Listen. If the Merchant had been a more fleshed out character I could give you a 250k fic about how he’s a mutation who’s ability is some sort of void creature who can fold space and time together to make what we know in all the games as safe rooms and he and his kind follow heros on their journeys and provide them respite from the apocalyptic monsters while also using that to make money and use it to provide for their community or just sell more wares and also it’s a slow burn Leon/Merchant soulmate AU and it turns out the Merchant has always been there for Leon all along and after Spain he realizes since he’s interacted with Leon now he can’t go back to just providing safe rooms and ignoring him and it turns into one of those dream like places where Leon can go into the safe rooms and find his soulmate and so he’s always looking for a battle to walk into because it’s the only time he can spend with his love and ends up spending way too long in those safe rooms and the Merchant always has to coax him back out because the fight is always hard to get back to if Leon leaves it for too long and while his body will thank him for the reprieve his mind will suffer for it like a prolonged traumatization and so it’s a suffering balance between the real world where horrors happen and existing in an entirely different dimension with his soulmate but also he can’t just abandon everyone he loves and also they don’t know what it’ll do to him to spend too long there and what to do if he needs help…