Chapter Text
2015. The worst thing about this exchange program going this horribly wrong, Nero decides, isn’t the—uh, BOWs? Whatever these things are. Yes, them attacking out of nowhere and slaughtering people in the streets is very, very bad, but Nero’s dad is Leon S. Kennedy, he’s long since been trained in how to survive getting caught up in a sudden outbreak. Not to mention all that shit in Tall Oaks.
It’s not the weird smug cocky asshole who went and shot a priest and then just laughed off getting stabbed in the chest, which is insane, but is generally a sign of infection. He might be a stable G-Virus bearer, Sherry’s one and Nero’s seen her shrug off getting fucking impaled. She didn’t even grow weird eyes on her body.
It’s not even the fact that this whole mess interrupted him asking Kyrie out, although he’s furious over that, certainly. He’d dressed up for the occasion! He had a nice little bowtie and everything! He even had a speech and a gift and his college address on a card if she wanted to come visit him sometime! He is going to wreck every single fuckin’ monster in this goddamn hellhole just for that, and thank god for this cool new sword he got that allows him to do just that.
No, it’s the fact that when he finally gets a moment to himself in a cathedral, in between all the fighting, and calls his dad, Leon’s voice breaks when he asks, “Are you okay? Do you need me to come get you? I can call a friend who can get me a fast ride there—”
“Dad—” Nero starts.
“They didn’t get you, did they? Oh, god, please—”
“They didn’t get me,” Nero tells him, deciding not to mention that a couple scrapes and deeper cuts have healed over faster than he thought they might. Deciding not to mention that oh, yeah, one of the fuckers nearly tore his arm to shreds and then the damn thing grew a hard carapace around itself. It still throbs dully under his sleeve, but not like something nearly ripped it into so much mangled meat. He can’t describe it, but he knows he can’t let Leon know about it just yet. His dad would flip his shit and burn down a bioterrorist base about it. “If they did, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now.”
Frankly, he’s not too sure if this is a virus. He’s pretty sure if it was, there’d be a lot more shambling, moaning formerly-human things wandering the streets. These are much less humanoid and a little bit more intelligent than that.
“Okay,” says Leon. “Okay. I’m getting on the first flight there. How long can you hold out?”
“Dad,” Nero starts.
“Actually, fuck getting on a commercial flight, Chris owes me a favor,” says Leon. “I’m in Berlin right now, it’ll just take me about two hours to get to Fortuna. Less if it’s Chris as a pilot.”
“Dad,” says Nero.
“I’m gonna pack a rocket launcher, I fucking knew Italy was going to be trouble—”
“Dad!” Nero snaps, and that stops his dad’s spiral right in its tracks, judging from the sudden silence and the harsh breathing. “For shit’s sake, calm down, I’m okay. I’m holding my own investigation—do not start with me, I know what I’m doing.” That’s a filthy lie, he has no idea what he’s doing, other than just trying to find Kyrie and Credo and figure out what the fuck just happened, but hell if he’s telling his old man that. “Look, you can come. But I’m the one with boots on the ground here, so I’m gonna go on ahead. I’ll send you coordinates when I can, there’s a few people I need evacuated outta here.”
“You’re not going?” Leon asks.
“Like I said, running my own investigation,” says Nero. “I think there’s something really off here. If I get off this island without finding out what it is, who’s to say it won’t come back to bite us all on the ass?”
“I could do that,” says Leon. “You don’t have to, you’re, what, nineteen? You should be on the first boat out worrying about your degree.”
“I could be,” Nero agrees, and he is, in fact, quietly worrying about how this will look to his university, “but I’m the one in the middle of it, and it’s like you always said. You have to do whatever you can.”
Leon laughs over the phone, a wet-sounding chuckle that doesn’t even really sound all that much like a laugh. “I hate it when you do that, kid,” he says. “Okay. Okay. Just be careful. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I’m not gonna push too hard, just—be careful, and if anything does go horribly wrong, call me.”
Nero looks down at his arm, the claws where his fingers were, the soft glow from his palm. Things have, in fact, gone horribly, terribly wrong, but hell if he’s gonna tell Leon that. Sorry, dad, he thinks, ruefully. “I will,” he says, lying. “Love ya, Dad.”
“Love you too, Nero.”
Nero hangs up, then, and lets out a breath. Then he takes up the sword, a cool broadsword that revs like it’s a motorcycle and can set shit on fire if he revs it up enough, and walks further into the cathedral. Credo had said to meet them at the Order of the Sword’s headquarters—maybe there Nero can call Uncle Chris, or Aunt Claire, and put them on the line. Order’s gonna need all the help they can get, and who better than the world’s premier BOW-fighters?
God, he hopes Kyrie’s okay.
--
2000. Leon brings Nero to the Redfield Thanksgiving party for the first time when the kid’s four years old, a little chubby-cheeked hellion. Nero’s eyes go wide as saucers when he sees Chris’s little wooden cabin and just where it’s situated, and he runs around the grounds squawking with delight, shouting, “Dad! Dad! Look! I wanna go fishing!”
“We’ll go fishing soon!” Leon calls to him from the porch, his heart growing warm. His chest is still smarting a little, but the doctors cleared him a while back. So long as he doesn’t try to lift anything too heavy or put too much stress on his body, he ought to be fine. He’s just glad everyone he loves is willing to pick up the slack while he’s in recovery, and that Nero, his sweet kid, just treats it like it’s normal. It—It is normal, Leon reminds himself. It’s saved his life.
Claire, on the wooden stairs beside him, sips on her Capri Sun, and says, “Jesus, they grow up so fast, huh? I remember when we first met and you showed me a photo of him.”
“Yeah, he was so small,” Leon says, fondly. “I guess if I had to pick anything up from a one-night stand, I’m glad it’s Nero, y’know? He’s a good kid.”
“He really is,” says Claire. She takes another sip from her Capri Sun, and says, “He misses you whenever you’re gone, you know? He keeps asking me and Sherry when you’ll come home, whenever he stays with us.”
A sharp pain flares in Leon’s chest. This, he knows, isn’t from the surgery. “I know,” he says, quietly. “I just…I have to keep doing this.” Not just because he wants to take down Umbrella, although that’s a big part of it, but—the way Simmons had talked about it, this job’s not the kind of job he can just submit a two weeks’ notice for. If he walks away, even if he could bring himself to walk away, the question remains: what’ll they do to the people he loves? To Claire, and Sherry, and Nero? “I can’t walk away, Claire. Not if I can help.”
“I’m not asking you to,” says Claire, “but—you’re so busy all the time. You’re gonna miss seeing him grow up.”
Leon watches his son run across the grass, laughing like a tiny madman and swinging a stick around. The kid’s gonna topple over, the way he’s moving like that, putting force behind his blows. “So long as he’s alive to grow up,” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” says Claire, “but do you want him to grow up hating you for never being there?”
Leon twists his fingers into the sleeve of his jacket. “No,” he breathes. “But—this kind of fight—”
“—has more fighters besides you,” says Claire. She nudges his side, gently, because his chest is still healing. “Go. Hang out with your kid. He won’t be four years old forever.”
--
2004. “The least you can do is get them to let him see his son,” Chris says on the phone to someone, as Nero creeps into the kitchen, just like a spy. He turns, shaking his head, in the direction Nero is sneaking from.
Nero freezes in place and hides behind the table, waiting for Chris to turn away. When he does, Nero slowly, ever so slowly, tiptoes out from behind cover. The cookie jar his dad keeps telling him he cannot bring upstairs is now in sight, and since his dad’s not here (yet, but he will be, because he always comes back), that means Nero can, must, and should take it.
He can taste the chocolate chip cookies now. They will be his.
Chris, still on the phone, says, “He’s been under observation for almost a week, if he was going to turn he would’ve done so by now.” He pauses. “Look, I get the precaution, believe me, but at least let him see and talk to his kid. Nero hasn’t heard anything from his dad since Leon got back from Spain, and that was days ago.”
Nero very carefully pulls the cookie jar off its place on the counter and clutches it close to his chest. Turn? His dad? He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. Nero knows his dad and he knows he’s a survivor. Leon’s going to be okay. He has to be.
“They’re keeping him in the most sterile and secure facility they’ve got and they’re still giving you the runaround?” Chris asks. Nero scowls as he holds the cookie jar close and begins the process of very carefully, very discreetly getting out of the kitchen without being spotted. “Right. Fuck that. I’m going in tomorrow morning. If I have to yell at a bunch of men in black just so Nero can see Leon, then I will.” Another pause. “They’re treating him well in there, right?”
There’s something under Chris’s tone that Nero knows means business. If they’re not, I will be very, very angry.
“Good. Okay. So I don’t have to fight some dipshit who keeps saying ‘she’, then.”
That’s ridiculous. Why would someone call his dad she? Nero would scoff if he wasn’t so sure it would give him away. Because it would, he tiptoes slowly out of the kitchen. All right. Now all he has to do is make it up the staircase.
“The kid’s doing okay. Keeps asking when his dad’s coming back. Yeah, I know it’ll take a bit, but at least let them see each other. Leon must be losing his shit.” Chris sighs, and Nero slowly steps on one stair before he turns to look, seeing Chris push a hand through short, bristly hair. “He’s been building up a rock collection to show Leon when he gets back, y’know?”
Nero holds back a hiss. If Chris spoils the surprise, Nero’s gonna make him pay.
He takes another step. This one—
—creaks.
“Oh, shit,” Nero breathes, and whips his head up to see Chris turning. All thought of stealth and care abandoned, Nero rushes upstairs with the cookie jar clutched close, pulling his door open and slamming it shut before he locks it. He slumps against his door and pulls the cookie jar lid open, then crams the first of his ill-gotten gains into his mouth.
Then: “Nero, kid, I know you’re still awake.”
“NoI’mnot,” Nero says, but with the cookie in his mouth it comes out more like nuhhannot.
“It’s—” A pause, like Chris is checking something. “Sh—Crap, it’s one in the morning, you really should be asleep.”
Nero swallows the bits of cookie in his mouth. “Go’way, ‘m sleeping,” he says.
“And no one swiped the cookie jar from the counter,” says Chris, and Nero guiltily crams the rest of his cookie into his mouth. Less guiltily, he chews. “Your dad wouldn’t be happy, you know.”
“He’s not here and he’s not gonna be here for a while,” Nero mumbles, after swallowing. “What’s it matter?”
“Ah,” says Chris, “okay, great. Cool.” Nero hears his great bulk thud against the door, which shudders against Nero’s back but doesn’t give, then the sound of someone sliding downward onto the floor. “How much did you hear?”
“It’s—It’s okay,” says Nero, contrite now. “It’s okay that he’s not here. Yet. He’s fine. He just needs looking after ‘cause he went to a bad place and they hurt him real bad. It’s okay.” If he says that enough times, maybe he’ll convince himself.
“He does need looking after, a lot,” Chris says, with a soft, sad laugh. “But you miss him, don’t you?”
Nero crams another cookie into his mouth rather than have to answer that.
“Yeah, thought so,” says Chris, because Uncle Chris is somehow weirdly perceptive, same as Aunt Claire, when it comes to Nero (and Sherry). “I’m gonna go tomorrow and make ‘em let you see him. He’s fine—cranky about all the tests, but fine. He misses you, too.”
“He does?” Nero asks.
“Of course,” says Chris. “You’re his kid and he loves you.”
Nero sniffs, and says, “Sherry’s parents.”
“Were terrible people,” says Chris, “who made terrible things. Leon’s a good person and he misses you and wants to see you. The only thing stopping him are the people he works for, because they think he’s—uh, so badly hurt that they can’t let him out until they’re sure he’s no longer hurt.”
“They think he’ll turn?” Nero asks.
“Oh, f—fudge,” says Chris, with the tone that Nero’s beginning to recognize as the one he takes when he’s trying very very hard not to swear right in front of him. “They’re paranoid people, Nero. They just wanna make sure.” He trails off into angry muttering on the other side of the door, then says, “We’re gonna make sure that they let him out the second they can, not a moment too late. In the meantime, you wanna come hang out with your uncle tomorrow? I’d appreciate some back-up.”
“Yeah!” Nero cheers. “Will they let me see Dad if I come with?”
“If they don’t,” says Chris, “I’m gonna be really, really angry.”
--
2007. They’re driving home from school, Nero safely strapped into the backseat with a McDonald’s toy, when Nero says, “Do you know who my other dad is?”
Leon glances at the rear view mirror, then at the road, and says, “Not a whole lot, no. He and I—uh. Well. Sometimes people just…really like each other a lot, and they make a baby by accident.” Which is a huge oversimplification, because Leon at the time had been dealing with some heavy gender dysphoria and dissociation, and sex was both fun and also a way to anchor him into his own body, which in retrospect is not a very healthy way of thinking about sex, but there it is, he supposes. “Sometimes they stay together for the baby, and other times, they split up. For, uh, reasons.”
Nero goes quiet, and then says, in a hurt voice, “He didn’t love me?”
Oh, no. Oh no no no. “Baby, sweetie,” says Leon, pulling over and parking the car in front of some boutique with reserved parking slots, screw them, his kid needs him, “oh, honey.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and twists around in the driver’s seat, clambering over so he can take his baby boy’s hand. “Neither of us knew—look at me, Nero, sweetie. Neither of us knew you were coming. He left in the morning and I only realized I was going to have you a few weeks later.” And that had been an absolutely hellish nine months, alleviated only by his parents being supportive and kind.
When Nero had been born, Leon had decided that, fuck it, he was going to be the best father this kid could ever have. Not mother, father. That much he’d decided on.
“Didn’t you guys ever—” Nero starts, and Leon shakes his head.
“I tried, kiddo,” he says. “I looked. I knew his name and what he looked like, but—mostly I just came up with a birth certificate, and a missing persons report.” And a brother who had a business, but when Leon had called, all he got was a disconnected landline. So—uncle’s out of the picture. “I don’t know what happened to him,” he says, softly, “but his name’s Vergil, and he quoted William Blake at me.”
Nero’s face scrunches up in vague disgust. “I don’t like Blake,” he grumbles. “He’s boring.”
“You’re eleven,” says Leon, fondly. “You gain a new appreciation for these kinds of things when you get older.” Although hell if Leon ever stopped appreciating William Blake, and William Shakespeare, and Maya Angelou, and all those other poets. Must be the lit minor he took back in college. “I can keep looking. You deserve to know your other dad.”
“But he left you,” says Nero, plaintively. “Why would he leave you?”
“Lots of reasons, kiddo,” says Leon, used to being left behind. “He didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him. We had a good time. He didn’t have any reason to stay, and I didn’t have any reason to ask him to. He was nice, that was all. And when I found out I was going to have you,” Leon had an immediate panic attack and an actual meltdown, “your other dad was long gone. Didn’t know where he went.”
“But if he knew about me…” Nero starts. “Would he—Would he like me?”
“He would adore you,” says Leon. “You’re the best, and he would love you.”
Nero kicks moodily at the seat in front of him. Leon sighs.
“What brought this on, kiddo?” he asks.
“We got an assignment in school today,” Nero says, rubbing at his nose. “We’re supposed to make our family trees. I know about your family tree up to Gramma Amelia in Sicily, but they said they wanted to know about my other dad.”
“Ah,” says Leon, “okay.” A family tree. Christ. Leon had always hated doing those back in school, because Ancestry.com didn’t exist back then and Leon had to ask his parents to talk to his grandparents, and he’d had to ask if step-parents counted, and—yeah, he’s glad Nero’s assignment is relatively simple now. “I can try again with your uncle.”
(The uncle’s landline is still disconnected, so Leon gives up on that real fast.)