Part IV: Dreams

We swam among the northern lights

and hid beyond the edge of night.

We waited for the dawn to come

And sang a song to save us all.

- Northern Lights

A dream had found him again, fairly dark, but only mildly so - a fog that slowly gave way to light. And it was about himself and her.

They'd grown so much since that fateful September night.

Back then, Leon Kennedy had been a simple rookie cop, late to his first day on the force because of a party he'd overindulged in to forget about a bad breakup. Ironically, that mistake may have saved his life, and by extension, hers.

If he hadn't shown up late, he'd have been another undead victim of the viral outbreak that struck Raccoon City. He never would've met and befriended Claire, never would've been recruited by the government, or have gone through all the places his missions took him.

And he never would've met Ada Wong.

There were many things that she was that he hadn't quite agreed with the more he found out about her - a spy for a rival organization of Umbrella sent to steal a sample of a new mutagenic virus; an assassin working for Albert Wesker, the rogue Umbrella and S.T.A.R.S. operative; a ghostly vixen darting in and out of his life, assisting him where she could but with some kind of hidden payment only she knew about.

And yet, Leon seemed to have accepted these facets of Ada's life as they kept crossing each other's paths, along with all the things she'd done to fix him - coming to terms with his parents' deaths, his connections with his friends, learning to not work so hard, and their feelings with each other.

And now here they were, twenty years of all of that transpired. And they were finally together.

This time, Leon hoped, for good. She'd had a good hold of most of the strings around his heart, always playing around and entangling them through the years. Yet, maybe that wasn't what she was doing with them after all, the more Leon thought about it. Or maybe that's how it started, but not how it ended for either of them.

In any event, Ada Wong had his heart firmly in her grasp.

"Leon?"

His daydream or reminiscence was broken by the sound of Ada's voice, and he sharpened his gaze to lock onto that of her's, noticing a cheeky sparkle there.

"You've got that goofy smile on your face again, and you're spacing out. Everything alright there, handsome?"

Leon let out a soft chuckle at her words, moving closer to wrap one arm around her shoulders, holding her close. "Never better, gorgeous", he said happily. "Never better."

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

- Yoko Ono