Fanfic / the ringing in my ears gets violent

Carlos: In the meantime, be careful. These guys aren’t just brainwashed, infected villagers with pitchforks. They’ve got major artillery and they know how to use it, and that’s not to mention all this talk about El Segador.
Chris: The reaper?
Carlos: Their nickname for the black-clad ninja bastard, apparently. They also call him a ghost, a banshee, an omen of death—anything vaguely ominous, you name it, he’s it.

the ringing in my ears gets violent is a Resident Evil fanfic written by QueenWithABeeThrone where Leon goes missing in the climax of Resident Evil 4, having only been able to get Las Plagas out of Ashley in time. Five years later, and months after the events of Resident Evil 5, Chris is deployed to one of Los Illuminados' newer bases. It's there that he finds himself stalked by an Implacable Man antagonist, in grand Resident Evil tradition, but this time there's something...familiar about his stalker.

Or, as the fic summary outright says, this fic is the Winter Soldier!Leon Kennedy AU.

Also has a one-shot set in its future: another line without a hook.

This story contains examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: Carlos' reaction to Leon, in a video tape, telling Saddler that he must've gone more senile than expected. Ada and Chris aren't quite so amused. It stops being quite so funny when the torture starts.
• Adaptational Sexuality: For both Chris and Leon, who are explicitly shown to have romantic feelings for each other throughout the fic. In canon, Leon has a complicated romance with Ada, while Chris at most has Ship Tease with Jill.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Leon gets around this way, and manages to almost get the drop on Chris multiple times thanks to this. Chris also uses it once in the second chapter to escape the dungeons, but he's more heavily built than Leon, so it's a much tighter fit.
• all lowercase letters: Some of Leon's Apocalyptic Log is in this with poorer and poorer grammar and spelling, indicating his slowly deteriorating mental state. The story title and chapter titles are also all in lowercase.
• Alternate Universe Fic: Of the What If? variety, spinning off after Leon fails to get Las Plagas out of himself in time.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Leon's brief POV in chapter 7 has shades of this, along with Sanity Slippage.
• Amnesiac Lover: Downplayed. Before Spain, Chris and Leon had mutual romantic feelings for each other, but were planning to take it slow and go on their first date after Leon's return from Spain. He never came back.
• Amnesiac Resonance: Leon starts undergoing this in chapter 7. It's implied that not only are the frequent mind-wipes done in order to prevent this from happening, the cult and the Puppeteer Parasite inside his body are conditioning him into desperately avoiding this.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: After five straight chapters from Chris's POV, the sixth chapter is written from Carlos' perspective. The seventh chapter briefly switches back to Chris near the end, before capping off with Leon's POV.
• Apocalyptic Log: Chris, while making his way through the compound he's trapped in, starts finding notes written by an L who apparently tried to make multiple escape attempts in the past. He later connects that L is the same person as the long-missing Leon.
• Artistic License – Biology: The author's notes in chapter 4 admit to playing just as fast and loose with biology as canon does.
• Badass Normal: Par for the course in REverse, but Chris Redfield takes the cake, surviving encounters with Ganados, Regeneradores, zombie dogs, and even his very own Tyrant-style stalker.
• Barbarian Longhair: Claire in the prologue notes that in her encounter with the masked man who shot her, she hadn't been able to tell his hair color from all the grime he was covered in. Later, Chris spots him on a computer screen, and makes note of his hair being long and unkempt. The accompanying art that opens the fic shows Leon with hair about the same length as Bucky Barnes in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Ada invokes this as her reasoning for wanting to save Leon, noting that she owes him a debt from 2004. However, it's clear her feelings for him still run deeper than that.
• Berserk Button: A terrified scientist manages to press on Chris's buttons when he admits to not caring to remember the names of the people he experimented on. Chris, whose patience is wearing thin after realizing that Leon had been captured alive, shoots the man in the leg in response.
  • Ada's is watching Leon getting put through the brainwashing process. Notably, she puts a shotgun barrel through the monitor in response.
• Blade Enthusiast: While Leon picks up various other weapons throughout the story (including a chainsaw), the art depicts him wielding a knife. He's most often written with one throughout the story, with a Knife Fight showcasing both his skill at it and the Dramatic Irony of him playing Krauser's previous role. another line, set after he starts his Heel–Face Turn, still has him pulling a knife when someone knocks on his door.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Leon, whose first appearance in the fic proper has him attempting to stab Chris.
• Broken Bird: Leon displays shades of this in another line. Coming back from five years of being Brainwashed and Crazy did a number on his psyche and it shows.
• The Bus Came Back: Carlos Oliveira comes back and plays a supporting role to Chris's adventures on the military base, keeping him company over the earpiece while carrying out his own mission.
  • Wilson, the Big Bad of Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, returns in the same capacity for this story, this time having taken over the cult of Los Illuminados after Saddler's offscreen death.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: A scientist in chapter 3 admits that he doesn't really bother to remember who he experiments on for Los Illuminados.
• Call-Back:
  • Chris compares his mysterious stalker to previous Implacable Man antagonists like Mr. X. Ironically, Chris's stalker is Leon, who once went up against Mr. X himself.
  • Jill's situation in RE5 is briefly alluded to a few times. Most notable is Wesker's brief cameo appearance in a tape, explicitly set after the Spencer Estate mission.
  • During a firefight, Chris asks Carlos how he and Jill dealt with the Nemesis. Carlos casually notes that Jill blew it up with a railgun, and recommends that Chris deal with his stalker that way.
  • Once again, Chris tries to talk down a Brainwashed and Crazy friend by begging them to snap out of it.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Chris and Carlos engage in some while Chris is getting shot at by Ganados and the masked man who's been stalking Chris for much of the story.
• Chainsaw Good: Subverted, when Leon picks up a chainsaw he ends up swinging it into an electric fence and shocking himself.
• Crossover: Downplayed, a genderfluid character named Mollymauk, with purple hair and an ostentatious coat but no non-human characteristics, appears in another line and plays a small role as a clerk in a shop.
• Crusading Lawyer: In the years since RE4, Ashley is revealed to have become a lawyer known for standing up for victims of bioterrorism. She cites Leon as the catalyst for her career path.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not Leon, surprisingly, although to be fair he's currently brainwashed and The Voiceless. However, Carlos picks up the slack, especially in Casual Danger Dialogue with Chris.
  Carlos: What is it with us and getting stalked by BOWs?
  Chris: Hazard of the job, I guess.
• Determinator: Leon made multiple escape attempts before the brainwashing finally took, as evidenced by his notes. In the present day, he will not stop coming after Chris, no matter what Chris throws at him.
  • This extends to being able to withstand continued electrocution, something that surprises and scares Chris in the story.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Saddler survives the events of RE4 only to meet his ignominious end years later at the hands of Albert Wesker, with the tapes that Chris watches implying that Wesker ripped his heart out with his bare hands.
• Dramatic Irony: Chris realizes in chapter 3 that the person leaving him helpful notes is the long-missing Leon, and wonders what happened to him. He even conjures up a Mind Control scenario similar to Jill in RE5, which is essentially exactly what happened to Leon. He still doesn't manage to connect Leon to his masked stalker.
• Dramatic Unmask: Chris finally manages to rip the mask off of his stalker's face in chapter 5, and is stunned with horror and heartbreak when he sees that it's Leon, who Chris has been desperately looking for since he learned he was Not Quite Dead.
• The Dreaded: Ada describes the masked "ninja bastard" as a ghost, and displays a moment of subtle fear while talking about him. Justified, he shot her prior to the events of the fic.
• Dying Declaration of Love: A heartbreaking variant in chapter 5. Chris has been picking up Leon's Apocalyptic Log in pieces. When he reads the last piece, it's implied to have been the last time Leon wrote as himself, as his mental state is bad enough that he's lost almost all his memory. He begs Chris to forget him, and admits that he loved him.
• Electric Torture: A tape watched in chapter 6 depicts this happening to Leon, in the same vein as the bank vault scene in the plotline's original source. Carlos finds it so disturbing that he leaves the room, while Chris and Ada wreck the TV they watch it on.
• Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: Discussed and subverted. The narrative takes some pains to point out that ECT shouldn't feel like torture, with Carlos's narration describing a friend using ECT to treat his depression. When he compares it to how Leon was brainwashed, he calls Leon's treatment nothing like the therapy that helped his friend.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Leon goes from a top government agent to the story's equivalent of the Winter Soldier. Chris even compared him to Mr. X and the Nemesis.
• Establishing Character Moment: Leon's first appearance in the fic, and the first time Chris sees him in person in five years, has him coming out of nowhere to try to stab Chris. He very nearly succeeds. Chris manages to stagger him with a flashbang grenade, buying himself time to get away, but he's Genre Savvy enough to know that this masked man is going to keep coming after him, and keep coming Leon does.
• Evil Wears Black: Chris's masked stalker is often described as wearing black. Subverted, because Leon is thoroughly brainwashed and not entirely in control of his own actions.
• The Faceless: Leon is described as wearing a mask in his appearances so far, preventing Chris from being able to recognize him.
• Face-Revealing Turn: How The Reveal of the Reaper's identity in chapter 5 is done. Once Chris pulls his mask off in the fight, Leon turns around, shocking Chris into only managing to croak out his name.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Leon's notes from before he's fully brainwashed are a mix of this and Apocalyptic Log, with many warning future readers of traps and giving away solutions to later puzzles.
• Friendly Enemy: Contrasting Leon and Ada's canonical dynamic, Carlos and Ada border on this, with Carlos reining in a furious Chris for Ada's sake. While neither of them entirely trust each other, Carlos doesn't seem to have plans to arrest her any time soon.
• Godzilla Threshold: Word of God in the comment section states that this is why Ada came to Chris in the first place, having been shot by Leon when she found out.
  • Confirmed in chapter 6.
• Healing Herb: It's a Resident Evil fic. Notably, though, Chris's stalker also uses them, something no other antagonist, in canon or in the story, has been shown to do. It serves as Foreshadowing for his actual identity: a Brainwashed and Crazy Leon.
• Heartbroken Badass: Years after Leon's apparent death, Chris is still in love with him, and the moment he finds out Leon's still alive, his priorities shift to rescuing him. And to surviving his encounters with the masked Reaper. Dramatic Irony kicks in when you realize Leon and Chris's masked stalker are one and the same.
  • It gets much worse for Chris in chapter 5, as he finds Leon's Dying Declaration of Love and then finds out that Leon not only is the masked man stalking him, he doesn't remember anything and is fully attempting to kill him.
  • Ada's appearance in chapter 6 implies that she's this too, over the same man.
• The Heavy: While Wilson is the fic's Big Bad, It's Personal between Chris and the mysterious Reaper, who's established early on to have shot Claire, and their conflict is what drives much of the fic.
• Hidden Depths: Leon is established as having had a minor in English literature, back-up plans involving becoming a novelist, and a small penchant for limericks.
• Human Weapon: Leon, who's had his brain fried to the point where he barely recognizes his own name.
• I Will Find You: Chris says this word for word after finding out the identity of the helpful note-writer. What he doesn't realize is, he already did. It's just that the brainwashing stuck.
• Implacable Man: Chris runs into one, and is annoyed and aggravated by his stalker's frequent appearances, making comparisons to previous antagonists such as Mr. X and the Nemesis. Unbeknownst to Chris, though, his stalker is a brainwashed Leon Kennedy.
• Internal Reveal: The audience knows, right from the start, that Leon is the masked stalker pursuing Chris throughout the first five chapters. Chris doesn't learn this until near the end of chapter 5, when he yanks the mask off of him.
• In Spite of a Nail: Leon still takes Jun-See's chip and prevents Claire from releasing the truth about the Mad Dogs, just like in Infinite Darkness, although his reasons are significantly different. Claire also still gets her arm hurt, although in this universe it's because Leon shoots her in the arm to take the chip.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: A digital version of this crops up in another line, when a bioterrorist attempts to send an e-mail to his accomplice about the man that tore through his guards. It's implied Leon killed him, and he's coming next for the accomplice.
• Lady in Red: Ada, natch.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Apocalyptic Log from Leon depicts this slowly happening to him.
• Laser Hallway: One makes an appearance in chapter 4. The impracticality of this is lampshaded by the note Leon's left at the end of the hallway:
  Congrats on getting past the laser hallway. No, I don't know what possessed them to think this was a good idea. I went through this on their first base too, and yes, they get their ideas from action movies.
• Loss of Identity: Leon's Apocalyptic Log notes, found out of order, depict the slow deterioration of his mental state. It's telling that when Chris picks up some of his later all lowercase letters notes, they don't even have the initial signing them off.
• The Lost Lenore: Downplayed, they never quite got around to making it official, but Chris clearly still carries a torch for Leon years after Leon's apparent death. When he finds out he's still alive, finding and saving Leon quickly becomes one of Chris's biggest priorities in the story.
  • Ada also holds this attitude toward Leon.
• Made of Iron: Leon, who in the story alone survives grenades of various types, firefights, getting knocked down by a shotgun butt, and being repeatedly electrocuted while climbing an electric fence. All in the name of tracking down Chris. Somewhat downplayed, on multiple occasions he takes green herbs to recover.
  • Chris, too, survives multiple encounters with an Implacable Man single-mindedly hell-bent on killing him. Word of God in the comments states that this is the entire reason why Ada Wong resorted to coming to him for help: because he had the best chance of surviving a fight against a Brainwashed and Crazy Leon.
• The Missus and the Ex: A heartbreaking variant, as Leon's The Lost Lenore for both Ada and Chris. They both care about him deeply and are willing to work together to save him, but Chris doesn't trust Ada on account of her being a mercenary with Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. Ada, for her part, seems somewhat ambivalent towards Chris.
• Morality Pet: Leon is still this for Ada, even years after his apparent death. Watching him be tortured in a video tape is the one thing throughout the story that breaks her cool disposition.
• Mundane Luxury: Leon's floored reaction to being given a warm blanket speaks volumes about how the past five years have been for him.
• Never Found the Body: Leon's body has never been recovered after his first encounter with Los Illuminados. It turns out, that's because he never died in the first place.
• No Need for Names: A horrifying variant. Leon's POV in chapter 7 makes it clear that his status as an Implacable Man came at a terrible mental cost, and his amnesia is enforced by conditioning that invokes this trope.
• Not So Invincible After All: Chris lays down a proximity mine that detonates and sends his stalker into a wall. Said stalker gets back up again, but takes a green herb to recover. Doubles as Foreshadowing for The Reveal—no antagonistic character, in canon or in the fic, has been shown using herbs, which makes Leon's use of herbs and breaking into save rooms stand out.
• Not So Stoic: Ada's one of the calmer characters in canon, but after watching the tape where Leon suffers through the brainwashing process, she puts the barrel of her shotgun through the monitor.
• Obligatory Swearing: A minor case, but the level of swearing is about on par with the more recently released games, with various characters freely dropping F-bombs in both narration and dialogue.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Chris is frantically trying to avoid getting murdered by either Ganados or a mind-wiped Leon, Carlos is sneaking around the island undercover to pick up information. It's implied that not once has anyone realized he's not supposed to be there.
• Only Sane Man: Somewhat downplayed, but Carlos finds himself the one person not on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge between himself, Ada, and Chris. Somewhat, because Carlos notes that he would be in the exact same position had he gone through the events of RE5 as well.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Exploited by Ada to get Chris's attention. It's implied that she specifically went to Chris because he's so Made of Iron that a heavily-brainwashed and murderously determined Leon cannot take him down.
• Red Baron: Los Illuminados' resident assassin is called the Reaper, among other vaguely ominous names. The narration from Chris's perspective, however, just refers to him as a ninja asshole.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Leon, having been infected by Las Plagas for five years, sports red eyes when he first shows up.
• Reforged into a Minion: Leon, who apparently gains accelerated healing and enhanced durability due to being infected with the Plaga.
• Rogue Protagonist: Chris finds himself relentlessly pursued by none other than an infected, brainwashed Leon, in a manner eerily similar to when Leon was being pursued by Mr. X. Chris doesn't miss the similarity to Mr. X, but doesn't realize the irony just yet.
  • He finds out in chapter 5.
• Sanity Slippage: Leon's Apocalyptic Log notes start out coherent and readable. His last note, a Dying Declaration of Love, is just barely readable. Chapter 7 further hammers this in by having his narration be significantly more fractured than the other points of view we see.
• Serendipity Shock: Chris leaves baskets of food out on his fire escape for Leon, whose reaction is utter bafflement at how kind he's being treated even from afar. A warm blanket nearly gets thrown back at Chris because of this, with Leon only keeping it because it's much better than his previous one.
• Shout-Out:
  • One puzzle plays the Imperial March as a musical clue.
  • A list of movies used as a decoy clue includes not only Star Wars: A New Hope, but also The Bourne Identity and The Manchurian Candidate. The latter two prove relevant to the plot.
  • The entire fic is a Whole-Plot Reference to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and even borrows the most iconic Wham Line and Wham Shot in chapter 5.
  • Game of Thrones gets name-dropped in chapter 2, with Chris bringing up Daenerys' many titles in relation to Claire's masked shooter.
  • another line has a musical one, with Queen's lyrics stitched onto a jacket given to Leon.
  • The one-shot also has a more significant shout-out to Iron Man, also serving as a way to establish how out of touch Leon is with the world around him.
• Silent Antagonist: In a sharp contrast to canon, especially RE4, Leon doesn't speak a word through the chapters posted so far. Most of his dialogue comes through written notes in the style of the usual files in the game. Some descriptions of what little of his Facial Dialogue can be seen above the mask, though, have him edging toward Silent Snarker territory.
  • Finally subverted in chapter 5 for the story's version of the iconic Wham Line.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: Integrates multiple gameplay mechanics from the source material into the story as much as possible, with the usage of herbs even serving as Foreshadowing for the Reaper's real identity.
• Solve the Soup Cans: In true RE fashion. The most egregious example is the gun puzzle in chapter 5. Thankfully for Chris, Leon's left notes containing the puzzle solutions.
• Suddenly Speaking: Leon lacks any dialogue in all of the first four chapters and the majority of the fifth, preferring to resort to wordless screams to express his fury or Facial Dialogue for his annoyance. When he finally speaks the Wham Line near the end of chapter 5, the narration notes that his voice is rough with disuse, implying that he hasn't actually spoken a sentence in some time.
  • The future of another line reveals he's talking again, but it's less smooth than before.
• Sympathetic Sentient Weapon: Chapter 7 solidly establishes Leon as this, presenting his POV for the first time in the fic and showing the audience just how broken his mental state is.
• That Man Is Dead: Leon in the one-shot seems to have this attitude towards his pre-brainwashed self.
  Leon: He wants someone who’s dead and—and whose face I happen to have.
• This Cannot Be!: Prior to the Internal Reveal, it's implied that Chris already had some idea who the masked man stalking him was, he was just heavily in denial about it. When he finally learns who it is, the only thing he can say in response is Leon's name.
• Tragic Villain: As per the movie it's based on, Leon as the Winter Soldier stand-in. What drives it home even further are his notes, where he does everything he can to help any future prisoners escape the island long after he's fully Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Wham Line:
  • In chapter 5:
    Chris: Leon?
    Leon: Who the hell's Leon?
• Whole-Plot Reference: Based on Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with Chris as Captain America and Leon as the Winter Soldier.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Chris's reaction to encountering a Laser Hallway. Instead of trying to make it through them via acrobatics, he just props bombs up against the walls to take out the emitters.