Chapter Text
Leon S. Kennedy died alone and surrounded by death. Chris had been the one who found what remained of him. It wasn’t the first time he’d gathered a team and gone out to drag his partner back from whatever hell the DSO had sent him out to. Their SOP stated that no agent would get a rescue squad sent out after them which meant Chris had grown used to waking up in the middle of the night to a desperate phone call from Hunnigan. “He’s gone off-grid. Again.”
Chris had spent the last few years of his career hunting Leon down in the ruins of collapsed labs or underground tunnels. He’d dragged Leon out of each and every one of them. Sometimes he’d been cracking jokes and smiling, other times he’d been half dead, delirious from pain. But he’d always been alive. And that was enough.
So when Leon had been gone for a mission for two weeks, Chris hadn’t been overly worried. His lover had been away for months sometimes. Sometimes they just took time. Even when Hunnigan called him late at night, explaining that Leon had been AWOL for almost three days, Chris told himself not to worry despite the fact that his chest still tightened. Three days was nothing. Chris gathered a small team that most of BSAA jokingly called “Kennedy rescue squad”, Himself, Piers, Jill and a few other of his most trusted soldiers boarded the helicopter just a few hours after Hunnigan's call.
The coordinates where Leon had lost contact lead to an underground lab. It was always an underground lab. By the time they arrived, the surface was nothing but rubble. Smoke still seeped from cracks in the ground and every step crunched under their boots. The descent lower was slow and exhausting. They had to stop multiple times to dig out debris to force an opening wide enough to squeeze into the lower floors. Chris had been so sure he’d never be able to fit in some spaces but somehow managed to squeeze through without removing the bulletproof vests or the rifle strapped to his back.
The air got more and more suffocating as they descended, it was damp and carrying the reek of blood and decay. The hallways were eerily silent. All the scientists seemed to have left and only a few dead BOW lay scattered along the floor. The team’s flashlights sliced through the darkness and revealed collapsed beams and broken pipes that dangled above their heads.
They moved carefully and methodically, like they always did. Chris hadn’t been able to figure out where the tension in his shoulders came from. But there was an unease in his gut, the feeling that something was wrong. Too quiet. Too dead. Leon had only been missing for a few days yet the place looked as though it had been abandoned for years.
“Still nothing,” Piers muttered from behind him, scanning further ahead with his rifle.
Chris nodded once but didn’t speak. His throat was too dry.
Every door they forced open revealed nothing but overturned tables, shattered glass and walls stained in a mixture of red and brown. They found old notes with bleeding ink, hard drives and vials filled with mysterious liquids. But no sign of people. No sign of Leon.
The team split up into pairs like they usually did when the building was too large. Chris and Piers took another staircase downwards. Chris hated that the silence only felt heavier the lower they got. The shadows stretched longer and their heavy steps Leon always complained about being too loud echoed in the empty halls. Chris tried to keep his mind empty but the feeling of dread had only increased. His chest tightened more and more.
He quickened his steps, leaving Piers further behind. He forced his way into a larger room, the heavy doors screeched. He let his flashlight sweep across overturned cabinets and shattered monitors. There were claw marks across the wall. Then the smell hit.
Blood.
His pulse spiked. He lifted his rifle, sweeping the corners more carefully, checking the ceiling, the floor. Yet nothing moved. But the smell…God, the smell was everywhere. He stepped further inside, rounded a corner and noticed the crimson smeared across the tiled floor like something - or someone - had been dragged. He swallowed and continued sweeping with his flashlight.
And then his light froze.
There. Slumped against the wall, half buried under the collapsed ceiling, was Leon. His head hung forward, the blonde bangs hid most of his face but Chris knew it was him. His chest clenched and for the briefest moment, relief surged through him.
“Leon!” His voice cracked, echoing off the walls. He rushed forwards, heart hammering, already reaching for his radio. I found him. He has to be alive. We got to him in time. He dropped to his knees, frantically shoving the debris aside and his hands trembling as he gripped Leon’s shoulder straps. The body felt cold.
“It’s me Leon, Chris. You’re gonna be okay. Just hold on.”
He tilted Leon’s face upward, praying to see his blue eyes flutter open or hear a familiar smartass remark. But Leon remained silent. Chris pressed two fingers to Leon’s neck.
Nothing.
He pressed harder, moved over to the wrist, then the chest, searching, refusing to believe. Still nothing.
That’s when he finally took the sight of Leon in. Blood was soaking Leon’s shirt, pooling beneath him. Both legs were mangled, flesh and bone mixing together. His left arm was twisting to the opposite direction, limply holding his old combat knife. The blade was covered in blood. His right arm was cradled to his chest, still grasping the broken radio.
Chris’s hope cracked and the sound was louder than any gunfire he’d ever heard.
“No…no, no, no. Don’t you dare do this to me,” His voice broke, raw with denial as he shook Leon gently. “Come on baby, wake up!”
But Leon didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Yet Chris' hands wouldn’t stop moving. If he just put enough pressure he could force a heartbeat back into Leon’s chest.
“Wake up, dammit,” Chris rasped, his breaths coming sharp and uneven. “You don’t get to leave me like this. Not you.” This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. He’d started dreaming of retirement; Leon had even talked about it too, for once. A small house in the countryside, fishing trips, lazy mornings without alarms. Leon had smiled more after the meds began working. Three months sober. Three months of hope.
Boots crunched against shattered glass behind him. “Captain?”
Chirs couldn’t turn away from Leon. His world had narrowed to the weight in his arms. “Piers, call the medic. He’s not…He’s not responding. He just needs - he just needs-”, his voice cracked, stumbling over words.
Silence stretched between them again, then Piers stepped closer. Another flashlight shone across Leon’s body. The sharp intake of breath was quiet yet Chris heard it like a gunshot.
“Chris,” Piers' tone was softer than Chris had ever heard it. “Chris-”,
“NO!” The word ripped out of Chris’s chest. He shook Leon again, less gently this time, his own panic now bleeding through. “Maybe I missed something. Feel for yourself. There has to be something. I just missed-” He finally looked up when Piers crouched beside him. He hesitated for a moment before pressing his fingers to Leon’s neck. Seconds passed but they were long enough to kill any embers of hope Chris had left. Piers pulled back slowly, face distraught.
“Chris,”
His name landed like a verdict.
Chris shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him all at once. He only bundled Leon closer to him, pressing his lover's face into the crook of nis neck, cradling his broken body, inhaling an unfamiliar scent of blood and decay.
Piers stared crouched next to them. He didn’t touch him, just silently spoke on the radio, words Chris tuned out. Piers' voice was somehow steady and low as he finally spoke to Chris again. “I’m sorry,”
Chris didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The world had gone distant, sounds muffled, colors dimmed. All he could see was what was left of Leon.
The climb back through the lab was a blur. Someone guided Chris by the arm but his vision refused to focus on anything except the stretcher that was being carried in front of him and the man strapped onto it. Someone draped a blanket over the body when they boarded the helicopter. As if the gesture meant anything. Chris sat rigid, fists clenched and staring at his covered lover the entire way back.
Back at HQ the fight began almost immediately. The DSO demanded the body. Their representative was clinical and detached. “He was our agent. Our assets. We’ll take custody”. The BSAA stood firm though. Chris rarely saw Director Peters that heated as he did during that meeting. Chris himself was not really to any use, he just sat in the back, eyes still unfocused and fists clenched. Jill sat on his right side, Piers on his left.
“You’re not cutting him up for parts!” Jill had snapped.
“He was DSO property,” The rep shot back. “Your interference here is already a breach of jurisdiction.”
It was all thanks to Hunnigan in the end. Chris still doesn’t know how she did it. She’d looked hollow during the meeting, like she hadn’t slept since she’d lost contact with him. Yet her voice was sharper than Chris had ever heard it.
“He stays with the BSAA,”
Chris didn’t go home after. He couldn’t. Leon’s jacket would still be on the chair. His mug in the sink. His bike in the garage. So he stayed at Jill’s, sleeping on her couch. Or rather, lying awake and staring at the ceiling as phantom sounds haunted him. Leon’s laugh, his barely audible footsteps, the faint rasps of his voice cracking jokes. And when the morning came, everything felt too quiet again.
The funeral came one week later. It was small, too small for a man who’d saved the world more than once. The church smelled of lilies and old wood. It was a sunny day and the last warm days before fall truly sat in. Claire sat on Chris’s right, her hands trembling in her lap, clutching a tissue. Piers on his left, his face unreadable but pale. Jill behind him, her presence steady as ever. The only people from the DSO were Helena and Hunnigan who looked even more like a ghost. Her usual calm composure was gone and her eyes sunken with grief and guilt. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Sherry had been the only one who audibly cried during the service. She’d sat with her head against Claire’s shoulder and sobbed.
Chris helped carry the coffin. His hands pressed against the wood, trembling from everything else except the weight. He tried to find comfort in the fact that there was a body at all. In their world, that was rare. Too often it was empty caskets, at least Leon was here. But the comfort wasn’t there. Because Leon was dead.
Except he wasn’t.