Work Text:
4 new voicemails.
1: September 29, 1998. 20:04.
“Chris. Things went to shit in Raccoon City and I’m heading in to look for you. Or Jill; I heard she’s still in the city but I don’t know what she’s up to. I’m looking for her too. I don’t know if you’re still hiding on the other side of the Atlantic, or if you’ve come back, but I want you to know where I am and what I’m doing. Stay safe. I love you.”
2: September 30, 1998. 04:37
“I’m being hunted. I made it to the RPD and it’s getting worse. Marvin Branagh said you’ve been in Europe since you came back from whatever the hell that last deployment was, on vacation, but I don’t buy that. Wherever you are, please come back soon, or at least call me back. If I can’t find you, I might at least be able to find answers. It might not be the wisest idea for you to come back, but you’re better equipped to survive this than I am.”
3: September 30, 1998. 09:56
“Still alive. I - I made a friend. Two, actually. I don’t know if I’m going to make it to tomorrow at this rate, but I’ll try. Please call me back if you’re alive too. I love you, Chris.”
4: September 30, 1998. 17:25
“I made contact with Jill. She’s in the middle of some kind of fucking mess, but she’s alright for now. I’m hiding out in the RPD for now until I know the others are okay. I’m not leaving the city until I hear back from you.
Barricading himself in the STARS office was starting to get old for Chris Redfield, but he didn’t exactly have a better plan. The hallway outside was filled with zombies and all manner of other BOWs; the rest of the west wing just the same. The main hall, its makeshift array of hospital beds and curtains long since thrown astray by whoever - whatever - had passed through before Chris arrived, was almost worse. And then there was Raccoon City itself - filled to the brim with the infected.
Going to Europe had been escapism at its finest after the events at Spencer Mansion, except that Jill had received his letter and promptly written him back to tell him that he was an idiot and he needed to come back before things got out of control. And then Claire had wormed her way into his self-imposed exile, somehow managing to find his new phone number before he even had it memorized, and had sent him a series of increasingly angry-slash-desperate voicemails while he was busy booking a flight back to the States. It had taken almost a week for him to get back to Raccoon City, what with all the bureaucratic red tape in his way, but he’d managed it eventually.
In short, Chris had been called home by the two people he cared about most to find that everything had gotten so unimaginably worse in his absence. The monsters that haunted Spencer Mansion had spread across Raccoon City, and he hadn’t been able to locate either Jill or Claire in the sixteen odd hours he’d been here. All he knew, based on the boarded-up windows and the destruction and the clearly unlocked desk underneath the grimy hanging banner in one of the offices that read Welcome Leon , was that somebody had been here. Chances were, that somebody had been one - according to the nameplate on the floor - Leon S. Kennedy . He’d wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, if this Leon had ever shown up to the station for their first day on the job; if they had made it into the station at all. Leon S. Kennedy was probably dead, he supposed, that thought accompanied by the sense of pained resignation that had plagued Chris’ mind ever since he’d received the assignment for Spencer Mansion.
He’d stepped out of the office to find his flashlight shining directly onto the horrific, nauseatingly reflective head of some kind of BOW he’d never seen before. It had looked like it used to be human, most of them did, but it skittered up the walls on all fours in a way that even Spider-Man wouldn’t have been able to pull off, limbs bent at an unnatural angle, and it was all flesh and muscles. Bloodied, pulsing, wet, raw. Chris could have practically felt the sensation of something dirty and painful dragging across his own flesh, the skin peeled away, blood dripping everywhere - that sheer biting sensation of scraping your palms on the pavement, but multiplied by a thousand - if only he had concentrated.
Instead, he had taken a single, instinctive step back, and had unloaded four successive shotgun rounds into the thing. It had achieved absolutely nothing except for spraying blood all across the shakily lit tile floor, and making the creature very, very angry.
Chris had run from the bloodstained claws and too-long tongue, and he hadn’t stopped, dodging zombies all the way up the stairs and then down the uncomfortably long hallway to the STARS office. This was where he found himself now, having deduced by the fact that someone had unlocked the armory (and left the USB dongle by the door) that he was not the first person to come here. That USB had been hidden, though, and well - whoever had found it would have had to figure out multiple riddles and traverse a large portion of the station to do so. This made him think that whoever it had been was either a member of STARS, knew a member of STARS very well, or was just exceedingly clever. Claire fell into two of those categories, but Chris was first and foremost a protective older brother, and part of him hoped she hadn’t had to suffer the same that he had. Although, if she had been the one to take the Magnum stored in the armory, she’d be well equipped to watch out for herself that way.
Chris, however, was running low on ammo even after stocking up with what was left in the STARS armory, and he got the feeling that the strange lickers on the walls were better off left alone than confronted. He could hear, all too well, the scratching and scraping of those monstrous claws on the walls, the half-slurping, half-hissing noise that the creatures made, and it was slowly driving him mad. Not as much as Spencer Mansion, he didn’t think anything could drive him as mad as some of the worse parts of that place had - he didn’t want to find out - but he could feel his heartbeat speeding up and his hands beginning to shake. All his training and experience could only do so much in the face of the literal apocalypse.
He was mentally debating the merits of trying to make it to the roof on the other side of the second floor when he heard a door slam somewhere across the building. He froze up, running through his stock of weapons, trying to decide what would be best if the source of the slam came closer. Was it a zombie? A human? Something else?
Another door slammed, this time closer, accompanied by the muffled yet unmistakable sound of bones crunching. A very human yell of anger. Gunshots. Then, feet pounding on floorboards, and Chris had barely reloaded his shotgun when the door to the STARS office flew open. It shut with a resounding bang, but that wasn’t the reason he jolted in surprise. No, that was because he was pointing the barrel of his shotgun directly into the face of another human.
A human in full RPD gear, including a tac vest, multiple knives and grenades strapped to his belt. The first thing Chris noticed about him was the piercing determination shining in his bright eyes, and the second thing he noticed was the fear hidden just under the surface.
“You must be Chris Redfield,” the newcomer said, pistol pointed back at Chris. It was the Magnum, the one from the armory. Well, that answered quite a few of Chris’ questions, but it also left him with more. The man didn’t wait for Chris to say anything before speaking again.
“If you could, you know, maybe not aim that shotgun at me, that would be great.”
He holstered his own pistol right on cue, still eyeing Chris with a look somewhere between suspicion and exasperation. Chris’ mouth was suddenly very, very dry.
“What are you doing here?” he said finally, slowly lowering his shotgun. Whoever this man was, he’d broken into the armory and probably a hell of a lot more, and as much as the circumstances called for it, Chris still wasn’t the biggest fan of that. Then again, he’d been ready to exempt Claire from his wrath, so it would be rude of him to hold this man to a different standard.
“I’m Leon. Leon Kennedy. Claire sent me.”
“The - you’re the new officer.”
“Yes.”
“Claire - my sister - she’s okay? Is she hurt?”
Leon looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes. “Yes. She’s fine.”
“How long have you been stuck here?” Leon asked. He looked over his shoulder to see Chris’ response, and all Chris could do was shrug. He glanced over at the computer, which was, in fact, displaying a time, but it was useless without a reference point for when he’d shown up.
“My phone died a while ago, and I doubt the clocks in the station are trustworthy. At least an hour would be my estimate.”
Leon sucked in a breath. “That’s rough, man. I must have spent a day in here, probably more.”
“And you came back ?”
“Like I said earlier. Claire sent me. To look for you .” He pointed at Chris. His fingerless gloves had a lot more than the fingers missing. Chris, not sure whether to feel defensive or grateful, and overwhelmingly just confused , shrugged in response.
“Thanks, I guess? I sort of gathered that. I guess I’m just wondering - hey, where are you going - Leon! ”
Chris broke into a jog as Leon stormed out the door of the STARS office, once again without warning. This time, it was noticeably quieter, though, and only a moment passed before he was blocking the doorway, putting a finger to his lips.
“The lickers are still out there,” he hissed. “They can’t see shit, but if they hear you, you won’t have time to scream before they’re on you.”
Chris hesitated. His lips parted. A single uncomfortable “Oh” came out. He closed his mouth and swallowed. That explained a lot.
Leon shifted so Chris could move through the doorway. “Now follow my lead.”
“I’m not a fucking amateur, Kennedy,” he muttered, but the other man didn’t respond. Maybe it was because he didn’t want an argument, or maybe it had more to do with the two lickers scuttling across the walls. Whatever the reason, the two of them stayed tensely silent all the way back to the main hall, circumventing the stairs Chris had come up in favor of a shortcut through the library. From there, the walk to the fire escape was rather uneventful, what with the hallways in the east wing charred and generally destroyed, along with most of the zombies roaming said halls. In addition to the obvious marks of a fire, probably caused by the crashed helicopter lodged in the outer wall, it looked almost as if a giant had rampaged through the place.
“So,” Chris said as the two of them approached the roof, “why was Claire so insistent on bringing me back here?”
“I thought she called you,” Leon said from somewhere ahead of Chris, half ignoring him.
“Her voicemails were a bit...rushed.”
“Well, long story short, she was originally looking for you because, y’know, zombie apocalypse , and you survived Spencer Mansion, so -”
“Wait, you know about Spencer Mansion?”
“Yeah,” Leon responded, once again falling into step with Chris. “I read the files. You, Jill Valentine, and Rebecca Chambers were the only ones who made it out. Rebecca is busy trying to find a cure for the T-Virus, last anyone heard of her, and Jill is somewhere else in Raccoon City, no doubt fighting for her life. You were far away, but you weren’t exactly busy, and you certainly weren’t dead or infected.”
Chris wasn’t going to deny that logic. “I take it we’re going to have a lot of catching up to do,” he replied, and Leon snorted in response.
At this point, they reached the door, and stepped out together into the light mid-morning rain.
“Yeah,” Leon said, softer than anything that had yet come out of his mouth, and he seemed to deflate a little as his gaze found the rising sun, hazy behind the fog between Raccoon City and the Arklay Mountains. Orange light caught the entire rooftop, illuminating fresh wounds and dark circles on Leon’s face, and it occurred to Chris that, despite their vastly different backgrounds and experience, they were both out of their element when it came to the crisis Umbrella had caused.
“Anyways,” Leon added, heading towards the stairs at one end of the roof, “I came in a couple days ago. One hell of a first day on the job. I ran into Claire on the way here, we got separated, both almost died a few times, met back up. Oh, and we have a child now.”
“A child? Claire’s pregnant? She’s not even ol-”
Leon almost tripped on the stairs. “Claire’s not pregnant, for fuck’s sake. The kid’s name is Sherry, and she’s probably ten or something. I don’t know. She’s the Birkins’ kid, anyways. Well, was . She’s an orphan now. Claire rescued her from Chief Irons.”
Birkin, Chris could swear he’d heard that name somewhere before. Something to do with Umbrella, with Wesker - just the thought of that man made a bitter taste rise in Chris’ throat. There was a lot to unpack here, anyways.
“Wait, wait. So Claire called me back over from Europe to help her take care of a kid?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” Leon asked, and Chris honestly couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
He turned a little to face Chris as he reached the bottom of the stairs, and headed for the fence. Getting no response, he evidently decided to speak again without waiting any longer. “To answer your question, in part, yes. But it also might have had something to do with the fact that you’re STARS, and you’re one of two people other than Claire and I to successfully fight a Tyrant, and you’re Claire’s brother and I don’t think it’s a stretch to guess that she trusts you more than anyone else.”
The first two reasons had been, as seemed to now be Leon’s standard, scarily on-point logic. The third was the same, but it was also painfully true. He was starting to get the sense that Leon was uncomfortably good at analyzing people, but he didn’t mind it so much - he also had a sense that the man’s intentions were not malevolent despite his somewhat standoffish behavior. His current behavior seemed to reflect a current state of pain more than any real example of his overall character.
The way he talked about Claire, though...it was interesting, and it sparked something old and protective in Chris’ brain.
The words spilled out of Chris’ mouth before he could regret them: “Are you and Claire in a romantic relationship?”
Leon faltered yet again, almost dropping the bolt cutters that he’d pulled out of god knew where and was using to cut the lock on the chain-link fence.
“No,” he said, with what looked to be remarkable restraint of some vaguely negative emotion.
Chris continued to stand by as Leon snapped the lock off the fence, and trailed him off the property like an uncomfortable but generally obedient puppy.
“Are you sure? The way you -”
“We’ve known each other for two days. Our shared trauma and the mutual trust developed in those two days has made us very good friends, and nothing more. I get that you’re a protective older brother, but you’re going to have to trust me on this.” The clear exasperation on Leon’s face, though, coupled with what might have been the eerie mix of foggy rain and bright sunlight or might have just been a blush, made Chris think that this wasn’t the full truth.
“To be fair,” he said, “you sound like you -”
Leon whipped around with speed to rival a licker.
“I’m gay, Chris,” he said, almost snapping. It was the first time he’d called Chris by just his first name. Then, softer, remembering that anger would get them nowhere when they were supposed to be on the same side: “I might fall in love with someone I met while surviving the apocalypse, but that person wouldn’t be a woman.”
Oh. Oh .
Chris blinked. Leon’s shoulders were drawn tight, all of his body language indicating that he was even more tense than before, probably waiting for a bad response. He wasn’t going to get one from Chris, though.
“Okay,” he said. “Is it far to Claire and Sherry?”
Leon’s gaze turned from Chris’ face to look down the oncoming street. Neither of them had made to open the now unlocked gate yet, knowing that they’d actively have to evade or kill zombies once they did so. And regardless of the obvious danger, those zombies had once been people.
“It’s not far,” he responded after a moment. “See that bank on the left side of the street, up at the next corner? They’re in there. We were planning to clear out of Raccoon City after we found you, but...I don’t know now. There’s a lot going on. Avoidance won’t solve anything.”
Chris hesitated, and then sighed. “You know, if you want to tell me I was an idiot to run away to Europe at the first signs of emotional trauma, you can just say it.”
“You don’t need me to tell you that,” Leon replied, but he was smirking a little bit now, visibly less tense than before.
Chris, for what might have been the first time since he’d come back to Raccoon City, allowed himself to smile. Rather anticlimactically, he was already reloading his shotgun as Leon put a hand on the fence gate.
“You know, I can see why Claire trusts you.”
It was Leon’s turn to smile this time.
If we die,” he said, eyeing the street, “it’s been nice knowing you.”
They made it about a third of the way down the street before things got messy. The first few zombies were easily dodged, and when the mob began to notice the presence of non-infected humans, Leon and Chris compensated by running. The sound of Chris’ shotgun firing echoed in the street, louder than it would have been for the lack of traffic. There were too many zombies to count, but even all their collective groaning and hissing and shuffling wasn’t enough to dampen the crack of the shotgun and then of the Magnum as the duo made their way through the street.
It was starting to look like they might actually make it to the bank untouched, so of course something had to go wrong. In this case, something was a gas leak that Leon evidently hadn’t noticed when originally running the gauntlet from the bank to the RPD. With both of them running, and fast - they were both more than in shape - neither picked up on the liquid pooling on the pavement, mixed with the last remnants of that morning’s rain, and all it took was one stray bullet.
One stray bullet could do a lot of things, like blow up the crashed car that was only a few feet away from Chris, sending him flying with all the grace and constitution of a limp rag doll.
He hit the pavement with his ears ringing, and the shock of the impact sent his teeth rattling. Something sharp sliced into his tongue, and he tasted copper.
“Chris! ” Leon’s voice was almost muffled, as if he were underwater, and then he said Chris’ name again, and Chris’ ears popped, and the haziness was replaced by a painful high-pitched ringing. His hands found the pavement, and then one hand found what might have been his side - he wasn’t sure, not with his eyes squeezed shut as if it would help dull the pain - and his fingers came away hot and wet. Dread filled his chest, mingling easily with the sharp, tight sensation of his ribcage pressing against his exhausted lungs.
There came the painful, oh too painful sound of gunfire, clack-clack-clack into flesh and metal, but mostly flesh - Leon had good aim, didn’t he? Chris, still far too removed from any kind of coordination of his senses to fully understand his surroundings or attempt to take control of his own body, folded limply into the grip of a new pair of hands a moment later, gently but firmly pulling him to his feet. A strap went over his shoulder - his shotgun, returned to his back. There was something lodged in his side, just under where his tac vest ended and his belt began, and searing pain erupted in his entire leg when he moved his hip as he stood.
As the ringing in his ears began to fade away, he willed his eyes to open, and found that Leon was half-carrying, half-dragging him down the street. His feet moved almost without him willing them, because to walk on his own meant excruciating pain and to not walk meant falling behind, into the grabbing hands of the zombies. His vision swam as he forced himself forward, and he was vaguely aware of Leon plugging bullets into the legs of every zombie in their path, somehow managing to reload the Magnum with only one hand when the magazine ran out.
The rookie was good, Chris thought, really good. And he stumbled, violently, both of them tripping over the stairs as Leon pulled him towards their destination, towards a half-assed farce of temporary safety.
The crash of the doors was resounding, painfully so, and it took all of Chris’ willpower not to collapse onto the grimy linoleum on the spot.
They barely made it into the bank before Claire launched herself at Chris, and fuck, he might have been crying just a little bit to know that, after it all, she was safe and they were back together.
“ Asshole ,” she said into his shoulder as he tightened their embrace, and he felt the corners of his eyes crinkle in a smile that was almost too wide for his face to contain, despite the pain in his side. Then, as she no doubt looked up, “Leon!”
Claire’s hands left Chris’ back. “C’mere!” she said, and a moment later Chris became aware of another person joining the hug, arms awkwardly wrapping around the two of them from one side.
“I’m so glad you’re both okay,” Claire said, squeezing them tighter.
“Actually -” Chris wheezed, the motion devolving into a painful coughing fit as Claire pulled back, all the color draining out of her face as she realized what had happened to him.
The hug had been quite nice, actually, but the moment - and the moment of realizing that Chris had debris lodged somewhere in his abdomen - was gone as the sound of feet lightly padding on the floor came from further inside the building.
“Claire?” an unfamiliar voice called.
Claire had an arm around each of their shoulders as the three of them turned to face the newcomer, and Chris couldn’t hide his surprise despite having known what was coming. A young girl, definitely no older than ten or eleven, stood there, staring up at them.
“Leon?” she said, looking between the two. There was something in her eyes, not quite fear, but she was visibly wary at the very least. There was trauma there, Chris could see it. She didn’t know whether to trust him, and she was right not to.
“Who’s that?”
Claire stepped forward. “Sherry, this is my brother, Chris. He’s here to help us.”
Sherry’s gaze flicked between Claire and Chris this time, finally settling on Claire. Chris could practically pinpoint the moment at which she relaxed, surging forward to throw her arms around Claire and Leon both.
He couldn’t help but smile a little seeing, despite it all, how happy they were. He’d never had much of a family, except for Claire and the rest of STARS - minus Wesker, now, and that wound was too fresh for him to poke at - but he could already see one in the works, and he didn’t find himself opposed to the idea of being a part of it.
Sherry, after a long moment, pulled away from her surrogate family, and turned to look earnestly at Chris.
“Thank you for coming home,” she said, her voice bold and not at all small like she was, “Claire has been looking for you.”
There was something in her voice, or maybe in her eyes, that betrayed a wisdom beyond her years - one which Chris knew all too well came from trauma.
“Of course,” he said weakly, resisting the urge to press a hand against his aching side,, and tried his best to make the smile he gave the child not look too fake.
Leon, who had been standing there with one hand idly resting on Sherry’s shoulder, finally spoke up again.
“Chris needs medical attention,” he said, “now.” The last word was surprisingly authoritative, determined, and despite the optical illusion show currently playing out in Chris’ field of vision, he swore he could see a glint in Leon’s eyes that was somewhere between charming and terrifying. That expression said I’m going to finish this, and nobody is going to get in my way. It took Chris’ breath away, although that also could have just been his injuries affecting him.
Either way, he - he needed to sit down, his head was spinning, his breaths were coming quick and shallow.
The floor rose up to grab him in its cold, hard hands, and his senses were plunged into murky water yet again as he fell to his knees. Someone’s hand was on his shoulder. He could practically feel the distress radiating from Sherry, standing off to the side. He forced himself to look up, at Claire, who was crouched in front of him, concern etched across her face. She was too young for this. She should have been going to college. She didn’t deserve this; none of them did. And Sherry - fuck, Sherry was just a kid .
“ - ris! Chris!” Claire’s voice finally cut into the hazy delirium of his blood-deprived brain, urgent and pained. “Come on. We just found you. Now’s not the time to die.”
The two of them made eye contact, and it was as if a feeling - not even a thought, but just the vague idea of one - crept across the connection between them, forged by blood both shared and spilt. They needed to talk, but neither of them were quite ready for it.
Chris diverted his gaze from Claire’s, and she stood rather stiffly, and took a step towards the back of the building.
“I’m going to go look for medical supplies,” she said. “I might find out more about whatever Jill’s been up to.”
Under any - really, any - other circumstances, Chris would have protested, but as far as he could tell, Leon and Claire were equally competent when it came to zombie-wrangling. There was no point in insisting Claire keep herself safe just because she was his sister and he was protective, and it wasn’t like he could even do anything to protect her in this state. Except maybe playing the role of a meat shield, but they were probably all fucked if it came to that.
Instead of complaining about any of the current downfalls - of which there were many - of this situation, he gritted his teeth and braced himself against Leon’s supportive hand on his shoulder.
“Stay safe, Claire,” he said, and then, recalling her voicemails, pushing past the compartmentalization and repression that defined so much of his job - of his life - “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she replied, with barely a hesitation, and then turned to Leon. “Do you have anything to treat his wounds while I’m gone?”
“First aid spray, but not much of it.”
“It’ll have to do.” Chris, with a mixed sense of horror and resignation, watched his sister’s grimace deepen. “Sherry, you’re going to have to stay here with Leon and Chris.”
Sherry, in a feat both impressive and concerning, managed to look only mildly perturbed by this.
“Okay,” she said, hugging Claire, “please come back, Claire.”
Where Sherry couldn’t see it, Chris caught a glimpse of Claire’s face - a soft smile danced across her lips and, surprisingly, reached her eyes, but there was also a clear pain in her expression.
“Of course I will,” Claire murmured.
And then she was gone.
Chris hadn’t experienced this much pain since that damned snake in Spencer Mansion poisoned him. Waiting for Rebecca to come back with the antidote then had been excruciating both because of the physical pain and because of the sheer terror that had struck him lying weak and alone on the floor in that godforsaken mansion, where even the so-called safe rooms were only a temporary reprieve from knowing that everything was out to get him.
This time, though, it was a different sort of deathbed. Lying on an abandoned bench padded with Leon’s jacket, Chris was all too aware that he was not alone. Sherry and Leon floated around the room like some kind of post-apocalyptic angels whose feathers had been tarnished by an oil spill, halos replaced by flickering white fluorescent lights.
The ceiling of the bank was high, and sprawling, and part of Chris wondered if it was going to cave in on him as he lay there.
Leon had applied first aid spray to his wound in between instructing him to take off his tac vest and helping him climb onto the bench. Now, the debris lodged in his abdomen continued to sting and ache all at once, but the bleeding had ceased somewhat, leaving blood in various states of dryness spread all across his side. Leon had insisted on cleaning the area directly around the wound too, something Chris couldn’t refuse in good conscience despite knowing - after pulling up his shirt to brave a peek - that this was probably going to need a trained medical professional’s attention at some point.
God, he wished Rebecca were here, but more than that, he hoped she was alright, and those two things weren’t the type to be mutually inclusive. So. He’d quite literally have to live with it.
He didn’t really want to live with everything he had done today, though. So at some point, as his thoughts wandered and stumbled and generally sort of sleepwalked around his murky brain, he willed himself back to consciousness enough to speak.
“Hey,” he said, “Leon.” He couldn’t gauge the volume, not with the ringing in his ears, but it seemed that he was speaking more quietly than usual. He hoped the other man, wherever he had gone - hopefully still in the bank somewhere - could hear him.
A moment later, Leon’s face appeared in his field of vision, ringed by a halo of white light and dirty blond hair. In the illumination, his hair had a reddish tint to it. Somehow, it looked shiny and altogether quite healthy despite how tired and pained and approaching unhealthy Leon’s expression was. It was interesting. Rather nice, actually.
“Chris?”
Fuck. Chris really wasn’t thinking straight.
“Sorry I put you on the spot earlier,” Chris slurred. “With the…” he tried to wave a hand in the air, unable to articulate his speech or even find the right words, but his limbs were too heavy. He must have still been losing blood. Leon seemed to understand, though, and shook his head.
“Don’t worry about it,” Leon said, his face coming slightly closer to Chris. Boots squeaked against the linoleum, and Leon sat down heavily on the floor next to the bench, leaning one arm on the side. There was an odd look in his eyes, something Chris couldn’t place, something flickering between distant and piercing, but it was difficult to tell what with the way Chris’ head was swimming and the way Leon was poised, almost looking straight at him.
“You apologized,” the rookie - although, after what had happened between the RPD and here, it seemed a little demeaning to call him that - added, “and to be fair, part of me was expecting a worse reaction. It’s hard to tell sometimes, in our line of work, how people are going to react.”
He sighed slightly, and Chris felt a pang of sympathy for the other man, something rendered almost foreign by the way his injuries were twisting at what felt like every nerve ending in his torso, including his heart.
“I - I’ll drop it, if you want. But it’s not an issue with me. My - “
Chris stopped, what was left of his executive function informing him that what he’d been about to say was in part not his to share, and in part not something he was ready to share. My sister likes girls. I might be gay or bi, too, I don’t know. I thought I loved a man once, but I never acted on it. He turned on me and now I’m scared I can’t love anyone at all, not even my sister and my friends.
“Yeah,” he croaked instead.
“Alright,” Leon replied weakly, looking about as uncomfortable as Chris felt. It seemed like there was gratitude, or a little bit of some vaguely positive emotion, present in his eyes, too, but Chris might have just been lying to make himself feel better.
They were both quickly distracted from their prior conversation, though, because at that moment a wave of pain came over Chris. He began to cough, instinctively trying to push himself up onto his elbows to afford his lungs full range of motion, but this only made the pain worse. He supposed, as Leon let out a strangled noise of distress and rushed to help him sit up without driving the debris further into his side, that this was why Leon had stayed behind.
“You know what I learned at Spencer Mansion?” Chris wheezed out once his breathing had stabilized somewhat, “I’d rather die surrounded by friends than live all alone, buried alive by the weight of my sins.”
“Fuck,” Leon swore, “that’s metal. Are you always like this, or is it just the blood loss getting to your head?”
And then a pause.
“Also - we’re friends?”
Another pause, this time Chris’ doing.
“If you want,” he replied after a moment. “You - ” he broke off to cough “ - you seem cool.”
“I saved your ass, of course I seem cool,” was Leon’s blithe reply, but he was smirking in a way that made Chris very much want to be friends with him.
Chris let his head fall back onto the bench. It was far from a comfortable arrangement, but it beat the pain both mental and physical that he’d endured at Spencer Mansion. For once, despite only a wall and a set of doors between him and a horde of zombies, he began to feel that he was safe. No, not safe, he could never be completely safe as long as he was anywhere in Arklay County, and he had a duty to stay there for the foreseeable future, and the zombies were only a symptom of the greater disease that was Umbrella. But...he was warm, he didn’t have to be on his toes - he couldn’t be on his toes - all the time, his sister and hopefully medical supplies would be returning soon, and he was with people who were safe.
As if understanding that he was thinking about her, Sherry appeared in Chris’ peripheral vision, standing next to Leon.
“You said you were Claire’s brother,” she began, more a statement than a question despite the way she tilted her head as she said it.
“Yeah,” Chris replied.
Sherry hesitated, thinking for a moment. Chris could practically see the gears turning in her brain.
“I can see it,” she said after a pause, “you both look tired.”
Chris smiled weakly. In his state of delirium, his brain a liminal space between consciousness and something else entirely, he somehow found that darkly amusing, and he couldn’t place why.
“I don’t know, Leon looks pretty tired too.”
Sherry and Leon simultaneously turned their heads at this, gazes meeting, and something passed between them. For a moment, however foolish it was, Chris felt as if he were floating, as if he could reach out and pluck all the strings of attachment that ran between people. There they were, hovering in the fabric of the universe, tying the three of them together, tying each of them to Claire, some threads old and some new; some strong and some frayed.
Chris blinked, his eyes beginning to water. Reality came crashing down. Sherry was laughing, an oddly distant sound. She sounded almost like she was in pain.
“It’s different,” she said simply, as if this somehow explained everything; “you and Claire are the same kind of tired.”
Somehow, Chris’ brain managed to wrap itself around whatever the hell that meant. In some strange way, it actually made sense.
He sunk a little further into the bench, worn out by all the talking. He wondered, with striking clarity, if this was going to be the thing that killed him. And then - who should he blame? Perhaps Claire or Jill, for telling him to come back; Leon, for bringing him down that street; himself, for allowing his skin to be broken and flesh to be torn by the debris still firmly and uncomfortably lodged in his side.
No.
None of those.
Umbrella, he decided, almost smiling as he felt his face contort into something approaching resigned serenity, a sudden wave of weariness threatening to carry him away.
Umbrella was to blame for all of this.
That was right.
Oh. Chris was so tired. And oddly warm. He could just drift off right now. Close his eyes. Let his breaths lengthen. Let his heartbeat slow.
“Hey. ” Leon’s voice was a hot knife cutting through ice, firm and sharp, yet quick enough to be gentle. “You’d better not fall asleep on me,” he said.
Chris became suddenly and profoundly aware of his chest rising and falling, slow and heavy. He wanted to fall asleep, now that he thought of it. Leon did not want this. There was a choice before him, and he did not have the presence of mind to feel confident making that choice.
Something cold touched his side, making him jolt a little, and was quickly replaced by an icy sensation that lapsed into some kind of odd tingling and burning - Leon’s hand, and then the last of his first aid spray, he realized, as the familiar noise of the can rattling and coming up empty was followed by metal clattering on tiles.
Leon muttered something, probably a curse, under his breath. Chris must have closed his eyes at some point, because as he forced his lead-heavy eyelids to stay open and search what he could see without sitting up, he found that Sherry had moved away from the bench. Leon was leaning on it now, head on his elbow, carefully giving Chris his space. His hair fell over his eyes, making his dark circles look even darker, and in the single moment in between Chris looking at him and Leon realizing this, an expression of something pensive etched into his face. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-one, but the pain aged him - Chris knew this phenomenon all too well, and he felt for the other man. He wished all of them - Leon, Claire, Sherry - didn’t have to suffer what they had; wouldn’t have to suffer the same that he knew was coming for him.
Chris groaned. “I’m not gonna fall asleep,” he said, more to convince himself than to appease Leon.
Leon let out a quiet hmmph.
“Sure thing, buddy. Keep talking.”
“Want me to tell you and Sherry a bedtime story?”
“I don’t think that’s how that works. Usually the person telling the story isn’t the one who’s half asleep. And besides, your stories probably aren’t appropriate for a child.”
Chris chuckled weakly, beginning to forget all pretext except that this was a very compelling conversation to be having.
“You doubt me, Kennedy,” he said, feigning offense, to which Leon tilted his head sideways and sighed dramatically. His hair was nearly obscuring his face like this. Chris wanted to reach out and brush it behind his ears. He didn’t have the mental coordination to reflect on why he wanted to do this, nor the physical strength to actually do it, so he settled on just staring idly at Leon from under heavy eyelids.
Leon’s lips twitched in a slight smile.
“Maybe,” he said, “but I got you talking.”
“Are you going to keep me talking?” Chris slurred, beginning to tire again.
“Sure,” Leon said, leaning back. For a moment, Chris thought he was going to stand, but he was just shifting his posture, readjusting his elbows on the bench. “Tell me a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“Tell me how you got here.”
They both grimaced, then, simultaneously realizing that this meant talking about Spencer Mansion, and Leon flashed Chris an apologetic glance.
“Sorry, that was...if you don’t want to relive that, I understand.”
Chris sighed. Stared up at the ceiling. Decided that the field reports would never be enough. Decided that he needed something to ramble about, to keep himself awake while he waited for Claire’s return.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “maybe I’ll get some answers about this whole mess if I really think about it again.”
Leon focused his gaze on Chris. “It started with the murders, right? The ones that looked like cannibalism.”
Chris nodded. “I imagine you’ve read all the reports on that.”
“Yeah. I wanted to hear it from you, though.”
Chris dug into his brain, pushing his memories back to months before, to the sticky hot summer fog and the rain that had whipped the skeleton of Spencer Mansion all throughout those seemingly endless nights.
“I was on Alpha Team. We weren’t the first to go to the mansion, though. Bravo Team went in first.”
From there, telling the story was as easy as remembering, and remembering as easy as breathing - though also as painful as breathing was at the moment.
Chris had finished his story, and was beginning to discuss the Tyrants with Leon - who had evidently encountered one even more powerful than that which Chris, Jill and Rebecca had fought at Spencer Mansion - when a door finally slammed in the bank. It wasn’t the front door.
“Hide!” Leon hissed, and Chris saw a flash of blue and white, Sherry sprinting off somewhere. In an instant, Leon was scrambling to his feet, picking Chris’ shotgun up from where he’d placed it on the floor, loading it. Chris, head spinning from all the noise, was only half aware of Leon pressing something cold and hard into his hand - the Magnum, which would have a more forgiving aim from a medium range.
It was more instinct than any conscious thought process that guided Chris through the motions of prepping the gun to shoot, and he painfully pushed himself up into a position where he could brace himself on one arm of the bench, so as to see his potential targets better. Leon, next to the bench, stood protectively over Chris while still giving him space to shoot, and in this light, holding the shotgun, he looked more like an avenging angel than ever.
There was some forgiveness in store for them today, though, because the sound of footsteps echoing on the floor became increasingly familiar to Chris as it came closer, and he was greeted with a flash of red accompanied by Leon lowering the shotgun, rushing forward, and pulling the newcomer into an embrace.
It was Claire, of course, and she gave him a tight one-armed hug, a bulky box tucked under her other arm, before moving forward to the bench.
“Hey,” she said, crouching by Chris’ side, “I’m back.”
He flashed the strongest smile he could muster at her, but he was sure he just looked like he was dying nonetheless. Probably because he was. (At least he hadn’t been hurt any worse, he thought, or infected. He lived with the possibility of becoming one of the monsters every day, and he knew infection with the T-Virus wasn’t an ultimatum, but he also knew the T-Virus was only the tip of Umbrella’s iceberg.)
“Leon,” she instructed as the man crouched next to her, “pull up his shirt.”
Leon did as she said, gaze flickering over Chris’ torso and briefly meeting his face as he gingerly revealed the wound. Claire, whose expression was becoming more and more perturbed with every passing second, reached into the box, pulling out another canister of first aid spray.
“Fuck, we need to secure the wound,” she said.
“Removing an impaled object isn’t exactly the best choice here,” Leon added as he, too, crouched by Chris’ side. “If it penetrated any blood vessels or organs…”
“Leon, we both passed basic first aid,” Claire said as she began to apply the first aid spray around the edges of Chris’ wound. “We don’t have access to a hospital right now. The closest trained medical professional is Rebecca, and if she’s as smart as Chris says she is, she won’t even in the city at this point. Unless Chris wants to be bedridden for however long it’s going to take for this fucking mess to blow over, we’re going to have to give him a chance to heal, and that’s not going to happen with a massive fucking chunk of metal in his leg.”
“The bleeding seems to have slowed down,” Leon observed, to which Claire responded by passing him the first aid spray and producing a set of alcohol wipes from the box.
“Still gonna hurt like a bitch,” she said, vigorously wiping down her hands. “Chris, I’m sure you’ve been stabbed before.”
Chris, who was barely keeping up with the speed of their conversation, nodded weakly. If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he could have recited the steps for treating an impaled wound in the field from heart, up to and including the versions where removing the object was necessary, but as it was, all he could do was conjure up vague mental images of past missions. Wesker screaming in agony, holding his leg, a jagged chunk of bulletproof glass lodged deep in his thigh. Jill running the perimeter of their half-assed excuse for a safe house, gunshots echoing from time to time and making Chris’ heart beat a little faster with each magazine he could count emptying out, wondering when she’d finally pull the trigger and hear that click that meant death. Him emptying out his own first aid kits, Wesker insisting the glass be pulled out so he could keep fighting instead of waiting for backup. Chris feeling pride and something more blossom in his chest at the fiery grin Wesker had given him when he’d finished the impromptu surgery, hands shaking just a little beneath a stoic expression, and the industrial-strength first aid spray had slowly melded Wesker’s flesh back together as the two of them watched.
He blinked, realizing he’d inadvertently closed his eyes, and let out a hiss of pain as he realized what was happening. Claire had her hands wrapped around the debris, and Leon was bracing Chris, one hand firm and still cold on Chris’ chest and the other by the wound.
“Take a deep breath,” Claire instructed. Chris opened his mouth and began to draw in air, wincing at the pain that lit up his entire torso as he did so, but it was nothing compared to the searing, burning agony that came a moment later as the metal rod in his side was slowly pulled out. It was most definitely not smooth, and it felt as if the textured surface were grinding against every individual cell in Chris’ abdomen, taunting him, reminding him that all his muscles and strength and intellect were nothing against forces he couldn’t control.
With a wet pop and squelching noise, the debris came out, and Chris let out what might have been the loudest exhale of his entire life, the breath mixing painfully with a cry of distress. He was beginning to cry, partially from the torturous pain and partially from the overload of emotions his delirious brain was experiencing as his memory ran the course of everything from his first mission with STARS all the way to Spencer Mansion and his brief escape to Europe. Tears streamed down his face, and some repressed part of him - the part that had been entrenched in toxic masculinity and compartmentalization to the point where he sometimes told himself he wasn’t supposed to show emotions, let alone feel them - surfaced to speak and implore him to hide his face, to shrink away from this show of weakness , or better yet, to pretend it wasn’t happening at all. But he was vulnerable in a way that was foreign to him, and one which did not enable him to ignore any of this, so he gritted his teeth through the pain and willed his lungs to continue heaving as the dull ache of the debris was replaced by the alcoholic sting and burn of first aid spray, aimed directly into the gaping hole in his flesh.
The little voice in his head sort of sounded like Wesker.
Don’t let them know you’re anything less than superhuman , he’d said to Chris, over and over again, and Chris could hear it as clearly as if it were real in his mind’s eye. At the time, it had seemed a bit of an exaggeration, not much more than the other hyperbole Wesker favored in his pep talks to his teammates - no, subordinates - but much like the realization that Wesker viewed the rest of STARS as inferior to him, this little turn of phrase made sense in hindsight.
Now was not the time to reflect on the inevitability of Albert Wesker’s fall from grace (or, rather, the publicization of the fact that he had never had much grace to begin with, having been indoctrinated into Umbrella more or less from birth) though, and Chris decided upon yet again forcing his eyes open that there were better things to focus on. Such as Claire, giving him a pained yet hopeful smile, and Sherry, who was peering over Claire’s shoulder with slightly more tolerance of all the gore than someone her age should have had. And Leon, who still had a hand on Chris’ shoulder, and held his gaze unwaveringly as the pain began to subside somewhat.
There was a long road ahead. But Chris wasn’t regretting his choice to come back from Europe, not by a far cry. Perhaps he could move forward like this.