#and woohoo the plagas-shaped hole influencing mold form shape

[billy-cockblock]

REV AU one shot: Chris finds out

Crawls out of my hole covered in blood and mold: I don't know why this was so hard to write, but the writer's block is hitting me hard. I could see several parts of this scene so clearly in my head, but my brain just really didn't want to put words to paper. Once my brain's better I'll probably come and edit this a bit, but I hope y'all enjoy it. It's definitely one or the favorite scenes I've come up with.

He quickly lifted heavy limbs, picking them up from the ground. Leon’s vision had gone dark, but his rapidly came into focus. 

He fumbled for the gun dropped when they went flying, foreign hands finding familiar purchase against the metal. Taking aim, he let off a volley of shots at the monsters encroaching on them. 

They were tougher than infected he’d faced before; the center body of the strange knife-whipping tentacles needing to be basically shredded before they died, and bullet holes slowly sealed over with black tendrils if it wasn’t killed completely. 

He felt like he was wasting ammo, but it just took so many bullets to drop the monsters. The larger one that’d flung them across the room and slammed Leon’s head into a desk was getting closer, lumbering steps slow. He tried to shoot its head like the rest of them, but the gun only clicked.

He swore under his breath and pulled Leon’s knife out; he hated close-quarters combat, but he didn’t have time to reload. Diving past flailing, dangerous limbs, he buried the knife in its main body. It grabbed and sliced at them, but he kept stabbing and cutting until it was too shredded to keep moving. He shoved it with more strength than he was used to, and it fell to the ground, dead.

Head still on a swivel, he made sure there were no more infected. The room looked clear, but there were a few desks and filing cabinets something could hide behind. 

While he checked the room over, Ethan took a breath. He felt bad for having to break his promise of not taking control, but Leon wasn’t waking up in time. He’d pull back once Leon woke up, but it felt like he’d gotten a concussion with how hard he’d gotten his head hit. He spread his mold, stitching closed the scratches and scrapes Leon’s body had accrued. Skin and muscle was easy to regenerate, then pull his network from, and it’d almost become second nature since he’d gotten permission from Leon. 

Nerves were a little harder. The mold naturally liked to cling to the nervous system, trying to take control and upload a person’s consciousness to the megamycete. It preferred to envelop or take over nerves, and that took more coaxing from Ethan to get it to untangle. 

That’s why he was hesitating trying to do something about the concussion. He’d done his best to take control of Leon’s motor functions without getting the mold too tangled with his brain, but he’d have to root even deeper if he wanted to heal it. He subconsciously felt along his connection from the megamycete to the brain-

He froze. Damaged cartilage, more mold present, fractured vertebrae, and frayed nerves. A lot of frayed nerves. 

He reached for the back of Leon’s neck, both with the body’s hand and his mold. The joints in the spine felt like they’d been misaligned before snapping back into place, nearly severing Leon’s entire spinal cord. His brain still sent and received continuous waves of signals to and from the body, impulses carried across the gap by Ethan’s mold network tangling with Leon’s nervous system. 

Ethan felt like he was going to be sick. Or, as sick as he could feel in the state he was in. He didn’t think Leon hit his head that badly, but he guessed his neck did snap in a weird angle when they hit that desk. 

After the horrific stories Leon had told him, a desk is what would have done him in?

He tried to pull the nerve fibers back together, but the mold that had taken their places was stubborn. It had locked itself firmly in place to keep the cord from coming detached and shutting down Leon’s body functions. He’s glad it obeyed when he tried to program it to protect Leon without his input, but he needed the mold to move if he wanted to heal it enough that he could remove it. He’d have to work to remove his network from his nerves anyway, so he might as well work on healing the concussion. He could practically hear the megamycete sing in joy as he spread to repair the battering Leon’s brain had taken-

“Close call, huh?” a familiar voice asked from behind them, making him tense up. 

“Y-yeah, no kidding,” he replied, trying his best to speak like Leon. He nearly enveloped the man’s brain to speed his healing; he needed Leon awake now. 

“I got worried when I saw one of them toss you, but I knew you’d have it handled,” Chris Redfield continued, none the wiser that he wasn’t talking to the real Leon. Ethan could hear him do that dumb slow pace he does while talking, where he wouldn’t look at him; dramatic asshole. Leon would’ve been dead if he didn’t have the mold. “You aren’t hurt too bad, though? Or infected?”

“No, I’ve had worse,” he replied, echoing what Leon said every time he’d close his wounds. He did his best to keep casual while hiding every inch of skin he could. His dark veins under Leon’s skin were visible even on his hands, and Ethan was sure his face was worse. 

“True, but this is my case,” Chris stopped his pacing and sighed. “This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t lost control of E-003.” A bolt of white-hot anger flared through Ethan’s entire network, and he felt a tingle from Leon’s brain. “Someone got to her, and-“

“What did you call Rose?” a voice, distinctly not Leon’s, left his mouth. Ethan whirled around without thinking, face pinched in anger, before freezing, rage forgotten. 

He met Chris’s eyes for the first time in sixteen years, and it was like the horror and dread never left them since that day in Europe. 

Without breaking eye contact, Chris pulled his pistol from its holster but kept it trained on the ground. With his other hand, he clicked the radio on his shoulder.

“Redfield reporting,” his gravelly voice didn’t give anything away, but Ethan couldn’t let him finish. “Kennedy’s been-”

A pillar of mold extending from Leon’s arm slammed him in the shoulder and enveloped the radio. He rolled with the force and raised his gun. The bullets aimed straight for Leon’s head harmlessly embedded themselves in a thick, carapace-like shield formed on his other arm.

Ethan had to get them out of there. The door was behind Chris, but the windows behind them were busted. They were on the second floor, so climbing to the roof would be better.

With half a plan, he tried to form tendrils to drag them back while he kept guarding their front. The mold twisted up in the space the megamycete laid in and instead formed four long, spider-like legs from Leon’s back. 

Whatever, I can work with it, he thought, sending a tendril off his arm to pull Chris’s feet out from under him. He lifted them off the ground, pulling them back to the window. He found it with the limbs and hooked them outside the frame. He grew claws over Leon’s hands to scramble up the side, earning him a bullet to leg once his guard was dropped. He ignored Chris’s shouts as he climbed over the edge of the roof and jumped for another.

He strengthened his legs and used the spidery limbs to get him as far from Chris as he could. He wouldn’t let Leon get found out, he wouldn’t let him get killed, and he’d only stay until he knew Rose was safe. Now he just had to find a place to settle down enough to finish Leon’s healing.

A sudden stab of pain to his consciousness nearly sent him careening off a roof. He thought it might’ve been something from the megamycete trying to fight its way out before he heard him.

What the hell was that?! Leon mentally shouted; he was wrestling for control back to his body, and was doing a damn good job of it. You promised! And why did you attack Chris?!

Ethan pulled any mold back back from his skin and shoved control back so fast, Leon fell to his knees.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… he said on repeat. He felt Leon’s shoulders loose a little tension as he shakily stood to find cover behind an air conditioner. Once he’d gotten settled down, he laid a hand on his chest over where the megamycete rested.

“Hey,” he said, tapping his chest to get Ethan’s attention. “I feel like I missed something while I was out. Mind filling me in?”