Chapter Text
Prologue
For twenty years, Leon S. Kennedy had been very good at one thing.
Sacrificing himself.
For strangers.
For governments.
For people who would never know what he'd given up.
It had never mattered.
There was always another mission.
Another outbreak.
Another city.
Another person who needed saving.
And Leon had always gone.
Until the day the person asking him to stop wasn't a government official.
It was his wife.
---
"You don't get to make that decision alone."
Ada's voice cut through the chaos of the facility.
Leon looked at her.
"I don't have a choice."
"You always have a choice."
"Not this time."
Her expression hardened.
"That's what you tell yourself."
Somewhere beyond the room, alarms screamed.
Red lights flashed against the walls.
The facility was coming apart around them.
Neither of them moved.
Ada stepped closer.
"You think you're the only one who gets to decide whose life matters?"
Leon said nothing.
Her eyes glistened.
"If you die..."
He swallowed.
"Ada."
"If you die, I won't live another hour in this world."
The words landed harder than any bullet ever had.
For once, Leon had no answer.
Because she wasn't threatening him.
She was begging him.
And somehow, that was worse.
---
He would remember those words later.
He would remember them while running through the rain.
While blood soaked through his clothes.
While one hand clenched around the only cure he had.
He would remember them when he found her lying motionless in their bedroom.
He would remember them when he realized he might already be too late.
But he would remember something else too.
Something much simpler.
A woman sitting beside him on a porch.
A hand slipping into his.
A voice telling him they would always find their way home.
---
The world thought Leon S. Kennedy belonged to it.
It had spent twenty years proving it.
Using him.
Calling him.
Sending him wherever nobody else wanted to go.
And Leon had let it.
Because that was what he did.
Until the world came for the one thing he had never learned how to live without.
His wife.
And when Ada Kennedy was almost taken away from him-
something inside Leon Kennedy finally broke.
Not his mind.
Not his heart.
His obedience.
---
"Agent Kennedy, we need you."
A pause.
"Find someone else."
Nobody thought Leon would ever say those words.
Least of all Leon himself.
But the man who had spent twenty years answering every call had finally learned how to hang up.
And somewhere far away, people were beginning to understand what that meant.
Because Leon wasn't angry anymore.
Anger could be controlled.
Negotiated.
Waited out.
This was something else.
This was a man who had finally decided that his life belonged to him.
And there was only one person he intended to spend it with.
Ada.
His wife.
His home.
His entire world.
And God help anyone who tried to take her away again.