Code Name: EVE

A/N: To clarify, the next actual chapter (chapter 3-1) will take place two years after the game. This interlude takes place two years before the game. Hence, at this current moment in time, it happened four years ago.

“Thoughts are the shadows of feelings, always darker, emptier, and simpler. I don't care if they're fake or real, I just thank them for showing up at all. I have black periods. Who does not? But they are not a part of me; they are not a part of illness, but a part of my being. What am I saying? I have the courage to have them. Four o' clock in the morning. This sucks.” --Warbrain, Alkaline Trio

Dammit, Leon should have known better than to try to help Krauser by now. When he caught Krauser trying to sneak out of the bunkhouse last night, he should have just let him go, but no. Not Leon Scott Kennedy. He had to run after Krauser and try to stop him from doing something stupid—a futile task. And why? They barely ever saw each other—mostly for a few minutes while awaiting their respective therapy sessions and in the mess hall. When they did, Krauser was ripping on him half the time. Leon hadn’t taken it personally because that’s the way Krauser was with everybody, but there was also a point in that right there. Krauser didn’t seem to like Leon any more or less than he liked anyone else. He certainly didn’t seem to think of Leon as a friend, aside from bandying about the occasional, sarcastic ‘comrade.’ And it was this cynical asshole that Leon had gotten himself in trouble for, trying to keep him from getting himself thrown out. Krauser was much smarter than he let on, how could Leon let him waste that?

And there was the other downside in letting himself get sucked into being Krauser’s babysitter. It had caught on around the facility. If Leon hadn’t been caught with Krauser last night, they probably would have found some other excuse to make Leon stay here. As it now stood, everyone else was on leave, having a good time, and Leon was stuck here making sure Krauser stuck to his punishment: sitting in this damn tent on a muggy night watching a fucking helicopter. At least it gave Leon time to study. It was the last night before exams. Which brought Leon to another thing that bugged him about Krauser. Unless he was doing something besides goofing around on those nights when Leon wasn’t awake watching him, he barely had to apply himself at all. Where Leon had to work his ass off, Krauser seemed to have a natural instinct about these things. Even now, he was just lounging in his chair toying with a piece of grass. Whatever. As long as he didn’t do anything to interrupt Leon’s concen-

fwww

Leon gritted his teeth but didn’t look up.

fWWfww

What on earth… Leon glared at Krauser, who had put the blade of grass between his thumbs and was blowing through it, making it whistle. “Do you mind?”

Krauser’s eyes moved to look at him sideways, but he didn’t move his hands from their current position.

“Some of us are trying to get something constructive done.”

Smirking, Krauser balled up the slender leaf and flicked it at the smaller man. “You’re a real nerd sometimes, Kennedy, you know that?”

“It’s your fault I’m stuck here, the least you can do is give me some peace.”

“Oh yeah? ‘Cause I recall telling you to mind your own damn business and go back to bed.”

“What were you going to do with a stink bomb, anyway?”

“Set it off.”

Leon rolled his eyes. “Where?”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Krauser grinned.

“It would if you were thinking of doing it again,” Leon pointed out.

He just laughed. “And so what if I was? You gonna tell on me?”

“No,” Leon sighed, looking back at his book. “You know I wouldn’t.”

Krauser shook his head. “You’re such a boy scout…”

Leon ignored him. Whatever self-destructive energy Krauser had, Leon wasn’t going to fuel it by being a tattletale, or by letting the bigger man pick stupid fights with him.

“I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about, anyway.” Krauser let his gaze wander out the window. “We both know you wanted to stay in tonight.”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t be stuck in this stuffy room with you.” There was a long silence after that, and Leon fell back into his reading.

“So you’d really stop me by yourself before getting help, huh?”

“Sure,” he replied without looking up.

“Heh. Stupid way to punish us, isn’t it?”

Scowling again, Leon glanced at his comrade. He was balancing on two legs of the chair, with his feet on the table, studying the ceiling. Thinking he was still trying to make small talk, Leon snapped, “Look, I’m trying to concentrate over here, okay? Can’t you be quiet for five minutes?” Krauser made a lip-zipping gesture and flicked his fingers as though tossing away an invisible key. Leon was able to return to his own business, until several minutes later, when he heard Krauser stand up. “You can’t leave…”

“Just taking a piss, sir,” Krauser shot over one shoulder as he slipped out.

He knew that Krauser had no qualms about lying and as such he was pretty darn good at it. Never flinched, never blinked, never stumbled… They’d joked about seeing if he could pass a polygraph… Could he really let Krauser go off alone like that? Probably not… But he wasn’t about to get himself in trouble by following him again. No, he’d do what Krauser had told him to do last night and mind his own business. For about thirty minutes. That was way too long for a piss. Knowing Krauser and considering their relatively isolated state, he would have just found a bush nearby. I’ll just look outside and see if he’s still around…

He leaned outside and scanned the dark field. At first he thought Krauser had bailed on him—Typical...—until he saw a shadow moving by the chopper. Leon blinked. Oh, no. Oh, hell, no. Quickly discarding his earlier resolution, Leon left the tent and ran the distance to the landing pad, stopping at the edge of the concrete. “What the hell are you doing? Get away from there,” he hissed.

Without turning around, or moving his gaze from in the inside of the helicopter, Krauser said, “Don’t you have more constructive things to do?”

“Get away from there,” Leon repeated, a little more firmly.

Krauser turned, the moonlight illuminating the rather eerie grin on his face. His eyes flicked to the grass line at Leon’s feet and then up again. “Why don’t you come get me?”

“I’m not kidding. I don’t want to get in trouble again.” Whether Leon was here or in the tent, if something happened to the helicopter, they would both be screwed.

The grin got even wider, if that was at all possible, and Krauser leaned an arm on the floor of the cockpit. “What is it that you’re so worried I’m going to do?”

There was something really wrong with him tonight, wasn’t there? It went beyond what Leon had come to know as the look that meant Krauser was about to do something dangerous. Whatever he was planning, it was something well beyond going into town and trying to clear the front steps of the library in one leap. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, just forget about it and go back inside.”

Laughing again, Krauser instead turned back around and pulled himself up into the cockpit. Leon actually felt his heart skip a beat in his chest. He lunged across the line and grabbed for Krauser’s legs and waist, desperate enough to use force at this point. However, all he got was a boot in the chest. Stumbling back, he landed hard on his butt, skinning his palms a little as he tried to catch himself. Shaking is head, he looked up through his hair just in time to see Krauser strap himself in.

“Wanna try that again, pretty boy?”

“This is insane! Get out of there!”

“You always say that,” Krauser laughed. “Like I know how to fly one of these things, right?”

The implications of that question were not good at all. Leon knew that Krauser always wanted to be in the air force. He knew that Krauser had been in training for at least two years longer than him. The bigger man had been away on and back from a forced vacation before Leon had come here. Anyone who knew him before that seemed to be either gone, or wouldn’t talk about it, leaving Leon with no way of telling what Krauser did and didn’t know. If he thought he was going to steal the thing, Leon had a very real problem on his hands. “Listen,” he said, slowly and calmly. “If you get down and come inside now, no one has to know that this happened.”

Krauser’s eyes stayed glued on Leon, glittering gleefully as he ran a hand across the control panel. “It’s not getting up that’s the problem. It’s getting back down again.”

“You wouldn’t dare-” Lights flicked on all across the panel. Something about Leon’s expression apparently made Krauser laugh again, a rather unhinged sound. If this was some kind of game, Leon was tired of it. They were both going back inside if he had to punch the other man out and drag him. After a quick glance around, Leon lunged in after him, clawing for the release on the belt. His fingers brushed it, and then Krauser grabbed his wrists.

“Don’t touch me, Kennedy,” he warned.

Leon elbowed him in the chest and then tried again. Taking the helicopter off the ground would screw up his life. If he didn’t get hurt, he’d probably wind up in jail. What the hell was wrong with him? And he was actually hitting Leon now, beating on him with his fists as hard as the limits of his position and the size of the space would allow. Leon gritted his teeth and took it, putting up one arm to protect his head. The onslaught stopped for a second, and Leon was just about to grab for the clasp again, when a sound overhead made him look up. The blades whirring to life. In his moment of distraction, Krauser shoved him back outside again. Leon locked eyes with him as the chopper started to lift. The look in them sent a chill down his spine. Sharp and focused, but at the same time not quite on this moment. Maybe he’ll get off on insanity or something. Leon scrambled back, sprang to his feet, and ran to find somebody, limping a little on a bruised hip. Krauser had been right. This was a stupid way to punish them.