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He should be conserving ammo. He really should be, but the rotting masses descend on him with outstretched hands and gnashing teeth and so the Matilda stays steady and firm in his grip as he carves a path towards the police station. Claire is… somewhere. She promised she’d meet him at the station and he chooses to believe it, carrying that desperate hope deep within his chest so that he doesn’t waver on his journey. He’ll make it — they’ll both make it — and they’ll get the answers they seek. They can’t be the only ones alive. There have to be survivors somewhere in Racoon City. They —
Above the mindless groans and hungry snarls, a scream pierces through the night. Immediately he zeros in on the sound — a heartbroken wail unlike any he’s ever heard before. Leon forgets about the police station, forgets about Claire — forgets about himself for a brief moment as he registers what he’s hearing. In seconds he’s running, dodging the starving undead without thought, wholly focused on that scream. It’s a person. It’s a survivor. Everything — even his own safety — comes second to the desperate urge to save.
In the end, he nearly trips over them.
His foot catches on a sprawling leg, nearly sending him crashing to the ground before he regains his balance. He bites back a curse as he spins on the ball of his foot, pistol pointed downward but not holstered, not when the situation is so precarious, and —
There’s a woman half slumped on the ground, body bowed in what can only be grief, matted blonde hair brushing the filthy pavement as she sobs, and sobs, and sobs. “You promised!” she wails, broken fingernails scraping bloody lines into the street. “You promised you would be right behind me! Why — why would you —?!”
“Ma’am?!” He drops to his knees beside her, roughly shaking her shoulder. “Hey, you gotta get up, it’s not safe —”
In hindsight, he probably should’ve predicted the punch.
He moves with it, rocking backwards to absorb the force of the blow as best he can, feeling the way the point of impact pulses in time to the beat of his own heart. He probably should’ve expected this. “O-oh sh-shit, you’re, you’re a — how —?!” The woman stammers, caught off-guard, fluttering hands dancing over the collar of his jacket. “I — I’m sorry, I didn’t — where did you —?”
“It’s okay,” he says, rubbing his smarting jaw. That’ll definitely leave a bruise. “I came as soon as I heard you scream. Are you okay?”
The woman’s face is covered in blood and grime, tiny sluices of pale skin revealing where her tears had run heavy down her cheeks. A shattered world shimmers in the glass of her eyes, a devastation Leon can barely comprehend suffusing her whole body with soul-deep agony. She glances at him for a moment — and, strangely, immediately looks away, hands recoiling as though burned. “I… I’m okay,” she says shakily, fingers anxiously knotting in the stained white cotton of her shirt. “I don’t — I don’t understand —”
He feels for her. He really, really does. To survive this long in the outbreak — he can’t imagine what she’s seen, what she’s experienced while trapped in here. He’s only been in Raccoon City for less than an hour and already feels like he’s stepped halfway out of reality. “Hey,” he soothes, pulling his mouth into a crooked smile. “It’s okay. My friend and I — we’re headed towards the station to see if we can get some answers about this outbreak. Come with me, okay?” He tries to make himself softer to show how much he means his words, pulling back his battle-sharp edges until his heart can shine through. “I’m a police officer,” he says, extending a hand to her. “I’ll keep you safe.”
She stares at his outstretched hand with longing and trepidation alike. Finally, she grasps it with her own, willow-slim fingers warm against his palm. “Okay,” she whispers. “I’ll come with you. I don’t… I don’t understand what happened, or why I’m…” Her breath trembles. Her bloodied fingers twitch. “But I’ll come with you. I won’t be a burden.”
He pulls her to her feet, clocking the massive firearm hanging heavy from her hip and the hastily looped belts carrying a multitude of bulging pouches. “I doubt you ever could be,” he tells her.
“Shit.”
The woman’s head whips around at his heart-felt exasperation, the wild grief in her eyes crystalising all at once into something piercing and keen. “What’s the problem, officer?” she asks, every muscle in her visibly weary body suddenly drawn taut as a bowstring.
Leon presses the Matilda’s mag release, showing off the empty mag in his hand and emptier ammo pouch on his hip with a self-depreciating smile, because if he doesn’t laugh he’s going to cry, and this really isn’t the time for tears. “Seems like my girl’s finally hit her limit,” he states dryly, wishing he could put some actual levity into the situation. “Unless you’ve got some extra ammo lying around, we’re just going to have to see how good we are at sneaking past the angry parents over there.” He immediately wants to hit himself for the poor joke. That was the best he could do? Equating sneaking past feral zombies to the low-stakes thrill of sneaking out of the house? Really?
“What calibre do you need?” She ignores his paltry attempt at humour, every ounce of her concentration now dedicated to the problem he’s accidentally laid out at her feet. “I have… I have some ammo. Various types.” Bruised fingers trip over two mismatched belts crisscrossing her hips, scrambling over battered hip pouches with directionless urgency. “What do you — what do you need?”
“Got any 9mm?” She reaches into a pouch without looking, red-rimmed eyes trained unerringly on the space just above his shoulder. He doesn’t know why she hasn’t looked him in the eye this whole time. He tries not to take it personally. When she withdraws a clenched fist from the pouch and holds it out towards him, he doesn’t expect the non-standard ammo that lands in his upturned palm. “Is this… did you make these?” he asks incredulously.
And — it’s not scorn, exactly, that crosses her face, but something perilously close to it. “I did what I had to do,” she hisses, “and if you’re going to be ungrateful I’ll take back what is mine.”
His fingers instantly close around the questionable rounds as though clutching ingots of pure gold. “Not ungrateful at all, ma’am,” he says quickly, “just a bit surprised. It’s not often you find someone who —”
A snarl, a figure half-seen lunges, and before Leon can even react the woman grabs a glass bottle off the ground and smashes it across the creature’s distorted face before it can grab her. “Reload your gun, officer,” she says with all the false confidence of someone staring death in the face, teeth bloodied and defiant to the end. “I will…” For a moment her composure slips, voice cracking with barely leashed grief. Her hand trembles and then steadies, closing decisively around the massive grip of the pistol sitting heavy in a holster clearly not designed for her. “I will protect you. This time, I will —”
She draws her gun — a massive, brilliant thing that shines fiercely in the glow of burning flames. There’s a small charm dangling from the trigger guard, a tiny stuffed bear scuffed and battered with age. It’s wildly at odds with the menacing shape of her gun, but Leon finds it oddly charming. The woman plants her feet firmly and squares her shoulders, eyes flinty with determination as she tracks the shuffling bodies converging on their position.
“I will protect you, the way he protected me.”
Her arms are shaking with effort when she finally reholsters her monstrous revolver, pale skin awash in agonised sweat. He’s not surprised. With the way that thing kicked with each shot, he’s only surprised she’s not sprawled out on the ground. “That thing’s got a bit of a kick, eh?” Leon says, mouth dry — with awe or horror, he doesn’t know. With just three shots she’d cleared the roadway up ahead, buying him precious time to reload his magazine and jam it back into his pistol. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s a R-Requiem,” the woman says shakily, quickly snatching the spent casings off the ground, tenderly rubbing her wrists with a muffled whine of pain. “Sta — hah — standard issue f-for DSO agents these days, I think. Shoots 0.50 cal rounds.” She tries to smile, but the pain wracking her body contorts it into more of a grimace. “I c-can see why they would… why he… without it, without him, I…” Unshed tears glimmer on her eyelashes, but Leon watches in horrified awe as she visibly shoves the grief down, boxing it away until it’s manageable again. She looks at the path she’s cut through the undead. “Let’s just — let’s just keep moving, okay?” And really, what can Leon do but acquiesce when her voice cracks on the last word?
He immediately takes point, jogging through the burning wreckage and debris as the woman trails behind him. DSO? He’s never heard of such an agency, but they must be dealing with some serious threats to be issuing monsters like the Requiem to their field agents. He wants to know more about this strange organisation — wants to find out the name of his mysterious companion too, now that he thinks about it — but all of that can wait until they’re safely inside the RPD. They rush towards an underground alleyway — the woman throws a Molotov cocktail over his shoulder at a horde of undead, when the hell did she get that?! — the Requiem roars at his back as she covers him — and when they finally reach the surface again —
“The station is right up ahead, come on!” Leon dashes forward, firing the Matilda only when necessary, and a distant part of his mind acknowledges that the woman’s handmade bullets perform just as beautifully as any store-bought one. The glow of the RPD sign cuts through the smoke and rain, the deafening crack of the Requiem telling him the woman is still hot on his heels. He can hear her stammering something, a strange note in her voice, but he can’t make out the words above the din of combat. He slams into the gate with all the force he can muster, shoving the creaking iron just far apart enough to slip through the gap. “Hurry up,” he shouts, “we’re almost to safety!”
The woman rushes through mere seconds after him, shoving the gate closed behind her and bolting it for good measure. She turns to face the building but stops short, eyes glued to the sign hanging above the doorway, lips silently forming the shape of those letters over and over again as disbelief clouds her face. “Raccoon… Police…?” she whispers, barely audible above the starving moans and clanging of iron. “But that’s… that’s impossible… Raccoon City was…”
She rushes past him, ignoring his startled cry as her shoulder knocks roughly against his, stumbles through the doors, and then… stops. “The Raccoon City Police Department…” Her eyes are glued to the Flying Goddess statue standing proudly at the centre of the room, almost hypnotised by its imposing figure. She doesn’t even react to the sound of his shoes scuffing against the tile floor as he slowly joins her before the front desk. “All of this… all of this was destroyed years ago… how… how am I…?”
At that last remark, Leon can’t hold his tongue. “Years ago?” he repeats. “What do you mean, years ago? Raccoon City was fine just over a week ago!”
She scoffs. “That’s ridiculous. Anyone who knows anything at all knows that Raccoon City was levelled in —” Her voice cuts off abruptly. Mind still reeling from the impossibility of the city being levelled when they were standing in the heart of it, he doesn’t have time to react before she turns and grabs fistfuls of his jacket. She still isn’t looking at him, but this time her head is completely bowed, slightly angled away as though she cannot bear to catch even a glimpse of him. “Officer…” She’s shaking again, worse than she ever has before. “Officer, what is your — could I have your name? Please?”
And though he doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly started talking nonsense, he won’t refuse such a simple question. “Leon Kennedy, at your service,” he says. “I should’ve introduced myself sooner, but —”
The woman drops heavily to her knees, dragging him to the floor with her, and finally, finally looks at him. Red-rimmed eyes stare at him with grieving wonder, tears cutting fresh tracks through the grime on her face as she visibly drinks in every detail of his face. “Leon?” She reaches for his face with trembling hands and he lets her, not understanding why she cups his cheeks so tenderly, as though her mere touch will shatter him like glass. “My — my Leon?”
He doesn’t know her — doesn’t think he does, anyway — but the part of him still aching from his breakup responds without conscious input. “Maybe not right now, but I can be yours if you want me to be,” he says, a roguish grin tilting the corners of his mouth upwards as he winks playfully at her. Internally, he winces at the terrible pick-up line. The terrible everything, really. God, he’s just the worst. At the very least, he consoles himself, maybe she’ll get a laugh out of my terrible flirting.
But instead her face crumples like tissue paper as she begins to weep, softly at first before growing in volume, sobbing as though her heart is being torn from her chest as she pulls him into a crushing embrace, her whole body trembling with the strength of her cries. “I’m sorry,” she weeps, “I’m sorry I got you killed, it was all my fault, e-everything was my fault, I tried so hard and I still couldn’t save you and I, I —!”
Leon doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand how the world could’ve ended while he slept, or what happened to Raccoon City, or why this strange, grieving woman is weeping against his chest with a litany of impossible apologies tripping off her tongue. But he understands grief. He understands compassion. And so he wraps his arms around her shaking frame as she sobs herself to pieces.