Chapter Text
Everyone was born with a timer. It tells you down to the exact moment when you will lock eyes with your soulmate.
No one knows why that is, or how or why the timers came to be, they just simply were. Some people had been trying for as long as they could to figure out why but most had just simply accepted it as another part of what humans were. To some timers were they're everything, they did everything they could to shorten their time, because your timer could change depending on what choices you made, from ordinary everyday things to big life changing decisions. To other people it meant nothing, it was just another date in their lives that they had to watch out for.
For Leon S. Kennedy it had meant dreams of that moment where he would lock eyes with his soulmate and his timer would go off, of where it would happen and how his soulmate would react to him. Just a few weeks ago he'd been taking eager guesses at who it could be. A neighbor in the apartment building he was going to be living in, a civilian he'd meet while walking to the station, or even one of his fellow officers? That would certainly complicate matters for a rookie, but he'd been certain they'd find a way to work through it.
And now his timer... it was down to just a few minutes. 3 Minutes 14 Seconds to be exact.
And he felt nothing but fear and apprehension at the thought of it.
Ever since this nightmare had started, everything from walking into that gas stations backroom and watching that poor sheriff getting his throat torn apart to having to shoot the ma- no, that monster that had killed him, it had been but a prelude to the hell he'd have to endure once he and Claire had made it to the heart of Raccoon City and while trying to escape the seemingly endless puzzles in the police station. Watching Elliot get torn in half, finding the slashed up and mangled bodies of the two officers, those things lunging at him from the ceiling and trying to gut him with massive malformed claws.
Marvin catching sight of the timer on Leon's left wrist and giving him a sad knowing stare, sparing one grief driven moment looking at his own wrist which held a fully counted down timer with a single blood red line through the middle.
All the times of adrenaline fueled running, fighting, and way too close calls were starting to take their toll on the young cop. His hands had acquired a faint tremble sometime over the last hour or so, probably since he'd watch Ben get his head crushed in by a massive gloved fist like it was a damn grape. His eyes where growing heavier the longer he continued on, the fear and adrenaline could only keep him going for so long. All of that and more combined with the overwhelming stress of the whole situation was starting to slow him down. A sick cold feeling settling in his belly like a lead weight that he couldn't afford to deal with right now.
Not now that his timer was down to 2 Minutes 36 Seconds as he steps back out of the boiler room, newly acquired club key safely in one of his hip pouches, and readies Matilda to take out the two zombies that had crashed through the door earlier since like most of the other creatures in the station they didn't stay down after the first time they dropped and where slowly getting back on their feet to try and take a bite out of him, again .
After he drops them both he spares a few seconds to stare at his timer, in neat black numbers on his left wrist, as he turns the valve to redirect the water from the right pipe to the left with his right hand.
1 Minutes 26 Seconds
He makes his way back up to the handle and water pipes and to use them to finally extinguish the helicopter fire. Stopping first to pick leaves from the two green herbs he hadn't seen under the stairs.
35 Seconds
He carefully nudges the door open and stops to pluck some leaves off of the red herb that's sitting in the floor before making his way around the corner.
15 Seconds
He turns the corner and faces the helicopter just as it starts to creak, and then the helicopter lurches and is forced upwards and wedged further into the damage ceiling and hallway like it's nothing.
5 Seconds
Leon freezes up and can only stare in horror at the massive figure of the thing clad in a black leather trench coat that had oh so casually lifted thousands of pounds of metal with a single hand as it lowers its arm back down.
It looks down and locks eyes with him from under the brim of the black fedora atop its head.
The insistant chiming of his timer going off barely registers in his mind as piercing silver eyes stare back at his own navy blue eyes in bewildered surprise and confusion. The chiming from his wrist is being echoed by the chimes from the grey giant's right wrist.
Leon S. Kennedy has finally met his soulmate.
And the first thing he does is run.