#this is so evil vera..... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mandalhoerian · 2 years

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NO TIME TO DIE | leon kennedy x oc | 6

pairing: leon s. kennedy x oc word count: 10K~ warnings: TRIGGER WARNING for suicide and torture and racism summary: Leon doesn't know what to panic over, his morals and values being put on question by who his boss really is, or what that man can do to Vera - who thinks Leon is dead because of her. READ ON AO3 ! CH 7 ☆ NO TIME TO DIE MASTERPOST

Death comes to Marvin as a little girl in a loose white dress, black curls wild and unruly, with twinkling pale eyes — barefoot and giggling.

She looks the same as the day he took her home, to their home.

Her embrace is warm and happy, the boundless safety contained in the small arms circling around him lulls him into the kindness of the dark, fear drains away into solace, all his worries and all his sorrows melt away as if they never existed at all. It's not that terrible, she tells him, and it's the most important secret ever, shared with him during snack time with invisible, imaginary beverages in pink plastic tea cups. Not all darkness and tragedy.

She sounds childlike-wise and a bit mischievous as she always does, the wit of dozens of geniuses wrapped around her little finger, pulling on his sleeve instead of holding his hand, a habit of hers she never resolved. Come, there's nothing to be afraid of. We'll be together forever.

Light spills into the void, curls around him like a purring cat, he finds himself in Vera's old bedroom he had to close up after she moved out, but it’s not at all the lonely, desolate place it is. Everything’s back to how it used to be, messy and cozy just like how she liked it, metal parts she's taken apart scattered everywhere so dense he can't see the color of the rug anymore, a collection of cups decorating the nightstand, her mastic and clove scent is a blanket.

His daughter is tucked next to him, he's carried her away to bed after she fell asleep on the couch. He can hear the boisterous laughter of his coworkers coming from the next room, it's one of his cookouts.

He's never known serenity this all-encompassing, has never felt this weightless, it's the sweetest remedy on his aching, worn-out body. A honeyed, heavy slumber spirits him away, the merry noises fade and disappear altogether.

The last thing he sees is his child. She wakes him up at the crack of dawn to take him on a new adventure to that fishing trip they never ended up going.

The concrete was rugged and wet against Leon’s cheek, the chill penetrating his skin sending icy waves of a damp throb around his skull.

He could work with mildly uncomfortable.

It was bearable at worst compared to what the bullet carved into the back of his tactical vest had done to his body. That little point of impact from such little distance had knocked him out straight away; and no, he wasn’t harmed per se, his back was going to be extremely sore for a while really, but the bitter reminder of the familiarity with being made to lose consciousness and how scary it could be returning to him was a pesty relative he’d cut contact with long ago — untimely and uncalled for.

None of that disturbed his state of floating between frail consciousness and restive unconsciousness; Claire yelling at the top of her lungs, and slamming on the gate so hard the rattle traveling through the ground and reverberating in his bones did.

Leon startled awake, alarmed, disgustingly sweaty with a pounding heart and the dread of falling from a building, and the first thing he saw was Vera’s abandoned gear lying less than a couple meters away from him. The sight of blood striking red where he remembered her cuffing her last popping in color by the light shining on it from the headlights of the car beyond the gate disturbed him wretchedly deep in his core that he didn’t even register the pain in his back.

He put his hands on the ground, not caring that the material of the fingerless gloves got soaked with rainwater, to support his weight. An uncontrollable groan got fished out of him with the zap of pang that shocked his body; he lurched forward, cutting his fall with his forearms and hissing.

“Leon, holy shit!”

Claire was by his side in seconds, supporting Leon so that he could sit up on his knees and focus on breathing properly, he was searching around wildly the best he could, not hearing her speak (“Fuck! Thank god, I thought he killed you, oh thank god!”) — and his heart hammering against his chest more heavily and breathing accelerating with each second spent on not finding any traces of Vera or Sherry.

That man. That man. Brian Irons, his supposed boss. The Chief who was supposed to be the best of them all. How could he?

Leon knew the look on him. He knew that glint in his eyes, the reflection of the hidden intentions to hurt people putting its hands to the windows of the soul and peeking in for prey. Leon had seen it before. He knew instinctively when someone wanted to inflict pain on him, or anybody at all. If his childhood had taught him anything at all, it was this. The very gut feeling needed for survival, to run from real danger.

Brian Irons was perhaps the best police officer in this city and he was going around terrorizing innocents when the whole world had gone to shit? He’d taken an oath, he was supposed to be serving the people, he was a cop, one of the good guys, like Leon, they were supposed to work together, so why?

That man wasn’t acting as police, he wasn’t here to help anyone. He’d made Leon cuff Vera (entrap her like a pig for slaughter) whilst she begged him not to, and damn it, the way Sherry was silently crying to the side, him threatening everyone, his authority dangling over them, over Leon who’d made a massive mistake because he fucking hesitated again, torn between what he was told to do and what he knew was wrong. He had shut down. It was his first time encountering the kind of malevolence from one he was sharing the same occupation with — and…. and…

Leon had fucked up.

He’d chosen to obey orders the moment Vera was accused of crime, even though his gut screamed at him not to. Leon wasn’t entirely thinking it through, he couldn’t go against his superior no matter how wrong things were going down, genuinely lost at what to do, and everything was happening too fast for decision making. Chief Irons had taken advantage of his callowness, knowing Leon would hesitate long enough for him to establish control.

It was his first day in this job and he was already taught a lesson: duty didn’t always mean doing what was right. And he’d failed colossally.

His eyes found the crimson on the ground again. What had he done?

Leon was on the brink of hyperventilation. Vera and Sherry were gone. An innocent civilian and a kid. Jesus Christ, they —

“Leon! Hey,” Claire shook him by the shoulders, rough and urgent, squeezing all around his arms to get the blood flow going. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Leon shuddered as he tried to take control, leaning forward and clawing at his knees to ground himself, it wasn’t the time to be panicking. Count from 100 to down…

The fucking blood. Vera pleading with him like he’d never seen before. Sherry’s stifled weeping…

“Can you hear me? Can you see? How many fingers am I holding up?”

His trance was cut short when she shoved her fingers between him and where Vera’s stuff was lying around. “Three,” Leon said, out of it still, but mostly back in his body because of the stimulation Claire was providing. He winced. “Shit, my back…”

“You got fucking shot alright,” Claire took something out of her back pouch. “Here, some herbs… Should take care of that.”

Leon downed the plants in one go. “Sherry and Vera?”

She combed some hair away from her face that had gotten loose most likely because of the scuffle with Chief Irons, and wiped the corner of her chin with her knuckles. “Are you sure you’re—”

“I’m fine,” Leon said, curt, lips thinning and lines appearing on his brow with the strain on his back as he got up swiftly. “Tell me what happened.”

“He took them, Leon, I—” Claire stopped mid sentence, as if something got stuck in her windpipe, and swallowed it down, her hands flattening on her jeans as she wiped them. “I couldn’t stop him. He had me tied and I broke free too late. The gate closed before I could even go after them.”

“Outside?” Leon went up to the automated door to the garage and clasped the grids, squinting because of the light that directly shined in his eyes, somehow hoping it would remain unlocked after the man had apparently opened it, but things remained the same as they always were. They still needed a keycard for this. His hold on the bars tightened, the ice that was trapped in the metal bit into his fingers, and Leon let it hurt.

“I’m telling you we can’t let that asshole be. On paper, the police chief helping a girl get to her mom sounds great, and I’m sure it’ll be perfect in his hypothetical paperwork, but the way he held us at gunpoint — shooting you for no reason?” Getting shot while wearing a tactical bulletproof vest was the least of his worries. “You’re his employee and you were obeying his orders, there is no explanation for this! He told Vera it was her fault.”

Leon grimaced at that, shutting his eyes, this must have happened while he was out. The irrational anger to hit something bubbled up to the surface and he barely held it back.

Claire screamed out of frustration and kicked the gate once more, and then she was ranting again, without a coherent train of thought advancing to a certain destination, it was a word salad. “What the fuck? He kidnapped a child and instead of taking Vera, I don’t know, to jail? Like he was supposed to after arresting her or whatever, which is total bullshit by the way, — he literally hauled her over his shoulder like a fucking potato sack and abducted her, Leon. Technically I was arrested too, but he left me behind, all tied up at the mercy of zombies if I didn’t manage to break free. This isn’t something a cop would do! I mean, what could he want with a child? Family friend? Yeah, my ass! She was struggling to get away and he forcefully— god, and — and — ugh, he fully intended to kill you, Leon! There is something seriously wrong here. I don’t know about you, but I don’t care he’s the police chief, he clearly has some fucked up ulterior motives and I’ll make sure he’s gonna have what’s coming to him!”

What was coming to him, really?

Leon simply observed, deep in contemplation, he honestly didn’t know what came next. This was supposed to be about fighting for their lives from undead dangers without any moral complexity to their hunger, he’d finally come to make peace with the fact that he had to close his heart to every one of those things he put down being an innocent person before all this. He was too preoccupied with scraping through in these circumstances while shielding Claire and Vera, with the newest addition of a kid to their party, that the possibility of some people with nothing but blight in their hearts looking forward to taking advantage of this chaos and thriving in it to enact what they couldn’t when order was in place just hadn’t occurred to him.

Leon had adapted too fast and too eager, his mind translating this as having to survive during a natural disaster rather than something man-made, he’d ruled out any instance of becoming a victim of premeditated evil.

Sure, in a life or death situation, the self prioritized survival of their own above everything, he expected irrational selfishness to a degree. But this? This he knew better, intimately close than a knife on his carotid, a concentration of malice his soul had tasted so young in his life from the blood in his mouth that he recognized the flavor from the first sip. His back hurt. Whatever wound Chief Irons had inflicted on Vera must have been hurting even worse. And Sherry… God, he could only hope for the best and keep the worst out of his mind.

This is my fault. Why did I let this happen? First I failed Lt. Branagh and now—

“We’ll go get them, right?” Claire persisted. “Right? Don’t tell me you’re stuck on that fucker being your boss!”

“How can I not be?” Leon said, flabbergasted. “He’s supposed to be one of the good guys. I’m… I’m trying to make sense of everything, I don’t know what to do. You go to the police when shit right here happens, and what now when it’s my superior officer kidnapping people?”

Claire was accusatory, a biting flare to her tone. “What’s that supposed to mean? We can’t leave them behind!”

“That’s not what I’m saying—” All air was punched out of his lungs. “I don’t even understand what’s going on, I…”

“You’re getting cold feet? Now, out of all times? Leon, they need us!—”

“I know—”

“So what is the problem then?”

“When it’s a zombie you can shut it off,” Leon explained, the internal battle showing on his face, pitiful, weak, having entirely lost the reins of the situation, and it scared the daylights out of him for the very first time since he was dropped down into this hell. “You can think of them like some monsters from movies, right? And all of those creatures— you have to. You’ll go crazy if you don’t. We’ve faced people coming back from the dead and monsters from hell, I just didn’t think we’d have to defend ourselves from the living too. This is a person. A living, breathing person, who comes from authority, committing evil because he can right now in the midst of all this chaos. There’s nothing stopping him. No order anymore. I don’t know how to handle this, I wasn’t trained for this Claire.”

Claire scoffed in his face despite the understanding that settled in her relaxing body language first. “So what’s the verdict then? We just carry on?”

“No,” Leon tutted, exhaling, running a hand down his face. “No. He wants to hurt them, I saw it. I—” This was aggravating, there was only one choice to be made, but it was against all he had been taught, it entered vigilantism territory.

Claire was displeased with him, and he apologized to her with his eyes the best he could, but then, something on the ground distracted her, and she passed Leon to bend down and pick it up. “You’re thinking like a rule-following cop,” she said, holding up a pendant. He’d seen Sherry wear it before, and it caused him to look away. “What does Leon Kennedy want to do? What does he think is right?”

She threw him something else and he caught it at the last second.

Matilda.

The brutal, “Fuck,” he hissed between his teeth came from deep within his lungs as he gripped the gun until his fingers went bone-white, the leather glove making sound against the matte black handle of Matilda, he could only remember Vera with her terrified self at being handcuffed by him, the trust they’d built stone by stone crumbling because of that act alone right before his eyes.

He’d never been more conflicted on what was right and wrong, had never imagined the force he’d be signing his life on could foster villains before, considered everybody to be like him for the cause they would be serving together. When Vera spat camouflaged venom at Brian Irons’ name, he’d brushed it off as petty and refused to think much on it, all the things he’d read about him were nothing short of charitable and heroic.

Starry-eyed Officer Kennedy couldn’t be more wrong, and child Leon who had managed to survive where nobody was looking to protect him was right. He was always right, and he was identifying Chief Irons with his tormentors from the past, pulling on every single siren in Leon’s gut.

The man had called her Jane, and accused her of sending a rat (?) after him. She had pleaded with Leon to not believe him, that desperation had tasted like stress-sweat and metallic, not at all as mournful for Lt. Branagh. A deep-running, festered grudge was afoot here over something she’d done as a private investigator for sure, all the arrows were pointing at Vera going behind Chief Irons’ back and him being livid over whatever that was. The statistics of women falling victim to crimes of passion from men was something he couldn’t ignore even if he tried in this situation. He couldn’t just turn his back and let this play out.

And a child. His younger self was poking his sleeper of a bear paranoia about what the man could possibly want from Sherry, but his years at the academy immediately diagnosed it clinically clear. He was going to exchange her for something he wanted from Sherry’s mother. He was hasty, sloppy, impatient, could have acted harmless with them to get what he wanted, and Leon would have fallen for it the dutiful idiot that he was — but what happened instead was a shitshow, fear and irritation was pushing him. He was after something, and that gave him something lesser to worry about.

“They don’t have time Leon,” Claire said, taking a few steps back to the shallow stairway leading to some open door to the side of the garage gate. “I’m gonna go save them from that ACAB-proving son of a bitch and you’re welcome to come with me and I won’t blame you if you don’t want to, but if you try to stop me with hypocritical cop bullshit, my opinion of you will change irreversibly, got it?”

At the end of the day, Leon’s choice was obvious. His purpose was to help people, and if his superior officer had decided to expose himself to be eviler than the hell entrapping them to this nightmare, Leon’s duty was to put him to justice. That wasn’t exactly doable step-by-step at the moment, the city had fallen, so it was going to have to be the next best thing. Hostage rescue.

What came after that was entirely dependent on how cooperative the man was, but since incarceration was out of the question and there was basically nothing they could do about the quite literally collapsed justice system, Leon hoped it wouldn’t come to having to put him down.

He didn’t think he could hold it together any longer if he ended up killing a person.

“We should find another keycard first,” he said, the words were as faint as the puffs of mist his breathing created in the air before fading away, mixing with his prayers. Please stay safe. Please be safe. “We’ll get them back.”

“Yeah!” Claire’s whole face lit up, as angry as she was enthusiastic, shoulders and her back straightening in determined energy. “Damn right we will! Let’s go, he came from over there.”

Leon answered with a silent terse nod and holstered Matilda, and stopped Claire with a wave of his hand when it reminded him of something important. “I’m gonna take her stuff along with me.”

“Good thinking, Vera has a lot of loot in that bag. You’ll also have the magnum gun, now that it’s just the two of us, we’ll need any extra firepower we can get.”

“Ah, that’s—”

More practical than what he was thinking about.

“—right…” He completed, voice fizzling out as he shouldered the heavy backpack and rearranged his own inventory to work best with the new setup he had going on. Lightning Hawk went to his hip that was littered with grenades and flashbangs, shotgun to the very back, and Matilda ready in his hands. He couldn’t make eye contact with Claire the whole time.

Leon had attached a bit more sentimentality and meaning to not wanting to leave Vera’s backpack and weapons behind, and Claire’s approach left him somewhat embarrassed at himself. He couldn’t really voice that out loud though, and with his head down to hide his inappropriately flushed face, he followed her as they made their way to the unlocked north door just by the garage’s gate. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to have picked up on his rosy-cheeked silence.

A fallen barrel along with a car was blocking the way just to the right to another unlocked door signified by the green lighting above it, and if Vera were here, she would have informed them of where each door led to, the whole parking garage area was wild territory here and Leon was itching to scout first than to go headfirst into it, but he couldn’t waste any more time, each passing minute was crucial to Sherry and Vera’s wellbeing — first and foremost, inspecting the place the man had popped from was the priority.

They entered a concrete, dully gray walled hallway with a small wooden table at the end of it that continued to the left, which ended with an elevator similar to the one they had descended to the underground levels with, leaving Leon suspicious. The locked room just by the elevator had to be some sort of a control room for the elevator for it to have been made unavailable, getting his attention with the diamond shape on the metal door. The chief had either come from this room or the elevator, which would probably lead him to the blocked off wing of the station that they couldn’t access due to the shutters and the lack of the heart key.

This meant they had a way of going back to the station if the diamond key was around here.

Or. Or. He could just shoot the glass window to the control room. Leon, personally, had no patience or time to waste on going in circles about a hypothetical key that most likely wasn’t even on this level. They would have to get this done fast in case anything would be attracted by the noise.

“Get back,” he warned Claire, taking out Vera’s most prized Lightning Hawk out to one-shot this. The glass would surely be too thick for a normal handgun to bring it down in one go.

She quickly caught on what he intended to do. “I can use the submachine gun. Vera wouldn’t be too happy about us wasting the bullets she put her blood, sweat and tears into crafting.”

Leon made a flat noise at the back of his throat at that, stopping in his tracks that basically spelled. “Oh right,” above his head without putting it into words.

Lowering the magnum, “Alright,” he said, gesturing for her to take the stage. “Be careful.”

Claire glared at him softly, no vitriol behind it. “I know what I’m doing.”

He didn’t say anything back, hurrying to lock the door behind them just in case as the rapid firing and the ear-piercing shattering and glass raining down made him automatically flinch to crouch even though he wasn’t anywhere near it.

After all the noise died down, “I did it!” Claire called out to him, triumphant and out of breath.

“You okay?” Leon turned the corner. “You didn’t get glass on you or anything?”

“You worry too much, c’mon, help me up, I can’t hold on to the edges here.” Claire carefully stepped over the broken shards littered all over the floor. There really was no way of getting leverage from any part of the framing of the glass because of the spikes of shards that had remained after the assault of bullets just now, so Leon supported Claire to let her haul herself over to the other side. She had to knock over a fat pile of documents to get a better footing on the power control panel looking metal contraption. “I’ll look around, you stand there for now, we can get unexpected visitors.”

“Copy that,” he agreed, getting the hallway and the door he’d just locked to his twelve and giving his back to the wall with the table against it. He could hear the tinkling and crunching as Claire walked around on broken glass, but nothing from the other side of the door to the garage, no shuffling or zombies or anything throwing themselves on the door and banging on it to get in.

This area must be unbelievably big if nothing heard us, he thought.

When he was sure they wouldn’t be disturbed, Leon picked up the monthly magazine on top of the table, feeling weirded out why something like this was lying around in an isolated place like this.

Acid rose from his stomach when he noticed which page it was turned to, it was laying like that as if someone had flipped to that part specifically and had left it mid-reading. A photo of Chief Irons in uniform in the press room was spanning half the page. “Hey Claire, wanna know what I found?”

“What is it?”

“Check this out, the chief was featured in an article from a magazine. You don’t have to get over here, I’ll read it out loud.” He began upon the audible disgusted groan from Claire. “Who's the most feared, yet respected man in town? The answer should be obvious to any resident of our fair city. That's right! It's police chief Brian Irons: the man that scares the bejeezus out of criminals everywhere and stern father that loves every last one of us sinful citizens.”

“Oh my god, ew.”

“Chief Irons is known for his great charity work, including big contributions to the orphanage straight from his own pocket and the years and years spent as the director of it, support for abused women, art preservation, animal conservation — let us know if we've missed anything. Just when does our great hero sleep—-”

“Enough, I get the picture.” Leon could detect the repulsed shudder in her voice. “Someone must love sucking dick because none of that describes the piece of shit we just met. So not worth the money the author of this would have gotten in return. When does our great her sleep?— really? Really? More like, when is he working at all, because I’m positive he locks himself in his office and lets others do the work for him and pays off bootlickers like this idiot here to feed his ego.”

Leon of yesterday would have scoffed at that, trust fully placed in his boss he only knew from the acceptance letter written by him, and the plenty of articles he’d read prior to setting out for Raccoon City. Funny how things could change in a matter of minutes.

A blaring alarm resounded from the elevator thanks to something Claire had done, and he dropped the magazine he was looking at like some rotten food. She came out from the door right after, having unlocked it from the inside. “Our ride is ready.”

“Can’t wait,” Leon said flatly.

“Do you want to look around a bit more first or should we just—”

“This place is too huge for us to be done quickly. Isn’t it weird how all the noise we made didn’t attract anything?”

“Yeah, now that I think of it…”

“I don’t think it’s about us being lucky enough that none of those things made it down here, so it must be about how spread out this area is. Or that they’re locked up somehow, and spending time to find out is not a risk I’m willing to take when Vera and Sherry need us.” He pushed the button mounted to the right wall to the elevator, shifting on his feet anxiously and rolled his shoulders as he intently watched the cage door slid open. “Let’s get going.”

She was silent when they got inside and the gates closed, but asked, “Do you think Marvin’s turned?” as they started to ascend. “What do we do if he has?”

Leon flinched at that, he was desperately trying to focus on one thing at a time, and this question plunged him into the depths of guilt.

Albeit succumbing to silence on the matter, he knew why Marvin had chosen to be left behind, and it inspired admiration and respect in him the same way it did tragedy. This was one final sacrifice of a parent to spare his child from the trauma of a lifetime as much as it was to go out as a man and to not be seen as a monster, his one final act of defiance against what he couldn’t fight.

If Leon were to honor his wishes, he had to put a bullet in his brain the moment he came across him; but if he were to help Vera, he’d have to violate the dignity of a good man so she could have closure.

And he’d already chosen selfishly.

“I don’t know if I can put him down,” Leon admitted, in a moment of weakness. He didn’t even want to think about taking Vera back to her father in that state. Marvin’s wishes were clear as day, and he would stop her with all his strength for a chance to make up for failing the lieutenant. “I don’t think I have it in me.”

Claire’s silence was not of judgment, but unity — she thought the same too. Sure, they were desensitized and numb to horror by now, but it rendered their hearts more tender to tragedy. The skin may have formed calluses, yet it didn’t stretch to tear glands. “And if he’s still alive? How do we tell him his daughter was kidnapped? By the police chief, at that.”

That somehow sounded more complicated than the moral dilemma he was going through. Telling a dying man who had forced his daughter to abandon him for her own safety that she, in fact, was far from safe. Leon couldn’t imagine a passing more nightmarish than a flailing of helplessness, fear, and regret in a struggle to help someone precious but knowing death was devouring him alive. He couldn’t do that to Marvin.

Fuck, he hated this. Leon would rather go through a horde of zombies with limited ammo than do these mental and moral gymnastics.

“We have to lie to him,” Claire concluded, not waiting for Leon to answer, unable to take it anymore. “It’d be too cruel to tell him, he should at least have peace before… Before…”

There was no salvation in hollow mercies, but Leon would paint the lies a guiding white if it would lead Marvin to heaven. He owed his lieutenant that much.

Turns out, this was a personal shortcut to reach the parking garage faster, the balcony connecting the chief’s office to the elevator also belonged to him only too — an entire section in this station was designed for him and him only, and Leon didn’t know what to feel about it.

However, this criticism died down quickly when they got off the rain to the comfortably-heated mansion-room of a home office of his, one would think he actually lived here, that’s how luxuriously designed to his taste this office was. Mahogany adorned every corner, from the flooring to the cabinets, cupboards, and bookcases containing small art pieces and sculptures; as if to ignore the horrors outside of the room’s confines, a heavy musky and woody perfume fragrance stuck to the air, undisturbed in its elegance — and it dawned on him that nothing had stepped inside here except for Chief Irons, Claire and Leon.

It enraged the blond to no end that dozens of innocents were dying right under this man’s nose and he had willingly chosen to shut his door to their faces, let alone step outside of his little mancave here to care.

It simmered right below his skin, blistering his tongue from how close it was to erupting from him, and he made no sound of it, but one look from Claire to his anger-stained face having a staring contest with the taxidermied eagle on some table was enough for her to keep to her own examination around the room.

He had to breathe for a second and stop imagining his life, himself with this worthless garbage as a boss. Leon was in the wrong for automatically assuming he was someone to look up to just because of the hierarchy, he was so eager to expect the best of brothers and sisters in arms who were sharing the same occupation with him; and that naivete was a flaw, not a strength that he had prided himself in developing over time in to heal from what he had experienced.

For example, if Leon had maintained the status quo of a clueless graduate and was invited to his chief’s office for a pre-introduction lecture before tonight, he would have assumed the man just had other sources of income, side hustles, perhaps, or he simply came from old money, the taxidermied animals sure pointed at it — maybe he was into hunting rather than purchasing.

Leon wouldn’t question.

And now to think of it with a cooler head, all of this was beyond a mere police chief could hope to afford, the lone price of the giant oriental rug that laid underneath the opposing leather armchairs and the circular coffee table between them had to cover more than half his salary.

One quick look through his desk and the copy of emails sent to him by someone under the name W.B. proved the corruption and bribery, dollars to doughnuts.

Chilled to the marrow over the orders of killing anyone who got too close, Leon didn’t know he said, “G?” out loud until Claire made an inquiring sound. He raised the printed emails to wave at her, uncomfortable for other reasons than the cold sweat coating his back. “Found evidence I need for turning him in. He must have thought nobody could reach his office to leave these lying around in plain sight.”

“Turning him in.” Claire was about to laugh, closing the notebook she was flipping through with a thunk. “To whom? We’re on our own, Leon. He clearly knows this.”

“The station has a jail, I’ll take him there once we detain him. Surely this situation will die down soon, and it will get back to normal.” The annoyed, sharp undertone was not directed at Claire, but to himself. How embarrassing it was to have come to the conclusion right before his eyes, Leon had been too absorbed in self-pity to get it together when the lives of three people were depending on him, especially when one of them was being made to witness the loss of a parent, and a child was talking about her dead father like small talk over the grocery shop line — Leon had no right to think he had it hard.

Carefully stashing the documents in Vera’s backpack, he kept a stiff upper lip. “He will be taken to justice then.”

“You’re really convinced it’s only Raccoon?”

“If both of us were pretty uninformed and clueless coming in, I say it’s pretty contained,” Leon assured. “I don’t know how, but I have a feeling authorities will manage to keep it under control before it spreads. The farest it’s gotten has to be the gas station we met in. That’s something.”

“You’re really happy about that?”

“More like relieved.”

“I don’t know, Leon. There wasn’t any quarantine corridor around the city the last I checked.”

“Listen, we have to be optimistic, or what’s the point in staying alive? Why do we even fight? But we want to live, don’t we? I want to survive. I know you do, too. It’s not the primal instinct to fight for our lives that’s pushing us forward, it’s hope. Hope that somewhere out there is a safe place and we can get there, hope that Sherry and Vera are staying safe right now because that bastard wants something out of this — hope is all we have, but it’s no weaker than our weapons. If we abandon it right now, we’re not any more alive than the zombies out there.” Leon stopped to contemplate, blinking thrice in the short silence that hung heavier than the offending perfume of Irons sticking to the office’s walls. “In a way, to survive is to hope. For better days to come.”

“Jesus…” Claire was at a loss of words and Leon thought it could be the lack of any negative response left to say. “That was inspiring. Didn’t take you for a poet.”

And now Leon was shy. “I’m not a poet, I’m just someone who wants to help.”

Claire’s fragile smile dwindled at something he’d said, which in turn, got him worried. “Well, in regards to help, I’ve got none.” She threw the leather notebook in her hand dismissively on the coffee table, it made a slapping sound. “This is just a taxidermy log. I didn’t finish reading it, but I skimmed through. Nothing stuck out to me.”

“It’s still evidence,” Leon stated, buoyant, going over there and picking it back up regardless, wanting to see it for himself.

The format went with the name of the animal, the gender, how old it was at the time of capture, place of capture, and other statistics. Chief Irons had recorded everything down to the T.

“We don’t exactly have his license, so how else can we prove he is a taxidermist and connect it to the case of bribery?” He saw the one about the bear and his entire face fell to disbelief. “There are a couple of ways to prove this belongs to him, he can just deny it, y’know? But one of which is just to compare hand wri—”

Pig (Female, 22 years old)

Leon’s voice got snuffed out like a candle light as his breath hitched in a hiccup, jaw wavering a couple times, but not even a whistle could break through the gunshot of a trepidation that just numbed his brain.

Place of Capture: Raccoon City

There’s no way.

Length: 5'3" Weight: 110 lbs.

The further he read, the more icky and disgusting were the hot and cold chills that cascaded down his spine. He was ready to pray for this to not be the thing he thought it was.

The specimen's body is soft, sweet, and white all over. And it's all mine. Forever.

“Oh god,” he choked, beads of panic rolled down his temples and a couple black spots swam in his vision. Leon had never broken out in this amount of sweat in a matter of seconds before. The disgust had no room to coat his stomach, it didn’t even have time to — fear had kicked his abdominal cavity in like a reflex, his first thought was of Vera.

Claire’s uneasy question was coming from far away despite her standing right next to him. “What is it?”

And then it was anger that made his hands shake. He frantically flipped back, just to see any other red flags they might have missed, and grunted harshly when the pages wouldn’t slide under his fingers — until they didn’t anymore from the sweat his hands had started to generate.

I nearly came when I sliced its yellow belly open and its warm guts spilled out. I still smell of wild beast. This is the life.

What the fuck? What the actual fuck?

“We have to go,” Leon said, his ears starting to ring, pushing the notebook to Claire impatiently, not even waiting for her to finish reading the page that had hurled him to the edge of terror and disgust. “We have to get moving right fucking now.”

He was a paper and was being pulled from all four corners, and this was the ripping yank. There no longer was a more pressing matter to him than this — no worse horror he could conjure up.

And as usual, Leon was wrong.

Minutes later, they were standing before the corpse of Lieutenant Marvin Branagh with a hole in his skull and a gun in his loose, rigid hand; body in fetus position carefully snugged behind the goddess contraption like he wanted to hide.

To not be found.

As if it was the only place his last drops of strength could have afforded.

Even in his very last minutes he had thought of what his daughter would have to go through if she ever came back for him.

In Leon’s hand was the letter he left behind on the couch where they’d last seen him, it fluttered to the floor from his loose, shaking grip, and got soaked in the splotches of his blood. Claire put a hand over her mouth and turned away, sharp and loud breaths from her nose telltale signs of her holding back tears.

The man was the most peaceful and happy Leon had seen him.

Front hall of the orphanage had not changed one bit since the last time she was here a little over one decade ago, still the same wooden laminate floors and the colorful socializing tables, toys scattered everywhere, the receptionist’s table still the same mahogany to Irons’ nouveau riche taste, the smell of chalk and baby powder evident in the air. Even the scratches over the railing of the stairs from how much she and her friends liked to slide down had remained, and the repaired dent of the very first step from the accident where she had broken the whole wood in half was untouched.

Vera would be nostalgic to the point of tears if she wasn’t being held hostage with death definitely at the end of her journey right now. Her feet were duct taped to the legs of a chair, cuffed hands on her lap like she was in deep contemplation, and her torso also duct taped to the backrest of the said chair.

The only thing that’s changed was the “Doe-eyed Jane” exhibit covering the whole opposite wall that wasn’t there before. That was the reason Irons had her there like some audience in a theater, he was showing her how much he’d profited off of the legacy she chose to leave behind — that she hated.

The giant photo from top to bottom of her and the CEO of Umbrella Pharmaceuticals Oswell E. Spencer standing proud with one hand on her shoulder at some kind of formal award ceremony was right in the middle like some family portrait of royalty, and the trophies, her earlier creations in glass cages and countless articles of her at both sides of the photo creating a collage all seemed to belong to someone else. She couldn’t recognize the child as herself. Irons had shaped her entire personality to better fit the television back then, she barely remembered any of it in the first place.

Not that any of it mattered. Not anymore, at least.

This taunting would have worked one hour ago, when Leon was alive and she still had some fight left in her. A good, honest, brilliant young man was gone because of her — he was dutifully carrying out orders, hadn't even meant harm to anyone, and he would never, Leon didn't even have a mean bone in his body. A life was thrown away to prove a single point, that was the kind of person Brian Irons was. Someone who would lock a bunch of police officers that fully trusted in him and tell them they had to keep killing each other until one of them stood the victor to go free. Of course he'd shoot a promising rookie who was the glue holding their little survivors group together in a heartbeat to watch Vera crumble. It was the final Jenga piece to knock everything over.

And the world always took the best ones away, didn't it? Like you would pick the prettiest, most beautiful flowers out of a garden to be yours, Leon was gone with the wind just like that, along with her father. It was so unreal. She would do anything for all of this to be a dream, sit down and let all her teeth be ripped off her gums without making a peep by Irons if that’s what it took.

Vera thought she would have lost herself if the worst were to ever happen, thought she would end up crying blood from how she would yowl and scream like a wounded animal, that she’d lose herself from the pain, puke her insides out.

Yet, all loss left behind was nothingness, just as the word suggested. Vera wasn't even able to shed a single tear.

Someone had hit the lights off in her head, severing the connection her soul had to her body. She didn't know when she'd gotten that attached to the rookie cop to lose grip on the entire world after his death, and why this didn’t happen after accepting she’d lost Marvin for good. All emotions, all vitals in her body had simply flatlined after Leon.

Something stung and stung and trashed around somewhere trapped within, but Vera didn't feel it, not really. She was disconnected entirely, out of it the whole time, sanity having beaten down into a mush she couldn't shape back into the brain it used to be for a long while, and in that time period, Irons had apparently knocked her around like a violent kid playing with dolls before he'd given up due to what must have been the lack of reaction from her.

Which was an understatement, that's what she took out of it anyway, she was bound to this chair with a massive headache banging down on her other screaming injuries when her consciousness had fully emerged back to the surface.

In a fucked up turn of events, Vera had to thank her body for shutting down from all the emotional trauma because she sure wasn't a torture-trained soldier. Pain was crumpling her up and smoothing her over before beginning the cycle again right now, she could hardly remember how Irons had taken his anger out of her, but she sure felt she was some kind of violated playdough.

Her upper wisdom teeth were gone and still hadn't stopped bleeding, disgusting copper filling her mouth, she had to swallow over and over again so it wouldn't breach her lips. She was sure it was so bad at one point to have had spit a lot out, she'd found herself like a toddler that couldn't quite find her mouth with the spoon yet, heavy flows of blood had trickled down her chin to her neck and had ruined her pink top, making her look like she'd treated herself to some flesh like an undead. Her stomach was probably kicked, she could practically feel the purple, her lungs were being stabbed by her ribcage each time she inhaled.

Vera just hurt all over, and for the moment, it was her entire world, it didn’t leave room for other thoughts complicated in nature to occupy her mind, but the director's office opening still pierced through her haze, pattern recognition from the good old days springing back to life from its grave.

"Oh, you're awake? How wonderful." Proud as a playful, victorious predator playing with its food, his annoyingly slow footsteps stopped just behind the chair. "I'm glad everything seems to be in order."

Vera gulped down another mouthful of blood and spit. Her vision was swimming, blurry.

His hands came down on her shoulders, so fatherly it made her stomach churn, her body reacted to it the same way it would to an indigestible ingredient, she wanted to reel away from the touch. "I admit I've been a bit harsh, but you understand that, right? You have to understand, I mean, I cared about you, cared for you — treated you like a daughter, even. But the world outside of the orphanage has made you forget, obnoxious when I taught you better. What's there to not understand about why I'm doing this?"

Fucking hell, the roof her mouth was half the reason why the headache was about to split her skull open. Just nod your head. Just nod.

So Vera let him ramble on and have his moment, it wasn't as if she could do anything else, it was between provoking the bear or just waiting for it to strike in his own time.

"I've been nothing but supportive in the past, it was my personal objective that one of our unfortunate children would get to pursue their happiness and hobbies despite all the odds." His fingers thread through her wavy and blood-matted hair, pulling cruelly on the knots he found and jerking her head along. "I fed you, I clothed you, I prepared you for events, I've bought anything you could have ever wanted for your success. And even when you threw away your star spangled life and failed everybody around you to fucking play detective, I connected you to my station. I've given you everything. And what do I get in return?"

His hand fisted a handful of hair, bent her head back until it couldn't, and the bones holding her neck together constricted her breathing. This way, he could directly look her in the eye, but she couldn't — white stars were flying and bouncing around her field of vision, fresh blood swelled and bubbled down her locks from them wound his revolver had struck her in the parking garage. "The girl I dedicated my time and love to digging the ground under me like a fucking rat. I think I'm justified in my anger, wouldn't you say so? I've raised a turncoat."

It was at the tip of her tongue. He’d barely be in the orphanage anyway, even though her memory wasn’t the best, she knew it to be true, yet he took credit for everything, acted like he was her parent before Marvin, and that was the flame that lit up the life within her.

Irons saw that in her, interpreted it as success in bringing Vera to where he wanted, psychologically. He didn’t even hide the satisfaction. "I thought a walk down the memory lane would help. Look at that. I made that. I made all of that happen, how hard do you think I worked so that the people wouldn’t be apprehensive the moment they saw you? Even that posh fucker from the eighteenth century that probably gets his ass wiped by his servants flew to the states to see you because I made you."

Vera bit her tongue as he released her hair. She would gladly give him Doe-eyed Jane. It wasn’t her. It was true that he’d created, no, crafted that perfect little wonder child. All to his own benefit.

The only thing she couldn’t let go from Jane was the jabs that he made at her appearance, he constantly reminded her that nobody was able to look beyond it to take her real talent into consideration at first — insinuated that she deserved that until he got his way with her attitude, too. Jane had to be an angel to at least be accepted, nothing below that was tolerable for him.

He wanted so badly for Jane to be something else, it showed in the most harmless of ways: how he was peculiar about her makeup backstage to appear light-skinned and calling it normal procedure, for example. He’d never liked her for some kind of unknown reason she’d never figured out before being taken away by Marvin. The commentary about her from news anchors on TV mostly going, “She’s brilliant for a Middle Eastern child, isn’t she? I was surprised how sweet and intelligent she is,” had become more uncomfortable and less of something to celebrate over the years. Suddenly it was weird that she had been asked “Where are you really from?” in interviews one too many times for other reasons than the interviewer not knowing she was an orphan, the laughter when she would keep answering “Raccoon City” more sinister.

“Such a disappointment you’ve turned out to be. There wasn’t any news channel left in this country that didn’t feature you, the literal president of this country knew about you, and from that to having a basement apartment with nothing to your name? You’re that good at your work, huh? So good you fucking gave away your identity to a journalist who would obviously fucking snitch. Stupid bitch. Some genius you are.” The hatred hidden behind weaponized reasoning seeped into her skin, the gaze sizing her up from head to toe brought the contents of her stomach up her throat. “Should’ve believed my gut in the first place.”

He was going on and on about the same subject to hurt her, thinking he got the armored dragon right from her vulnerable soft belly, when she couldn’t care less.

“...didn’t hav’ to kill ‘im,” she croaked, liquid bubbling at the back of her throat. It surprised her that the first thought her body desired to voice was of Leon.

“Are you a shy elementary school girl? Raise your fucking voice.”

The words were a gurgle. “You didn’t. Have to kill him.”

“The rookie? Come on, I didn’t kill him, it was you.” Of course he wouldn’t give her a straight answer. There wasn’t one in the first place. He’d done it because he simply wanted to. “I have to applaud you there, he had it coming. You know what I hate the most? Goody-two-shoeses yammering on about justice but going against me, their own superior, over and over again — it’s horse shit. I point at where justice is, so they just have to listen. But do they? No. They have to be heroes. You know what happens to heroes? You just have to take a look at Greek mythology…” He snorted, degrading. “Not that you would know. You’d rather play with oil than read something once in your life.”

Leon had died for this. The sweetest, kindest boy she’d ever met. His life had been cut short just because Irons was in the mood for it.

Her blood boiled to a lava that could melt her skin right off, it brought her back to the cruel, pitiless hands of life.

“And your sorry excuse of a father encouraged it,” he said, delighted. “Visionless, both of you. Absolutely uncultured, uneducated… Hah. I should have blown him up like the others when I had the chance. Maybe I could have made you watch him scramble to save his friends.”

Something shifted in her, lit the spark of a forest fire, the hurt licked at her insides but she didn’t make a sound, just focused her unblinking gaze at one of her pictures on the wall in deep, consuming resentment, fashioning a gravestone for him at the back of her mind.

“Not even a little bit bothered by that?” A full-blown belly laugh ricocheted off the walls. “Poor Branagh. I don’t know what to be sad about. A daughter who doesn’t care about him the slightest, or a daughter who won’t be angry for her father.”

He and men like him thought of rage as an unfit clothing on women, claiming it for themselves, and it had to be nothing short of how they expressed it to be taken seriously. From that point of view, anger in women didn’t quite translate well, it either flowed in endless tears like the red shade of sadness, or simple hysteria so that they would make fun of it to invalidate.

Rage was so cold it burned. It was calculating. Lethal quiet.

Vera didn’t look angry, she was simply staring.

The way he took her father’s name in his mouth and chewed it around like it was molded food — she couldn’t stand that. This bird caca baboon could say anything about her and Vera wouldn’t bat an eye, she knew the truth, none of the guilt-tripping manipulation tactics could work on her ever, but her dad? Vera wanted to rip his tongue off for that before he eventually took her out of this world, just for that she wanted to live a bit longer and look for an opportunity to teach him a lesson about fuck around and find out.

Everything had gone to shit anyway, nothing was left anymore — nothing left to hold her back.

No time to die, Leon reminded her, as if he was right beside her.

No time to die for Vera until she made sure Irons got what he deserved. They were in hell. It was time he received his punishment.

“Sülalesini siktiğim göt lalesi bir susmadı ya. Anladık tamam amına koyayım, villain konuşması yan çarı işte. Kafam şişti dır dır dır, öff.” (1)

“What?” That got him to stop. If cursing in Turkish was going to agitate him so much that he’d step in front of her and glare her right in the eye, Vera would have done it right from the start. “This is the United States of America, girl, none of that Arabian bullshit. Speak English.”

“Orospu çocuğu!” She lurched forward with all her might, eyes maniacally wide open. “Yok, orospuya hakaret olur ya bir dakika.” Oh, how cathartic and therapeutic it was, nothing topped how creative you could be when cursing in Turkish. “Götünün suyunu emen minderinin fabrikasının müdürünü kulağından sikeyim lan amına bacağımı sokup yarım vole attığımın genetik artığı!” (2)

He backhanded her across the face for that, her head snapping to the right and neck popping from the force of the impact, she’d spit out the blood in her mouth in the process too, but all she did was laugh a little too much with a cackle to it like someone several bricks shy of a full road, her exposed teeth dark pink with spit full in view.

“Crazy bitch,” he recoiled back, visibly appalled by Vera. That’s right. There was a saying in Turkish about this. When a madman sees another, he hides his own weapon could be one translation of it. If her crazy topped Irons’, he’d be thrown off for sure, scared even. He was already breaking.

And for some reason, he checked the clock on his wrist. “I’m not done with you. Just you wait, I’ll wring every little drop of that sass out of you.”

Interesting, she thought. “Why not now? Going somewhere?”

“None of your—”

“Or waiting for someone?”

He caught her by the chin, squeezing so hard his nails left crescent marks on her cheeks. “I’d worry about myself if I were you. I still haven’t finished thanking you for Bertolucci.”

She smiled up at him, wanting so badly to spit all the blood in her mouth in his face, but that momentary anger release would have consequences that’d get in the way of her newly budding plans. So Vera abstained, and it took all of her willpower to do so, all limbs ramrod straight until he was back in his office, a knife-sharp scream of fury pressing up at her vocal cords. The classical music that had begun right after wouldn’t be enough to cover it if she wasn’t able to swallow it down, feeling like a cactus was going down her esophagus.

Vera wasn’t left alone with her thoughts for long, however. The pitter-patter of light steps made her look up to the second floor, thinking she was having hallucinative flashbacks to her childhood, but it was Sherry who appeared at the mouth of the stairwell.

She’d forgotten about the little girl.

The duct tape squeezed her torso painfully with her big inhale of surprise. She still thought she was seeing things until the terrified blonde stopped right in front of her and knocked some sense into her with a trembling hug.

Even though any contact with her body hurt and the little girl was squeezing her too much, Vera could only sigh in pity. She must have been above them all along, witnessing the slap and everything before it. “Oh, Sherry…”

“I’m sorry,” the girl sniffled, taking a few steps back, her widened, glistening, watery eyes all the more blue with the reddish tint because of crying. She didn’t know where to put her hands, and the amount of blood she saw was obviously scaring her. But not a strand of hair was out of place, not one crease in her outfit. She was untouched, thank goodness. It was easy to figure out the man had something he wanted from her, or her parents—“Are you okay? He hurt you so much, I’m so sorry.”

Vera cut her train of thought short at that. Sherry had nothing to apologize for. But the brunette knew this child had to keep apologizing a lot in her life to make things better, mostly for the things out of her control or weren’t her fault at all.

“I’m alright honey, better now that I see you’re okay too.” Her mind was racing, not able to hold on to one single coherent thought — if Leon was here, he’d be able to console the kid much better than she could. “He shouldn’t see you roaming around. How did you even sneak out?”

“I found scissors and—”

“What?” Excitement was a balloon in the pit of her stomach. “Do you still have the scissors?”

“Yeah!” Sherry took it out of her pocket, catching on quickly. “I can cut you free!”

Something about not running with scissors.

Vera’s smile could split her head open, she couldn’t stop it even though she was aware it could be disturbing for Sherry. “Attagirl,” she said, keeping an ear on the classical music. “Let’s do it.”

The holdback was that Sherry’s hands were shaking as she clamped the blades in the open curving space between where her back met the chair. When she managed to cut through the tape wrapping around Vera’s arms and ribs, the young woman gently took the scissors from the girl, the handcuffs around her wrists jingling, and squeezed her hands, grateful. “Thank you so much Sherry, you saved me, I can take it from here.” The girl was so fragile, so hesitant. Vera had to keep insisting. “I would have had to waste so much time ripping it with my fingernails if it weren’t for you.”

“I wish I could help more.”

Ripping the tape from her torso in one layer and finally being able to lean down to work on her legs, she said, “Trust me, you’ve been the best help I could have had here.”

Standing up proved to be harder than she initially thought, pain washing over her like a waterfall, and Sherry had to support her from the waist to keep Vera from falling. Her head had started to pound with a different kind of hurt, she was careful not to prod the pudding-soft flesh her ripped teeth had left behind their place, but the accidental brush from her stagger had made her see white for a few seconds, only capable of taking hollow, tiny breaths.

Calm it, she told herself. Calm it down, easy.

Sherry’s worry was drenching her voice. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

Her hands found the kid’s head, careful so the handcuffs wouldn’t scrape her, and pet her as gently as she could, not able to answer her verbally at first.

“Vera?”

“I’m good, I’m good.” She straightened, mentally trying to assess the damage done. I can do this. “It’s fine, Sherry. I just need a moment.”

“I’ll look out for you!”

Vera pursed her lips to stop a smile. “Thank you for that.” But Irons could be back any second, and the probability had to be the priority even when she knew he’d gone away for a reason. A lot of possibilities came to mind, but she really couldn’t afford stopping to weigh every single one. It wasn’t just her and Irons anymore, she had Sherry to worry about, Leon and Marvin would never forgive her if she let something happen to this child.

Once the ground wasn’t wobbly under her feet, and the breathing stopped hurting as much, she removed her cuffed hands from Sherry’s hair and made her look at her. “But I need you to hide, okay, honey? Do you see that table over there?”

She meant the receptionist’s desk resting crooked against the wall just before the Doe-Eyed Jane exhibition, creating a cavity Sherry could easily drop down into.

“Yeah.”

“You can come out when I say sesame. Anything besides that, you continue hiding and ignore me if you ever hear me say come out.”

“Okay, got it!” She hesitated. “What will you be doing?”

“I’ve got a monster to fell.”

For Leon.

Vera's Turkish cursing very poorly translated to English below:

"asshat i'll fuck your entire bloodline, stfu omg. ok we get it, walmart villain monologue or whatever, blah blah blah ffs my head's gonna explode" (1)

"Son of a bitch" "No, it'd be an insult to bitches. I'll fuck the director of the company that makes the chair pillows that your ass sweat soaks right in the ear, you genetic leftover - i'll put my entire leg in your cunt and throw a half volley" (2)

tagging: @ocappreciationtag

#leon kennedy x oc #leon s kennedy x oc #leon s. kennedy x oc #leon kennedy #resident evil oc #story: gravedigger #era: no time to die #shai's writings #the intro is inspired by a poem by dorianne laux #this is SO LATE god #i dont like this chapter in the slightest hhhh #oc: vera kaplan

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