Together: A Dark Romance Duet || Leon Kennedy x Female Reader

Chapter 1: FMC

Part I: The Beginning of the End

When I come to, everything hurts. It is hard to imagine what normalcy felt like at any point in my life, because the past that I think of now only feels like a dream. Memories feel like weapons, and many of the dreams I have in my unconscious state taunt me with images of what life was before my abduction.

It's strange how you don't realize how good life was before something detrimental happens. Before my mother died of alcohol poisoning when I was fifteen, it was easy to look past all the shitty parts of my childhood and pretend my life was perfect. Even though my mother was consumed by money and liquor, and my politician father worked more hours than he spent at home, I was happy. I was beautiful, rich, and I was ignorant enough to believe all my fake friends truly cared for me. But after my mother's death, and my spiral, I saw life for what it really was: a never-ending battle to remain happy and stable.

As soon as I left home at eighteen and dove straight into my college career, I never looked back. My visits to home to see my father and his wife became fewer over the years, and now I can't even remember the last time I hugged him. I don't know if I'll ever see him again.

The hood is taken off my head, and I blink furiously, vision blurry from being knocked out multiple times and head pounding from the severe concussion I no doubt developed. My captors were not gentle, and neither was I with them, resisting every chance I could.

I make out the inside of a church, tasting the iron of blood on my tongue. Wooden pews before me, colorful glass mosaics line the walls. All the feeling in my body comes back in a rush; my bones trembling, wrists rubbed raw from being bound by rope, head throbbing. Cold concrete nips at the backs of my thighs as I sit up and realize just how freezing cold this church is, as if no life exists within these walls. Rain pounds down on the wooden structure, as if asking to be let in.

The only form of light comes from the many candles lit around the church, and as my eyes adjust, I watch shadows move around me. Figures in robes chant a strange hymn in Spanish. From my studies in the language, I am able to make out only a few words in my state.

Plague.

Rebirth.

Sacred body.

I look behind and above me to find a large window made up of red, green, and blue stained glass, all fragmented as if none of the pieces fit. Chaos. A symbol, what looks like a dragonfly with broken, jagged-edged wings presents itself behind the colors. I swallow the sandpaper in my throat.

More chanting begins as the shadows increase in number, the figures all hidden under their robes. Cowards hiding behind the sacred word of their god.

Finally, the man I'd seen in my nightmares emerges from the shadows. The smell of carrion hits my nose with an unrelenting aggression. I notice the...thing the man holds in one hand. Shaped like a staff, lean and tall, but moving like it's alive. Tentacles slither up and down the staff, snaking out and flowing as if on a phantom breeze. Bile burns in the back of my throat, the acid of an empty stomach.

"Sacrificial lamb. You will receive our most sacred body," the man says. Glowing cerulean eyes meet mine, and I can't help but suck in a breath, scrambling back at an attempt to escape this monster. Grayish, purple skin spreads thin over cracked lips in a wide smile.

"It begins now."

I feel a sharp, stinging prick in the side of my throat, and I gag at the pain, attempting to scream but finding my voice raw. I thrash, but the pain overcomes me, my body freezing up and going numb as if I am no longer in control.