Chapter Text
"If I am with you, you will die. It's simple math.”
October 9, 2026
His hand is a sun spot upon her lower back, chasing away the chill of this dark, dank place, steady as they are reeled out of the bowels of ARK via rescue harness.
The throb behind her eyes, the distant pull of the sutures low on her abdomen, the bite of the harness into her thighs— all of it barely registers due to the cool, pleasant numbness of treated wounds spread throughout her torso and bicep.
The blinding shafts of light above her seem like they’re at the end of a tunnel, growing brighter with each inch claimed in their ascension.
Grace doesn't look up at it. Her eyes fall shut, and her mind fills with the radiant awareness of Leon Kennedy’s touch.
Undeniable warmth had engulfed her hand with gentle, steadfast strength throughout her treatment without saying anything at all as the distant feeling of tugging flesh beneath needle and thread took up residence in her mind. Remained as the medic had been finishing with the last of the sutures and the team leader had been explaining the lift sequence in that particular tone people used when they needed you to stay calm and needed themselves to believe you would. Leon's hand had simply arrived, heavy and certain, and it stayed.
She had focused on it as the winch began to move.
The rubble had fallen away beneath her feet in pieces, a slow dissolve of everything that had nearly been her grave, and she had kept her mind on his hand and thought about nothing. Not of the revelation that Alyssa Ashcroft was not her biological mother, that her parents, whoever they are, didn't want her. Not the image of Emily’s flesh bubbling and warping, her features twisting into something vicious and monstrous until all that was left was a mindless mutant Leon had no choice but to shoot down. Not the moment the ceiling had come down around them, the light fixtures burning out one by one as Leon took a seat beside her, and seemingly without hesitation, promised not to leave her side — chose to die beside her.
The feeling of his unwavering gaze right before the lights disappeared entirely is as all encompassing as the spotlights that swallow them whole as they finally reach topside.
The noise hits first — wind, rotors, someone shouting coordinates into a radio — and then the cold, a real above-ground cold of mid autumn that she hasn't felt in what seems like a very long time. Hands reach for her at the lip of the shaft, steadying the harness, guiding her clear of the edge.
When Leon clears the top, he doesn't stop moving.
He says something to the medic she doesn't catch, and then he's in front of her. There's no time given to process. She's up, lifted against his chest with a care at odds with how he appears: splattered in blood and debris, bedecked with weapons and tactical gear, the skin above his eyebrow bearing an angry red cut that had been butterfly-taped with the rough efficiency of a man who'd waved off anything more thorough. He gives off the aura of a hardened mercenary who's seen, lived, and done enough to last several lifetimes.
Her eyes become heavy, weighed beneath invisible fingertips she can't seem to fight against.
“I can walk,” she murmurs, lips hardly moving. She takes a slow breath — musky sweat, coppery sharpness, and something warm, smokey, and earthy that ties it all together — and feels her lungs expand without resistance for the first time in the past twenty-four hours. Maybe even longer than that.
“You can,” he agrees, stride never ceasing.
The helicopter is maybe twenty meters away, she notices through bleary eyes. She counts his steps without meaning to, her cheek against his shoulder, and thinks that she probably should have more feelings about being carried. She thinks she might have many feelings, later, when there is space for them.
For now there is just the wind, and the rotors getting louder, and the solid, unreasonable fact of him still here against all odds.
—❥—
There's darkness, painful in its familiarity. The way it coats her senses, viscous and impenetrable. Unfeeling in the way it presses down on her without effort, smothering in its chilling, suffocating silence. The absolute nothingness is a presence unlike any other that grants no liberties no matter how well acquainted they are.
She stumbles forward, hearing the creek of metal sheets beneath her boots, the shaky rasp of her breathing. Stopping causes the sheer absence of sound to make her feel as if she's separating from her body, no anchors to hold onto, no reality to grasp, nothing there to keep her from drowning. So she creeps forward, ears straining and heart feeling like a throbbing pang that causes her ribs to creak precariously.
A pattering sound halts her movement.
It's light. Nothing like the scraping thuds of Marie's relentless gait.
Still, her hand pats down her side subconsciously and she withdraws a cylinder of plastic that molds into the grooves of her palm. A click later and a beam of light banishes a sliver of darkness.
A flashlight. Right. Why hadn't I remembered—
Silvery blond, more ashen than her own, flutters out of the sphere of light.
A shock jolts through her nerves, overclocking every system in her body. She darts forward like a shot, blindly following the tapping of little feet and each flash of a worn, white gown or silver hair caught within the wild swing of her flashlight.
“E-Emily? Is that you, sweetie?” she calls, breathless but refusing to stop, to rest. “I-It's me, Grace!”
“Grace!?” Sharp, high-pitched, and frightened, her name echoes back in return.
The source is everywhere and nowhere, but she pushes herself faster anyway. That sweet cherubic tone is uniquely Emily.
How could that girl possibly be a clone of me when Emily is so pure, so bright, so deserving of salvation?
Emily's origins don't matter to her, she decides. I'm going to make sure she makes it out.
Her lungs burn, her skin slicked in sweat, legs becoming lead weights. But she swears she can hear the patter of Emily’s feet growing closer, ahead of her.
Her flashlight grows dull, the darkness choking out the light like a black hole just as her next footfall sounds damp. Her body stops against her will as the wet feeling beneath her shoe carries a certain queasy similarity that's only recently become unforgettable.
“E-Emily? Sweetie, w-where are you?” she pleads, breaths becoming shallow from how metallic the air has suddenly become.
The footsteps she was chasing have vanished. No matter which way she swivels, there's nothing captured within the muted glow of her flashlight. She angles the light low, wondering if there's a hidden path below. Feels her stomach roll in on itself so violently, she crashes, knees first, into the chilling wet beneath her with a gag.
Emily's eyes are closed, head lolled to the side, her tiny torso riddled with holes so red they're nearly black. Her dress, once white, is almost entirely crimson from the pool of blood Grace kneels in. So much blood, an amount she's achingly cognizant of.
“Emily?! Oh, god! EMILY!”
The little girl is weightless when she bows over to cradle her limp form to her chest, the flashlight clattering to the ground where it rolls to a stop. She wails to the heavens, begging them to trade her for Emily, all while rocking the little girl who once clung to her with such trust — desperately wishing this was all some sort of sick dream.
Wild eyes snag unwittingly on the curve of a boot in the pool of flickering light, crawls up the prone form, past the sheen of a gun in hand up to the gory hole blown into his temple.
The face she recognizes is enough to fracture her brain beyond recognition. There's a total disconnect, and all at once, she feels empty. Her screams cease, and everything suddenly becomes crystal clear.
She lies Emily back down, crossing the girl's arms over her chest before pressing a kiss to the icy skin of her forehead.
Then she crawls over to him, stains her mouth crimson with a stolen kiss from lax, blood-smeared lips. Grace takes the gun from his hand, presses it to her temple, squeezes the trigger—
“Grace!”
Air rushes down her throat that feels as if it's been abraded with salt. She folds into a fit of coughs, kept short of collapsing entirely by a firm pair of hands on her shoulders. Her body feels as if it just emerged from a steamer. Her skin drenched and constrained in sticky clothes while her eyes water in a continuous overflow.
She gasps and trembles, holding onto thick forearms for dear life for a solid minute until it registers who is with her. Her damp vision sweeps over the dark cargo pants and navy compression shirt up to the expression pinched tight, but aware. Alive.
“Leon!” She wastes not a second, launching herself forward to loop her arms around his neck and promptly splits open around a relief too great for her body to hold.
Now that she made it to the after life, she can be here with him and her mom and Emily. She squeezes him tighter, sobbing her unintelligible gratitude for all to hear.
“Easy, Grace. I'm here. I've got you,” his low rumble travels like ripples across water sluicing down her skin. She feels his burning touch at the small of her back before he sweeps her legs out over his with his other hand. “Don't want to reopen your stitches.”
Stitches? The word creates dissonance in her mind in tandem with the pang that begins to radiate from her lower right side. She's dead now, so why does she still have to deal with mortal inconveniences?
Shaking her head, she ignores the way her stomach starts to clench uncomfortably and leans back enough to see Leon clearly. She zeros in on the side of his skull where bones and brain matter had been so fresh not long ago before asking, “Where are they?”
Her eyes fall to his that study her with a tentativeness that feels too much like caution. This close, she can't even miss their pink almost puffy appearance that looks recognizable in a way her brain skitters over.
“Who?”
Her brows furrow and her fingers tangle into the back of his shirt, the joints in her hands straining. She looks around and sees eggshell-white plaster walls, a single amber light fixture casting light across the spacious room, a couple of side tables. Nothing else besides the bed they sit on.
“Mom. Emily,” she croaks as a throb blooms into existence behind her temples.
“Grace—”
“We died,” she interrupts him, adamant, unwilling to believe anything else. “We died. We're all here together, Leon. Now where are they?”
“You were having a nightmare,” he begins, hand cupping her face, thumb brushing away the moisture leaking out of her against her will. “I contacted the Hound Wolves while you were sleeping.”
He pauses, and that millisecond where his eyes tremble has her shaking her head.
“Grace…”
“No.” Whatever he has to say, she doesn't want to hear it. It's not true. He's been misinformed.
His throat bobs. “It's Emily. They went to her, but—”
“NO!” She springboards off his lap, but he sees it coming, and she only manages to wriggle and thrash in the lock of his arms around her.
“She was long gone. The antiviral couldn't revive her. I'm so sorry.”
She turns on him, slamming her fists against his chest, howling like a rabid dog, her mind a whirlwind of abject chaos. “You're wrong! You're wrong! YOU'RE WRONG!” Again and again, she pounds her fists, shrieking over the sound of Emily's voice in her head calling for her in concern, with fear, with unconditional trust.
The hot slice of her skin splitting open is welcome, though the blood oozing freely is hardly enough of a penance. So she twists her arms to drive her fingers into the covered wound below her collarbone next.
Leon wrangles her so her back is to his chest with a hissed curse, his arms pinning hers down before he lowers them on their sides into the cushion of the bed, throwing his leg over hers.
She throws her body against the unyielding constraints, bucking and screeching bloody murder, but eventually her death throes fade. Her body falling limp as long, weeping moans of “noooo” seep through the cracks running jagged all over her soul.
That baby, that sweet angel.
She feels Leon's head lean into the back of hers, his hoarse apologies an unending knell her spirit marches off into oblivion to.
Because she may still be alive, but she can't see how she could ever live with herself for being the reason someone else she loved died.