Work Text:
When Marvin finally drags himself out of his hiding spot, the boy he heard speaking is long gone. If he had to take a guess, he’d say the boy probably went to try and save Elliot in the East Hall. He wishes him luck. The girl, however — she’s still here, reloading spent shell casings on the couch. She looks… hollow is the only word he can come up with. Her eyes are glassy, her hands moving without conscious thought, and there’s a faint tremble visible in the thin line of her shoulders. “Ma’am?” he calls out, grimacing in pain as the hole in his stomach pulls with each movement. As expected, she bolts up from her position, hand hovering over the grip of a massive gun. He raises a hand, waving it slightly to dismiss her. “Sorry to startle you like that,” he says. “I’m Marvin Branagh, lieutenant of the RPD.”
“I, I’m Grace,” she says, slowly moving her hand away from her firearm. “My friend, h-he went to the, the East Hall to try and… to try and help. There’s an officer down there, he, he —” All at once, her eyes lock onto the gaping wound in his side. “You’re hurt.”
He smiles ruefully. “Dying, really,” he says. “Got bit by one of the S.T.A.R.S officers a few hours ago.” There’s no point in beating around the bush, not with the situation as dire as it is. “I’ve been holding on for as long as I can, but —”
“Sit down, lieutenant,” she orders, helping him take her vacated seat. There’s a light in her eyes now, for all that it’s marred with resigned understanding. “I can’t —” Her voice cracks, but she doesn’t cry. “I c-can’t save you, but I can… I can slow it down, I think.” From a hip pouch, she pulls out an auto-injector unlike any he’s ever seen before. It’s slim and rectangular, almost futuristic in its construction, filled with a green liquid that reminds him of herbal remedies. “I don’t have many left, but I can spare at least one —”
He waves her off. “Save it for yourself,” he tells her. “You and I both know it’s a waste of resources —”
She stabs him with it. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.” He desperately wants to reprimand her, but she’s not his subordinate and he does feel a little bit better. A little more human than he had a few moments ago. She kneels down and fishes out a packet of gauze and medical tape. “I know I’m just buying you time,” she tells him as she knocks his bloodied hand out of the way, “but Leon… he was haunted, you know. By this place. By all of Raccoon City, really, but…” There’s an efficiency to her movements as she tapes the gauze in place, but he can tell her mind is elsewhere. “Maybe he was just waiting to die, in the end,” she mumbles to herself, “and I was just the method he chose to get there.” The wrappings are smoothed out in slow, distracted swipes of her hands. “If I had just been stronger he wouldn’t have had to protect me. Maybe… maybe then, even though he was sick, I could’ve… we could’ve, together…”
Marvin has no idea what she’s talking about, but he knows survivors’ guilt when he sees it. He carries his own fair share of it, having seen the things he has in his line of work. Knowing the heavy weight that comes with carrying it, he offers her the only advice he can give. “You can’t blame yourself for other people’s decisions,” he tells her gently, laying his bloodied hand over her trembling ones. “If this Leon you’re talking about chose to protect you at the cost of his own life, then you have to keep living for him. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for him.”
“…of course, lieutenant,” she replies, but he can see the lie in her smile.
When Grace drags the boy out from under the fire shutter, Marvin uses what’s left of his strength to slam it shut on the zombie’s emaciated head and tries not to think about how his name was Jacob, a 22-year-old who dropped out of college last semester to care for his ailing mother, and how terrified he had been when —
“You’re safe,” Grace whispers frantically, “you’re safe, oh God, wh-when I heard you scream I, I was so —” Marvin watches her visibly pull herself together, jagged pieces of worry hastily crammed back into place. “I’m glad you’re safe,” she settles on. “And… there’s someone who’d like to meet you.”
Marvin leans heavily against the shutter as pain sparks across his dying nerves. He’s a cop. He’s supposed to help people, and sometimes helping others means pushing past blinding agony. If this is the last time he can help others, then he’s going to do it with a smile on his face. “Marvin Branagh,” he says, and tries to make it warm.
“Leon Kennedy,” the boy replies, and God, it’s the rookie. Hadn’t someone called at the start of the outbreak and told him to stay away? Why the hell was he sprawled out on the battlescarred flooring with blood soaking into his shirt when he was supposed to be at home, safe? “There was another officer,” the boy continues, oblivious to Marvin’s internal turmoil, “I, I couldn’t…” When Marvin reaches out a hand to pull the rookie to his feet, the boy’s eyes are haunted. God, what he wouldn’t have given for such a look to never grace this boy’s face.
He sends Leon off to change into the RPD uniform, because the boy is one of his men — the last of them, if Marvin is honest to himself — and doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of this miserable night drowning in torn, bloodstained clothing. Hopefully the uniform will give him just a little bit more protection as he and Grace try to escape the city. The boy stumbles off, still dazed. When Marvin looks back, Grace is kneeling next to the decapitated corpse with some sort of device in her hand. As he gets closer, he realises the device is siphoning up a sample of blood. “Are you a scientist of some kind?” he asks. “Trying to find a cure to this madness?”
Mirthless laughter trips out of her lips. “No, I’m just your average desk jockey,” she says as she pushes a few buttons on the device, “but this sample collector can break infected blood down into its base components. From there, I can retrieve what I need and discard what I don’t, and from the usable materials I can craft a few things.” The device beeps. Grace toggles through options before selecting one, causing the blood to spin as though in a centrifuge. When it stops, the vial is full of a crystal clear liquid that lacks the viscosity of blood. She pulls out an empty auto-injector and slots it into a small opening on the side of her device, and Marvin watches in disbelief as the auto-injector slowly fills with a familiar green liquid. She catches his eye and offers a rueful grin. “I know it’s off-putting,” she admits easily. “That’s why I never told Leon what the ingredients were. Though…” Her eyes glass over ever so slightly. “I suppose he probably knew, with all those years at the DSO under his belt.”
He skips the obvious question and instead asks, “Were you two co-workers?” It must be hard, he thinks, for this girl to have lost her Leon, only to stumble upon a boy who shared her friend’s name. Maybe that’s why she had sounded so distraught when he overheard the faint sounds of her conversation with the boy. Her heartbroken wails were what broke him out of his stupor — and he’s so damn grateful for that, even as he mourns for her loss.
“No, nothing like that,” she denies instantly. “I’m just a girl someone thought was the key to a lock, and Leon… Leon was the one who saved me.” From the look in her eye, he knows this line of conversation is over.
He doesn’t push. The wound is clearly too raw. Instead, he reaches out a hand in a quiet request for assistance. She immediately helps him back to the couch and takes a seat on the other side of the portable computer. They sit together in silence punctuated only by his one-handed typing as he pulls up the security feed, watching the hallways and praying nothing ambushes Leon on his way back to the main hall.
Grace makes herself scarce when Leon returns to the hall, mumbling something about collecting more blood. Personally, Marvin thinks she’s just embarrassed by her earlier outbursts. It’s understandable, of course, no one likes being seen at their worst, but —
“Where’s Grace?” Leon asks quickly, eyes darting around as though she’ll pop out from behind the curtains that had once been used to section off a hastily-erected triage corner. “Is she… is she alright?”
“She’s fine, rookie,” Marvin soothes. “Gave her a mission to calm her down a bit.” When he sees the alarm on Leon’s face, he quickly adds, “It’s nothing strenuous, and I didn’t send her anywhere that’s already blocked off. Just asked her to grab some equipment from my office.” The boy doesn’t need to know he’s lying, and if Elliot’s research pans out, there’s no reason for him to ever find out. He sends the rookie off with Elliot’s notebook and his personal combat knife, preemptively mourning the version of Leon currently standing before him. It’s not fair, he thinks bitterly. Everything he and the others had done to spare the boy, and he still ended up mired in this mess.
When Leon’s footsteps finally fade, Grace crawls out from under the shutter leading to the East Hall and closes it once more. As expected, her hands are soaked in blood. She looks around — looking for Leon, if Marvin had to guess — before standing in front of him with a strange look on her face. “Lieutenant,” she begins slowly, “if I asked you to take a secret to the grave, would you do it?”
Her eyes are tired. There’s a weariness there that begs to be understood, and Marvin quickly grasps that this is her asking to be heard. “You don’t want to tell Leon?” he asks. “I know the two of you just met, but I can tell you both care for each other already. Wouldn’t you rather tell someone you already know instead of me?”
Her lips twitch. “No,” she denies, “it has to be you. Everything I know… it needs to be taken to the grave. And Leon —” She looks so sad. “Leon will outlive us all, lieutenant.”
Not a great statement, that last one. It sets off alarm bells in his head. He’s talked with people like this before. Avoiding such a thing was impossible in his line of work. On rooftops, on bridges, some screaming at him with a weapon in their hand and others sitting on the window ledges of apartment buildings — yes, Marvin has heard such hopeless certainty before. Some of them he was able to save, to talk off the ledge and bring back to safety. Others… others he had failed, and been forced to watch helplessly as they took that final step towards oblivion.
He thinks about them now, all the people he hadn’t been able to save. He looks at Grace and sees them in her eyes. He wants to save her. One more person, he thinks to himself. Just one more person before he can no longer save anyone again.
“Come here, Grace.” He pats the open seat on the couch, smearing blood over the torn faux leather. “Elliot presented us with a puzzle I can’t make heads or tails of, but Leon set out to solve it. You have some time to talk things out with me.”
She drops onto the couch, unfazed by the fresh blood now soaking into her torn jeans. “I know I’m going to sound crazy,” she says, “and I really don’t blame you because even thinking about it makes me feel insane, but just… pretend you believe me. Just for a little bit, pretend… just pretend.”
He nods solemnly. “Tell me what’s bothering you, Grace.”
The girl takes a deep breath and steels herself. “My name is Grace Ashcroft, forensic analyst for the FBI,” she tells him, bloodied fingers running over the belts wrapped around her waist, “and about thirty years from now, Leon Kennedy will die because of me.”
Her story is as impossible as she warned him it would be. Time travel? That kind of stuff belonged on the pages of science fiction novels. But everything else she said… he can’t discount it. It’s too grounded in reality for it to be a complete fabrication. Besides, the way she looked while recounting her story… that pain was real. Even now, sitting in companionable silence while Marvin digests her words, her eyes sting with unshed tears. There’s so much he doesn’t understand about her story, but he doesn’t think he needs to understand everything. She just wants to be heard, and Marvin has always prided himself on his ability to listen. “I believe you, Grace.”
She exhales slowly, as though a modicum of weight has been lifted off her shoulders. “I’m sorry I told you all that,” she whispers, “but I… I wanted someone to know me here. I can’t… I can’t tell Leon. I want to, but I… I just…”
Marvin thinks he can follow her line of reasoning. “In the future he works for the government,” he says, “and the government is corrupt. Cartoonishly corrupt, from the sounds of it. You don’t want to put him in danger by giving him information that could get him killed.”
“Yes,” she replies gratefully. “He… he was so kind to me, a-always looking out for me a-and… and…” her face screws up in pain, “he d-died just to save me. I know, I know this Leon isn’t mine, but I… how could I put him in more danger? Wh… what kind of friend would I be if I…?”
No wonder she’d asked if he’d take her secrets to the grave. “You carry a heavy burden, Ms. Ashcroft,” he tells her. “Thank you for trusting me with part of it.”
She waves him off with a trembling hand. “Just Grace, please. I don’t want… Ashcroft is not a common name. My mom, she… I don’t want…”
Marvin aches for her. Even after all she’s been through, thrust from a waking nightmare into the burning hell of the past, her first priority is the safety of those she cares about. It’s something he understands. “To the grave,” he swears. He’s glad, suddenly, for the infection slowly robbing him of his life. If he wasn’t so close to dying, Grace would never have talked to him so candidly. She would’ve bottled up all her suffering, her grief and her rage, and been crushed under the weight of her secrets. That’s no way to live.
“I want you to do something for me,” he tells her. “There are spare uniforms in the locker room. I want you to go there and I want you to change into one.”
The subtle order startles her out of her mild fugue. “Me?” she echoes. “But I’m not one of your officers! I can’t —”
“You can, Grace. I’m telling you to do this. I’m asking you to do this.” He reaches over and squeezes her hand. His grip is so much weaker than it used to be. “Even if you’re not one of my men I want you to be protected, and the state of your clothes…” Her shirt is torn and bloodstained, and her jeans aren’t in much better condition. If any of the undead manage to get a good hold on her, the damaged layers won’t offer any protection from a flesh-rending bite. He doesn’t want that to happen to her. He doesn’t want her to suffer the way he’s doing now. “Please, Grace. Do this for me.” Do this for Leon, he doesn’t say, but he knows she heard what was implied.
The fight goes out of her. “Okay,” she acquiesces softly. “For you.” Marvin watches as Grace follows the same path Leon took, closes his eyes to conserve his strength, and mourns.