[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 470 - Determination — Tears Unshed

The prison had never been this quiet.

Ashley sat on the floor, back against the bedframe. No lights. Just moonlight squeezing through the small window grate, throwing a pale, cold patch across the floorboards.

She held the Solar Stairway petal in both hands.

Not the whole plant. She'd only torn off one small piece when Candice wasn't looking, right before she left the lab.

It was thin as a cicada's wing. A silken light moved across its surface, giving off a faint glow in the dark.

Beautiful enough to stop your breath.

The truth was, she'd lied to Leon from the start.

She was never some rebellious runaway from a broken home.

She couldn't tell anyone who her parents were. That kind of information would bring disaster down on Leon, and on herself.

Her identity was too dangerous. Countless people were watching for any trace of her.

Because she was President Graham's daughter.

The daughter of the highest-ranking leader in the United States. Every potential terrorist attack had her name on the target list.

Back then, her father got word that things were growing unstable. High-level U.S. government officials were being assassinated one after another.

She'd been about to start college. Instead, her father had her forcibly transferred to an unremarkable little prison in Georgia and had documents forged to confirm she was nobody. Just an ordinary civilian with an ordinary name.

He told her he'd send someone to bring her home once things settled down.

So she came to this prison. She lived the same life as the other inmates.

In the beginning, this place wasn't a refuge from Walkers. She was just a number back then. An utterly ordinary female prisoner.

She was a pampered rich girl. When had she ever suffered like this?

She threw fits. So the other women bullied her. They isolated her, pulled her hair, shoved her head into toilets. She suffered every misery this place had to offer.

All she thought about, back then, was how to use her body to get pregnant, get that damn parole slip, and walk out of this hellhole.

She didn't care whether the situation was stable or not. She just wanted to go home.

Simple. Direct. Like closing a deal.

Then Leon showed up. Young new prison guard.

She'd known early on he wasn't a good person.

Rude. Domineering. Back then he was also afraid of making trouble, unwilling to get anywhere near her. Sometimes he was such a bastard she wanted to put a bullet right between his eyes.

But then he helped her stand up. After all that time getting knocked down, he showed her how to fight back. How to say no to people who thought they could walk all over her.

When the outbreak hit, she couldn't leave the prison right away, so she stayed.

She watched Leon take over the whole facility. He brought in more survivors, led teams out for food, built something like order in this place. And he brought something else with him too.

Hope.

Something she'd never let herself want.

She watched him do it with her own eyes. Leon going from a transferred probationary guard to the backbone of every survivor in this prison. Their only leader. Step by step, from nothing.

He transformed her too. From a woman who only thought about using her body to get out, into something else.

A living, breathing person.

He was also her first man.

That feeling was carved into bone. Nothing would wash it out, not in this lifetime.

She'd thought it would just keep going like this.

Her president father had always liked clever, sharp young men. If they ever met, they'd probably get along well enough.

She used to think about the look on Leon's face when she finally told him the truth about who she was. Her family was one of the top business dynasties in the country. The one thing they never ran short of was money.

She'd also heard that at Fort Benning, people still traded with the new-issue U.S. dollar. Maybe there were places like Fort Benning scattered all across America.

As long as her father hadn't fallen, she was still that wealthy, untouchable girl.

And when that day came, she was going to bury Leon in so much money his head would spin. Make him cling to her. She'd picture it sometimes — that always-cold, always-stoic Leon scrambling around after her — and it made her feel genuinely good.

Keep him away from those other women while she was at it.

Sure, he was a little too free with his attention. Sure, they fought constantly. But as long as he was there, she didn't want to go back to the life she had before. The sky wouldn't fall as long as he was around.

But now?

The sky had fallen.

The tears came without warning. They dropped onto the back of her hand.

She didn't believe he was dead.

Candice said he was still alive.

But alive — what did that even mean right now?

He'd fallen into an icy river with a knife wound in his chest.

God only knew where the current had taken him. Whether he was lying in some muddy ditch waiting to die, or whether someone had already found him.

She couldn't wait.

Not one second more.

Daryl was the best tracker anyone had. That was true.

Rick and the others were reliable. That was also true.

But they weren't her.

They couldn't feel what she was feeling. That specific, airless panic.

And she couldn't feel theirs, either. She had no way of knowing if they were truly giving everything they had. She had no way of knowing if they understood what finding Leon actually meant.

They didn't know what he meant to her.

Everything.

Ashley looked at the petal lying across her palms.

What if Leon really had been taken by Umbrella? What did she have to fight something that size?

Where would she even find the leverage?

Maybe this could give it to her.

Candice had said each person only needed a tiny amount. If it worked, an ordinary person could become something close to a super-soldier.

So she'd only taken one small petal.

5 percent.

Very low odds. She knew that.

But what did it matter?

If she didn't find him, Leon's chance of survival was zero. Her odds couldn't be worse than that.

She also knew what she was. She'd known it for a long time.

A decorative vase.

At first, that had been true in every sense. A naive rich girl, terrified of real danger, still throwing tantrums when things didn't go her way. But the time she'd spent with Leon had changed something in her, slowly and then all at once.

She didn't want to be the woman hiding in the back anymore. The one who waited to be saved.

Leon had told her once: some things you can't count on other people to do. You have to do them yourself.

This time, she was going to find him herself.

Ashley stood up. She went to the nightstand, dug through the drawer, and came up with a pen and a crumpled sheet of paper.

She knelt on the floor and used that thin slip of moonlight to write by.

The handwriting came out crooked. Blurred in places where tears had fallen before she'd finished the lines.

Everyone:

Please forgive my selfishness.

I know you're all trying. I know you won't give up on him. But I can't wait.

If I die, don't grieve for me. Bury me under the biggest oak tree on the farm. Leon used to like sitting there to smoke.

If I come through this and disappear, don't come looking for me. I've gone to find him.

When I find him, we'll come back on our own.

Ashley.

She folded the letter and pressed it under her pillow.

Then she picked up the petal.

She looked at it for a long moment. Like she was looking at her own dim and uncertain future.

Goodbye.

She hoped this worked.

Ashley closed her eyes and placed the petal, thin as a cicada's wing, on her tongue.

No taste.

Nothing. Just like eating an ordinary flower petal.

Silence, terrifying in how complete it was.

Nothing happened.

Ashley opened her eyes. A flicker of disappointment moved through them.

Could it be...

Had it failed?

➤ Next: So Someone Saved Him After All