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Leon wants to bang his goddamn head against the wall. Why the elaborate puzzles? Why couldn’t the secret passageway have been something reasonable, like hidden behind a false bookcase with a lever masquerading as a book? Solving riddles, obtaining medallions— seriously, why? Marvin’s life is on the line and here Leon is, squinting at bloodstained scribbles in a pocket-sized notebook, trying to spin dials on a statue so it’ll cough up one of three medallions.
He knows he’d be having much more fun if the situation weren’t so dire. There hadn’t been much to do at the orphanage as a kid, so he’d gotten really good at puzzles. Rubik’s Cubes, newspaper crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, card games — anything the workers managed to scrounge up had become a way for him to pass the time without becoming mind-numbingly bored. Riddles and brain-teasers had kept his brain sharp, and now he was able to apply those hard-won skills in the real world. Unfortunately, with the world actively ending around him and several lives on the line, any enjoyment he might’ve held for this treasure hunt was poisoned by nerve-wracking stress.
The statue finally rumbles as it accepts his code, the golden medallion shimmering brightly against the discoloured stone of its statue. “Oh my God, I have to do this two more times,” he groans as he finally frees the Unicorn Medallion from its compartment.
The radio on his shoulder suddenly crackles to life, startling him from his thoughts. “Leon?” comes Grace’s voice. “Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” he replies easily. Her voice is strong and steady compared to the last time they talked. He’s glad. She’d been near hysterics after that close call with that zombie in the East Hall, and he hadn’t seen or heard from her since. “What’s the situation? Is Lt. Branagh okay?”
“Lt. Branagh is doing just fine, rookie,” and it’s such a relief to hear the man’s voice over the radio, static-y as it is, “but you need to get back to the hall ASAP. I’ve got something to show you. It’s important.”
Leon slowly heads towards the door leading back to the library. “Copy that, I’ll be right there.” He presses his ear against the door and hears something shuffling and groaning on the other side. An ambush, perhaps? He doesn’t think the zombies are able to come up with such a strategy, considering the state they’re in, but Marvin’s knife finds its way into his palm anyway. Just in case.
The radio crackles one more time. “Be careful, Leon,” Grace implores. “This situation — it’s only going to get worse from here. I can feel it.”
“I’ll be careful. You have my word.” He waits for a moment to see if any more transmissions will come in. When the radio stays silent, he throws the library door open — and immediately slams the combat knife into the rotting eye socket of a zombie attempting to catch him unawares. It screams, nails clawing at empty air as Leon yanks the knife out and creates enough space to draw his pistol, and he tries not to think about the blood-soaked band shirt it wears or the spiked earrings falling out of its rotting ears as he shoots until it drops. All his lighthearted exasperation from earlier vanishes like the morning mist as he runs, dodges, and hides from the shambling masses trapped within the library. He had almost forgotten, somehow, in the midst of this ridiculous treasure hunt, that Raccoon City had become hell on Earth.
When her heart-rending sobs taper off into hiccuping breaths, Leon loosens his embrace and sits back. “Feel better?” he asks.
The woman pulls her arms close to her chest, smearing the grime over her face as she swipes ineffectively at her eyes. “I’m sorry for, uh, a-all that,” she replies, dodging the question. “I, I didn’t mean to p-put that on… on you.” She tries to smile. “I just… the person who saved me w-was also named Leon, and I… it was…” Her throat bobs as she swallows. “It’s just raw, right now.”
“It’s okay,” he tells her, even though he’s not really sure how he feels about it. He doesn’t want to be seen as some kind of replacement for her lost friend, even if they share the same name. He’s Leon S. Kennedy, not… not someone else. Certainly not the Leon she had so desperately been apologising to. “Think you can stand?”
She nods and pushes herself up on shaking legs, stumbling but not falling. “Oh, I, I never even introduced myself,” she realises, watery eyes wide. “I — that was rude, I — m-my name is Grace. Grace, ah, W-Winchester.” She holds out a trembling hand. He grips it firmly, gaining him a real, if small, smile. It makes her whole face look softer, even with the grief still glimmering in her eyes. “S-sorry about the hysterics, again. It’s… it’s really nice to meet you, L-Leon.”
Leon hurries down the staircase, holstering his gun as he does. Marvin looks… well, Leon doesn’t want to say better, but the bandages over the wound in his stomach have been changed and he looks a little more energised than before. Grace is, once again, nowhere to be seen. He assumes she’d been with the lieutenant when the radio messages came in, but where was she now? He decides he’ll ask later. Whatever Marvin had called him back for sounded time-sensitive. “Lieutenant,” he calls out, “I’m here. What’s the situation?”
Marvin jerks his head towards the fuzzy display situated on the couch next to him. “Come here, take a look.” The lieutenant enlarges one of the feeds to reveal a familiar figure standing outside a gate.
A gusty sigh of relief bursts from Leon’s chest as he drinks in the blurry image. “Yes! I knew she’d make it!” Marvin looks at him and Leon rushes to explain, “Her name’s Claire, I came into town with her.”
The lieutenant nods and leans back, face contorted with pain. “That courtyard she’s in… you can get there through the second floor… east side.” His voice is threaded with tightly-leashed agony but is still strong and sure. “You should hurry. The situation out there… it was already bad when we had a full fighting force, but now…”
Leon gives a decisive nod. “I’m on it. Thanks, lieutenant.” As he heads towards the staircase, he pauses. “Is Grace… avoiding me?”
A long, exasperated groan comes as a reply. “I’m… not gonna sugar-coat it for you, rookie,” Marvin sighs. “She is avoiding you, you got that right, but — and you listen well here — it’s because she thinks that you don’t want to see her.”
And that — that brings Leon up short. “Me? Not want to see her? Why would she think that?”
“Because she’s worried… that you think that the only ‘Leon’ she sees is her own, now. The one that died. She doesn’t want you to hate her for that knee-jerk reaction from earlier, so she’s been keeping out of sight… trying to give you time to come to terms with that knowledge.”
Leon winces because — he had been thinking about that, back when Grace had fully broken down in his arms, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he quietly started to resent her for immediately thinking of someone else that shared his name and worried she would never see him as himself? He thinks about how he would’ve felt if Claire had died dragging him out of the wrecked cruiser, consumed by fire before his very eyes. He thinks about how it would’ve felt if he had run into someone else named Claire in the immediate aftermath of her death, someone who couldn’t possibly know about the freshly bleeding wound on his heart. He thinks about how his smile had unconsciously twisted at Grace’s admission, and how her eyes had dimmed when she noticed his expression even as she had smiled so kindly at him. In that kind of situation… yeah, he thinks he can understand why Grace had suddenly become so skittish after all of her grief poured out.
“I didn’t mean to —”
Marvin cuts him off, though not unkindly. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Leon. Grace is the one who needs to know… not me.”
He’s right. Of course he’s right. And he really needs to meet up with Claire in the courtyard, so maybe it’s for the best that he keep his words to himself for now. “Will Grace be here when I get back?”
“I’m sure I can convince her to stick around,” Marvin replies. “Now get going.” Deciding to take those words as a promise, Leon starts to jog up the stairs, quickly checking his map to get a vague sense of where he’s supposed to be headed. As he slips out the door, he can faintly hear Marvin grumbling to himself. “Kids these days,” Leon thinks he hears, “fighting for their lives at the end of the world and still worried about their silly little crushes.”
Claire is tense and soaked to the bone when he finally climbs down the stairs, anxiously tapping her foot against the cobblestone walkway. She predictably looks a little worse for wear than when he last saw her, but she’s visibly unharmed and has a warm smile for him when they finally meet at the gate. “Claire!” Her name bursts from him, uncontrolled and relieved. “Oh, it is so good to see you.”
“How’re you doing? That helicopter just came out of nowhere…” Her eyes dart towards the wreckage behind him, the glow of flames reflecting faintly in her eyes. Leon tries not to grimace. Fire… that’s the last thing he needs to worry about right now. Hopefully the downpour will keep the fire contained, but with the way his luck has been going, he’s not going to hold his breath. Claire gently rattles the locked gate, smile falling slightly. “I’m guessing you don’t have a key in one of those fancy pockets?”
He winces. “Unfortunately… no.” Man, he feels like such a heel. He has a bunch of other keys, sure, but not this key. He should’ve asked Marvin where the key was before heading here. Even if he’d had to make a detour or solve more puzzles, it would’ve been better than leaving Claire stranded after all the work she’d put in to make it here. “But, well… how are you doing?”
“Oh you know, just… surviving.” She shrugs, aiming for something casual and missing by a mile. Her smile drops further, lips inching down before flattening entirely. Her next words are nearly a whisper. “Haven’t found my brother yet, either.”
Worry sinks like a stone in his stomach at the news. If it’s hitting him this hard and he doesn’t even know her brother, how is Claire holding up? “Don’t lose hope,” he rushes to say, fingers curling in the gaps of the chain link gate. He wishes he could hold her, reassure her with physical touch instead of just words. Surely a hug from a friend would’ve done her a world of good in this situation. “I’m sure we’re gonna find him —”
A gun goes off at the top of the fire escape. He’d know that distinctive boom anywhere. He whips around, eyes wide as he takes in the scene above him. “Leon!” Grace yells as she scrambles down the stairs, traces of blood splattered across her face, Requiem in hand and — wearing the same uniform as him. He didn’t know she was a fellow officer! “Lt. Branagh told me your friend was here —” she steps up to the gate and waves slightly at Claire, “hi, Leon’s friend, I’m Grace —” looks back at him with eyes that don’t hurt, “so he asked me to rendezvous with —”
The helicopter explodes, shrapnel raining down around them. The fire alarm begins to ring, slowly awakening the hungry dead surrounding Claire. His heart leaps into his throat. “Claire, I think you should go.”
Grace shoulders him out of the way. “Don’t bother, I got this,” she grits out, well-worn lockpicks finding a home in the gate padlock with a surety that implies extensive past experience. She shoots a tense smile at Claire. “Think you can hold them off for a bit while I crack this open?”
Claire unholsters her pistol, raising it with her back pressed against the gate. “Can’t hold them back forever,” Claire replies, calm even in the face of danger, “but if you can get me in I’ll kiss you on the goddamn mouth.”
“Save your kisses for all the pretty boys out there, not me,” Grace laughs, something high-pitched and stunned, but the fleeting moment of levity passes as she gets to work. She’s settled, focused, lips curled into the faintest of snarls as Claire begins to defend herself. “Leon, take those bolt cutters over, get that door open, and start making your way back to Lt. Branagh,” she orders, voice steady and sure. She glances away from her work for a moment to lock eyes with him, a promise burning in her gaze. “We’ll be right behind you.”
These two might be the strongest, bravest women Leon has ever met, and he’s only known them for a scant amount of hours. “You got it.” The bolt cutters bite through the chain with ease. He eases the door open slightly, peeking through the crack to make sure there’s nothing lying in wait for him on the other side. It’s clear. Before he darts through, he pauses. “Promise me you’ll meet me in the hall — both of you.”
Claire laughs, wild and free, even as her eyes never leave her targets and her pistol barks out a symphony of death. “Don’t you worry, Leon,” she tells him, sure and steady as a mountain. “Us women — we never go back on our word.”