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Leon was drowning.
Well, currently not right now, but he was head deep into multiple glasses of whiskey and the bottle next to him was almost out of that sweet, amber ambrosia that made his head spin with glee.
But yeah he felt like shoving his head into a deep bucket of water and filling his lungs until the oxygen left his pathetic body.
Glass bottles of alcohol littered the dirty wooden floor of his empty apartment, the colors blurring together into a twisted mosaic. Pieces of glass littered in colorful shards, taunting him with their muted colors and sharp edges, begging to be sliced into his pale flesh. As he laid on the cold floor–the alcohol making his brain delightfully fuzzy and empty–he shivered, wrapping his arms around himself in a lonely hug.
If he squinted a little harder, the colors of the stained glass merged together into a mosaic, and dread filled his bones when it looked a little bit too familiar to something he knew all too well in his nightmares.
The church in Spain, Las Plagas, blood running down Luis’s back as he took his very last breath, his words lingering in the stale air.
Bile rose in his throat as he remembered what could have been, if Leon was just a little bit more careful, if he had done something to help Luis survive.
If he closed his eyes now, he might never want to open them now.
Leon blinked hard, trying to will the hurt suppressed in his heart to bleed out. He needed it out, whether it was through tears or by sacrificing his crimson blood.
Northing came out however, and his eye remained dry and his heart mournfully continued to beat erratically with anxiety and grief.
His dark bangs covered his eyes, trying to protect him from the shadows he saw in the dim living room. Light barely flickered through his windows, as he often kept them shut with black-out curtains. Yeah, he knew this apartment was specifically curated and rented for him to keep him safe, but Leon swore he could see the twisted tentacles from a Guadaña swipe through the fragile glass and the head of a raging bull with a deadly axe reach for him. It was frighteningly easy for him to imagine the sharp jaws of a Regenerator digging deep into the flesh of the crook of his neck, blood gushing from his broken veins and pieces of his skin stuck between those jagged teeth. The unnatural laugh of the creature and the slithered form when he failed to kill each parasitic heart made him gasp awake at night and frantically searching for his rifle.
Leon let out a wet laugh, curling closer inward to himself, as he imagined dying in that creepy lab with Ashley only a few doors away from him. He wondered if Luis would have wanted a friend in Hell.
“People can change, right?”
Leon’s dull blue eyes met warm brown eyes, his eyes full of charm and glee, contrasting the blood running down his mouth and the smell of smoke that had radiated from his breath. Luis sat on the ground, his back being supported by his couch, the pose too similar to how he died. Leon gazed up from the floor at his dead friend, wondering if he ever knew that Leon would carry the burden of his death years after he left Earth.
Yes, Luis.
Leon closed his eyes, the half empty bottle of whiskey close by his side, lulling him into a restless slumber.
People can change.
The soft sounds of the evening city faded away into nothing, as Leon drifted away from the world.
Maybe not for the better.
-
Leon woke up to his stomach screaming at him, and found himself half sleeping on the toilet bowl after throwing up the remainders of his depressing night. With his stomach empty and his mouth tasting like acid, Leon made the mistake of glancing himself in the mirror.
His hair was greasy and flat, as if it hadn't been washed for days, (which he hadn't unfortunately), and deep wrinkles were embedded into areas that were once full of youth, making him look much older than 33. A messy stubble had grown to be a permanent addition to his gaunt cheeks. Dark bags weighed his face heavily and paired with his dead blue eyes, he almost looked like a zombie.
He huffed amusedly to himself, the irony enough to spark something in his dead soul.
After dragging himself back outside, blissfully ignoring the alcohol bottles, he winced when the bright light from his phone lit up like a beacon in the dark room.
Great, now he was late for work too?
He groaned, wishing he was just a normal fucking person in a normal fucking world.
-
“Leon S. Kennedy.”
Leon froze as he heard a very familiar voice behind him, just as he had closed the door to their shared office.
Shiiiit.
“Hah, who’s that? Sounds like a cool ass guy with a great haircut.”
Leon didn't dare turn around yet, not until he felt the fury from Ingrid Hunnigrin simmer down into an frustrated anger rather than I’m-gonna-kick-your-ass-anger.
Well, when was Hunnigan ever not mad at little ol’ him?
“Turn your ass around right now.”
Leon hesitantly turned to see her glaring at him over the rim of her glasses, the strands of her side bangs delicately brushing across her stern honey-brown eyes. The slope of her straight nose trailed down to her thin lips which were pressed into a tight frown, and her arms were crossed in front of her chest.
Yikes.
Leon raised his palms next to his head in a mock surrender, which only made Hunnigan raise an eyebrow in disappointed disbelief.
“Well first of all Prince Charming,” Hunnigan huffed and pushed her glasses up with a practiced motion. “Your haircut makes you look like a middle aged mom. Second, this is the third time this week and the sixth time this month since you’ve been at least two hours late to work.”
She dipped her head forward, enough to freeze Leon with her cold eye contact—wait was that concern he was seeing?
“Third, you look like absolute shit.”
Leon paused, feeling uncomfortable as Hunnigan's sharp gaze racked over his disheveled appearance, tracing over the messy edges of his dirty-blonde hair before judging the edges of his shirt that hadn’t been tucked into his wrinkled jeans. Jesus, he knows he looked like a mess, but he swore he didn’t look that bad when he saw himself in the mirror.
…Right?
“You think my haircut looks bad?”
The concern etched in her gaze flitted away as quickly as it appeared, as Hunnigan sighed in defeat and turned to sit back down at her desk.
“Can’t you take anything seriously, Kennedy? Next time you’re late, I’m writing you up on that.”
There was that cold, unbearing gaze again.
Leon swallowed thickly looking away to not show the hurt in his eyes when he realized how selfish he was to assume that the concern was for him. Obviously she would be concerned if the DSO’s golden boy and the idiot she was in charge of was slacking off. It looks terrible on the company and herself, of course.
Leon felt a wave of guilt wash over him, mentally berating himself for possibly causing trouble to the one person he could truly rely on in his missions.
He shoved his trembling hands into the pockets of his jacket and sat down at his desk, across from Hunnigan.
“Sorry. I was… busy with something.” He mumbled, still turned away from Hunnigan's blatant staring.
What else could’ve he said? Sorry for trying to see how much alcohol I can drink before I drown? Sorry that I can’t get to work on time because I can’t sleep or the monsters would get to me?
Fat chance he would even believe himself if that came out of his own mouth.
Leon sighed, hearing the soft tapping of Hunnigan’s keyboard, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to get another conversation out of her until at least lunch. He glanced at his own desk, wincing at the papers strewn messily across the surface and the haphazard scrawls of his unintelligible writing. He did his best to organize the mess that is his paperwork, wishing he had his heavy Matilda in his hand rather than flimsy paper clips.
Leon hated how DSO required mandatory office days as if agents like him weren’t better off staving off blood thirsty BOWs than filing paperwork like an average 9-5 joe. Every second he spent at this flimsy desk, someone was out there screaming and begging for someone to come save them.
And Leon can’t fucking be there because this fucking company would rather have him pretender to understand printed reports instead of having by him out there 24/7. He thinks the good PR can't possibly be worth the lives of literal human beings.
What if there was a child that needed help? They could’ve–God—
Leon felt nauseous.
But Leon couldn't stop the way his body slouched in relief when he sat in an actual chair for once and not on a ruined pile of rubble. That sense of anxiety was still drumming beneath his skin, but wasn't amplified by the terrible rush of adrenaline that he had to maintain to survive his missions. And yes, he knows that the memory fog and the blurring of his vision was due to his lack of sleep, but he has absolutely no time to sleep in those dangerous locations.
It's so incredibly selfish of him to treasure the simple breaks at the office even if he hates it.
Who else is suffering out there while he gets to rest?
He knew that Hunnigan had mentioned he was burnt out once, but he had shut down that idea, that luxury of being able to take a break for something he could easily work through, a long time ago. Leon can handle it, he always does of course. …He still can't help but dream of the day where a BOW finally gets a lucky hit on him and he can finally sleep.
One single shot straight through the heart, and he would bleed crimson across the dirty concrete floor.
It would finally be over for Leon S. Kennedy.
It should've been over in Racoon City, something insidious cackled in the back of his mind.
Leon sighed, glancing over the report in front of him. Squinting at the small font of the papers, he could barely make out the tiny printed letters detailing the incident that had just occurred last week.
We regret to inform of the multiple casualties that occurred due to the lack of communication between the corresponding agents and the officials in charge of the investigation.
Death follows Leon everywhere, even if he isn’t the cause of it.
He doesn’t know how long he stared at those dreaded words, until he heard Hunnigan shuffle from her desk with her bag in her hand.
“Leon? It’s lunchtime.”
He blinked once, then twice, but it did nothing to clear the haze in his mind. He felt lightheaded, as if he was bleeding out. Leon remembered this feeling, it was so familiar, the way he would often forget about cuts and scrapes until they oozed too much blood for him to walk straight.
He must’ve forgotten to pat himself down. Methodically he traced his palms over his ribs, then his arms, legs, thighs—
“What… are you doing?”
“Huh?” Leon paused his motions, taking more of his surroundings.
Oh.
So that wasn’t Hunnigan in his comms. He raised a self-conscious hand to his ear, feeling the emptiness where his earpiece usually was. She was right there in front of him, her pink lips bitten raw and her eyebrows furrowed. Leon glanced down at himself, surprised to see no bloodstains or rips in his clothing, only the worn leather of his jacket and the dark wash of his skinny jeans.
There were no haphazard bandages around his thighs and the yellow light emitting from the overhead lights indicated Leon was not in the dark depths of a haunting cave.
Leon suddenly felt the humiliating urge to cry.
“Leon?” Hunnigan peered closer, worry evident in her expression as she lifted a hand to check his forehead, before snatching it back as quickly as it appeared when Leon flinched away hard. “Do you need to see medical?”
Medical can't fix me, he whispered. It's hard to fix something that was broken a long time ago.
Leon focused on the figure appearing behind Hunnigan's crouched figure, his vision blurring from the unshed tears.
“Gone soft, Rookie?”
Jack Krauser stood with his posture pin-straight and his expression as cold as the day he first met him. Leon’s eyes traced the countless scars embedded in his rough skin, the pale pin standing out from yellow hues of his skin. He was shirtless, just like that fight oh so long ago. Again, he had to say goodbye to another person on that island.
This time, Leon didn't know if he deserved to mourn the death of the one person he thought he would never surpass.
“No,” Leon mumbled under his breath, and glanced at Hunnigan. “Tell him to go ‘way.”
The scars Krauser left were too sharp–too deep– if he kept thinking about it, Leon might drown in grief and guilt. He couldn't decide if it was guilt for killing him or letting Krauser take the life of the man who decided to change.
Someone was touching his shoulder, snatching him away from the humid air of Spain and the jumbled groans of incoherent Spanish. The familiar scent of coffee and fresh lavender filled his senses and made him relax instantly. Hunnigan's perfume stayed insistent in his nose, growing stronger when she leaned closer to examine his eyes, concern prevalent in her expression this time.
“Leon–there’s no one there?”
Leon blinked, and Krauser was gone. All that was left was the familiar taste of acid on his tongue and the familiar blur of his vision.
Leon hadn't cried since Racoon City.
Leon buried his face in his hands, slouching in the uncomfortable wooden chair. The office was silent for a few seconds, Hunnigan's hand removed from Leon's unstable form. He could only imagine the expression she had now.
“Okay, so here's what we're going to do,” It was Hunnigan's work voice, reserved for difficult missions where Leon didn't know he was going to make it out alive. “I’m sending you home early.”
His head shot up fast, wide eyes staring into Hunnigan's steady gaze.
What?
Before Leon could protest, Hunnigan roughly hauled him up from his office chair.
“Go get something to eat or take a fucking nap for once,” She sighed, brushing the wrinkles of his button-up away. “Don’t worry about the paperwork.”
Leon gaped at her, wondering if she had finally lost her mind.
“Wha–Hunnigan–I can’t just leave,” He wrapped his arms around himself self-consciously. “Fucking–they’re gonna put this shit on record.”
He thinks about Sherry, a memory he buried away a long, long time ago.
-
“It's okay, we’re okay,” Leon didn't know whether he was comforting the shaking little girl in his arms or himself. “You’re okay, see?”
He lifted her hands away from her face, hoping that the sight of his grimey face and hopefully not too blood-soaked clothes was enough to calm her frantic, tearful breaths.
Leon traced the edges of her neck all the way down to the tips of her fingers.
“No bites, right? We’re okay, I promise.”
He can't remember what happened next, his mind fogging when he tried to remember the color of Sherry’s eyes and the dirty clothes she was wearing. It was as if the condensation had formed over the memory, blurring it into nothing but fragments of what should have been a reassuring memory.
Sherry was safe. They were safe.
-
Relief and comfort was an unfamiliar emotion to him now, but once in a while, he could almost taste that feeling of hearth that never seemed to come back to him. This was all he had left of Sherry, before the DSO had stolen him away.
That's why he absolutely cannot have any mistakes on his record, no matter how much older Sherry is now.
“I’ll handle it,” Hunnigan stacked his paperwork into a single neat pile with a small ‘clunk’ on the wooden desk. “I always do.”
Then she turned to Leon, a small shaky smile on her lips.
“You know damn well I always do.”
Leon didn't know why he felt particularly emotional today, but he almost wanted to–almost did–bawl his eyes out and never let Hunnigan go.
Deep down, he knew that if she had let him go now, he won’t come back tomorrow.
He glanced at her one more time, memorizing the color of her eyes and the familiar smell of her perfume, then he walked out the door.
-
The air was cold and unforgiving as Leon made his way home. He took the train home, only to feel some semblance of normalcy in his life. Leon closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the last bit of Earth before he could disappear. The feeling of the worn train seat felt rough, and scarred on his finger tips. Soft music played from a stranger nearby, and quiet chatter echoed the station despite only one other person being with Leon in the train.
He couldn't make out the conversation, but it sounded like Claire was trying to make Sherry laugh, and blinking his eyes open he was met with the soft sight of two familiar figures sitting across from him before they disappeared.
It was a short walk from the train station to his apartment. In front of his door was Luis, waiting patiently as blood seeped from his pursed lips.
“Don’t do anything you will regret, cowboy.”
Leon stared at him, wondering why he had waited so long to join the other in Hell. When Leon grabbed his shoulder to brush him aside, Luis disappeared into the evening breeze.
He closed the door behind him.
The next time his door was opened, police sirens replaced the quiet sobbing of a lonely, lonely, man.