Echo

Despite knowing she's inside the collective consciousness of the Mold, it still takes her a moment to place the face to someone she knows. Well, someone she knows of. It's hard, what with the sleek steel plates covering the bottom half of his face, preventing him from talking.

But the light brown, almost blond hair and tired yet still bright blue eyes ties it all together.

This is the man her uncle has a single photo of, tucked away in his wallet. A photo where the two are smiling happily, cheeks red with merriment and drinks in their hands, leaning against each other like the trust they have is worth something.

Leon S. Kennedy.

That's the name written on the back of that photo, the one Rosemary Winters-Redfield had snuck a peek at.

It's strange. Michael talks to her, but can't be seen. Leon is here in body, but can't speak.

And she can see why her uncle loves this man because damn, was that a high kick where he did the splits?!

Even at the end of her adventure, learning that Michael was in fact the spirit of her father, Ethan, she still wishes to reunite the two men who are absolutely pining after each other.

(With her new acceptance of her powers, it might just be possible.)

She blinks awake slowly, reality swimming before her eyes and settling back to where it’s supposed to be.

Almost in a daze, she steps onto a bus, scrounging in her pocket for a few bills—the allowance money Chris had given her earlier this morning—so she can pay the driver. She gets off when her stop comes, stepping towards the recognizable wrought iron gates of the cemetery her family is buried in. Rose can see the worn leather jacket that’s usually thrown over a chair in their apartment up ahead, so familiar in the way it stretches over broad shoulders that could still carry her.

She carefully steps closer to her uncle, making sure not to disturb him. Yet, he hears her anyway. He’s always been hypervigilant. “Comes from my old job,” he’d once told her when she had first learned what hypervigilant meant.

“They were both good people, most of the time at least,” comes the murmur of Uncle Chris’s baritone. “Ethan, I’ve told you about your dad many times. But I haven’t said much about your Uncle Leon, have I?”

She mutters a small negative. He chuckles wetly, and she doesn’t have to see his face to know that his eyes are already overflowing with tears.

“Leon was… everything to me. If I fell, I knew he would be there to hold the line until I got back up. He was like this snarky, sarcastic pain in the ass, made just to fight at my side. Even when I… When I couldn’t remember who I was, who anyone was, my body recognized him right away.”

Rose sets a hand gingerly on his shoulder.

“I think you would’ve liked him…”

She doesn’t tell him that she’s already met the man.

Chris gives a discreet sniffle before wiping his face with a sleeve. He stands and turns, his eyes misty yet his smile content.

“C’mon, Little Rose. Let’s go home.”

The man reaches out his large hand, offering it just as he always did. And Rose realizes something. Her Uncle Chris has always given his everything to others. He gave his all to his jobs, gave his entire heart to a man who couldn’t love him back. There's been so many times that he’s been burned. And yet… Here he is, still giving his all to take care of Rose, to go on so she can have a good life.

Chris trembles as he clutches his friend’s child to his chest. Dead friend’s child. Ethan Winters was his best civilian friend, the one who could commiserate with him about work yet didn’t remind him that he was supposed to be a Captain, supposed to have his life put together.

Honestly, most days he didn’t. His life was never the same after Wesker sent the Raccoon City STARS team to the Arklay Mountains, to the Spencer Mansion. It had fallen apart there, and no amount of whatever he tried to use for glue would piece it back together again.

The only semblance of normal he had was that one time he and– and Leon sat down, bared their hearts to each other, even if they were both drunk as fuck.

Rose’s gurgling shocks his mind back to the present, and he’s instantly aware of the tears on his cheeks.

His watery eyes lock onto the file laying in front of him. It’s unassuming, almost innocent in the way the manila cardstock of the folder hugs the white paper inside.

Most of Chris’s important life events were wrapped in manila folders. But none of them had ever bore the name this one did.

The agent who had brought it had carefully set it on the desk in front of him with a sad smile and left. The look people always gave him when yet another one of his comrades-in-arms doesn’t make it back. Almost hysterically, Chris thinks he might’ve known the agent only as the friendly receptionist who gives him a smile every time he walks in the building. Someone he’s not even close with is the person who brings him the news.

The folder glares up at him, begging him to open it. He has to know, has to bear the weight on his shoulders like he bore the weight of so many other deaths and tragedies.

The words Kennedy, Leon S. wave at Chris through his tears.

He brings a dirty sleeve to his eyes, wiping away enough to see clearer than before. His fingers tremble and shake as he feels the open edge, almost afraid to survey the contents. In this moment, it looks more dangerous than any virus he’s fought against.

One hand keeping Rosemary Winters against his chest, the other flips open the folder.

There, in bright red, KIA is stamped over Leon’s smug grin.

Chris can’t hold it back anymore.

The one person who could match him, the one person who always had his back, was gone. Killed by the very thing they sought to destroy.

Chris absently wonders if it’s all his fault. If his curse finally gripped its sharp claws into Leon. If Leon could’ve been saved if Chris hadn’t been wallowing in his grief for Ethan. If he was just five minutes faster–

Rosemary’s tiny, pudgy hand smacks his face as she fusses slightly, tossing and turning in the crook of his arm. Instinctively, he coos at her, making soft shushing noises as he brings his other hand to support her.

“It’s alright, Little Rose. Uncle Chris is here. Shh, it’s alright.”

Her intervention—accidental as it was—helps clear his mind.

“Guess I really am too stupid and emotional, huh?” A bittersweet laugh escapes his chapped lips as he recalls Leon’s exact words about him. “Your– Your Uncle Leon always told me that. I have a feeling that you two would’ve teamed up to make my life a living hell.”

Despite his watery eyes and dyslexia that’s only gotten worse with age, he reads.

Cause of death: cGSW. Suspected reemergence of t-Virus, or Plagas parasite. Body unable to be retrieved due to–

Chris can’t read any further. He can’t stomach it. A bullet to the head, plus the possible rampage of multiple viruses.

“I’m done.” His voice is soft, barely more than a whisper. If Leon isn’t here, then this world can rot for all he cares. Leon was the only good he had left, the only one his heart had settled on. Nivans had piqued his interest, but in the end had been more like his own kid before he died.

Like something is moving his limbs, Chris numbly flips the folder closed and rises from his seat, taking Rosemary with him.

He regrets being led around by the nose by Ada. He regrets not fighting for his own happiness. He regrets not quitting the godforsaken DSO. He regrets not saving Lieutenant Marvin Branagh. He regrets letting the virus under his skin win. He regrets not telling Chris how he really felt.

Despite wanting it to end this way, back where it all started, in Raccoon City, Leon can’t help but have regrets.

He regrets a lot of things.

However, he could never regret helping save and working with Sherry. He could never regret killing his own bastard of a father. He could never regret the choice to feel right in his own skin and start the testosterone doses. He could never regret doing his part in the field to help fight against bioterrorism.

If only he could contribute more than his pathetic, unhappy, wasted life.

Watching Grace reach out for him, he has a bitter smile on his face. The platform is falling apart under him, shaking, quaking. Both he and Zeno will die here. He’s okay with that. But despite wanting this, wishing for this… he feels like his work isn’t finished.

Before his sluggish mind can work further, find his reasons to survive, the Wesker Wannabe rips the hatchet out of his shoulder with a grunt. It clatters to the ground as Zeno rolls his neck, the wound stitching itself back together.

Leon prepares himself, pulling up his fists, winding back his swing in a stuttering manner. His body isn’t working with him anymore, like it knows the end is here.

Zeno’s arm folds Leon in half before he can form his next thought, and the only thing in his mind is I’m glad she made it out. He falls to the ground with a bone-rattling cough, on his hands and knees. But it isn’t enough, it’s never enough. So Leon heaves himself back to his feet, taking another swing.

The superhuman catches it easily and drives his palm into Leon’s shoulder, dislocating it. The pain and momentum brings Leon to his knees with a cry.

He thinks he might’ve heard Grace calling for him, but his clouded mind is fogged over with irrational fear and anger.

Leon gets up again, like he always does, and takes another swing. He can’t help but think this is very Chris-like of him. Zeno dodges, jabs a fist into his side, throws a right hook into his face, then a left.

Leon stumbles back, his vision spinning more than it was, and gets a roundhouse kick for it. He’s turned around, he can taste copper, his vision is fuzzy, and his ears are ringing. His body is crying out in pain, but Leon doesn’t because his father beat that out of him a long time ago.

A punch to the stomach makes Leon heave, cough up blood. More than before. Deliriously, he thinks of all the other times he’s been like this.

His hands reach out to grasp onto something, anything, as he falls to his knees. He can’t see. Can’t hear. Can’t feel anything but pain.

Gingerly, he brings a hand to his stomach. His breath wheezes out of his lungs, blood accompanying every inhale and exhale he can barely squeeze through his throat.

At least this guy didn’t go for his neck, like all the other BOWs he had fought.

He blinks slowly, his vision coming back just enough to see Grace yelling at him from her precarious place, but he can’t hear her. He can only hear the rush of blood in his ears.

His vision is blocked by white. Zeno. He tips his head back to look at the blond, looking his angel of death in the eye.

Funny, how the most angelic thing he sees in his life isn’t the endless abyss of a bottle, his saving grace of a mother, the blissful high of an orgasm, or even the freeing sight of his father’s blood on his hands.

Well, there’s only one thing that can beat this Wesker Wannabe in the size of the halo over his head. Briefly, he thinks of Chris, thinks of how the Captain looks, haloed by the setting sun. Thinks of how he wants to reach into that light and keep it to himself, lock it behind his ribcage and feel that warmth forever.

He doesn’t see what’s in front of him as he gasps out what are probably going to be his last words. His vision is filled with the smug grin of his personal angel.

“At least… I could save you.” At least I could save you from this horrid end. Save you from this pitiful sight. Save you from being brought down by me.

He knows Chris will hate him for this, for choosing his own death. But at least all of this would be behind him. This would be his final stand, right back where it all started for him. Goddamn fucking Raccoon City.

The sound of a gun cocking hits his ears, ripping him back to painful reality.

The amber light of the lab falling apart around them glints off of steel and then—

A flash.