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Everything moves quickly once the soldiers show up— Grace finds herself being hustled along, up and out of the fiery ruins of the laboratory. Good riddance, she thinks, and doesn’t look back as she climbs. There’s a helicopter waiting at the top of the hill, and Leon helps her get in. Sitting’s a relief— hell, her knees hurt. They didn’t hurt like that ten minutes ago. Someone hands her a blanket— scratchy blue polyester—to wear around her shoulders.
She’s never liked helicopters, counting the few she’s had to ride for work. She’s consistently good at getting air-sick, if she’s good at anything, but she barely has time to start to worry about that before Leon’s reaching over her lap to buckle her in, and the world’s starting to shrink below them.
She must have been more tired than she’d thought, because the next thing she knows, Leon’s gently shaking her shoulder and then helping her to her feet. Outside is different again; they’re back, further afield of the ruins of Raccoon City. There’s a bigger camp set up here, one with tents and trucks and more soldiers than she thinks she’s ever seen in one place, even at work.
She gives herself a moment to blink at it all, stupefied, before Leon glances over his shoulder again. “You good to walk?” he asks quietly, and she nods.
“I’m pretty slow right now,” Grace warns, but Leon just nods.
“These guys can’t give you shit for being slow,” he says. “Glass houses, and all.”
She huffs a laugh. “They timed the rescue well enough,” she says, and Leon rolls his eyes, smiling. She doesn’t know where he finds the energy to joke at a time like this.
“C’mon,” he says, and he starts off towards the crowd. His pace is mercifully slow; she barely has to hustle to keep a few paces behind him.
Somewhere along the way, the soldier who’d found them is back; Grace can’t remember his name. Hound, or Wolf, or some other nickname that’d be silly if it wasn’t pinned on a guy with a gun the size of her leg. He and Leon are talking, heads bowed together— it’s stuff that Grace should be listening to, probably, but the adrenaline crash has started to make her brain feel like Jell-O — it’s already taking up most of her willpower to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, towards the red cross on the side of the tent.
She’s following behind a few paces; Leon keeps glancing over his shoulder to be sure that she’s still following, which is… nice, honestly. It’s nice.
The proximity’s handy to keep her going in the right direction, especially as she keeps turning and looking around. The whole site’s practically crawling with movement; there are trucks and helicopters and so many people she can’t fit them all in her mind. Another sweep. She doesn’t exactly know what she’s hoping she’ll see— or who she’s looking for. There’s flashing lights, people with helmets and big ass guns — could’ve used one of those earlier, she thinks wryly, in a voice that sounds too close to Leon’s.
Lost in thought, she stumbles on a loose bit of rubble, and Leon, who she thought had been off with that Hound-Guy, is dipping under her arm to help her up. He’s barely stable himself, she thinks, even if Elpis seems to be working like the magical cure-all that Gideon had claimed it was.
“You alright?”
“I just— I tripped,” she mutters, and finds her feet again. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. We probably should get you checked out at the med tent.” Leon replies. He smirks. “Those injuries look pretty… in-tents. C’mon.”
Grace doesn’t laugh. Hound-Guy snorts, looking down at his tablet.
“Wait, but- but you should get checked out too,” she protests, as Leon dips to catch her arm over his shoulder. “You’re the one that almost died.”
A few paces ahead of them, the Hound-Guy’s head swivels back over their way. He taps his earpiece, and Leon’s jaw flexes.
“It was barely a scratch,” Leon says, a dry little smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. His eyes flicker over to the soldier, who’s still watching them like a hawk, the binocs giving the illusion of extra eyes. Somehow, his gaze still manages to feel judgemental. Leon clears his throat. “I guess it’d be too much to ask for you not to worry Captain Redfield over this, huh?”
“With all due respect, Mr. Kennedy, I think that ship’s already sailed,” the soldier says, lifting his chin at the host of trucks on the far side of their little encampment. “I just got word that the captain’s on his way.”
And Leon straightens right up at that, shoulder going stiff beneath Grace’s arm. It’s so complete—like, his whole body sharpens, tenses. He’s right at attention again, and now it’s pointed like a compass-needle at the blank mask before them. He stares at Hound-Guy with bright eyes, pointed, waiting. Grace studies the two of them curiously.
“You got an ETA on Redfield, then?” Leon asks, and that blasé, jokey tone from before has been stowed away inside the soldier again. Grace can’t quite tell if she should be worried or not, but Leon’s not reaching for his gun, so she doesn’t move.
“A half-hour, if all goes to plan,” Hound-Guy replies. “He was tied up with the BSAA brass and our contacts at the DSO.”
“Sherry,” Leon says ruefully, and Hound-Guy inclines his head ever so slightly. “Should’ve guessed.”
“Agent Birkin keeps your intel close to the chest, from what I’ve heard,” Hound-Guy says. “I’m not at liberty to call her a pain in the ass myself, but—”
“Careful now,” Leon warns, and Hound-Guy raises his hands in surrender.
“She’s sharp, is all,” he says. “The captain called her well-trained.”
Leon doesn’t relax, exactly, but he offers a whip-crack of a smile. “Good save,” he says, and then nods once, clearly dismissing the soldier. Grace isn’t too sure how the hierarchy works here— but then again, she’s not exactly surprised that Leon’s acting like he outranks even the supposed leader of the soldiers.
Hound-Guy lifts his hand in a lazy salute and then turns on his heel to wander back to the sirens. Leon scoffs. “Captain Redfield sure knows how to pick ‘em.”
“Um,” she says, and Leon blinks down at her, like he’d half-forgotten that she was there.
“Medical tent, right,” he says; his features settle into something grounded. He’s got a mission-point again, she thinks. They start off again, in a slow hobble, Grace leaning on Leon’s shoulder as they go.
At the medical tent, there’s a whole horde of people waiting; soldiers, stressed-looking folks in civvies, and what must be the paramedics. They’re not in lab coats, which she’s almost pathetically grateful for. Instead, it’s a mix of Kevlar body-armour and brightly-coloured arm-bands. A few leather jackets, too; Grace wonders, half-heartedly, if there’s some sort of dress-code to being a super-spy.
The tent’s smaller on the inside than it’d seemed— or maybe it’s the dozens of bodies crammed into the space. Paramedics and scientists and soldiers, all practically standing on top of each other. She’s a little intimidated by it; that, or maybe she’s just unused to seeing so many alive bodies all at once.
Thankfully, her reluctance to separate from Leon must be apparent, even to these strangers, because she manages to get seated on a folded-out cot right beside him. She wraps her scratchy blanket tighter around her shoulders, and folds her legs up beneath her.
A round-faced paramedic comes over first, toting a giant green first-aid kit that she sets down at Grace’s side. She’s almost annoyingly cheerful for the middle of the night and the middle of a biohazard-contamination zone. Grace obediently lets her poke and prod and shine her little light in her eyes and ears and mouth. No bites, no black veins, and no hallucinations, she confirms, and the paramedic nods approvingly.
Beside her, Leon’s getting the same treatment. He manages to get a joke out around the inspection, and to his delight, the nurse seeing to him seems to find him funnier than Grace does. Grace sits, chewing on worry around the looming weight of exhaustion. She really doesn’t want to have to deal with whatever this Captain Redfield is going to do to them— especially if that entails more running or, God forbid, fighting on her part. Her wrist can’t take much more of the recoil from Leon’s stupidly heavy magnum.
Leon’s getting blood drawn, leaning back on his free elbow. He looks utterly at ease, even with a needle stabbed into his arm, which Grace thinks is another point in his too-cool favour. He’s pinched an actual cell phone off of someone, somewhere, and he’s tapping out messages with one hand, gloves folded neatly beside him.
There, on his left hand, sits a golden ring, gleaming in the light when he shifts his hand. She blinks at it. It stays stubbornly real, shining on the ring finger of his left hand. Grace sets aside her looming worry for a second, because—
He must be married. Huh.
She half-wonders what kind of a woman would be married to Leon Kennedy. What kind of woman would sign up to be tied into this life forever. That question opens up a whole rabbit hole; Grace wonders if she’d known about Elpis, about Raccoon City. If she’d known just how ready Leon had been to die down there with Gideon’s corpse and Grace herself.
“Little pinch, hon,” the paramedic says, and Grace has enough time to squeak like a stepped-on mouse before she’s getting poked with a needle. Leon glances up at her, and she offers him a wobbly thumbs-up. He raises an eyebrow, smiling dryly.
Grace endures another few minutes of being examined before the paramedic packs up her giant kit and bustles off to the other side of the tent, leaving her with a plastic bottle of water and a bandaged-up arm. She tentatively sips at the water; it tastes like the fine layer of dust and dried blood coating the inside of her mouth. Yuck.
Leon’s migrated back over to the folding chair beside her cot. Maybe he doesn’t want to be alone right now either. That’s certainly a more dignified excuse than he needs be sure that Grace doesn’t tip over and crack her head open on the ground.
Grace watches the paramedics flit in and out of the tent, and finally clears her throat. Leon looks up. “So- so what’s going to happen with Captain Redfield?”
Leon’s watching her carefully. “How so?”
She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Like, should we start running?”
He laughs. “Hell, I probably should.” She stares. He’s leaning on the edge of the chair, deliberately lax— but she doesn’t believe him for a second that he could take someone else in a fight— let alone the top dog in charge of this whole operation. There are way too many soldiers outside for them to stand a chance.
He takes note of her expression, seeming to catch that whatever the joke is, she’s not in on it. “You can relax,” he says. “Redfield’s a teddy bear. Unless you’re Umbrella, of course.”
Grace nods, but she doesn’t listen to him, not wholly. She sips at her water, grimacing when all it does is wash the acidic taste of dust back over her tongue. After a second, Leon goes back to his pilfered phone. She stares moodily at the white tarp wall and lets herself zone back out. She doesn’t think about anything, for a bit.
She’s so lost in thought that the first thing she notices is an absence, more than anything else. The noise; sirens, chatter, footsteps— they all quiet down, just for a second. She blinks back to herself, confused. Leon’s already alert; he’s stowed his phone, and is sitting, arms-crossed and expectant. Waiting for what, Grace wonders— but she finds that she doesn’t have to wonder for long, as the flap of the medical tent is lifted to reveal the biggest all-human man Grace thinks she’s ever seen.
He’s tall, almost impossibly broad, wearing a dark, tight-fitting coat. Across his back, he’s got a gun big enough to put Hound-Guy’s to shame, and a matching set of pistols at his hip, his thigh. The sleeves on his jacket cling tightly to his muscled arms, and the second he enters the tent, it’s like everything goes silent. Maybe it’s just Grace’s mind. The paramedics, like a flock of startled pigeons, disappear in his wake; she barely notices.
The man has a thick, dark beard, close-cropped hair, even darker eyes. The collar of his coat is turned up. Beneath it, she thinks she can see body armour, shifting and gleaming as he approaches, boots thudding heavily on the ground. Beside her, Leon lets out a slow breath. She doesn’t have to ask who this is.
“Captain Redfield,” he says easily.
“Agent Kennedy,” Redfield responds. His voice is a growl of a sound, low enough that Grace feels it in her bones. He turns to her next, and she tips her chin up, determined not to be intimidated. She’s not sure if it works. “You must be Grace Ashcroft.”
“Y-yes sir,” she says, and curses herself for the wobble in her voice. Redfield crosses the tent in a few heavy steps, and then bends to meet her eye, one knee to the concrete. She blinks at him. Leon’s watching Redfield intently, an amused little twist to his lips. He’s leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, looking perfectly at ease. It throws Grace for a loop. “Um,” she says.
“I was told that you were the one to find and administer Elpis to Agent Kennedy,” he says, “which not only saved his life, but you have delivered information that we needed to potentially save the lives of millions.”
“Um,” Grace stutters. Redfield’s gaze is heavy on her shoulders. “I guess?”
“You’ve been an invaluable help to my team, and to the organizations that we represent,” Redfield says, and his brown eyes crinkle in the corners when he smiles. Teddy bear, she thinks incredulously. What the hell. “I wanted to thank you personally for everything you’ve done.”
“Oh,” Grace says. She inhales shakily. “Uh. Thanks?”
“Thank you,” Redfield says, and he stands again. He looms over her, their height difference utterly staggering. Thankfully, he turns to Leon next. “And I’d say the same to you, but I think all you’ve been is a massive pain in my ass lately.”
“You wish,” Leon snarks, and unfolds up from his chair in a single, smooth movement. He taps the back of his knuckle against Grace’s little cot and catches her eye. “You good on your own for a second? I’ve got some stuff to run through with the big guy.”
Grace blinks. Leon waits. He’s serious, she realizes, and she hastens to nod. “Yeah, of course,” she stutters out. “Whatever you guys need.”
“We won’t go far,” he says, and taps her cot one more time, like a promise. “If you need anything, just yell.”
In the meantime, Redfield’s already moved to the far end of the tent; Grace hadn’t heard him walk away. How a guy his size can creep around like that is beyond her. He’s lifting the edge of the tarp up— not the way back out to the rest of camp, it seems, but out behind the tent, with nothing but night and Raccoon City rubble as far as the eye can see.
“We’ll be just a second,” Leon says, then ducks under Redfield’s huge arm and is gone.
Grace waits all of a respectful ninety seconds after Redfield drops the flap to get to her feet and hobble over to eavesdrop. She is a journalist, after all.
They’re standing out back; she peeps out in between the folds of the tent— and if she ducks a little, she can get a good view. Her knees protest the crouch, but she’s not given a chance to listen in on BSAA and DSO whisperings nearly as often as she’d like. Redfield’s back is to her, and he’s turned towards Leon.
Leon’s a pace ahead, head down, murmuring softly. Grace hears Gideon, hears Elpis. Redfield nods, doesn’t speak.
“But you already know what happened,” Leon interrupts himself. He turns on his heel, looks back at Redfield. Redfield watches him right back; Grace can’t see much of his face from this angle, but she doesn’t think Redfield’s looked away from him, not even once. Leon drawls,“How many times do you have to hear the same story before you get bored, huh?”
And Redfield, like a mountain shifting, like a statue coming to life, says; “I wanted to hear you tell it.”
Leon snorts. “Then I’ll have my report typed up and on your desk by end of day, Captain.”
“Leon,” Redfield rumbles.
Leon sighs.
“I killed Gideon,” he says. He’s still pacing, turning. His hand keeps coming back to Requiem’s handle, like he’s checking if it’s still there. If Grace was the one interviewing him, she’d describe the movement as restless. Nervous, maybe. The words don’t fit on someone like Leon Kennedy. “Carved his brain out myself. He’s not coming back.”
He doesn’t turn to look back at Redfield, when Redfield says, “Good.”
Leon’s shoulders shift as he laughs hollowly. “It’s the job.”
“Still.”
Leon’s quiet for a long, long moment. He’s facing the rubble, face lost in the shadows, shoulders tight. Redfield doesn’t prompt him. “The building was unstable, afterwards.”
Click. Redfield checks the safety on his giant rifle, then gently sets the gun down on a smooth plane of concrete. He puts his empty hands in his pockets, bracing against the night chill. “That part sounds familiar.”
Leon tips his head, not quite laughing. “It really would kill them to make a secret bunker that’s built to withstand the bullshit they put inside of it, huh?”
He pauses. Redfield waits. “I don’t know how much your puppies brought back to you,” he says.
Redfield crosses his massive arms over his chest. Leon’s hand curls around Requiem’s handle for the barest of seconds, then he lets go. “Their intel tends to find its way back to me,” Redfield says eventually, voice unreadable. “I’m the one giving their orders.”
There’s another silence then, one that curls and folds in on itself, filling the space like a physical presence. Redfield, stone-cut, is unmoved by the quiet, but Leon wilts under it. Grace bites her lip; his shoulders hitch up, up, and he drags a hand through his tousled hair. Redfield sighs.
“Listen, I wasn’t trying to get myself killed, if that’s what you want me to say,” Leon blurts. “I didn’t— I couldn’t have known that there wouldn’t be a way out.”
Redfield doesn’t say anything at all. Leon touches Requiem, scrubs his hand down his leg. Grace has seen him calmer staring down a horde of zombies. He glances up at Redfield briefly, then snaps his head away, staring out at the ruins of the city. The silence is a weight on his shoulders, nearly physical in how it bears down on him.
Redfield waits.
“Come on, let me have it. I’m sick of waiting for you to yell,” Leon snaps. He’s got a stupid amount of energy for a guy who’s faced as much as he has. Maybe he’s got a second wind that Grace doesn’t know about. Maybe he’s got nothing to lose.
“Is that what you want?” Redfield asks quietly. Leon looks back at him, icy eyes sharp.
He scoffs. “Don’t tell me you’re not mad.”
“Oh, I am,” Redfield says immediately.
“Yeah?”
“Furious.” He doesn’t raise his voice when he says, “Terrified.”
Leon’s face screws up all funny at that, like he’s going to laugh or cry or yell. Grace wishes she had a better angle; she wishes she could see the look on Redfield’s face, so she could know what he sees that’s breaking Leon’s heart like that. All she gets is the steady slope of his shoulders, nearly eclipsing Leon’s wavering silhouette.
A beat. Leon sucks in a breath, schools his face. Then he holds out a hand, palm up, and beckons, two-fingered. Redfield’s soft laugh sounds like gravel.
“Those things will kill you,” he says. “Besides, I quit.”
“The job’ll get me first,” Leon says, and beckons again. “Besides. I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Redfield sighs, and reaches into his pocket. Leon’s not quite smiling, but there’s a story in the slight twitch of his lips. The pack of cigarettes looks comically tiny in Redfield’s massive hands, as he gently, deftly shakes out a single bone-white smoke and places it between Leon’s extended fingers. The paper goes dark when Leon twists it between his fingers; dirt or blood staining the skin, like his gloves were good for nothing at all.
“Tell me these aren’t menthols,” Leon says, as Redfield stows the carton and pulls out a tarnished gold lighter in its place. He handles the thing like it’s a weapon, Grace thinks, watching Redfield turning it, flicking it open. There’s something about how he moves his hands that betrays him.
“Don’t insult me,” Redfield replies. Leon rolls his wrist, pleased, and places the cigarette between his lips.
He tips his face up, and Redfield leans in, one big paw of a hand coming to shield the flickering flame from the wind, and lights the tip of his— of Leon’s cigarette. Standing side-by-side like this exaggerates their height difference— it makes Leon look almost small. He’s dwarfed by Redfield’s bulk, but he doesn’t shift away until Redfield does.
The smoke picks up on the wind, blowing acrid and sour to where Grace is kneeling, hiding, watching. Leon takes a long drag and blows it out slowly, like he’s savouring it. He closes his eyes, takes another drag. “Disgusting,” he says.
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No you’re not,” Leon says. He takes a final, deep inhale, then extends his hand to Redfield, who takes the cigarette and raises it to his own lips. The smoke rises in a thin plume between them, dissipating up into the night. “Thirty years, and you still smoke the same shitty brand.”
“What can I say?” Redfield asks. “You know I’m loyal.”
And there must be some secret folded up in that sentence, or in the tobacco, or maybe it’s just the final, inevitable reality that even Leon can’t stay on his feet forever, because—
“Fuck, Chris,” Leon says, and he takes a step, a single step towards Redfield, and Grace thinks ah.
Leon falls against Redfield’s body, or Redfield reaches for him; Grace doesn’t know what comes first. Redfield’s hand on Leon’s hip, just above the wicked curve of his axe. Redfield handles him like it's easy, turning him, catching him. Their bodies slot together like puzzle pieces; like there is some divine rightness to their proximity. Grace, watching, can’t even bring herself to feel surprised.
Leon tucks his hand into Redfield’s jacket, arm curling around his waist, and Redfield sweeps a heavy hand up Leon’s spine, cupping the exposed nape of his neck. With a sigh, Leon slumps forward until his head thumps onto Redfield’s shoulder. His back shifts with his breath; shuddering, gasping out of him at the simple touch of Redfield’s hand.
There is almost too great an intimacy in the way that Redfield holds him close; one that’s so thick in the air that Grace can hardly bear to watch it. She feels like some sort of voyeur as they stand, wrapped in their embrace, swaying. Leon, like a puppet on cut strings. Before, when they’d been rescued, she’d thought that he’d relaxed. She thought she’d already seen Leon when he’s at ease.
She’d been wrong, she realizes. Because this is Leon at ease, secret, treasured.
Redfield takes a drag of the cigarette, blows the smoke away, well over Leon’s curled-in head. He knocks the pillar of ash loose, careful not to drop the burning ember on Leon’s shoulder. There’s a careful dignity to how he smokes, all practiced, muscle-memory movement. And when he moves his hand back to his lips, fingers curled neatly into his calloused palm, she spies the matching ring on his finger. Gold, tarnished and familiar, like the one Leon had slipped back on the second they’d realized that it wasn’t a suicide mission after all.
Her chest aches.
There’s quiet then, long enough that Grace almost picks herself back up and leaves. But then—
“I still wish you’d told me you were going to go,” Redfield murmurs.
Leon doesn’t lift his head. The argument is a well-worn, familiar thing. “I couldn’t have. You’d have asked to come.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
“You know it’s not,” Leon says. “You also know why you couldn’t.”
“If you’d have just told me—”
“Chris.”
“Fine.” Redfield lifts the glowing ember of what’s left of the cigarette to his pursed lips, then drops the smouldering butt on the ground. Leon crushes it beneath his heel. “I won’t start.”
“No one else was going to go looking for her. For Grace.” Leon says, and Grace startles at the sound of her own name. She’d forgotten herself, she supposes. Leon rests his chin on Redfield’s broad shoulder. “She’s a damn good kid.”
“I read her file,” Redfield says. “After this, I’d be surprised if we don’t try to poach her from the FBI ourselves.”
Leon exhales through his nose. He’s frowning wistfully, eyes distant. “I just remember thinking, when I first saw her headshot, that she looks just like—”
“I know,” Redfield replies softly. “I know.”
“She doesn’t deserve this. None of them do.” His voice is steady, cool as ice; his expression is hard to look at head-on. He shakes his head. “She’s so fucking young, Chris.”
“Mm.”
“We can't have ever been that young.”
“I remember thinking that she looked like you, Rookie,” Redfield says. Grace blinks. “How you looked when we met.”
“Been a while since anyone’s called me that.” Leon huffs. “You know, I killed the last guy for it.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Redfield says. He shifts, arm resting heavy across Leon’s shoulders. In this light, it’s hard to tell where he ends and Leon begins. “I’ve got to keep you young somehow.”
Leon smiles, rueful. It makes him look older than he is, in this light. “I don’t think I was ever that innocent.”
“I think you might’ve been.” Redfield says. Grace can’t imagine it; maybe he can. “Maybe you just forgot.”
“Not much use in trying to remember now, I suppose.”
“No,” Redfield says. He sounds incredibly tired. “No, I guess there’s not.”
They lapse back into silence. Above, there are stars peeking out from the clouds of smog. There’d be enough for constellations if the explosion hadn’t sent all the dust back up into the air. Grace is saddened, somehow, by their loss.
“You still like me like this, at least,” Leon says eventually. From this angle, all Grace can see is the shadow where he’s resting his head on Redfield’s shoulder, ash-blond hair spilling over the black leather. Redfield’s answering laugh is more of a vibration than a sound.
“I like you a hell of a lot less after having to drive your stupid Porsche all over Raccoon City.”
“My baby,” Leon coos. “You brought her?”
“If I didn’t, I know you’d never let me hear the end of it,” Redfield says. His hand rubs silent, soothing patterns into Leon’s back. “You and that mid-life crisis of a car.”
“Please,” Leon scoffs, “I know you secretly think she’s sexy.”
“I think she’s a waste of gasoline,” Redfield replies. A beat, then he inclines his head to Leon’s, murmuring, “Her driver, though…”
Leon snorts. He presses one hand to Redfield’s chest, fingers splayed. “Keep it in your pants, Captain,” he teases. “There’re still fires to put out.”
“Don’t remind me,” Redfield sighs, and lets himself be pushed back a step. Slowly, reluctantly, the two of them start to disentangle themselves. Leon extracts his arms from the depths of Redfield’s coat, and dips to pick up his gun, hooking the strap over Redfield’s broad shoulder.
“That’s why I never took that promotion,” he says, and Redfield chuckles. “My only job now is to go home and sleep for a week.” Leon straightens the lapels of Redfield’s jacket. Minus the weaponry and the body-armour, they’d be the picture of an old married couple, Grace thinks.
“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Redfield says. He catches Leon’s hand and holds it. Leon sways, anchored in his orbit. He clears his throat.
“What’s the news on your end?” He’s too good at the switch-up, Grace thinks, jumping back into work-mode as soon as the world starts to need him again. Redfield shrugs.
“Not much you don’t already know. Search teams, recon for the serum, for Gideon’s research. I’ve got a team on those loose ends, just in case. Oh, and—”
“—And?”
“There was a survivor we found,” Redfield says gravely, “in the remains of the care center. A girl.”
Grace’s heart stops beating.
Leon sucks in a sharp breath. “Alive?”
“For now,” Redfield replies. “I can’t make any promises, though recovering Elpis is a step in the right direction. But after what I heard from Sherry, I wanted to tell you about her first.”
Shaking, Grace presses both hands to her mouth. Her eyes sting; her heart races. There’s no way.
“We have to tell Grace,” Leon says, only half-listening. Grace can’t blame him. Her knee’s bouncing with newfound energy, nearly tipping her right out of her crouched position. Leon runs a hand through his hair. He looks lighter— or maybe it’s Grace’s soaring heart projecting onto him. “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe she’s alive.”
“What do I always tell you, hey?” Redfield asks, hand straying to Leon’s hip one last time. “We can save everyone.”
“Or we have to believe so,” Leon finishes. He looks back at Redfield, eyes bright, and a true smile threatening to grace his lips for the first time. “You really never fail to surprise me, Redfield.”
“I try,” Redfield replies warmly, tugging him in. Grace rises shakily to her feet as he pulls Leon close one more time. She turns as Leon wraps his arms soundly around Redfield’s neck to draw him into a kiss, and lets her hope carry her back to her cot.