Chapter Text
‘What am I doing with my life?’
Leon thinks to himself as he walks down a cold and lifeless alleyway.
The thought lingers in his head longer than he should let it.
‘What's wrong with me? Why can’t I connect with others?’
Leon, glances up, his dull eyes mulling over the figures that pass by him. They move past him aimlessly, with no purpose-- their footsteps uneven as they drag their feet along. Their faces always stay the same— slack, emotionless, and no hint of recognition.
Leon likes to watch them and imagine what they could have possibly been like before they were like this. He looks over at a woman who bumps into his shoulder. A ripped white blouse paired with a blood stained pencil skirt. Leon pictures her as a poised business woman, an air of professionalism following her. But now, the only thing that follows her is the stench of decay.
He keeps walking. The others don’t look at him. At least not in a way that shows there is something behind their eyes. Leon knows he doesn’t need to breathe, but he still lets out a deep sigh anyways.
Now, Leon knows he doesn’t look as bad as half of the others walking around. He’s noticed that before. Not because he’s self obsessed, but from simple observation. His skin is pale, cheeks sunken in slightly, with dark circles deep under his eyes that make his pale eyes stand out. His face has no missing flesh or exposed bone, and no decay showing on his skin.
He looks down at a puddle that covers the ground, peering into his own eyes.
His reflection looks back at him.
‘Oh, that's right. I’m dead’. He reminds himself. Leon doesn’t panic when he remembers. Just something obvious he somehow keeps forgetting.
Leon doesn’t know how long he’s been dead for. Weeks? Months? Years? He doesn’t even know how he died or when. He barely even remembers his name.
‘L’ He tells himself, focusing on the letter like it’s an anchor. ‘L for Leon’. He makes an extra effort to remember his own name. He doesn’t know why, but he does.
Leon knows many things. Well, enough things.
He knows his name. He knows what this place is called. Raccoon City.
The words are everywhere: Plastered on the newspapers littered around the streets. He’s read them before too. Read the newspaper headlines and the columns that talked about things in this city before the outbreak happened. Those ones are harder to find. Found in places that aren’t too exposed to the weather or that were destroyed when the chaos hit.
The ones that lay at his feet aren't like that. ‘EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY’ is printed in bold across the headline.
He doesn’t know what the outbreak was like. Doesn’t remember what caused him to be like this.
But he remembers the name. It sticks. Just like the police station.
He continues his walk down the alleyway into an open street, the building coming into view. The words, Raccoon City Police Department written above the iron gate that leads to the courtyard. When Leon woke up, well, dead-- he woke up here. Inside those walls. He looks down briefly, taking in the uniform he still wears. It’s dirty now, stained with mud and blood. Fits him looser than it probably did when he first wore it. Parts of it torn, missing fabric, but just enough to tell him what he needs to know.
He was a police officer.
He doesn’t remember why or how he became one but the evidence is stitched into the fabric worn against his chest.
Leon walks through the gates of the police station, remembering to close them again to keep those pesty boney’s out. They don’t bother him much but they’re not fun to look at and make him uncomfortable. Their gaunt figures, practically thinned down to the bone, face only a skull with tight leathery skin pulled thin. They’ll eat just about anything with a heartbeat. Well, Leon does too, but he at least tries not to. He’s conflicted about that part about being dead.
If a corpse doesn’t eat anything living, they’ll eventually become a boney—and Leon does not want to be one of them. Completely devoid of their humanity, any previous sense of self disregarded and consumed by their hunger for flesh.
Leon’s seen someone turn into one of them before. It kinda traumatized him, watching them fight off the hunger for as long as they could, only for it to end in them tearing off their own decayed face. It wasn’t that long ago he watched that happen. He can’t let himself get to that point of hunger. He won’t.
As Leon finishes closing the gate, he makes his way towards the front doors of the building. Inside he's greeted with the familiar main hall and goddess statue that stands proud in the middle of the massive room. RPD does not have many corpses that roam its halls anymore, Leon’s not sure why, but he does like the silence most days.
Those days Leon spends his time wandering the many halls and rooms of RPD. During his time here he has encountered multiple statues, rooms that have no purpose in a police station, and a clock tower. Not to mention the handful of type writers he’s found in random rooms. When he’s really bored, he pretends to type on them. As well as he can with fingers that are well past the stage of rigor mortis.
He’d found a notebook with a missing page during his early time exploring RPD. He had enough mental cognition to figure out that the symbols smudged onto the paper belonged to some of the statues that he had found. Leon spent hours one day staring at a statue shaped as a lion, hoping that a miracle would strike and he’d put the pieces together. Between the notebook and the statue, that miracle still hasn’t arrived for him.
Leon’s favorite room is the west office. He likes this room the most because it has his name. Painted on a banner that hangs from the ceiling, the words “Welcome Leon” serve as his constant reminder that his life existed outside of being dead.
Leon also likes to collect things. Each day he finds something new to bring back to the west office and add to his collection. Most things Leon collects are notes. Notes from other officers left around the station before the outbreak happened, from a time when the halls were lively and filled with chatter. There are notes that give Leon context into who he might’ve been before he turned. Clues into what other people thought about him.
Leon sits himself down at the desk he assumes was supposed to be his, a small name plate engraved with his name into it sits on top. He opens the drawer he likes to stash away all his favorite notes he likes to read over and over again.
“Leon S. Kennedy, we're putting you on a very special case for your first assignment.
Your mission is...to unlock your desk! The key to your success is in the initials of our first names. Input the letters in order of our desks. There are 2 locks–1 on each side of your desk. Make sure you get them both.
Basically, your first task is to remember your fellow officers' names, but you figured that much out, right?
Good luck, Leon.
By the way, it might take a little work to get Scott to give you a straight answer.
Lieutenant Branagh”
Leon stares at the piece of paper. He wishes he could remember solving this. How he talked to his other officers and could remember their faces. He can almost imagine it. His life if he hadn’t died. He’d be walking these halls smiling and waving at his coworkers, remembering everyone's names. But now, no one has a name. No one can remember their own names. Forgotten, along with any anniversaries or birthdays.
But Leon tries to remember each and every name he reads in the notes he finds scattered in RPD. He remembers their names not for himself, but for those who can’t remember them. Among the many names that Leon practices remembering, there is one that he is glad he found. The name of his almost-friend- the only other person that roams RPD.
Leon’s almost friend, Marvin, is his name. He was a police officer also. The lieutenant badge suggests an officer of higher rank than what Leon was. Their friendship is great, it’s easy. He lingers in the same rooms as him, sitting in silence with another body- another person. He is the only one Leon really feels connected to. Seriously. They occasionally grunt and stare awkwardly and make almost-conversations with each other!
Leon doubts he’d have a lot in common with Marvin outside of both being dead. But now, they both share one thing extremely in common.
Hunger.
The craving sits between them, not spoken out loud in words, but understood as a feeling. A pull that neither of them can ignore for more than a few days at a time.
Leon hates it- hates what it makes him do. Who- what it makes him turn into.
But he knows what happens if he doesn’t give in. He’s seen first hand what happens to those who resist for too long.
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Time passes by weird when you’re a walking corpse. It’s different now, it’s still. Leon marks it anyways. When he decides to walk out into the main hall of RPD again, the light from outside filters through the broken windows and has shifted enough to suggest that it is around noon the next day.
Marvin is already standing in the room when Leon joins his presence. A low grunt pulls Leon’s attention away from his own thoughts.
“Hungry” The word comes out roughly, barely sounded out as black drool leaves Marvin’s mouth.
Leon sighs, heavily.
“Yeah”, he exhales back in response, more intact than Marvin. Then, after a pause he points back towards the main door, “City.”
That word sparks something in Marvin, his posture straightening slightly as he shifts immediately.
They’re a couple blocks down from the station when it hits their nostrils.
The scent.
Leon’s eyes dilate and mouth instinctively salivating before he even fully processes it. They continue moving without speaking, drawn towards the scent. The trail leads them into an old building. The windows boarded up and broken, the door slightly ajar. Leon’s gaze drifts inside to the shelves lined with scattered supplies. Medicine. Bottles. Pills.
Pharmacy, Leon recognizes absent mindly.
The smell is stronger, fresher, more alive inside.
A sudden bang echoes from somewhere deeper inside. Leon tilts his head slightly as he listens more intently. Another sound echoes. Movement.
He slowly and deliberately makes his way towards a closed door at the back of the shop. Inside a man is crouched low, digging through a cupboard, unaware of Leon’s presence behind him. The man is muttering something to himself under his breath, shifting items around in hurried, erratic movements.
Leon feels the pull. The instinctual need to attack and consume. His jaw tightens as he attempts to restrain the feeling.
He should leave. He’s done it before- ignored the pull and forced himself back to the station. But Marvin steps into the room behind him, louder. The man freezes for half a second before turning around.
“Don't get mad-” His voice cuts off. “Shit!”
He scrambles to his feet, hands reaching for his gun on the counter above him. Before he even is aware of what he’s doing, Leon moves. Slamming him into the man and driving him to the ground. The impact of his back hitting the ground punches the air out of the man’s lungs in a sharp panicked gasp.
Leon’s grip on the man’s shoulders is tight and heavy, keeping him pinned down.
“I’m… Sorry..” Leon attempts to say outloud, the guilt already eating at him.
The man is thrashing below him, struggling to push him off. His hand grips at Leon’s police uniform, grasping at anything that might give him leverage.
“Get off-!”
Leon forces him down again, harder this time. The man’s head cracks against the ground, a sharp sound, too loud.
He hates it. The violence. The resistance. Watching them fight. Watching them struggle for what little life they have left, only for it to end with them becoming nothing more than Leon’s meal for the coming days. He grabs the man’s shoulders and repeatedly shoves them into the ground.
The man is yelling now, a name he can't recognize, loudly. Panicking as his will to live can’t outweigh the fight left inside him. That’s not good. Leon knows what will happen if he keeps screaming.
More will come, more like Leon. He has to stop this, now.
Leon leans down, movement more forceful now, as he brings his teeth to the man's neck and rips into the flesh there. Blood gushes from the wound. Leon bites again. Harder this time. He tears a piece of his flesh out, swallowing it. He loses himself in the action.
Marvins moves on the ground next to Leon, biting into the man’s arm and eating at his flesh. Leon can feel tears pooling in the corner of his eyes as he continues to gouge into the man’s neck.
The screaming turns into pleading, voice weaker and weaker with each syllable. The man’s breathing grows erratic, chest heaving as his body works in overtime to take in the air that's being stolen from his lungs as blood fills his mouth. Soon the words stop as they die in his throat along with him.
Leon grabs the man’s head and smashes it into the ground over and over. Cracking open his skull to reveal his brain. The least Leon can do is eat the man’s brain.
If he can’t save him from the fate of being eaten alive, he can at least save him from the fate of doing the same to others.
So he grabs some of the brain matter on the ground and puts it in his mouth.
The moment Leon consumes his brain, his world fractures. One second he’s hovering over a dead body in the stillness of the pharmacy, and next he’s standing somewhere incredibly bright. The contrast is so sudden it makes his head throb. He feels the warmth of the sun against his skin, so overwhelming- followed by the sound of laughter. The sound is clear, echoing around the space surrounding Leon.
The scene settles around him, grass stretching on, rolling into hills. A playground beneath the wide open sky, sunlight reflecting off the metal. Shadows follow children running around in uneven, excited bursts of energy. Voices overlapping with each other, so chaotic-- so alive.
He hasn’t felt warmth in so long, a feeling stolen from him like his own memories. He feels it deep in his chest, somewhere that hasn’t stirred before. He feels it enough that it makes him hesitate, making him aware of just how long it has been.
And then he sees her.
A small girl on a swingset waving at him, her hand curling loosely around the chain of the swing. She belongs here in a way that makes everything around her fall into place. Her posture is relaxed, natural, unguarded- as she smiles. It’s not forced or empty, it’s bright and full. It catches Leon off guard. Not because of what she’s doing, but because of the warmth that fills his chest.
The memory doesn’t last long. It pulls thin, moving him without even asking. It shifts into something new before he can fully even process the last one. The playground dissolves into a classroom, the scrape of chairs and the quiet hum of voices. She’s sitting next to him now, close enough that their shoulders are touching. She leans toward him slightly, arm pointing at something on a sheet of paper in front of him. She throws her head back into an easy laugh. He doesn’t even know what's on the paper in front of him or the context but it doesn’t matter. The sound of her laughter fills the empty space inside Leon where his heart should be beating.
Time shifts again, the scene dissolving around him. The only constant is her. Her again and again- all in different stages and places. Her smile, her presence, her touch-- all feel familiar in a way that Leon can’t point his finger at.
The final memory settles, a meadow opening up below him. Wind gently blowing through the grass and through her hair. She’s sitting next to him on a blanket and there's something in the way she’s looking at him. He can feel the nonexistent pulse in his heartbeat as blood rushes to his cheeks in this memory. He likes this girl, he realizes. Maybe more than likes. The way she smiles effortlessly, her eyes crinkling at the corner when she laughs. Leon feels drawn to her.
But this is not Leon’s memory. He doesn’t know her.
The sunlight vanishes along with the warmth it brought, dragging Leon back into the dim lifeless Pharmacy from before. But the feeling lingers and so does the tingling in his cheeks.
Leon looks down at his hands. Blood and brain matter harshly contrast the pale skin of his fingers. Marvin’s presence hasn’t shifted, still content eating away at the man’s arm. Leon’s never had memories that intensely storm his mind while eating someone’s brain before. It hazes his mind as he moves to grab the excess brain matter that has spilt onto the floor. He places it inside his pocket and makes the effort to wipe his hands on his uniform.
The hunger inside him has dulled turned into something manageable for now, but it leaves something else- something harder to name.
He’s still feeling the aftershocks of the intensity of the memories when a crash echoes into the back room. Leon stills, gaze sharp as he hears more noises reverberating from the front of the store. The sound of glass shattering and something heavy hitting something- followed by panicked shouting. Then there's the sound of gunfire. Humans- and from the sound of it, more than one.
Leon raises himself from the ground slowly, quieting his movements as he steps back into the main area of the pharmacy. The scene of chaos unveils in front of him. Corpses have already gathered here, no doubt drawn in by the screams of the man Leon had just killed. They move with no finesse or coordination, just pure instinct.
He can see two survivors fighting back, desperate and loud. One of them- a girl wearing a red leather jacket, fires a shotgun, the blast from the barrel ricocheting around the room as the bullet tears through the head of a corpse that was too close to her. The blast from the shotgun sends the now headless corpse back into the ground, but it doesn’t stop the others from closing in.
Leon stares at her for a moment. He can see the fire behind her eyes, the will to live as she pours multiple rounds of shotgun shells at the others in front of her. He looks away.
He doesn’t want to be here for this. Doesn’t want to kill any more humans than he already has. So he keeps his footsteps as quiet as possible as he shuffles his way along the edge of the store.
That’s when the other survivor goes down. Dragged to the floor, unable to regain his footing as multiple corpses overpower him at once. He screams, loud and desperate. The corpses tear into him without any of the hesitation Leon has shown. He hopes Marvin continues to eat at the man in the other room; stays out of this fight.
He turns the corner around one of the aisles--
That’s when he sees her.
Crouched low underneath the shelving, pressed inside of it like she’s trying to make herself invisible. Her hands tremble against the floor. Leon’s eyes follow her gaze to a gun on the floor-- at the feet of three other corpses. She hasn’t noticed him yet.
He looks at her. Really looks at her. The recognition isn’t immediate, it’s a small flicker of something he can’t place, something just out of reach. He tilts his head, narrowing his gaze as he studies her face more intently.
Then it hits him. The feeling fills his body before the memory does. A feeling that burns in his chest, something left behind from what he had just consumed moments ago.
He knows her. Knows the curve of her lips. The way her eyes move. Hell, even the way she breathes- he recognizes it.
Not from his own life. Not from memories.He recognizes you.