Chapter Text
There was nothing better than a little quiet after a mission.
Leon leaned back into his sofa, the familiar ache in his bones a testament to a job, yet again, done. The relief was like a weight lifting from his chest that he hadn’t even realised he’d been carrying. Sherry was cured. After all these years, the last ghost of Raccoon City had finally been laid to rest for her. And Grace had apparently adopted Emily.
It was the kind of happy ending his line of work didn’t often allow. So, as the curtain fell on this particular act of his chaotic life, all Leon S. Kennedy, age forty-nine and change, survivor, agent and walking cautionary tale, wanted was a proper break.
Sleep, good food and plenty of water.
He wasn’t asking for much. Just the simple things.
The next thing he knew, the world was made of smells.
A thousand different scents, from stale cigarette smoke to frying onions to the faint, coppery tang of blood from a nearby butcher’s, all hit him at once. He tried to sit up and found his body was not responding to commands in the usual way.
He was… compact.
He tried to rub his head, and a small, furry limb batted against his ear.
A paw. He had paws. He scrambled to his feet, his balance a teetering nightmare, and caught his reflection in a shop window. A scruffy-looking black-and-white cat stared back at him, its green eyes wide with a distinctly human panic.
Leon S. Kennedy was a cat. He was a flipping cat.
The man who had kicked more biological nightmares in the teeth than he’d had hot dinners, the legend with more epithets than a Norse saga – ‘The Plague-Killer,’ ‘The Saddest Man in Survival Horror,’ ‘Agent Ginger Snap’ – was now a stray mouser on the streets of… his heart stopped. It was Raccoon City. But it wasn’t the Raccoon City he knew, all scars and memorials. This was the Raccoon City of his youth, bustling and ignorant and gloriously, terrifyingly alive. A newspaper in a rack confirmed it: September 10, 1998.
Time travel.
He’d been turned into a cat and thrown back in time.
Of all the stupid, universe-level jokes. He thought of every sci-fi novel he’d ever read, every film he’d seen. The hero always had a voice, a body, a plan. They could shake their past self by the shoulders. What was he supposed to do? Meow a warning? Trip his younger self up in the street and hope for a dramatic revelation?
September 10th.
His younger self hadn’t even been dumped yet.
The thought made Leon’s new cat face contort. He remembered that breakup, remembered the feeling of his whole world collapsing because one girl didn’t love him back. He’d spent the next few days marinating in cheap alcohol, a plan as practical as juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle on a tightrope over a pit of hungry crocodiles.
He’d been such an idiot. A hopeful, earnest, heartsick idiot.
And that was the strange thing.
As he sat there, a tiny creature in a city of giants, he realised that underneath all the cynicism and the body armour and the bad one-liners, that idiot was still him. He’d just learned to hide it better. Maybe that was his one advantage.
He knew his past self better than anyone. He knew his routines, his weaknesses, his stubborn, stupid optimism. He couldn’t stop the bomb, but maybe a persistent, scruffy cat could make sure that young fool was in a slightly better place when it went off.
It was a long shot. It was a cat’s chance in hell. But it was the only chance he had.
Right. First things first.
Where did his younger self live again?
Leon sat there on the dirty pavement, a cat with the mother of all headaches, and tried to drag the information from the fog of his ancient memory. He wasn’t even in Raccoon City yet. If he remembered correctly, baby Leon – no, that sounded ridiculous, like he was talking about an infant. Young Leon? He’d settle on ‘Kid’. It was what he called every rookie under thirty anyway.
So, Kid was about to graduate from the academy in a few days. That would be, what, the 15th or 16th of September? Then Kid, full of piss and vinegar and a desperate need to prove himself, would request assignment to the Raccoon City Police Department. That request would go in around the 20th, and by the 24rd, it would be approved.
Leon remembered the thrill of it, the sense of destiny. What he hadn’t known then was that by the 23rd, the T-Virus was already silently weaving its way through the city’s sewers and water supply like a malevolent knitting needle. Kid would get dumped by his girlfriend – a fresh wound on top of the excitement – and, too stubborn to go home, would find a cheap motel on the city’s outskirts. He’d wake up late on the 29th, hungover and heartsick, and drive straight into hell.
Leon, the cat, blinked. Piecing that together had felt like untangling a pair of earphones that had been through a washing machine. And it raised a rather massive, furry elephant in the room: what was he supposed to do now?
If he stayed in Raccoon City and the outbreak happened, he was just a cat.
Defenceless.
A tasty, four-legged snack for the first Licker that fancied a change from human flesh.
And would he even get infected? He’d seen the mutated dogs, the grotesque Cerberus creatures with their exposed spines and slathering jaws. But a cat? In all his years, he’d never once seen a mutated cat. Not a single one.
His feline brain, which seemed to be running a constant, low-level commentary of what about that bin? and that string looks interesting, suddenly offered up a new thought: was that cat discrimination? Did the T-Virus have a species bias?
Maybe it couldn’t be bothered with cats. Maybe it looked at a cat and thought, “Nah, they’ve already got nine lives, that’s just showing off.” Or worse, what if they did exist, but they were all just really, really good at hiding?
So, no. Staying in the city was suicide by cat food.
Leaving felt like desertion. Every possible path, every logical step, kept leading him back to the same conclusion. It was like all roads led to Rome, except Rome was a clueless, idealistic, emotionally-vulnerable rookie cop who was about to have the worst year of his entire life, and also that Rome was currently his younger self.
That was it, then. The only play. He had to find Kid.
Leon had to locate his younger self, probably somewhere near the academy or his old apartment, and somehow, against all odds, get himself adopted. He needed Kid to be a cat lover. Leon racked his brains. Did he like cats as a young man? He honestly couldn’t remember. He’d never had one as a kid. He’d been more of a… well, he hadn’t been anything, really. He’d just been a lad who wanted to do some good. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and right now, his only hope was that beneath that earnest, freshly-shaved exterior, there lurked the soul of a man who would see a scruffy stray and think “friend,” not “vermin.”
No pressure.
What do kids these days say again? Holy guacamole?
Yes, that was it.
Leon tried the phrase out in his head as he sat there, a grubby cat on a familiar doorstep. Holy guacamole. It felt wrong. Too mild. Too… Tex-Mex. He preferred something with a bit more punch, a bit more complexity. Something like Holy Pad Thai. Now that had a ring to it. Holy Pad Thai! It captured the sweet, the sour, the salty, and the utterly bewildering all at once.
Yes, that felt better.
He’d actually made it.
Leon S. Kennedy, a forty-nine-year-old man trapped in the body of a scruffy tomcat, had somehow navigated the streets of 1998 Raccoon City, hitched a ride on the back of a delivery truck, evaded a dog that had taken a distinct dislike to him and found his way to the front door of his younger self’s old apartment. It was a nondescript building on the corner of Ash and Klebb, a squat brick affair with a chipped cornice.
He remembered it like it was yesterday.
Which, for him, it technically wasn’t, but the point stood.
The journey had been an ordeal.
A five-star, all-inclusive nightmare with no mini-bar and far too much fresh air.
He’d survived on rainwater from a puddle that had definitely been urinated in by something, and the culinary highlight had been the discarded half of a doner kebab he’d found wrapped in greasy paper behind a bin. His human brain had recoiled in horror. His cat brain had registered the event as: meat. good. more. The sheer, primal disgust of that moment still lingered. He’d sold his dignity for lukewarm, mystery-meat scraps, and his cat brain had thanked him for it.
Now, sitting here on the worn doormat, he was hungry again.
Ravenous, in fact.
He just hoped the Kid had some tuna in.
Or, at this point, he’d settle for a bowl of water that didn’t taste of bin juice.
Right. The door.
He looked up at the bell. It was a small, round, plastic thing set into the doorframe, about four feet off the ground. To a human, an inconvenience. To a cat, it might as well have been on the moon. He braced himself, crouched low on his haunches and jumped.
It was an unmitigated disaster.
He’d seen the documentaries on Netflix.
He’d watched those lithe, magnificent creatures launch themselves onto kitchen counters with the grace of ballet dancers. He’d marvelled at their coiled power, their perfect coordinates, their utter disdain for the laws of physics. Liars. All of it. Propaganda put out by Big Cat to make the rest of them feel inadequate.
Leon was a cat now, and he couldn’t jump for toffee.
His first attempt was a feeble, half-hearted hop that barely cleared the doormat. His second was more enthusiastic but wildly miscalculated, sending him careening into the door with a solid thump. His third was a desperate, scrambling lunge that resulted in his front paws hooking briefly over the door handle before his back legs failed him and he slid back down.
He landed on his feet, though. He had to give the damn docs that much.
Despite the undignified, flailing descent, despite the complete lack of any observable skill, his body had somehow, instinctively, twisted in the air and he’d touched down perfectly, all four paws neatly arranged. It was like his body was running on a different operating system than his brain, and they were not currently on speaking terms.
Leon gave up on the bell.
Pride, he’d learned long ago, was a luxury for people who weren’t currently starving on a stranger’s doorstep. He shuffled forward, pressed his face against the crack at the bottom of the door, and let out a meow. It was a pathetic, reedy little thing at first. He tried again, putting some shoulder into it. This one was louder, more insistent, a plaintive wail that seemed to surprise even him.
He didn’t care. He was too tired, too hungry, and too far gone.
He took a deep breath, braced his tiny cat lungs, and meowed as loudly as he possibly could.
A next door slammed open. “WHAT THE DEVIL IS—”
Leon knew him.
Mr Ferrara. Divorced, or as good as. Kept to himself mostly, except when he was drunk, which was most evenings. His wife had left him six months ago, and Leon, as a young man, had had a front-row seat to the aftermath. She’d been stunning, a woman who looked like she belonged in a magazine, and their marriage had been a demolition derby of shouting matches.
The wife, Leon recalled, had a particular style. She never just called him an idiot or a drunk. She went for the jugular with medical precision. “You’re a tumour on my existence!” she’d shriek. “You’re a parasite! You’re a plague on this family!”
It had been quite the vocabulary lesson. Sitting here now, a cat on a mission, Leon couldn’t help but file that away. A woman who weaponised diseases against her husband, and then, a few weeks later, her husband’s neighbour gets thrown into a viral apocalypse. Coincidence? Almost certainly. He’d never been one for signs and portents.
Ferrara squinted down, his face cycling through anger, confusion and then a sort of maudlin softness as he registered the small creature. He crouched and his voice went high and ridiculous.
“Well, look at you. What’s your story, eh? You lost, little guy? Hmm? Where’d you come from?” He looked around, as if expecting an answer from the peeling wallpaper. His bloodshot eyes followed Leon’s unwavering gaze towards flat 3B. A slow, drunken understanding dawned. “Ohhh. You want in there? This your place? You belong to that young fella? The one with the stupid hair and the do-gooder face?”
Leon meowed. Short. Firm. Affirmative.
Ferrara grinned, revealing a row of uneven teeth. “Smart cat. Knows his own door, huh?”
Leon meowed again, putting some feeling into it. Because yes, his younger self had stupid hair. He had a do-gooder face. He was an earnest, clueless, soon-to-be-apocalypse-surviving idiot. Leon couldn’t have agreed more.
The instant his gaze shifted from the cat to the door, his expression curdled. The drunk’s affable mask slipped, revealing something uglier underneath. He straightened, swayed slightly and then his fist was pounding on the wood with a force that made the frame shudder.
“KENNEDY! GET OUT HERE! OPEN UP, YOU USELESS PRAT!”
The bell added its frantic, electronic voice to the assault.
Leon heard the unmistakable sound of someone being jolted from sleep.
A groan. The creak of a bed. Footsteps, heavy with irritation.
Then the door swung open, and Leon found himself staring at a ghost.
His younger self.
His brain began cataloguing the differences.
The face was the same, but unmarked. No scar along the jawline from that incident in South America. No permanent tension in the brow. No shadows under the eyes. The skin was clear, almost luminously healthy. The hair was that same shade of blonde, but it was softer, thicker, falling in an uncalculated flop across his forehead. And the style. Oh, the style. That carefully arranged, centre-parted, slightly-too-long-on-top catastrophe that screamed 1998.
His younger self was wearing baggy shorts that ended mid-calf and a loose, faded t-shirt that hung off one shoulder. Comfort clothes. Clothes of a man with no immediate threats. His feet were bare on the worn lino. And his eyes were currently just annoyed.
“What the hell is your problem, Mr Ferrara?” the voice asked.
Mr Ferrara drew himself up to his full, slightly unsteady height. “My problem? My problem?” He jabbed a finger at the cat still sitting on the doormat. “Your bloody cat, that’s my problem! Yowling his little lungs out at God-knows-what-hour!”
Young Leon blinked, his brow furrowing in confusion. He looked down at the scruffy cat now meowing up at him. “But this isn’t—”
“And look at the state of him!” Ferrara ploughed on, gesturing wildly at Leon’s bedraggled form. “He’s half-starved! Look at him – skin and bone! His fur’s a disgrace! What do you feed him, regrets and fresh air? You can’t just get a cat and then forget about it, you useless young idiot! They’re living creatures, not decorations!”
“But I didn’t—”
“Young people today!” Ferrara shook his head in disgust. “No sense of responsibility. No idea how to look after anything. You’re lucky I’m a reasonable man, Kennedy. You’re lucky I don’t go straight to the landlord.”
Young Leon’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. “The landlord? But I—”
Ferrara bent down and scooped Leon up as if he weighed nothing, thrusting the startled cat into his neighbour’s unprepared arms. Leon found himself suddenly pressed against a warm, solid chest, the faint smell of cheap laundry detergent and something indefinably young filling his enhanced nostrils.
“Now listen here,” Ferrara said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial growl. “I know the building doesn’t officially allow pets. But the rest of us, we turn a blind eye, yeah? As long as they’re well looked after and don’t cause trouble. So you sort this one out. Get him some proper food. A collar, maybe. And for God’s sake, don’t let him sit out here screaming all night or I will have words with the landlord. Understood?”
Young Leon, now holding a cat he’d never seen before in his life, stared at the older man with an expression of complete and utter bewilderment. “I... but he’s not... I don’t even...”
“Good lad.” Ferrara clapped him on the shoulder, nearly making him drop his new furry burden. “Glad we’ve got that sorted. Night night, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” And with that, he turned, swayed slightly and disappeared back into his flat, slamming the door behind him with a final, definitive thud.
Silence descended on the landing.
Leon, cradled awkwardly in his younger self’s arms, looked up.
He was so close now. He could see the individual pores on that ridiculously fresh face, the slight stubble that hadn’t quite learned to grow in properly, the faint freckles across the nose that decades of sun and stress had long since erased.
He tried to think of something cool to say. Something that captured the moment. A one-liner for the ages. Something like, “Long time, no see, kid.” Or, “You’re going to want to sit down for this.” Or even just a casual, “Sup.”
What came out was a tiny, pathetic: “Mrow.”
His younger self looked down at him, his mouth opening and closing like a fish that had just been informed water was optional. His eyes, those young, unmarked eyes, were wide with a confusion that was almost comical. He looked from the cat, to the closed door and back to the cat.
“What the fuck,” young Leon whispered, to no one in particular.