[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 556 - Ashley's Decision

Ashley buried her face in Leon's broad chest.

Her emotions finally settled, but the hand clutching the hem of his shirt had no intention of letting go.

Leon sat patiently on the edge of the bed, his palm stroking slowly down through her long golden hair.

"Leon."

She lifted her head from his chest without warning.

Eyes still red. Gaze completely serious.

"What is it?"

Leon lowered his eyes to look at her.

Ashley bit her lip. Something in her expression said she was making a decision, enormous, internal, final.

"I want to have your child."

The moment those words landed, the Infirmary went so quiet you could almost hear the drip inside the IV line.

Leon raised an eyebrow.

A flash of genuine bewilderment crossed his face.

Then he couldn't hold it. He laughed out loud.

What on earth was going on in this girl's head? She'd barely crawled back from death's door and her brain had already jumped straight to bearing children?

"Are you serious?"

He pinched her cheek.

"You're not even thinking about how old you are, and you're already ready to be a mother?"

"I am serious!"

Ashley panicked. She reached up and cupped his face in both hands.

"Don't laugh."

"This world is rotten to the core."

"Nobody knows whether tomorrow comes before the next accident."

"When you disappeared — I really thought I was going to lose you completely."

"If I died tomorrow, there wouldn't be a single thing left to prove we ever loved each other."

"I don't want that."

"I want to leave you a child. Even if something happens to me later, at least he'd still be here with you."

The words were a little naive.

But in this godforsaken apocalypse, they carried a gut-wrenching kind of truth.

People living day to day always wanted to hold onto something, anything, that proved they had existed.

Leon let the teasing fall from his face.

He took Ashley's hands from his cheeks and held them in his own.

"Listen, Ashley."

"I understand."

"But not now."

"Why?"

A flash of hurt moved through her eyes.

"You think I'm not good enough for you?"

"Stop that."

Leon exhaled quietly. His gaze met hers, direct and steady.

"This has nothing to do with that. The problem is me."

"My body stopped being anything close to normal a long time ago."

He pointed at his own veins.

"The T-Virus and the mutagen have fully fused with my DNA. My bodily fluids — blood, saliva, all of it — carry an extremely potent conversion property."

"If we became physically intimate right now,"

"You would be converted."

"You would become a Mutant under my control."

"And it cannot be undone."

Leon's voice stayed level. He laid out every consequence, unhurried, one piece at a time.

"Once the conversion is complete, you will be absolutely obedient to me at a subconscious level. I will become your dominant will. The moment I issue a command, it overrides yours, completely. You won't even be able to form the thought of resisting."

He reached out and ruffled her hair.

"Doesn't that terrify you?"

"You're your own person, Ashley. Surely you don't want to reach a point where you can't say no to me, about anything. You'd stop being yourself. You'd just be a puppet that does whatever I tell it to."

Leon had expected this to talk her out of it.

Free will was something nobody handed over lightly. That much he was sure of.

But Ashley heard every word.

And showed absolutely no sign of backing down.

She actually let out a long, slow breath, like she'd been bracing for something far worse.

"Oh, is that all? I thought it was something serious."

She murmured it softly. Then she leaned back in, both arms looping around his neck again.

"So what?"

"I don't care."

Leon stared at her.

"Did you not understand what I just said?"

He frowned.

"You would lose your capacity for independent judgment."

Ashley met his eyes without flinching.

"You said if you gave me a command, I'd follow it."

"So, would you ever tell me to go die?"

"Of course not."

He answered without hesitation.

"Then it's fine."

Ashley smiled.

It was the first real smile since she'd woken up. Her eyes carried a trace of cunning, and something reckless underneath, the kind that doesn't count the cost.

"If the price is obeying you forever, I'll pay it willingly."

"Besides, you're the one who saved my life to begin with."

"And..."

She leaned close to his ear. Warm breath against the curve of it.

"Being completely under your control." A beat. "That actually sounds kind of good."

That was practically lighting a match.

Leon was a normal man.

And this, this was about as direct as it got. Throwing herself at him without a shred of hesitation, without a single thought for the consequences.

Keeping up the refusals at this point would just be performative.

"Make sure you've thought this through."

He looked at her lips, inches from his.

"There's no taking it back once the arrow leaves the bow."

"I'm completely clear."

Ashley didn't give him the chance to keep reasoning with her.

She just tilted her head up.

Soft lips pressed against his.

Not tentative. Not fleeting. It was an invasion with something absolute behind it, clumsy and fierce all at once, Ashley working open his mouth with a stubbornness that had nothing practiced about it, reaching for him like she was claiming something she'd already decided was hers.

Leon's breath went heavy on the spot.

The hand resting on the bed's edge moved without thinking, wrapping around her waist and pulling her in hard.

The last inch of distance between them disappeared.

She didn't care.

So what exactly was he still holding back for.

Lips, teeth, breath, tangled together.

Leon didn't stay on the receiving end for long. The aggression baked into his bones came fully awake, and he took over completely. Ashley felt it roll over her like a wave, something huge and consuming that wrapped around her until there was nothing else.

The first step of the conversion was done.

Ashley's body went rigid all at once.

Unlike the pain Ada had experienced, what moved through Ashley was heat, a strange, electric surge that rose from somewhere deep and spread outward. Not pain. Something that raised every hair on her skin and made her scalp prickle.

Her body had already carried the Solar Stairway virus long before this. Now it met the dominant factor living inside Leon.

Like finding the thing it had been looking for.

The two viruses hit each other in her blood and didn't fight, they converged, fused, recombined, fast and sure, like they had always been meant to.

➤ Next: The Child Won't Mutate, Right?