Together: A Dark Romance Duet || Leon Kennedy x Female Reader

Chapter 25: FMC

Part III: A New Dawn

After waiting in the dark for what feels like hours, I'm beginning to give up hope. Silence consumes me, playing with my thoughts and tugging at each insecurity. I've always struggled with insomnia and night anxiety, but being locked in a cell in an ancient castle overlooking the ocean takes it to a new level. My paranoid brain is convincing me that Leon isn't coming—no one is coming, and I'm left to fight out of my imprisonment alone—or die. They might've left me to rot here. Maybe they're waiting until the plagas fully devours me, killing off the person I am so someone new emerges, something they can control.

Either way, waiting around to find out in solitude is a torture of its own, especially when the night seems to stretch on endlessly.

I stare out at the moon reflected on the ocean's smooth surface, replaying my encounter with Ada, the way she showed up like a ghost and disappeared into the night. The woman is an enigma, and it's still unclear why she came to me in the first place, her role in all this, and her motive for helping me.

I want you to save Leon.

That was her one request, but could it be the reason she came to find me?

Now I know for sure she and Leon have history. Whatever it may be, it's none of my business, anyway. Maybe Leon will tell me everything eventually, but he doesn't owe me anything. The two of us are only trying to make it out of this alive, and even with everything that's gone down between us, it still doesn't mean I'm privy to his secrets or his past.

Help him find his peace.

Those were the words she left me with before departing. I can't say I fully understand them yet, but it's not hard to guess their meaning when I can clearly read the pain in Leon's eyes. He's a trained killer forced to witness the worst horrors of humanity; nothing about that leaves a person without a few shadows. I don't know if I'll be the one to help him find the peace he needs in this life—I don't know if I'm what he needs. All I can do for him now is stay alive and help him put an end to this evil.

I feel the weight of my gun—Leon's handgun—now tucked into the waistband of my jeans hidden underneath my T-shirt. With a concealed weapon, I have more of a fighting chance. They think I'm helpless without Leon, and I want to keep it that way. To them, I'm a scared, incapable, and stubborn girl waiting for her daddy's men to save her. I don't know if they know I've already lived through this hell once as exactly that. They might've dug deep into my history before kidnapping me, but it makes no difference. I'm not willing to repeat that past.

The shrill creak of a door opening down the corridor jumpstarts my nerves. I want to remain ready for whatever comes next. Trying to ignore the elevation of my heartbeat, I draw my hands behind my back mostly to hide my fidgeting and shaking hands and draw my gun if I need to. Since I was somehow knocked out when they moved me from my cell in the dungeons to this cage high above sea level, I have no clue as to my true location in this castle.

The shuffling of footsteps grows nearer, the sound dense enough to suggest not one but several bodies heading this way. I squint in the dark with my back against the stone wall, forcing my eyes to see through the veil of darkness.

Underneath the light of the fading scones, Ramón appears like a nightmare made flesh. I lock eyes with that inhumanly golden gaze.

"Ah, good to see our precious doll awake," he says, enunciating each word in that squeaky, childlike voice. Behind him, two robed zealots appear, flaking Ramón in the way I've seen my father's men do to symbolize the importance of the person at the center—to protect them.