of the Nevada Haze Motel turned slowly, and a shadow crept inside from the hall. The room was dark and empty: papers strewn over the floor and on the bed, the one moveable window-pane ajar with a warm humid breeze blowing in and the curtains beckoning. The steady patter of the rain on the glass cast strange green shadows on the walls in the neon glow.

A figure stalked towards the bed, a gun in its right hand.

Leon gently nudged the door back; it shut with the soft snick of a well-worn lock. The figure tensed and spun, gun raised, but not in the right direction. From the darkness behind the door, Leon drew his Eagle and sprang forward, knocking to the floor what at first appeared to be a large man, but suddenly felt much smaller and lighter. The intruder fought back savagely, clawing at him; he wondered why its gun had not gone off. But the sound of the Magnum-shooter's safety clicking back was unmistakeable... even in a struggle. With Leon's gun to its temple, the figure suddenly relaxed and went still.

"Looking for something?" Leon hissed.

"Should I say the same to you?" Ada panted darkly, trying to conceal her alarm with an even voice.

"Give it up, Ada. They're gonna find you if you keep this up."

"You're a good cop," she answered brusquely, "but good cops usually end up dead."

"Not yet."

"So what now?" she demanded. "Are you going to turn me in?" That cynical, scathing tone crept back into her satiny voice. He remembered it so well; to hear it again even in the darkness and the tension was almost comforting.

"You're not the one I was expecting," he said, lowering the gun and fixing her keenly with his eyes. "But I knew one of you would come here, eventually."

"I need those files, Leon," she warned. "Stay out of it."

"For what? So you can go on playing your games? You're out of your league this time."

"What would you know?" she snapped frostily.

"Plenty. I know what you're in this for. But it's more than that now, isn't it? It's not the money now, it's your life they want."

"And who's side are you on?" she asked calmly - though her rigid façade was faltering. She was tense, geared for a fight; but confronted with Leon once again, she felt suddenly unsure. Her determined hostility stood firm, but was sinking, rapidly, into a peculiar sea of vague, warring emotions. Abruptly aware of his nearness, the heat of his body - not unpleasant - left her struggling with a sudden, perplexing weakness. In conflict with her slinking, solitary self, this feeling repelled her - she longed to struggle, to break free, and yet her limbs would not obey.

She remembered him, carrying her, while she was barely conscious; taking that bullet for her...

"Your side," Leon rapped in answer. "That's why I went back to look for you. I know you wanted to escape all this. Why keep on playing with fire?"

"You don't know me at all," she spat, voice rising in sudden, inexplicable anger. "If you did, you wouldn't have come back to save me... if you knew what kind of woman I am."

He heard her sigh, her empty gun slipping down to her waist, and she toyed with it, feebly. Her hair was damp and lank from the unexpected rain, skin wet and prickled with cold; and it suddenly seemed to Leon that she was tired, so very tired of running. Familiar wounds on her face and arms still gaped, though she had done her best to conceal them; the bullet wound on her shoulder was roughly bandaged beneath her clammy clothes.

"It's... complicated," she said at last, with an effort.

"I've got all night to hear it," he said, releasing her and throwing his weapon onto the bed. Leon too, had felt rather uncomfortable, and now it seemed like a stalemate. "You weren't followed. Good view they got here."

"Nice room," she murmured in a resigned voice, gazing at the empty walls and the uncanny shadows. "You're living here?"

"For now."

"Nice." She whispered again, rubbing her clammy arms and shivering. "Nice and quiet."

"Yeah. No zombies or weird creatures... I was beginning to miss 'em," he shot back sardonically, grabbing his old leather coat from the chair and draping it over her shoulders. She flinched slightly, but didn't look at him. Her eyes were closed and she was standing there, like a lost and lonely child, arms loose at her sides, moist threads of raven hair obscuring the expression of emptiness that was clutching her face.

"Why are you doing this, Leon?" she whispered to him. "Just... forget about me."

"I can't," he answered bluntly, truthfully.

5

The rain didn't let up. It continued its fierce barrage, like a shower of needles, turning the driveway beyond the green sign into dancing red mire. It was a storm that the good folk of Nevada would talk about for months to come. From the window in Leon's room, Ada watched the raindrops running in little rivulets down the pane; those that fell by chance together, or merged and ran, finding the path of least resistance to the sill... just like so many people she had known. But she had always been a solitary raindrop, going nowhere. She grimaced silently when Leon first pierced the skin and pulled the thread through the seam of the ugly wound on her back, but she said nothing.

"How did you escape?" Leon asked, after a long silence.

"Had some help... from a friend."

"A friend? Who?"

"No-one you'd know, I think," Ada answered in evasive tones. "We go way back."

"Try me."

"I suppose it doesn't matter anymore, now that they're all dead. He used to be one of the Special Ops in Raccoon's police outfit."

"He didn't make it out alive?"

She lifted her head as if to say something, but nothing came. For a moment, an expectant stillness filled the room and hung there like a living thing.

"No," she said at last, in a strained voice. "It ended there. A lot of things should have ended there."

"That goddamn Umbrella for starters," Leon murmured angrily. "Bastards."

She plucked at a stray lock of her dark hair.

"What did you do that was so bad, anyway?" Leon went on curiously.

She sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter. I used people for what I wanted, that's all. I never thought about anyone else. I just didn't care."

"You mean John, right?"

Ada was silent.

"You weren't really looking for him that night, were you?"

She shook her head jadedly.

"You didn't love him?"

"No." Her voice was barren, empty. "But he said he loved me. He wanted to quit Umbrella... said we could go away somewhere together. He had enough money... Said he'd wanted to get out of the company for years, that it was starting to get to him. But I convinced him to stay."

Leon said nothing, continuing carefully to stitch up her back. Her eyelids twitched as the needle passed again through the bruised tortures of flesh, and she tried to force the pain out of her mind. The rain went on beating outside, a soothing and almost hypnotic sound.

"He went back to the mansion lab," she continued, "and that was the last time I saw him."

"He's dead too, huh?"

"As soon as he left, I went through his things... his work. He never really bothered to keep it secret from me..." she trailed off, staring into the mist of rain. "He was a fool."

"You mean he didn't expect the CIA to set him up with you," Leon retorted, a little scathingly.

"If he wasn't so naïve he might still be alive," she snapped. "But he was like a child. He needed someone."

"So you blame him for trusting you?"

"He couldn't see it, because he thought I was the woman in his life... not a threat, like everything else was to him. He wanted to leave it all behind and live in some pathetic daydream. His research on the T-Virus... his commitments... everything. He saw me as his rescuer... and I just played along with it."

She sighed again. Her head felt heavy and her limbs cold, sitting there on the edge of the bed with her shoulders bare.

"I just smiled and laughed when I needed to... lied when he asked me if I loved him."

Ada thought back to the time when she'd first dated John. She'd worn a red dress, a little like the one she was wearing the day Leon first saw her, in the basement of the RPD building. John was in a bar on Nickson Street, alone, when she walked in and asked for sangria. He wasn't given a choice. Within three hours they were back at her apartment making love.

"I wasn't always like this, you know," she said ruefully as Leon dabbed something cold and stinging on the tightened wound.

"Money?"

She nodded. Wasn't it always? The money was good... very good. And then there was the Agency, a sort of talent-scouting outfit for every kind of lowlife out there - it welcomed her in with open arms. It's always easy to get in, of course; nigh-impossible to get out.

"I never had anyone to take care of me," she murmured, "so I take care of myself. I don't need anyone or anything... I'll make it on my own."

"What about family?"

"My family were Chinese-Americans," she replied, with an effort. "They came over during the Fifties; my father was a small-time businessman in Chicago. Then one day, he was shot dead. They said he'd upset some local gangs. My mother died afterwards, and I was all alone. There never was anyone to depend on."

"Weren't there others?"

"The men in my life," she muttered, letting out a small, convulsive laugh, "were nothing special. They were never around for long."

"Maybe that's because you never let anyone get close to you," he suggested flatly.

"You don't get close to people when you live that way. You can't trust anyone."

"That's no way to live."

"I don't - like talking about myself," Ada whispered brokenly.

A fork of lightning cleaved the skies somewhere far off in the desert. The room was close and warm, but she felt cold and void. Leon was right. Of course he was, he was young... that was a different world.

It was strange, sitting there with him, after all that had happened. As though her life, always careening toward some jagged cliff of certainty had suddenly run out of gas and left her stranded, here in the Nevada desert. She wasn't running anymore, sweating under her cold, composed exterior; she was marooned in an infinite space, trapped in the desert of her own empty feelings with the young cop who refused to let her die. And she would have died, but for him. She had been almost hoping for death; things were so much worse now. Something to end the flight, to erase those sins... to sever the thorns and vines wrapped around her heart... yes, death would have taken all that pain away forever. Cowardly, perhaps; but who else in her universe could feel it?

"We’re different," she said weakly.

"But it's not what you want," he whispered persistently. "Living like this..."

...Or had she been wishing for someone to rescue her? Someone like Leon? Someone to tame the serpent of her heart, that venomous, hateful thing...

But how could Ada Wong possibly hope to shed a skin so bitter and clinging?

"Who gives a shit what I want?" she grated despondently, her voice cracking. Stinging tears welled up in her eyes, for the first time in a long time, and still she would not let them fall. A rush of self-pity gripped her, shot with sudden disgust - and despair.

"I deserve it."

A solitary tear broke free and ran down her porcelain cheek, hot and irritating; she wiped it away quickly with an angry hand. Leon started cutting the loose ends of the threads, silent, knowing that it sprung from a well of grief whose depths were beyond his seeing.

"...I don't believe that," he said at length.

"Why didn't you just leave me behind?" she breathed, wishing he would stop. Just stop... and not give her hope... cruel, yearning hope...

"Like you would you have left me?"

Ada lowered her head. The room was silent for a while, and the rain's clamour seemed to grow louder and more forceful. Leon put away the knife used to sever the makeshift sutures. Here he was, helping her again... and he didn't quite understand why.

"I'm sorry," she said bleakly. "Isn't that what you want me to say?"

"No. I want you to say that you'll come with me. And leave all this behind."

Ada's tears were falling unrestrained, little rivers down her cheeks like raindrops on the window pane, burning as they ran, falling onto her knees and dying there. Somehow she forced a smile. "When I said... I wanted to escape with you... I meant it," she sobbed. "But I just... can't, Leon. There are so many things... things you don't want to know."

"We can," he pressed, sitting down behind her, watching her face from the side. She felt like covering it, like running away, like fleeing into the desert in the sharp rain and running till her legs gave out and she couldn't run any longer. She was fighting now, between this hope and her familiar self - the only thing that was familiar in her world anymore: the cold, sceptical woman that was Ada Wong. So practiced was her front that she was loathe to let go, if indeed she could; the callus of hurt and pain that built a wall around her heart, higher and higher, till nothing could see beyond or break it. Beneath was still the woman of her youth, prone and hopeful like a child, neglected and mistreated by the stronger, heartless creature she'd become. She was still there, hoping and yearning, wanting to love and to be loved, but never given ground; and suddenly she surged up to battle with Ada Wong, in one last desperate attempt to assert herself; torn between this strange wish and the motherly darkness. The old life, danger and shadows, beckoned once again, and Leon with his wild dream seemed far away, unreal, a fleeting vision she knew was all too remote. But the struggle was silent within; all Leon saw was barely a shiver passing through her lithe but exhausted body.

"I'm not like you, Leon."

"Just say you'll come with me."

"You're too good for me."

She looked at him, watching her intently in the dark, his eyes twinkling in the dim light, tawny hair falling over one side of his lean face. Perhaps he would understand someday. He bore the scars now as well. She and he were the same, two ragged refugees of Raccoon City, sharing the same nightmare night after night, wondering when it was all going to end...

He reached up and wiped a stranded tear from her cheek.

"It doesn't matter," he said gently. "It's all over now."

"I wish it was."

Somehow she found her lips touching his, and didn't draw away. The strange and sudden desire she’d first felt for him in Raccoon rushed back in the midst of her anguish, somehow stronger and more hungry. Now a curious change came over her senses, fears seeming to shrink as his lips reassured her own, resurfacing only for a moment as they broke gently apart, and she searched his open face as if seeking the source of her own apprehension. Then she saw that he was studying her also, gaze falling slowly, candidly, from her eyes to her half-open mouth, heeding nothing else. He was so open, so obvious – she could see the lust in his expression, held back only by some boyish fear perhaps. There didn’t seem to be a question of trust any longer; such a thing had long since died its death for her, and yet she trusted him.

“Come with me,” he whispered again, loud and close in the darkness.

She said nothing, instead leaning into him and kissing him deeply, making the act itself her answer. This time she allowed herself; and the feeling was indeed a release, fraught with a tender pain. As his lips caressed her, the feeling of longing within grew greater and almost unbearable. She wanted to touch him, to feel his hot skin beneath her aching fingers, and his hair between them; to feel the weight of his body, it’s warmth, its essence. Something brushed her neck - his hands and fingers sliding softly over her cold skin, and she realised that her breath was dammed back, and that she must breathe.

It felt as though she’d been a lifetime while without love, without comfort -

But no –

There were other things to take care of... more important things...

Gently, deliberately, she pushed him back down to the bed, even as her pale shirt fell from her shoulders and the soft green glow outlined the sultry curves of her bare torso. Leon swallowed hard, confronted suddenly with two sights - Ada’s half-nakedness, and the Eagle in her hands, pointed at the spot right between his eyes.

“You want the G-Virus?” he asked darkly, though hardly with surprise; it wasn’t the first time he’d seen her cocking a gun at him. “That’s what you came for, isn't it?”

She watched him. Not a flicker of emotion crossed her rigid face; she remained upright, poised like a feline silhouette in the shadows, scrutinising him intently.

“I don’t have it,” he confessed steadily. “So you can put your shirt back on.”

“You had it. What did you do with it?” she demanded ardently, through gritted teeth.

“I threw it.”

“You’re lying.”

“Try me.”

A painful silence came between them. Ada looked at him, and he fixed her with those glittering eyes – but looking back into her own eyes, and not at the gun. Then she knew….. there’d be no use shooting him. That calm, triumphant look in his eyes told her as much – if she shot him she’d never know for sure; the ball was in his court now.

But perhaps she still could play along. Play along and see.

“I want everything else you’ve got. All of it.”

“Go ahead,” he said testily. “Take it. It’s in the drawer.”

“Open it,” she snapped, motioning him to the drawer with the gun’s heavy muzzle. Reaching across obediently to the bedside table, he slowly drew out the envelope that the papers and photographs had been in. Ada watched his every move, the gun moving with them. He could see that she was no stranger to handling the weight of the Eagle; he didn’t doubt for a moment she’d used one before.

“Here,” he rapped, tossing the envelope toward her. In the same moment, it flapped across her vision and she saw Leon swarm up close. A split second later he had her wrists in a firm grip, pushing his weight down onto her. She struggled wordlessly, till he wrested the gun squarely from her grip.

“No more spy games,” he said fervently, weight still pushed against her arms, the gun in his right hand. He made sure there was no way she was going to get her knee up to incapacitate him, either. Ada only smiled up at him, that same sardonic smile she’d worn back in Raccoon, when she said she’d been looking for John - and lying through her teeth. Sure, Leon was stronger... but she knew other ways of getting what she wanted... sure-fire ways when it came to men.

“So what now, Officer?” she drawled in her condescending, yet silky, voice.

He didn’t answer. Their faces were only inches apart now, and he was staring into Ada’s fathomless half-closed eyes; her breasts were pressing against his chest in a tranquil rhythm as she breathed, and her smile had faded. She was watching him differently now, gaze traversing his face as one searching for something with intense interest. She raised her head up and kissed him exploratively again, but he did not let her go.

“Not that easily, you don’t,” he warned, despite feeling somewhat confused and allured in unison. His feelings for Ada had been strong from the start, right from the moment of their first meeting when she'd almost shot him by accident in the basement. He recalled the moment, his brief anger at her flippant reply, so soon swallowed up by a curious kind of awe for her - a feeling that had never quite let go. She was beautiful and cunning, reckless yet determined, and never, ever to be taken for granted. He knew she'd slipped back into her old skin again, out to decieve and deny, but now he was certain he'd seen the real Ada - the one behind the mask - and ever since he'd kicked himself for not being able to save her. Part of it was probably the cop in him; but the rest was deeper, more personal. Ada had struck a chord in him no-one else had. He didn't know quite how to explain it, even to himself...

“Alright, I give up,” she purred. “Let me up, I’m getting cold.”

He sensed the same painful longing in her eyes, clouded perhaps with some other urgent intent, but it was still there. Why was it so difficult for her to let it all go? Just what remained to keep her loyal to the creeps who'd sent her into Raccoon in the first place?

...Not that she would tell him. He'd learned enough about Ada Wong to be sure of that.

She wasn't going to listen to him, he knew now, no matter how hard he tried; and in that moment, he suddenly felt older and unbearably empty. His plan to get her back felt like some crazy schoolboy venture, doomed to failure from the start, because he'd trusted and believed in her so much...

He should have known better.

Reluctantly, the cop let go, but didn’t move away. Goosebumps appeared on Ada's skin, yet Leon’s warmth was close enough to feel. She slithered out from under him, and rather than turning away and donning her shirt, she sat down beside him in the dark. After a moment of silence, she heard the Eagle drop to the floor with a muffled thump. Something in his eyes just now...

“It’s empty,” he said heavily, with uncharacteristic resignation.

“...So was mine.”

As if a great weight had suddenly been lifted from her, Ada saw that her chance was open, that he was letting her go, and allowing her to take whatever he had - at the price of crushing into dust his own short-lived hope. It was a shame, really, she thought. After all, they were friends - of a kind. Screwing Leon over had never been a pleasant prospect, especially after he'd worked to save her ass so many times, and the pang of guilt she felt for betraying him in Raccoon returned even sharper. He didn't even have the G-virus, and perhaps that was for the best...

Would it hurt just this once to be what she wanted to be, and do what she wanted to do? To stay with him a while, just a little while...

As he turned to face her, she met him in a gentle embrace, arms around his neck. A hardened nipple brushed his face as she pushed him into her, offering her cool, damp skin to his touch and to his kisses. He caressed the bare flesh with hand and mouth, the weight of her well-rounded breasts and the tight, cold, pinpricked skin of her waist. Ada was silent. Before long she had pushed him down under her, rubbing her slender thighs deeply against him, while he fumbled dazedly at the buttons of her jeans.

She leaned back and slipped them down. Following suit, he stripped off his T-shirt while she lay back down and popped the buttons one by one on his pants. Perching herself lightly upon his stomach, just above the hardness that was pressing at her back, she leaned over him, tracing paths with her nails across his shoulders. His hands were everywhere, though careful of her scars, while at the same time Ada’s lips travelled every contour of his youthful, well-formed body. First gentle, kissing and running her tongue along his midriff, now harder, bringing her teeth into play as she pleasured and tormented him. Sometimes he felt a deliberate roughness to her touch that he soon countered a little angrily by forcing her back slowly, till she was underneath him as before. But she only returned a coy and cunning smile as she pushed cold fingers into his open flies, caressing his burning hardness with subtle, teasing strokes.

He knew her game. But it wasn’t going to be so easy, he'd promised.

Reaching down, he grasped the hand she was using and pulled it back, setting her arms firmly away from him. There was a strange and playful mockery in her eyes, almost as if she were challenging him, expecting him to catch her off-guard. He slid down toward her waist, to the thin silk panties she was still wearing - she expected he would remove them; probably with his teeth in some attempt at sexual bravado. Instead, he brought his face the silk, making no attempt to take it off, breathing warm air onto it that sent strange sensations to the cold skin beneath. Now he brought his tongue to the silk, tentatively, then with increasing confidence as the material grew moist with breath and saliva, and the warmth of her own moisture came through. Ada breathed hard; the kid was good. The sensations were amazing – the feel of wet silk adding to the pleasure of his twists and turns.

Seeing that his attempts were having the desired effect, Leon stepped up the pace. She began to lose breath and pant, even though her self-control was well practiced; but she wasn’t used to inaction, and she sure as hell wasn’t used to being on the bottom. Suddenly she tensed, wrapped her legs about his neck and brought him upwards, at the same time pulling down his remaining clothing to expose the rest of him.

“What about…?” he began awkwardly, but she silenced him with a finger on his lips. It didn’t matter anymore – well, not for her anyway.

Now it was his turn to be surprised Wrapping her fingers around his member, she used it sedately on herself with the wetness they’d created, while he experiences the bizarre sensation of becoming, quite literally, a sex toy. Just as he thought she would change position, or had finished with him, she pushed it in. In the close darkness he recognised the unmistakeable warmth, the slick, total envelopment and immediate, overwhelming gratification it brought. He exhaled suddenly as she used her legs behind to guide him, first slow, then quicker as movement became easier and the position more familiar.

But not for long. After thirty seconds or so, she gripped him and rolled over so that she straddled him, the penetration deep. Now she used her full weight and movement to her own advantage, while Leon grasped her hips, driving the source of stimulation ever deeper with longer thrusts. From fast to slow to fast again, and inwardly satisfied at her control, Ada worked him closer to the brink, bringing him back mercilessly with a slower pace every time he threatened to explode. This peculiar sexual warfare she enjoyed, and especially the denial of orgasm – what better way to teach a man who was boss with his pants down?

Now they were sweating, and she was contemplating whether or not to let him go, for she was still fully in control and not yet exhausted. Leon was panting with exertion and elation, but but even as she’d made up her mind, she suddenly found his fingers caressing her moist folds, and her most sensitive part. This, along with the deep thrusts she’d demanded was enough to send the shockwave of climax rippling through her flesh, the rigors causing her muscles to tighten and sending own own thrusts to an intensity he couldn’t withstand. She gasped as they came almost together, before collapsing down onto Leon’s chest, catching her breath to the sound of his turbulent heartbeat.

"What just happened?" she found herself wondering, and soon after decided that it didn't matter what had happened, because it already had. Her cares were forgotten for the moment, just this one moment... a moment alone, away from the Agency, from Umbrella, Trent and the rest, but most of all from Ada Wong. Alone with Leon, it was the closest to peace she'd ever been.

6

The storm passed over in the early hours. When Leon woke again, with the relentless Nevada sun warming his eyes, he was not really surprised to find the spot in the bed next to him empty. Deep tracks in the red mud outside where Ada's black car had been confirmed his fears. Ada had gone.

So had the photographs and the files.

"Damn you, Ada," he whispered to himself, reaching for place next to the bed where the Eagle had been. Incredibly, it was still there.

Ada was still running, unarmed. Running to nowhere and no-one...

When at last he stepped out into the pleasantly cool cloudless morning, it was with a heavy heart and a glance in both directions along the road. Nothing moved along the shimmering black strip, stark against the mauves and scarlets of the desert. He did not expect to see anything anyway.

Thankfully, his car's ignition had not been tampered with. As he reached to pull the door closed after him, something small and white fluttered from the left pocket of his tattered jacket. A scrap of paper, lodged gently in the mud, trembling in the faint wind. There was something written on it.

He picked it up, carefully, wiping a speck of red dirt from it with one thumb.

Ada's small, angular handwriting.

All it said was:

"Sorry".

He wasn't sure just what she was sorry for; but in a way, his mind accepted it a little better. That Ada had not left without leaving something behind. Even if it was only a single word...

He looked up, to the infinite skies and the world beyond. Then he spurred his car and turned it about west - the way the black car's tyre tracks went, the same way he himself was going.