Lay Your Cards Out

Disclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil, or Leon or Ada.

For Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong, love is (a) secret.

Tired muscles seemed to groan with satisfaction as Leon dropped his bag onto the floor and slumped down in the nearest chair the minute he was inside his dreary and dusty excuse for an apartment. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes and sighed. He was glad that he had escaped from that mess in Spain with the President's daughter in tow. All he wanted to do was sleep for the next week or so, and he planned to get a beer upon awakening. Or perhaps a beer first and then sleep. But that was not how the following days played out. There were many conferences to go to, meetings, interviews, customs, medical exams, you name it. They would be bugging him for his written report soon as well.

He got up, suddenly thirsty and started walking toward the tiny kitchen. He had only taken a step when he felt something under his foot. Some crap that must have fallen out of his bag, he kicked it aside, glancing at it briefly. He did a double take though when the item jingled, looked down, picked it up, and observed it more closely this time.

The keys to the jet ski she had left for him to escape with in Spain a mere two days ago.

A present from Ada, he had initially thought. Well, sort of.

He fell back down into the chair and leaned his head back against the headrest, turning the key and the key chain around in his finger tips. He had almost forgotten about it in the chaos that followed his and Ashley's rescue. It reeked of the Atlantic Ocean...and of memories of the woman in red who had thrown it to him before making her smooth getaway on the helicopter.

Leon couldn't help thinking how uncharacteristically "Ada" the teddy bear keychain was.

He continued to dangle the thing in front of his face, its eyes staring back at him mockingly.

It was then that Leon saw it.

The little teddy bear rotated on its chain, and there on its back was a tiny zipper.

For Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong, love is betrayal.

Beep beep.

With a small sigh, Ada pulled the phone from its special case on her thigh holster and pushed the answer key. Albert Wesker immediately appeared on the small green screen, staring at her through the smoky lenses of his ever present sunglasses.

"So I hear that the government sent that agent Leon along over there as well. Have you come across him?" His voice was crisp and business like as usual, though there was that subtle tone of distaste as the blonde government agent's name passed through his thin lips. No one but Ada would have been able to detect it, considering all the years they had been working together.

"No."

"Hm. If you do happen to cross paths, eliminate him. Perhaps today is the day that his guardian angel has taken a day off." Wesker ended the transmission and her phone bleeped, the screen blinking 'No signal.'

"She won't be taking a day off anytime soon." Ada smirked as she replaced the phone in her holster, dimly aware of the feeling of déjà vu and the amusing image of her as a guardian angel. Her habit of talking to the screen even after Wesker disconnected hadn't left her...and just exactly how many times had Wesker ordered her to kill Leon back in Spain? She was mildly surprised that he hadn't started to become more suspicious of Leon's 'lucky escapes,' though it was possible that Leon must have earned some merit in Wesker's book after the Spain incident. Of course, she had helped him during then as well.

And there was also the fact that nothing about Wesker was what it seemed. Perhaps his quietness about Leon was the calm before a storm. Perhaps he did know and was simply waiting for a time when it would benefit him the most.

Ada stared at the computer screen, arms folded across her chest, waiting patiently for the files to copy. She was still anticipating the day that Wesker would find out what she was truly up to...who she was truly working for. He had made it clear that once her usefulness ended, so would her life. He had informed her about the missile aimed at Raccoon City and the helicopter that would be her single hope of escape only when she had shown him the G-virus tissue sample. Well, she wasn't going to go down without a fight and a large-scale explosion, that much was for sure.

The fake "master Plaga" sample that Ada had sent along to Wesker had been keeping him busy. The Organization had told her that it would buy them at most three weeks of time before the ex S.T.A.R.S. member would figure out it was not the real thing. Two weeks had already passed.

Ada took the small disk drive from the computer after the files were done copying. Carefully slipping it into one of the many pockets on her pants, she walked out of the lab and into the adjoining room where Leon was studying the security camera screens.

"You've got about fifteen maybe twenty minutes until the fourth floor guards finally start their rounds in this part of the building," her velvety voice pulling his attention from the screens. Leon turned, his blonde hair briefly whisking away from the right side of his face only to fall back into place where they partially covered his right eye.

"What about you?" It was a silly question to ask, Ada was more than capable of getting past the building's defenses without so much as a scratch. Leon had asked it merely to stall the inevitable: her departure.

"I've already got what I needed from here. See you around." Ada disappeared beyond the metal door.

For Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong, love is telling lies.

"Back in Spain...that was why you were at the island, right? You needed a sample of the Las Plagas to give to Wesker."

Ada looked at Leon with that expression she always had on her face when he asked her a question that she didn't want to answer, the look where she tilted her head to the side and gracing her lips was the faintest trace of a smile. "If it makes you feel better, then yes, that would be my answer."

Leon was unfazed by her uncharacteristically easy answer. "Why are you working for him? I don't care what the answer is, I just want to hear it coming straight from you."

The porcelain-faced femme fatale paused. "He saved my life." It was part of the truth. At least that's what Ada told herself every time she had to sit through Wesker's plans about bringing Umbrella back into power. Outwardly she pretended that she shared Wesker's wishes, but inwardly she was beyond disgusted at the idea.

"So you feel like you owe this to him. Fair enough." Leon seemed to buy her reply, though he still kept looking at her as though expecting her to say more.

"The money's not that bad either."

"The government knows about you...or at least they know that you work for Wesker. They call you the Red Rogue."

"Flattering."

"They tried asking me if I knew about you but I pretended that I didn't know what they were talking about."

Ada turned her gaze to the floor. "You could have told them."

"Yeah, I could've."

For Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong, love is accepting the other's faults.

Leon had taken care of the last guard on the large research vessel and was now alone…or so he initially thought. The silence was loud and he was acutely aware of his environment. It was then that he spotted her in the reflection of one of the glass covered dials on the control panel.

"This is the...hmm, let's see...sixth time that you've pointed a gun at me. I should know by now that you aren't really going to shoot." Leon turned around slowly, folding his arms as he faced her. She was dressed a bit differently this time, with a simple red long sleeved shirt and black pants with boots. She had her favorite gun, the Blacktail, pointed squarely at his chest.

"As I should know by now that you're going to cooperate regardless," Ada replied with a smile. Using her gun, she motioned for Leon to move aside from the control panel. He sidestepped reluctantly and watched as she walked towards the vast array of buttons, switches, and levers. Keeping the Blacktail aimed at Leon with one hand, she used the other to rapidly type in codes and overrides, looking up every so often at the screen to see whether her commands were doing the desired effects. When she was through, she holstered the Blacktail and pulled out her grappling gun.

"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," she said, looking at the control panel. "And I'd get a move on within the next sixty seconds." With that, she ran out of the room, towards the railing of the ship and lithely leaped over it, at the same time pulling the trigger of her grappling gun above her. There was a metal clang as the hook latched on to something above and she disappeared from view.

For Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong, love is complicated.

The pain was immense. This was not good.

Ada knew the base hiding the first biological warhead was going to be heavily guarded, but she hadn't expected this.

She managed to dodge the first few rounds of bullets that sprayed across the room threatening to turn her into a piece of Swiss cheese, but she was caught completely off guard by the next machine guns that emerged from the walls behind her. Ada felt the bullets before she heard them, feeling at least five of them rip through her soft flesh and leaving behind an excruciating pain unlike any other. The data long forgotten as her survival instincts kicked in.

Ada reached a bloodied hand down to the pack on her waist, growing increasingly worried as the feeling in her limbs began to dissipate, making undoing the zipper a tremendous task. She gave a sigh of relief as she felt the cool metal surface of the healing spray, mustering up her strength to grasp the can and pull it out. The can suddenly slipped, her fingertips slick with blood, her blood, and she watched helplessly as her last immediate hope rolled down the ramp and fell through the gap between this walk area and the next. Ada heard the clanging sound as the can dropped to the level beneath her, way beyond her reach.

She winced as she shifted her position on the floor, trying to use the railing to get herself upright, but this just brought on a wave of shooting stabs and she lay there clenching her jaw against the pain, defeated, the cool metal of the catwalk offering no comfort against her cheek. 'I wonder how I'm going to get out of this one...' she mused caustically. Despite her current situation, Ada felt no fear, having had a brief rendezvous with death back in Raccoon City. Hell, her pain threshold was nothing short of impressive. For her training as an operative, her superiors had subjected her to numerous types of torture, everything from electrocution to slow drowning. Ada had impressed them by being among the toughest of the tough, one of the only ones who hadn't begged for a rest break. Physical pain was nothing to her, and now the thought of her impending doom wasn't even enough to scare her.

Ada was a woman of few regrets, almost none except for one-

"Ada!" her thoughts were interrupted by someone yelling her name.

The voice sounded distant, distorted, as though someone was yelling to her from down a tunnel.

She turned weakly in the direction of the sound of footsteps getting louder, her curiously colored grey eyes landing on the figure sprinting down the hall towards her.

Leon.

"I was downstairs when I heard machine guns, and then I went up there and saw all this blood and then here you are! Oh my god…" he knelt down next to her and tried to apply pressure on the worst of her wounds. She was losing blood fast, and he could feel the warmth of it pulsing out through his fingers as he pushed down. She gasped at the pain and clutched at his arm desperately. Her fingers were slick with blood, leaving behind a grisly painting on his arm.

"Help me up...I have to go get that datacube."

"You mean this?" Leon held up a small silver cube in front of her.

"How did you get that?"

"I'm just good like that."

Ada grumbled and made for the cube. She was slow, and Leon easily held it back from her.

"I'm sorry, but I can't give this to you," Leon said. "I can't let Wesker have it."

Inwardly, Ada smiled. He still thinks I'm working for Wesker, she thought. She was, but he wasn't the only one she was working for. It was for the best that Leon not find that out.

"Do you have a healing spray with you? I've lost mine," Ada asked, trying to keep her voice velvety smooth despite the searing pain. Leon searched his pack for one and Ada held her hand out for it. Ignoring her, he sprayed the healing liquid onto the worst of her wounds first before moving onto the others. He felt himself sigh with relief as he watched the bleeding slowly cease, the gashes puckering closed. They now looked like wounds that were inflicted a month or so ago.

Leon wasn't prepared for what happened next. Ada leaned in and pressed her lips against his. He forgot where he was for a split second, taken aback by the motion. He was so shocked and absorbed by this that he failed to notice Ada's left hand slowly moving towards her pocket. When she pulled away from the kiss, there was a loud bang, a blinding flash of light and Leon was immediately left disoriented. He felt a slick hand wrench the datacube from his grasp and a voice whisper in his ear, "See you around."

When Leon's vision returned, she was nowhere to be found.

Author's Note:

I've been working on this for awhile and I've only now just come back to it after years of neglecting it. I've graduated from college now so I have more time to write. This is just a little piece to help ease me back into the old routine.