Leon nursed the half-melted ice in his glass more than the drink itself, letting the burn settle behind his sternum rather than in his throat. Forty-nine. Old enough to know better, young enough that the government still expected him to crawl through hell on command. And now—Raccoon City. After all these years, they wanted him to go back.

The bar was dim, warm, anonymous—exactly the kind of hole-in-the-wall he sought out when the world felt too loud. He didn’t want company. Didn’t want conversation. He wanted silence thick enough to get lost in. But even the quiet couldn’t drown out the feeling crawling up his spine. The dread. The déjà vu. The memory of fire and sirens and the weight of his badge on the first night he ever wished he’d ignored an assignment.

He exhaled slow, pressing his thumb to the rim of his glass.

Then—red.

A flicker of color at the edge of his vision, sharp enough to cut through the haze. Leon’s eyes shifted before he could stop himself, instinct older than good sense.

She stood at the bar, just a few feet away. A silhouette washed in neon—dark hair, a red leather jacket, posture casual but purposeful. She leaned toward the bartender with the kind of confidence you didn’t fake.

It wasn’t her.

But for a heartbeat, his chest tightened all the same.

The echo of a memory he’d spent years trying to bury stirred, uncoiling like smoke. Ada Wong, slipping through shadows with intentions wrapped in silk; Ada, who turned betrayal into an art; Ada, who haunted him in ways no virus ever could. He’d learned to live with the ache she left behind, but tonight… tonight it pressed closer, raw, unwelcome.

He dragged his gaze away—and hated how difficult it was.

Leon wasn’t twenty-one anymore, green and hopeful and stupidly willing to believe that people who smiled at him meant it. He wasn’t thirty, clinging to mission after mission because adrenaline was easier than feeling anything real. And he sure as hell wasn’t young enough to be undone by a woman wearing red at a bar.

But the past had teeth. And tonight, it bit.

The woman laughed softly at something the bartender said. The sound didn’t resemble Ada at all, and he was grateful for it. If it had, he wasn’t sure what the hell he would’ve done.

He took another drink—too fast, this time.

He told himself it was just nerves. Just the pressure of going back to the place where everything started, everything went wrong. But deep down, beneath the layers of training and cynicism, was the uncomfortable truth:

It never really ended. Not Raccoon City. Not her. Not the version of himself he lost somewhere in the rubble.

He rubbed his hand over his jaw, feeling the familiar exhaustion settle deeper.

"I'm getting too old for this." He muttered to himself.