Chapter Text
In another, gentler life, Grace Ashcroft had a job, an apartment she barely spent time in, a revolver she was just learning how to use, and the ghost of a dead mother. In this life, she has the perpetual prick of an IV, cold hands that hold her down while she sobs, and an endless, yawning darkness behind her open eyes.
Sometimes she dreams of the rain, while she lies in her bed, strapped to it. She remembers the sound, the chatter against the concrete, and the clean, sharp smell of wet soil. Just before the—just before, in that life she never had, Grace had started gardening. Just an experimental hobby she’d tried picking up to take time off the screens. Funnily enough everything she learned about the plants she’d bought on a whim, everything she did to take care of them came from reddit. She got into mixing her own potting soil, following tutorials, guides, and her own failures. Her apartment was small, and kind of dingy, so she got grow lights. She was in the process of figuring a self-watering system when—
Well, when.
When she was made to realise that life was never hers.
She wonders if the care center has plants. And if so, who takes care of them? Not the same doctors and nurses who tend to Grace. None of them seem like the type. Not Victor either. He doesn’t have the temperament. He hardly has the patience for Grace, and she’s his favourite toy.
Victor likes breaking things, Grace has come to realise. He likes pulling things apart, seeing all the little bits inside, seeing them tick and beat, and then he likes mixing them up, putting different parts in different places, or adding new things to the mix. He doesn’t put things back though, at least not the way he found them.
In that other life, that dream one of hers, Grace would have gotten a thrill being able to study this monster of a man. To read about him, find out all the little crumbs of information, comb through his life history and put together a perfect picture of everything that matters. It would be an interesting project, one of the cases that would make her stay late at work, come home at dawn, crash out, and then rinse and repeat. A lovely life to dream about, to pass the time.
Time is one thing that is painfully slow at the care center. Nothing happens. Nothing that’s good anyway. It’s always one experiment after the other, sometimes painful, sometimes not. Sometimes Grace can rest and just let her mind wander while the doctors and Victor do whatever it is they want to do. The pain is just background noise, and she can slip into that old life she may or may not have had. Think of some of the cases she was in the middle of solving, figure out a better watering schedule for her plants.
But then, there are those other times. Times when the pain is all she is. Not a person, just nerve endings on fire until being conscious is too much, and then she is nothing. Nothing and no one. Not a girl, not an FBI analyst, not a sad thing on the floor, not even alive.
Huh, she must have never been alive.
Mid-afternoon they come for her again, and it’s one of the nothing days. It’s raining outside, cats and dogs, thunder, lightning (not that she can see that), howling winds. Maybe hail. If she makes a run for it, maybe she’ll die in the pouring torrent and maybe that will feel like healing.
She doesn’t try though. She’s tried before and it…wasn’t worth what they took from her. She only thinks about running. Feet slapping on the floor, air burning her lungs, wind, gunfire, blood. In some of these daydreams, they shoot her down. In some of them she makes it all the way to the courtyard, gets to feel the fresh breeze, grass and stone under her feet instead of cold tiles.
They strap her down for the procedure. She’s already been pumped full of drugs before being taken out of the room so Grace goes down easy. No protest, no peep. She knows better by now. Why scream when no one’s listening?
They begin. Slowly at first, and then like the lightning outside. Grace slips into the comfortable sleeve of despair, hopes for death, asks for it even. Politely. Sweetly, the way Victor likes it. No luck.
She remains there, for days, weeks, years. Could be years. Feels like years. On the table. No eyes to see, no mouth to beg, no mother to cry for. Straps, an IV full of poison, and knives that slice and remake her. Over and over again. Days, weeks, months.
She sleeps, she loses consciousness, she waits. Sometimes, she hums, some sweet thing her mother that never existed used to sing to her. Calming, soothing. It irritates Victor but Grace stopped trying to please him a long time ago. Nothing pleases Victor more than pain and Grace can’t give any more than she already has.
Eventually, she sleeps once more.
*
She feels it when the first infected breach containment. Grace wakes up when the sirens begin to shrill. There’s a loud explosion, from somewhere that feels far away and thrillingly near. There are screams around her, staff that are scrabbling to evacuate.
Frantic hands begin to undo her straps. “Get Subject Zero to the East Wing. Hurry!”
Voices, voices all around her. All panicked. Where’s Victor? Not here. She would have felt it. She would have known. A gurgle. A scream. The infected are here. Hands that were trying to hold her up disappear. Carnage follows.
Grace drops down on the floor, unsteadily. Her knees knock against the tiles but she doesn’t utter a sound. Just crawls to the nearest corner and makes herself small. She tries to cradle herself in her own arms (who else is there?). Sways back and forth while whatever must happen, happens around her.
She closes her eyes that no longer work and slips into the eyes of the closest infected thing. When they remade her, when they took from her, they also gave. She can’t see but she can see what others like her can. Sometimes she watches herself with Victor’s eyes until bile rises up her throat.
The room is beautifully damaged, scattered with corpses and their viscera. She watches with eyes that are not her own as an infected patient with a busted jaw pulls out the arm of a nurse. He screams, alive for now, and in pain. Good, Grace thinks. Must be fun. She would partake but she’s not that kind of a monster yet. For now she’s just a voyeur. Bring out the popcorn, she’s about to witness a massacre.
She sways, and hums to herself and lets the infected do their work. She jumps from eye to eye, watching, just watching. And waiting for Victor to come and stop the party. Shouldn’t be long now. Ten more minutes, maybe?
Ten minutes pass. Her room clears of the living and the dead begin to file out. They don’t mind Grace. She’s more or less one of them. She sits in the corner, obediently. The thought of escape isn’t even a consideration. They cut that out of her a long time ago. She just waits. Like a good girl. Watching, humming, soothing herself.
Outside the room, it’s almost the same. Blood everywhere. The siren wails and wails. Somewhere, in a different wing maybe, there’s a distant sound of gunfire. Curiously, Grace reaches and looks for eyes there.
It’s a long stretch. She’s not tried going this far yet. She eventually finds one infected, stumbling messily. The view from its eyes is grainy, like there’s static between them. Grace blinks, the infected blinks and catches something coming at her—at it. She—they—it stumbles forward, reaching, and like a polaroid picture breathing to life, she sees him. First the silhouette, then the eyes, then the gun.
She hears the slaughter next. The slam of bullets, the howls, the screams. The spray of blood like rain she hasn’t felt on her skin in so long. He’s a quiet, deadly thing. Must be beautiful too, she imagines. She can’t see him clearly yet. Heavy footsteps, a grunt, the boom of a rifle (or something she assumes to be one). She basks in the music of it, and tries to stumble closer. She nudges the infected body, tells it to move, forward, forward, go find him, go touch him.
She only catches the briefest glimpse of him before he ducks behind the thing that is and isn’t her and blows its brains out. Grace feels a strange twist in her gut, a prickling of pleasure she didn’t expect. Oh, death would be so sweet, and she was right—he’s beautiful.
Where did he come from? Who is he? Police maybe. But he isn’t in uniform. FBI? Did they finally notice she was missing? Unlikely. Or some secret agency, working against people like Victor? A-a bio-terror agency, she feels her rusty brain supply. There was one she knew of. The Division of Security something. Is that what he is? Has he been sent to clean out Victor’s dirty projects? Will he…is he here to kill her, she wonders with a thrill.
Has the universe finally sent her a saviour? To finally, finally free her. Bring her peace. A beautiful bullet to her brain.
It was going to happen eventually, she was hopeful. When she realised what they were making of her, she thought surely someone out there would be sent to stop it. And if not, to eventually stop her. It’s how these things go. Monsters should die, even unwilling ones.
The second infected she piggybacks makes sure to stay at a cautious distance, or rather she sends along a suggestion for it so she has a longer time to admire and gaze like a teenage girl with a crush on her much, much older uncle-like family friend.
He blows out the brains of this one as well. So, she moves on to the next, and then the next, and the next. She makes a trail for him. Infected in line from the West Wing to her. Praying he'll find her before Victor comes back.
She likes the jacket he has on, she decides. It would feel warm. It’s been a long time since Grace has felt warmth. Maybe he’ll let her wear it before he kills her? She could ask. Please, sir. I’ll be a good monster. I won’t bite.
By the time he reaches her, the care center is silent. Empty. Just her and him. A monster and a hunter. There are no dead eyes for her to look at him with so she turns her head in the direction of him. Footsteps, breathing, and the tick, tick, tick of a watch. She’d missed that detail of him in her surveillance.
He startles when he sees her. She hears the hitch in his steps.
“Shit,” she hears him say. A beautiful voice to match a beautiful face.
She wishes he had left at least one pair of eyes for her to see him with. She tries to follow him with her useless ones. Tries gets up, unsteady with the drugs still dancing in her blood. She uses the wall to support herself as she hears him take a step towards her, cautious. He must be pointing the gun at her, she hopes. She considers making a wail-like noise, pretend she’s mindless and maybe he’ll stop hesitating and take the shot.
“Grace Ashcroft?” he asks.
Her head slams up. Her knees shake.
How? What?
The first thing she thinks is that this is some sick test. Victor’s watching her, to see what she will do. She if she’ll run, disobey him again, make a fool of herself. She knows he has cameras all over the facility. But would he burn his care centre down for a thing like this? Maybe, maybe. For his favourite toy? Anything.
“Grace?” he asks, softer this time. Another tentative step. “My name’s Leon. Kennedy. I'm with the DSO.”
A gentle hand on her elbow. Gloved. Sticky with blood. She jumps.
“Hey, shh. It’s okay.”
She’s shivering. A sound escapes her that she can’t define. Animalistic, whimpering, sad and small.
He says something but it sounds faraway to her. Underwater. She stops understanding, stops listening, stops trying. Victor’s games never fail to break her. She’d been stupid enough to think they were over because she’s been behaving herself for a good few months, but that must have been so boring.
Her shaky hands find his hand, the one with the gun. Also gloved, and the gun is warm under her fingers. Recently fired. She hopes there’s at least one bullet left. One last to do the job. She cradles it with both hands, and brings it to her mouth. Fingers scrabble to find the trigger.
It sits heavy on her tongue for one glorious second before he, before Leon pulls it away.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he says. Doesn’t yell it, the way Victor would have. He says it so quietly. Gravel in his voice. Tough. Stern. She feels a lick of shame, and another confusing touch of desire.
“I-I-I wan’t—” the words aren’t leaving her. She doesn’t speak much anymore. Only screams, so she’s a bit rusty. “I w-want to go home,” she finally blurts. She wants to see her mother.
Silence. Just breathing. A hand comes to the back of her neck, holds her tight. In place. A thumb against her jaw.
“So," he says, softly, "you speak.”
It’s such a lovely voice. Like a balm against her. What other things could she make him say? She wants to keep him talking, but they don’t have time.
“P-P-Please,” she says. “B-Before he comes back.”
“Who?”
She’s shaking. She tries scrambling for the gun again but when she pulls, his arm doesn’t give.
“Before who comes back, Grace?” There’s something compelling about his voice, something that begs to be answered.
“V-Victor.”
“Victor Gideon?”
“Y-Yesss.” It comes out as something of a hiss.
The thumb against her jaw swipes towards her lips, back at her jaw. Back and forth, making her warm and dizzy.
“Gideon isn’t here,” he says. “Searched the whole place. No sign of him.”
She shakes her head. “He’ll be b-b-back.” He’s always back to witness the last leg of his games.
The thumb stops. Leon takes it away. Her skin stings from the loss, she wants it back. It’s been so long since she’s been touched without it causing her pain. So, so long. A quiet keening noise leaves her.
He finds her hand, wraps his fingers around her thin wrist. “Come on, then,” he says. “We should hurry.”
Her knees lock, her whole body freezes.
Hurry? Hurry where? He can shoot her here, leave her here, can’t he?. They don’t have to go elsewhere. Victor will find them.
“No!” she yells it. Shrieks. Wrenches her hand away from him. The floor finds her again. Cold, comforting. The last time she left—
No, no, no.
No.
“Hey,” he’s by her side in a second. “Grace?”
She makes a small noise. A trapped animal. Blind. Alone. Wings cut off. Victor said he’ll do exactly that if she tries to leave.
“You wanted to go home, right? Let’s go home.”
Why did she say that? She doesn’t have a home. She shakes her head. “I c-can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
No. No. “T-They’ll hurt me. If-If I leave. If I t-try.”
Leon takes a step back. Silence. He gets it. He’ll walk away. The game will end. Grace only wishes she could have ended with it.
“There’s no one left to hurt you, Grace,” he tells her gently. “They’re all dead.”
She sniffles.
They are. There’s not a single soul here but them. Not one eye left for her to see through. He had torn through the dark. She had seen that. A hatchet in his hands. A bloody dance.
She feels those hands on her now, under her knees, and he picks her up like she weighs nothing. She wants to struggle but she's scared. He's so big he could hurt her so bad and still leave her alive. Struggling never helps. They like her obedient.
“Gonna need you to hold on to me,” he says. “Need a hand free in case of stragglers.”
She clutches at him, arms around his neck. He’s made of pure muscle. Doesn’t even flinch. Just grunts as he gets up with her. But the game—her mind worries. Victor will not want this. She’s not supposed to leave. But she has to be obedient too.
Her hands clutch harder, nails dig in. Leon hisses but doesn’t complain.
DSO, he had said. Division of Security Operations. Founded in 2011 by President Benford, later assassinated. The government’s very own counter bio-terrorism unit, answerable directly to the White House.
Can Victor fake that? Find some insane mountain of a man to clear out his precious care center, pretend to be part of a formidable government agency just to see if poor Gracie will make a run for it? Unlikely, but…but—
And then there’s the name. Kennedy. She remembers reading that somewhere. Founding member. One of the first DSO operatives. Would Victor spin a web this tight? Would he go through the trouble of a backstory? He’d never bothered before.
“You good over there?” Leon asks.
She brings her face close to his neck, to feel the skin there, know that this is a real person. He runs warm, hot almost. And feels so good so close up. Solid. Breathing. And he's not hurting her. Yet. She rests her mouth against the crook of his neck, feels the soft tickle of his hair against her cheek, thee scratch of his stubble. Gunpowder, smoke, sweat, blood. And…and…
Oh. She flinches. Oh.
Infected.
He grunts. “Easy there.”
She blinks, and then sees herself from his eyes. A small girl in the cradle of large arms. In a thin hospital gown, matted hair, chapped lips. Her eyes are clouded, but they were grey before that. Once upon a time that doesn’t exist. She looks nothing like her FBI issued ID photo. That girl is nowhere to be found.
This was...this was too good to be true. Of course it was. Of course he was. She wants to cry but what would be the point? This is how all games end.
“W-Where’s Victor?” she asks him solemnly.
He stops. “Dunno. Like I said, he wasn’t—”
“Are you taking me to him?”
He stops. Looks at her. Really looks at her. She blinks, he blinks. “You think I work for Victor Gideon.”
She nods.
“I don’t.”
She’s heard that before. “I don’t believe you.”
She feels the pull of his mouth into a crooked smile, doesn’t see it because all she’s looking at is herself. Sad, and still in his arms. Resigned.
“Why?” he asks.
“V-Victor likes games.”
He frowns. “I’d show you my badge but…” He leaves that pointedly between them.
He sighs. “I don’t work for Victor. I’m here because DSO caught wind of his shady little post-Umbrella vacation life here and we frown on bio-terror hobbies.”
“Y-You knew my name.”
“Yeah, this whole case was kind of built around you,” he says. “Got your superiors all alarmed when their untrained analyst disappeared from an active crime scene.”
She winces. “You’re infected.” She throws her last argument, lets it slap him on the forehead.
He grunts. Adjusts her in his arms. “Yeah. And?”
“Why would the DSO send an infected agent?”
He shugs. “Haven’t turned yet.” A smile. “Don’t worry, won’t bite you.”
I could bite you, she thinks. See how he’d like that. When she doesn’t laugh, doesn’t say anything, he sighs again. He turns his eyes, her eyes on the hallway before them. Flickering lights, bodies on the floor. A plant in the corner, in a large ceramic pot. A philodendron. Drooping. In need of water. Somewhere, in the farthest ends, there’s a soft scraping noise coming closer, inch by inch.
“If you don’t believe me,” he says, “I can leave you right here. Tell the FBI their lost agent was nowhere to be found and you can run back to dear Victor.”
No, please.
“Or,” he pauses. His voice turns low, and a little nasty, “I could shove my gun back down your pretty little mouth. I’ll make it quick. Tell your bosses you turned. Clean end.”
She says nothing but feels an electric trill at the thought of it.
The scrabbling and scratching from the hallway closes in. Grace switches eyes from Leon’s to the infected doctor. It’s on the floor, crawling towards them. From Leon’s eyes she can see it’s only half a body, and when she switches back to it, she sees herself in Leon’s arms, all cosy like she’s made herself comfortable.
“What will it be?” he asks her. He looks comfortable as well, holding her all too easily, one arm under her legs, and one holding a revolver. A magnum, she notes. Was this the thing making all the noise this whole time? How is a revolver packing so much power? How is this one man? He’s looking at her with a kind of tenderness she wishes she could memorise. He’ll really kill her if she asks. And maybe he’ll keep looking at her like this the whole time. Maybe even talk her through it.
“I-I believe you,” she lies.
He grins, lifts his gun at the eyes down the hallway and shoots it. Through him she sees the head explode. Rain too far away from her skin. She sighs.
“Hold this,” he hands her the gun. It pulls her down with its weight as he rummages his belt for something. He replaces the gun just as swiftly as he gave it with something else. A round-ish, flat, but bulky metallic thing.
“Badge,” he explains.
Her greedy fingers study the grooves and edges. The letters D, S, O, and the little stars between them, the carved wings framing the insignia. She felt the grooves of similar ones running down the grip of his revolver. Tentatively she takes a bite out of it, like a gold-medalist. The rumble of Leon’s laughter travels up from his chest to her fingertips.
He walks them out slowly. Like they have all the time in the world, checking every corridor on their way, making sure the monsters are all gone. Grace holds on until she feels cool, fresh air on her skin. She almost falls off his grip. Breeze. There’s a breeze. They’re outside.
His eyes show her the sky. Dark and dotted with stars. The courtyard is gloriously green, and wet with rain. In the distance there is a fire, but before them is a car. Dark, sleek. Leon takes her to it.
Fuck, he wasn’t lying. They’re leaving. She’s leaving. He’s taking her away. He holsters his gun, opens the door for her and deposits her kindly in the passenger seat. Leather, soft.
He walks around the car and takes a seat behind the wheel.
“Last chance,” he tells her. “Could still take you to Gideon.”
She shivers, and he chuckles at the fear in her skin. He reaches forward, brushes against her as he buckles the seatbelt in for her. His badge is still warm under her fingers.
“You done with that?” he asks.
She clutches it harder.
“Okay then.” he says. “Just one last thing.”
She watches through him as he pries one hand from the badge, brings it close to himself, and snaps a picture of the tag on her wrist.
Grace Ashcroft, 28, F. Patient Zero - Elpis.
He starts the car.
“Sherry,” she hears him say to nobody. “Package is secure. Send in the Wolves.”