ｌｅｏｎ
It feels like déjà vu for Leon as he stands there, in the middle of the abandoned warehouse, with you clutched tightly into his chest, and B.O.Ws surrounding him, waiting to pounce.
"Jessica, I'm not doing this," Leon says carefully, taking a step back from her and her crazy eyes.
"I'd be careful about stepping in that direction," she smirks, and nods in the direction of the growling. "Hunters are out for blood. Haven't fed them in a while."
Leon turns around, clutching you so tightly to his chest he's sure his handprints will show up on your body later. There are four hunters he can see, but the growling is louder than that, which means there must be some invisible ones too.
He knows that if he wants to get both of you out of here alive, he'll need to let go of you eventually, and it takes him a while to accept that. He reluctantly reasons the situation with himself, until there is nothing more he can do to convince himself.
"Jessica," he says slowly, moving towards one of the now empty containers. "This is between you and me. You know Clementine had nothing to do with Arthur's death." He crouches down, and props your body up against the container, gently, slowly. "She's innocent. Killing her won't get you Arthur back."
"Oh, and killing you will?" Jessica snaps, red hot rage dancing around in her eyes. "Nothing will bring him back."
Leon takes a cautious step away from you, casting one last look at you, and then steps carefully in front of you, shielding you from Jessica's gaze. "So what are you doing this for?"
Jessica studies him for a second, and he can see the conflicting emotions play around on her face. "I need you gone, Leon. I need her gone, I need anyone that is still alive while Arthur is dead, gone."
Leon would feel for her on any other occasion—he really would've—but not when she did the things she did to you. Not when she abducted you and tied you up like some dangerous animal, not while she put your life so much danger. Not when her handprint is on your face, and your wrists are bloodied with her restraints.
She can come after him all she wants, she can lie to him, betray him, kill his partners, try to kill him, but she doesn't get to lay a finger on you.
No-one can do that.
He swallows and takes another step closer to her. "Jessica, I get why you're hurt. We all have people close to us die. But how do you keep defending him when he so obviously used you to help his father?"
Lightning fast, Jessica draws her handgun, cocks it, and aims it at his head. "Do not make me out to the victim here, pretty boy. I wasn't coerced into anything—"
Leon closes the distance between them as quickly as she had drawn her gun. He hits her gun-wielding arm with his forearm, making her lose her balance for a quick second. He takes his chance and grabs the barrel of her gun with his left hand, while using his right hand to turn the gun back towards her.
She wrestles with him for a few seconds, trying to yank the gun back out of his grip, but he's stronger than she is, and while she's busy trying to grapple with him, he strikes her in the neck, the side of his hand cracking hard against her throat.
She coughs and sputters, relinquishing her grip on her gun. He unloads the gun, pocketing the ammo magazine, and drops the now useless gun to the floor, kicking it out of her reach.
"You—shouldn't—shouldn't have done that," she coughs, trying to steady her breathing.
"There's a lot of things I shouldn't do," he says, impatient. "One of them is keeping you alive. But I'm not bringing myself down to your level."
He hurries up to her, and before he can touch her, she yells, a spine-tingling cry that takes him by surprise for a second. The Hunter B.O.Ws start circling them, and Leon curses under his breath.
"I knew they wouldn't be well-behaved for long with you as their owner," he says, and quickly gets his own pair of handcuffs from his hip pouch, and in one swift moment is standing behind Jessica, who's still clutching her throat, trying to stop coughing and wheezing.
He grabs her arms and pulls them behind her back. She resists at first, and Leon can tell she's using all of her strength to wrestle his hold.
"Jessica, stop fighting, you're done," he says, trying to keep her from thrashing and moving so much under him. "I'm taking you in."
"You think it's that easy?!" She screams, moving her whole body.
Leon expects some more acrobatics out of her, but his patience is at an all-time low. He grabs her by the elbow, and forcibly yanks her hand down. As soon as he feels something cracking under his touch, she screams, but he's deaf to her cries as he handcuffs her, her arm bent at an odd angle.
"You don't look very comfortable," he tells her, pushing her out of the way, as he readies his gun for the Hunter B.O.Ws.
"I didn't even lay a fucking finger on you, you asshole!" She cries, on her knees on the ground.
"I'm sure it'll heal quicker than the bullet wound you gave me," he says, and feels the Hunters back him into a corner, between two containers.
He casts a look at you across the room, and breathes as he realises no Hunters are close to you yet.
The Hunters start circling him, and as he shoots them, he realises he has nothing near penetrable enough to be able to take all of them down. Their thick scaly skin is making it difficult for his bullets to go through.
"Get the fucking girl you useless baboons!" Jessica screams at them.
Leon watches in panic as a couple of them divert their gaze to your body. He shoots at them, trying to redirect their attention onto him. One of them lunges at Leon, its eyes yellow and red, its breath too reminiscent of blood. Leon dodges, but ends up too close to the next Hunter, which is more precise in its aim, and as it claws the air around him, its talons end up slashing through his arm.
Leon staggers backwards, the blood already dripping at his feet. The Hunter's talons dug deep into his skin, and he stares at his arm in disbelief, realising how the cut drags out from right under his shoulder and wraps around his bicep and elbow, ending right in the middle of his forearm, missing his veins by a few inches.
"Better quit while you're ahead, Lee," Jessica sneers from behind him. "That is, if you want to leave behind a pretty corpse."
Leon takes a second to breathe through the pain, wiping the blood that had splattered across his cheek with the back of his hand.
"So you're the puppet master?" He asks her, using all of his strength to not let his clawed arm go limp.
"What do you mean by that?" She asks, her face serious.
"If I take you out, does that mean they'll have no one to answer to?" He asks, grunting as he shoots at the Hunters, the kickback of his gun sending waves of pain across his arm.
"What, you're just going to let a bunch of bioweapons roam around without a master? Who knows who they'll end up killing." she says carefully, her voice calculated, like she's trying to read his mind. "Doesn't sound very anti-bioterrorism of you."
Leon doesn't have an answer for that, she's talking too much and leaving no time for him to plan.
"You can kill me," Jessica says soberly, and he feels her looking up at him. "But know Lansdale will stop at nothing."
Leon dodges another of the Hunter's deadly swipes. He has a handful of ammo left, nowhere near what he actually needs. He feels backed into a corner, literally and metaphorically. Killing Jessica means the Hunters would probably run off, in search of bigger meals, but it would mean that she didn't get the justice she deserves.
Not killing her would mean wasting the bullets he had left trying to divert the Hunters away from your comatose body, which would mean game over for the both of you.
Jessica screams at him, interrupting the precious milliseconds he can afford to think. "Jesus Leon! Look at you! You have no idea what to do, you're so blinded by whatever it is you feel for that stupid bitch—"
Something comes over Leon that he can neither understand nor control. He turns around and shoots her, straight in the thigh, right where she had shot Parker. He doesn't think about it, doesn't try to rationalise his decision, doesn't think of the consequences. It's pure instinct. "Not blind enough, apparently," he says.
She screams in pain, rolling around on the floor, with her hands still handcuffed, squeezing her thighs together in a futile attempt at trying to stop the bleeding. "You fucking shot me!"
"Just returning the favour for Parker," Leon mutters, as he tries to understand what the hell he's supposed to do with a psychopath that's handcuffed and bleeding to death, four feral Hunter B.O.Ws, and a comatose woman whose heart he broke with good intentions.
He runs to you, shielding your body with his, as he shoots at the remaining Hunters. He manages to get one in the head, which is surprising considering his arm is shaking so hard from the cuts.
And then, as he watches in pure horror, the remaining three turn invisible.
"Fuck! Give me a fucking goddamn break!" He shouts at nothing, because they've all fucking disappeared, but as soon as he does, he hears a blissful noise, so perfect and beautiful that he think he might cry out of pure happiness and relief.
The sound of helicopter blades, whirring above the warehouse.
"One combat chopper courtesy of O'Brian!" Comes the voice from the vehicle's loudspeaker.
He taps his in-ear piece on, realising it had been off for the majority of his time in this damned warehouse.
"Leon? Why are you holding out on me?"
"Redfield," Leon groans as he holds you into him, his right arm blazing in pain. "Invisible B.O.Ws."
"I knew something was fucked up," Chris says. "Can you get out of there?"
"Negative," Leon replies. "I'm compromised—I'm injured and I've got Clementine who's unconscious."
Chris says something to someone that Leon can't understand, and then his voice becomes clearer in his ear-piece. "Clementine?! What the hell—"
"Long story," Leon says urgently. "I'm out of ammo, hurry."
He has barely finished his sentence when six or seven BSAA troops storm into the warehouse. One of them hoists Jessica up on his shoulders. She must have bled out a few pints of blood, but she was still writhing and trashing about, screaming bloody murder. Two more agents are thrown about by the invisible Hunters, and Leon watches in guilt as one of them has his throat slit.
He stands up, and even though his arm is slashed and he's bleeding and his head is about to burst open from the pain, he hoists you over his shoulder.
He will get you out of here alive, even if he dies trying.
"Kennedy, over here," one of the masked agents shouts, motioning to the door with his machine gun.
"Wait," another one shouts, and holds up a hand to stop Leon. He looks down his sniper rifle, and checks the surroundings with the bio-sensor scope. "Go from behind those two containers," he instructs Leon. "It's not safe where you are."
Leon nods and walks as quickly as he could. His heart is hammering through his chest, waiting and expecting for something bad to happen.
But for the first time in a long time, he manages to make it out without taking any more damage, without anything else trying to make his life even more difficult that it already is.
The chopper is circling above, and across the huge concrete lot, he can see two black BSAA-issued vans. Leon's heart sinks as he realises he'll have to cross the whole thing with you on his back. His strength is faltering, the adrenaline no longer powering his limbs.
But he starts to walk. He has no other option.
"Hold tight," Chris' voice comes through his ear-piece, as one of the vans turns in Leon's direction. "I'm coming for you, Kennedy."
(a/n: sorry for the dip in quality / quantity y'all, life is being a little bitch right now but i need to finish this story)