#as chris and piers and Bravo team are staring at leon like “holy fuck is he dying? he has to be dying right???”

[desired-misery]

Chris launches himself backwards— not fast enough to escape the white hot bolt of—

fear. Not—

Nothing in the chamber. Nothing tearing through his throat—

Chris trips over a body because Leon isn't one. Leon's eyes are opening, rust-red lips and teeth bared in a silent snarl. Everyone else steps forward, weapons raised—

“Leon!” Piers’ incredulous shout breaks everyone's instinctive reactions.

Stops Chris' primitive impulse to cover his neck, his brain still filling in what should have happened if Leon had a spare bullet left—

Stops Bravo from shooting, anticipating a hostile, context telling them a dead man moving is a bioweapon threat to eliminate—

And maybe Leon stops not because he recognizes any of them, but because he cannot possibly have the strength. He certainly doesn't have the ammunition. God, how the fuck is he alive—

Chris scrambles back, gets a hand over Leon’s shaking one, on the pistol— holy fuck, it's jammed, not empty— to disarm him. To keep Leon from moving because his gasp of air is so shallow, so ragged— how the fuck isn't he dead— if he isn't dead yet, surely he is on the way, he has a knife shoved into his chest where his heart should be—

“Hey,” Leon protests, his voice horribly hoarse, failing to keep Chris from taking his pistol away. “I need that.”

“Fucking hell, Leon!” Chris is relieved, absolutely, but he can't stop himself from feeling a wave of anger, too.

Leon’s eyes are dull, only half open. He always looks exhausted, but his eyes look sunken in, the skin around his eyes as dark as a bruise. Literally, deathly pale—

Chris pulls off his helmet so Leon can see his face, so Leon can stop his scarily weak attempt to get Chris' hands off of him, to sit up because Chris is terrified if Leon moves, he is going to finish bleeding out—

“Leon, Leon, stop! You're hurt, stop, please.”

It takes way too many seconds for Leon to focus on him, to hear him. For his gaze to refocus, settle on Chris’ face, for recognition to hit. Leon stops moving, letting his right hand drop back into his lap. His left has stayed by his side, limp.

“Jesus! Leon, how the fuck—?”

“Get him?” Leon asks— and this isn't the first time Chris has seen Leon speak through a blood-filled mouth, but this is even more unsettling because it is clotted, spills over his lips in clumps.

“Shoot him in the back. For me.” Leon eases his head back, grimacing. Showing the thick, dried bloody path that dripped down his throat, to his shirt. There is a dark stain around the knife hilt, smaller than Chris would initially expect—

“What?” Chris asks.

“Who?” Hunnigan asks in Chris’ ear, tone sharp.

“My partner. His knife,” Leon says, baring teeth. “Backstabbed— well, front-stabbed me.”

“Oh?” Hunnigan asks.

Chris does not know her real well, but he only needs to hear that singular word to know that Hunnigan is about to handle whatever unlucky sonofabitch thought they could get away with this.

Chris shifts his hand to Leon’s good shoulder, finding it hard to not stare at the fucking knife sticking out of Leon’s chest. No wonder they all thought Leon was dead— besides the knife in him— his chest is barely moving.

“Stay super still for me, Leon, you can't move right now—”

Leon’s smirk is faint, almost nothing more than a ghost of a twitch. “No worries, not moving. Don't think I can.”

“You don't have to do anything right now, Leon, just—”

“I can't, Chris. Can't feel anything below, well…”

Chris stumbles on what to say. Leon’s smirk grows.

“Damn, relax. Probably good I'm not feeling anything. That shit really hurt there for a while.”

Chris’ hand finds Leon’s, feels how cold and stiff his fingers are. He glances down. Under the blood, the skin is a dusty purple. Hypoxic.

“You really do like to shoot first, ask questions later, huh?” Piers asks, stepping close and kneeling down so Leon can see him, too.

Leon’s smile is barely there, but Chris can tell he made an attempt. “I, ah, don't usually have friendlies around me to worry about.”

Piers smiles back, badly. “Not if you act like that, you won't.”

“I don't want them,” Leon says. “My supposed friendly did this to me.” He takes a gulping, but still shallow breath. It is taking so much effort to talk. “Thought he was coming back to finish me off.”

Chris cannot help the shudder that runs down his spine. Leon would have killed him if his gun didn't jam. If he had even a little more strength to eject the round properly by not limp-wristing it. Not able to say that, Chris just lifts the pistol and angles it so Leon can see the case caught on the slide.

“Fuck,” Leon says. He clumsily touches the brass, then closes his eyes. “The last time that gun jammed like it, it saved me from being shot.”

“You’re the luckiest unluckiest man I've ever met,” Chris says.

The corner of Leon’s mouth twitches.

Piers is standing there to meet him, half-blocking the way to where Leon is—

“I can do it, Chris—”

“No, I will.”

Piers’ frown is unsteady. He has had less practice than Chris has; Chris won't make him to spare his own feelings. But when Chris steps past, Piers follows. A few strides behind, but still he follows. Chris does not have it in him to tell Piers not to.

It is part of the job. That's how it is. Eventually, something is going to take you out—

And classic Leon, not going down without a fight. Chris should expect nothing less. He counts seven BOWs in the hallway leading up to where Jacob is standing with two others from Bravo. They are in a rough semi-circle facing the body slumped against the wall, wedged against a beat up locker. Chris has to step over three more BOWs piled at the body's feet—

Chris hears his breath catch in his chest despite trying to prepare for it, for seeing familiar dirty blond bangs obscuring Leon’s face. His head is tilted down, knees to his chest, one arm in his lap. He is wearing dark clothes— nondescript combat gear, rare for Leon. All the good that did him.

“Damn it,” Chris breathes. As he kneels, he taps his earpiece to switch back to Hunnigan’s line. Kneeling doesn't give him much better view of Leon’s face, but that's him. Dried blood covering his chin, from—

Fucking christ, there is something sticking out of his chest— body armor, Leon was even wearing body armor this time and it still didn’t save him. Dark, patterned. Knife handle. BOWs don't use knives—

“Poor bastard got stabbed. Still went down swinging,” Jacob says, somber and reverent.

“Captain?” Hunnigan prompts in Chris’ silence.

“... we found him, Hunnigan. He— he didn't make it.”

Her silence only lasts a few seconds.

“You checked for a pulse?”

Chris takes a breath. “No, he's—”

“Check.”

Chris winces. “Hunnigan, he won't—”

“Confirm for me, Captain Redfield.” Her voice is flat but still strong. Better than what Chris can manage right now.

It must be standard operating procedure for her. Chris swallows. “Yes, ma’am.”

He pulls off one of his gloves, scanning over Leon’s body again. No other major injuries he can see. Other than the knife to the chest. It is a little left of center— when did someone have time to stab him in the middle of all of these BOWs? Unless Leon had been stabbed earlier and it took a while to bleed out. God, what a way to go.

Still, Chris is very glad he isn't infected. It is not a fate he wishes upon anyone. Taking another steadying breath, Chris presses two fingers to Leon’s neck.

Leon twitches. His hand jerks—

And Leon’s bloody handgun, drawn from his lap, presses into Chris’ throat as the trigger is squeezed by a red-stained finger.