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He catches Lex on his way back from a shift, entirely on happenstance. He's on his way to the house, idly walking, to see if America's around to go break s**t, but a wave of guilt hits him at the sight of the guy he tried to, well.

Eat.

"Hey," he calls, jogging to catch up with him, not in his medical scrubs for once. Just his normal run of the mill shabby. "Hey." Leslie looks up at Lex, and it's as if he'd just swallowed a lemon, face screwed up and furious and--

"I just-- yeah, sorry I tried to ******** eat you. It was my second time with that s**t and I thought it might be easier, but--"

Leslie deflates. "It wasn't."

Leslie scuffs his boot against the dirt, lips pulled into a taut line.

"Yeah. It happened on a mission. Don't know what the ******** it is, just...It's red eye. It doesn't have a name or whatever." He looks far away, then, pulled under by a memory, the tide crashing over his head.

"I don't want to ******** talk about it where other people can ******** hear," he says, simply, and jabs his thumb at a wrecked part of the towns. "I owe you, so. You can ask me s**t. I guess."

He picks the school, one of the wings still wrecked, and pries open a door with a crowbar hidden nearby. It's just a hallway, but there's a box of old plates in a corner and a few desks and tables pulled into the open. Leslie hops up onto a table and crosses his legs, getting comfortable, compacting himself back down into something small.

Leslie pulls out his flask and takes a swig, holding it out to Lex for his turn.

"The thing that I remember most, I think," he says, "is how we were all just a bunch of wild dogs, trying to be the winner."

Leslie had killed two hunters, and consumed a few more than that. He knows the weight of destruction. It's heavy on his shoulders, the burden of knowledge. He would never forget what it was like to have the taste of human flesh and blood on his tongue.

"I don't know if that's right, it's-- s**t. I don't think any animal is as cruel as a ******** human being can be, you know? We're complete ******** monsters." He took another swig. "Anyone not hit with red eye was... other, and number one ******** priority. And you come out of it, you know. In and out of that ******** murderous desire for a few ******** days. Every time you get it, it gets easier to drop out of it."

He looks at Lex, and there's a coldness there. He's far away, back in Russia. "If I could get it again, right now, consequences be damned, I would ******** take it."

"Don't get too ******** uppity," Leslie snaps, looking down at the other hunter with fury reborn. Lex drove him ******** nuts. "I've been here half as long as you and I can kick your ******** a**. We know that already." He's like a furious cat, hackles raised. He hops off the desk to get closer, jabbing a finger at the other hunter's chest.

"And while we're ******** at it? Do not, even for one ******** second, pretend that you know any ******** thing about me. Because the s**t I've been through and survived to even make it to this god forsaken ******** island would make you lose your ******** lunch."

Leslie steps back, out of courtesy and not much else. "It takes away the choice. You have one setting, and no questions. You know exactly what you need to do and how to do it."

Leslie looks at Lex and it's not a flashback to Russia, just a memory. The euphoria of destruction, tearing people into shreds. But he's tired, and Lex is asking for a story that's hardly Leslie's to give. A story of before. He's not that boy anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. Out of necessity.

"Nice ******** try, but all I'll talk to you about is red eye, and nothing more." It's not snapped; just a stated truth. "Not when you're going to sit on your high ******** horse and pretend you're anything more than animal. We're all animals, Jamil. You bleed just as red as a dog, and I would know. We've got instincts that run through us, and it feels good to listen to them, and better when listening to them means that we're ******** winners."

Leslie takes another drag of his cigarette, two swigs of his flask, and does just as Lex asks:

He talks.

About how he'd gone to a bunker with a partner, for an easy mission with only the tiniest of quirks, to make sure that they saw everyone before leaving. And they smile the wrong way, like a mask pulled too tight, snarling and ugly out of the corner of your eye but if you turn to look, really look, it's the smiling mask again.

Because it is a mask.

There were seven of them, at the base, and Leslie had a partner. It was supposed to be easy, and it was anything but. They were greeted by six and one is missing. They were greeted by six and excuses were made, but they went to find her and and she was not, in fact, sick as they'd claimed.

They found her hanging from the pipes, limbs askew, held up by chains, and her bones were clean in places, like a vulture had been the exact thought.

The pendant didn't work, no matter how hard he tried. His partner-- Marianne-- had been sure that she'd been alive when they'd pulled apart her entrails, spilled her guts onto the floor and cleaned it up without a trace.

And she'd died next, cleaved and beheaded in a single neat swing, too strong. By Carlos. Despite only knowing them from the mission report and the subsequent days of trauma, Leslie remembers each and every one of them, their faces burned into his skull.

Leslie admits, next, that he'd cried. His voice is cold and dispassionate, distant and faraway. Aleria had been excited. Carlos was coming. There was no place to hide, in that room, and so he'd had to go.

But before he can get too far, another voice joins in. Ana. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there's nowhere to go but down. Leslie talks about lifting Marianne's still bleeding corpse, torn asunder, bones showing, guts leaking and half eaten. And he hid there, smearing red and gore on his face and everywhere before laying beneath her, beneath her coat, blending in.

And he'd stayed there. Afraid. For hours and hours, violence echoing down the halls. The feeding frenzy. The war cries.

And Leslie had stayed there, crying, until it hits. It's unbelievable. It's euphoria in the purest form. So ******** furious at the world and everything inside it, at everyone in the base. It was a game, you see. A game to see who could climb the highest, who could raise up and touch greatness first. And they were willing to die to win, to kill to win, to maim to win. Everything is fair ******** play in war and war and more ******** war.

And it makes you strong. Your body without inhibitions, all the strength given to you by your weapon with no regard for pain or exhaustion or any of the things that make you mortal.

And you want to pay back the world for every slight that's been done to you, once over, twice, ten times.

Everything not covered in red is other, and everything other must be destroyed. And once they're gone, everything else not you.

Perry was the next one. He ran and it didn't matter, because we ran faster, longer, harder, and he'd become nothing but moving meat, prey to take down, to ruin, to eradicate. They'd used their weapons just as much as their hands and teeth, and then--

It's gone, just like that, the anger draining out of him and there'd been nothing but terror, half a dozen rounds of vomiting until there was nothing but acid, and tears left. His weapon was wailing but only because he'd stopped eating, a pendant in his hand as he tries so ******** hard to go home--

And it comes back.

And each day that passes another person dies, in the labyrinth of the underground bunker, expanded piecemeal by generations of hunters. He trades a killing blow to Patti for a shotgun shell to the face, and the rage was gone as soon as she breathed her last, gurgling from a mouth attached to a crumpled skull.

It's cyclical. Rinse and repeat. Vomit, cry, vomit, cry, vomit. Vomit. He says, then, giving Lex a blank look, that he puked every night for a month after it was over. He still can't sleep right, restless at the sound of anything dragging against a wall or dragged against the ground.

The red kicks backs in before he can run, and Leslie eats his fill. Every time the red knocks out of him he pukes, every time the red comes back he eats. Two sides of the same ******** coin.

And he'd been so ******** close, to winning. Just Anna and Carlos and him, but. His weapon wanted so bad to just slip back under the influence. To attack and not think, but they'd found him and he was alone. Crying. Ready to die.

He stops.

It had been about a week, then, he says. I don't remember. With the time difference closer to nine days gone. But a clone had saved him. Taym's. Had used his ******** name and killed Carlos, and Leslie had lost it. Minimal sleep, minimal food, and trauma, or so the infirmary had said. Docile and quiet like a ******** lamb. Following the clone. Led to safety. Alive because of a clone.

He looks at Lex and shrugs, lighting a new cigarette.

"So that's it. That's red eye. ******** miserable s**t. We got really ******** lucky that antidotes got out in time before this place tore itself apart."

He was eighteen and he looked so <******** tired because he was. He was eighteen with scars ten years old. He was eighteen and broken irreparably, held together with liquor and unhealthy coping habits that got him by just another day.

But he was trying, and that's all he had to offer anyone. Trying.

"Yep." He blew smoke up in a thin jet, melancholy. "The clone went in to kill Carlos. But I could have won, and where would I be now? s**t. A war is coming, you know. They're building something, big and ugly. I don't know who they are or what it is, just that's coming. It feels like being on the wrong ******** side."