Is this where I conduct my research...?

god, i love the way you look at me

....

yup, can confirm they're still looking at eachother, even on the stairs

leon's a ashleyholic ✅

and it's happening to retwt right now.

during leon and sherry's conversation, we know raccoon city isn't just something he thinks about from time to time, goes "darn it im still pretty hung up on it...oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and moves on.

he thinks about it every. single. day. it's like a wound that doesn't heal because you have HIV (wow what a beautiful analogy.)

anyway, if you think about it for a moment, you'd realise that, huh, if he married a raccoon city survivor, some of that pain and guilt would be eased, right?

if his wife did know him during that disaster and knew what it entailed, and assuming they have a healthy relationship where they share things about themselves, plus leon thinks about it EVERY day, then this conversation must have come up between them.

im not even suggesting that his trauma must be resolved if he married an RC survivor. im suggesting that leon would probably feel lighter, more comforted than he did if he had shared it with his spouse.

the rip of the band-aid wouldn't hurt as much, because you've ripped it off a few times before.

however, the way that trauma hit leon leaves no indication that he had opened up this part of him in a really long time, maybe ever. it still hurt like a bitch. it hurt and he kept it so close to his heart, even sherry didn't know the depth of his pain.

raccoon city isn't something he talks about with his wife, even though he thinks about it every day is what i'm concluding.

and what i'm proposing is the reason why he does not is because his wife is someone who does not know about it. she had no substantive understanding of it, she had no ties to it, it did not affect her or her family in any meaningful way.

which...would be none other than ashley (again.)

ashley would not comfort him, would not ease his pain, would not be able to give him her perspective, would not be able to recall silly stuff with him, because she cannot speak on things she had no idea about.

these are things claire and ada can both do at varying capacity with leon, but ashley can only wipe the tears of the man's face.

and think about it, there's no good reason why leon wouldn't open up about RC if he married claire or ada. like what, are they gonna shame him, belittle his pain, when they know perfectly well how something like that fucked people up, especially when you have such a strong moral compass and sense of justice.

remember, leon's monologue about saving ashley being a difference to all those deaths in RC is a just that, a monologue. ashley didn't understand saving her in spain means that way to leon. he internalised his small victory the way he internalised his immense lost.

and even if ashley understands it now, it would be the only thing she does. "well hey, you have me." is realistically the only thing she could have said to him whenever he has an episode.

and that's not enough, and it could never be enough, when elliot and marvin and ben and kendo and hundreds of thousands of people are still dead, and the ones who did survive are also now dead.

people thinking remake ashley is submissive should tell you enough about what type of fans retwt consists of i'm just saying. it's literally just because she's more soft spoken now.

or maybe that's it. the criticism is that her voice is probably too soft to deliver anything meaningful through that thick skull of theirs 🤷‍♀️

and what i discovered is that leon wasn't really looking at grace when he said "at least, i could save you"?

he was looking to grace's far right, seemingly at nothing.

i even tried to line leon up as close to where grace sits as possible and zoom in on him from grace's position.

he was still looking to his left rather than facing forward. if he really was facing forward, the camera would zoom out to the position on grace's right like in the first clip, not to grace.

here's the pics from grace's pov that directly zooms down to leon (other angles would result in zooming to the floor or somewhere leon wasn't kneeling)

if anyone's interested, i suggest looking at the freecam and decide for yourself. right now i'm looking at this mostly by myself so this is entirely my conclusion:

when one door closes, another one opens

a gentle reminder that grace was born in 2004, which is the same year leon and ashley met.

the year that spencer wanted to "make amends" (or so he said) and gave the world a sliver of hope, was also the year leon found himself his first real "difference"

in two different places of the world, around the same point in time, one person started to make peace with, the other started to atone for, the bioweapon disaster that is raccoon city.

since they are also the only two living people who operated under that old hunk of junk, those scars are one of a kind. there's nothing like them on anyone else.

their insecurities are showing and im dying laughing at the speed they change argument.

starting at "they're siblings-coded" to "it's one sided" to "the interview says no love", sprinkled inbetween are points about their own ship apparently being the "canon" love

and now we're here.

cant be surprised anymore since i never expect anything else from them 😌

what was literally his last sentence before that bullet went through his head?

"at least i could save you", to which grace was the receiver of that sentence.

but then...what he said isn't right, is it?

grace isn't the only person he saved. if we go by what was canonically presented to us, as in the canon events that we visibly saw happened to leon, then ashley would be someone he saved in the past, before grace.

and the thing is, requiem did not forget about this.

there are incredibly identifiable hints in requiem that the events in spain was called back to leon, from zeno's note that directly mirrored krauser's words when he taunted leon with ashley,

to the way leon described his failure in saving RC people lives in past tense, because leon impliedly took into account him saving ashley as making a difference, echoing the same sentiment in RE4R

these are deliberately worded and framed to remind us of the emotional and physical impact of RE4R's story on its successor, that RE4R was taken into consideration during requiem's conception

so if leon still canonically saved ashley, and requiem did not just...forget that he did, then how could that sentence had been

to just grace?

grace would have been, factually, the second person whom leon had saved, the first one being none other than ashley.

and leon wouldn't just suddenly allude to ashley during his final breaths if she is not a significant figure in his life 22 years after he rescued her, would he?

i might be dropping an absolute BOMBSHELL with this, but

leon DID talk and think about his wife in his final moments, just not in the way we, or grace, understood fully.

in extremely bold words, his last words to grace was equal parts to his wife, which in this context, can only be ashley.

as people used to say, one picture is worth a thousand words, and as i put these four pics together, i feel like it's just so obvious all my explaining feels redundant

2004:

...but i like that it's redundant actually, it means this should be easy to understand.

2026:

also idk if you catch it, but the line "at least i could save you" is the direct answer to the note zeno left for leon in rpd. his response was uttered next to zeno's presence, who was about to shoot his brains out. it's very layered i know lol.

oh god oh god oh god oh god-

this is like the kind of question you'd get on strawpage that lights up a whole ship war lol

of course that thought crossed my mind at some point. when you try to objectively weigh up the possibilities, the question should be how can you not think leon married someone, anyone, else?

but then again, this isnt what you were trying to ask me, is it? ;)

and you see someone dug up your posts from the account you abandoned that you swear you'd never come back to but still feel the need to mention once in a while...

anyways