you know what's wicked funny

I think it's easy to say Leon's survivor's guilt is ridiculous-- he was 21 when everything happened, meaning he'd only even been an adult for 3 years. He was incredibly young yet he felt an immense amount of pressure and responsibility due to his position as a cop. Though Leon later learned 'the force' wasn't all he thought it was cracked up to be, Leon attributed an immense amount of moral weight and ethical duty to his job. He became a cop because he wanted to help people and despite those of us with a conscious know damn well that's really not what American cops are here for, that was what Leon attributed them to and the reason he joined.

And he assigned such a moral weight to this that even after being explicitly told to stay away from the RPD, he drove there in the middle of the night to figure out what was going on. And once he discovered that the literal fucking apocalypse was happening, he refused to turn tail and run like any sane person would've because he viewed this as something he simply had to do. We're not given any details in the remake era about Leon's like before Raccoon City, but based on the supplemental material from the original RE2 in 1998 and Leon's disposition in 2R, I don't think things were really going well.

If we're going based on the original lore, Leon's parents were criminals and their crimes eventually caught up to them, leading to them having been seemingly murdered in front of Leon. And the only reason Leon survived was because he was rescued by a cop, thus he wanted to become a cop so that he could save people the way he was saved. And although there's no indication that this would still be canon in the modern games, there's also no indication that this wouldn't still be canon because, as previously stated, we don't know anything about Leon's life before the start of 2R. I think it goes without saying, but being the child of two criminals wrapped up in violence and watching your family be murdered and you almost dying yourself, especially as a child, would bring on a whole onslaught of issues. Even apart from the inherent trauma there, there's also the things that come after-- did Leon have any other family? Was he placed in foster care? Was he bounced around in the foster care system?

Regardless of the canonicity of his original backstory, however, as someone who works in mental health I do find 2R!Leon quite interesting for a number of reasons. Chief amongst those reasons is his immense naivety-- now like I said before, 21 is still quite young, but by that age you generally have some concept of how the world works. And if a woman wearing sunglasses at night in a cocktail dress and heels shows and tells you she's an FBI agent, I think most people would find that a little suspicious. Hell, if someone walked up to me in general and claimed to be an FBI agent, I'd question it a little, let alone if they were clearly not dressed like one and also the fucking apocalypse was happening. But this isn't an issue for Leon, because she shows him a badge and says she's an FBI agent and Leon takes her at her word.

I have a lot of thoughts about that in general, which I elaborated on in this post. Essentially, I think it's what I'm going to call a form of dissociative roleplay where due to the circumstances of the trauma he had endured, he clings to a predefined social role in order to preserve a sense of identity and control in a world that has spun violently out of his grasp. Leon's a rookie cop, which means he reports to Marvin, and Ada outranks him because she's FBI. Therefore, Leon doesn't really have to be the one to make the decision because he, as he says later in the game, "doesn't have the authority," to do so. But this isn't an attempt to absolve himself of guilt since, as we've seen, he fights like hell for people he has literally never met and their deaths weigh on him so heavily that 28 years later, he still nearly cries trying to tell someone about it.

But back to the cop thing. With Requiem's release, we now know that there are two highlighted instances that really solidified Leon's guilt and why he feels personally responsible for the deaths of everyone in RC despite the fact that, realistically, it was never his responsibility and it was entirely out of his control. When Leon first approaches the ruins of the RPD, he can barely bring himself to open the doors. He pauses outside with his hand on the door and even when he opens the doors, he does it with his eyes closed. And immediately, he has a series of flashbacks that center on the deaths of various cops but particularly Marvin, and Leon's memory specifically focuses on when Marvin told him "it's on you now."

Although we as the audience can tell that Marvin didn't intend for this to cause a life-long spiral and unimaginable PTSD when he said it, that's unfortunately the effect it had. While Marvin said it an attempt to make Leon get the fuck out of there, Leon interpreted it as "the natural order of things has fallen and now my boss is telling me it is my sole responsibility to save everyone and I swore a promise to a dying man and now I must uphold that oath or I'm a horrible person," and when you think about that in the context of Leon's original backstory-- child who watches his whole family get murdered in front of him who only manages to escape because he was saved by a cop, who then becomes a cop in order to help others to then wind up being one of the only survivors of a horrific incident again-- it starts to make an unfortunate amount of sense. And its not that Leon has to have had this tragic childhood for him to develop PTSD and survivor's guilt as an adult, but it just adds insult to injury because at that point RC isn't the nexus, it's just another perceived failure for Leon but this time on a significantly larger scale.

And still, all those years later, Leon still feels an immense amount of guilt toward Marvin specifically, someone he clearly looked up to despite evidently not knowing Marvin for longer than a few hours. Once he finally opens his eyes and enters the RPD, if the player finds Marvin's name plate, Leon will make a comment about "it's Kennedy, reporting for duty." And while he's exploring the RPD, Leon makes a variety of comments about how many good people died, how many innocent lives were stolen, etc. Leon's a ruminater, he loves ruminating about the horrors of RC (not literally loves, this is another symptom of PTSD), and being back at the literal cause of his major trauma isn't doing him any favors.

But like all things in Leon's life, it gets worse! Prior to heading to the RPD, he stumbles upon the old Kendo shop, which he seemingly can't help but go into. This doesn't seem to serve any other purpose beyond easter eggs for the player and another form of self-punishment and arguably self-harm for Leon because, for some godforsaken reason, he decides the enter the room Kendo took his daughter into when he had to put her down. This triggers a flashback of Kendo and his daughter, specifically centered on the part where Kendo yells at Leon "you're a cop... you're supposed to know something. how could you let this happen?" which, again, Kendo didn't know that Leon was only 21 and wasn't even really a cop since he'd only graduated the academy and hadn't actually had his first day, but this was just another blow to Leon's psyche because he assigned such as high moral responsibility to being a cop and he saw it as his sacred duty to protect these people and he failed. Leon apologizes profusely to the skeletal remains of Kendo and his daughter, vowing to never let this happen again.

And as if things couldn't get any worse for Leon, Viktor decides Leon's trauma with Raccoon City is prime real-estate and he's going to exploit that to fuck with Leon on a psychological level, which seems to be Viktor's preferred method. He seems to have little interest in just killing Leon-- after choking Leon unconscious and tying him to a chair, Viktor had ample opportunities to just kill Leon. He's significantly stronger than Leon, significantly bigger than Leon, and he'd already knocked Leon out seemingly minutes after Leon entered the building so it's not like he'd really have to put in much effort to just kill him. No, he wants to play with Leon. So what does he do? He immediately starts taunting Leon with his trauma. He asks if Leon came here for him or for Grace, and when Leon refuses to take the bait, Viktor takes it up a few notches. He brushes Leon's bangs back and pets his cheek in a move that crosses serious boundaries and starts the descend into potential sexual assault territory, and is very clearly making Leon uncomfortable. But even that isn't enough to set Leon off, so Viktor takes things even further, and he whispers about how Leon's a failure and he pulls down the collar of Leon's shirt, caressing his neck and fondling the injury from the infection before slicing Leon's neck with the scalpel. And after that and the creepy ass shoulder rub, Leon finally snaps.

But the psychological warfare doesn't end there because even after he does all that and Leon manages to break free and promptly kicks Viktor square in the balls, the game has only just begun (literally, lol). Leon going to the RPD was a setup, and Leon seemingly knew this to some extent, but he had to save Grace so it wasn't like he could just back out. So Viktor decides to drag out the 'welcome Leon' sign and display it front and center on a table in the lobby area, right where he knew Leon would see it. And he writes a little note that says 'you can't save anyone' to go with it, preying on Leon's trauma once again. Leon can barely even look at the welcome sign and he tosses the card, but it's clear Viktor struck a nerve. Because now Leon's back in the city where everything started, trying to save Grace but also save the world from Elpis (which he also perceives to be a virus)... again.

This time, however, Leon is sick as hell. He's infected with the t-virus and he knows he's got limited time-- not only is Sherry counting on him to save her too, but he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders once again and only a short amount of time before his body succumbs to the infection and he dies, which would then lead to Sherry's death, Grace's death, and countless others. So Leon pushes himself to his physical breaking point, and he's routinely coughing and throwing up blood and he even passes out several times, one of which happens in front of Grace. Once Leon regains consciousness, Grace points out Leon's one-man crusade is pretty ridiculous given how sick he is, but Leon's not backing down. And just like with every other time he tries to talk about Raccoon City, he understandably can't do it without getting emotional, and you can hear his voice start to break as he tries to explain that he fucked up the first time and he can't let this happen again. Grace, a fellow suicidal ptsd-having girlie, is very understanding of this, but it makes the scene no less painful.

And then the game just decides to torture us over and over and over again with Leon's guilt. I really cannot emphasize enough just how prominently displayed it is in this game. The parallels between Grace and Leon is gonna get its own dedicated post since this one is already approaching thesis length, but between their conversation after Emily 'dies' and their shared guilt for that and Leon's fleeting 'at least I could save you' to Grace before he dies in the bad (non-canon) ending... Leon please god get some fucking therapy holy shit like oh my god. Ugh. Wow.

And all of this ties in perfectly with the things that were already established in previous games, even in the CGI movies! Leon's duty to save whatever blonde girl or woman he runs into remains prevalent, his fear of letting others down and not being good enough to save them is a focal point of the game, and it all harkens back to Leon promising to "scrub this virus from the face of the Earth" in Degeneration-- which I know isn't anyone's favorite RE CGI movie, but it's still a neat nod regardless.

So overall, I just have to tip my hat to the character writing in Requiem because it did a truly wonderful job of showcasing Leon's trauma, but also his empathy, his humanity, and just how nice he is. He'd known Grace for literal seconds before deciding to go off on a one-man rescue mission in direct opposition to his employer. And the whole time, he's nothing but sweet. Even despite his own trauma and emotional and physical predicaments, he makes a noticeable effort to keep things calm with Grace. He comforts her physically, tells her everything will be ok and promises to keep her safe, and softens his voice when he talks to her so as to not scare her more. Their relationship is also going to get a whole analysis post in and of itself because it's so fucking cute oh my god, but I just had to highlight it here as well.