#vows

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word count: 14.2k ( in total)

18+ only. minors do not interact. this is a dark fic containing mature themes, forced captivity, coercive dynamics, grief, trauma, power imbalance, forced marriage, emotional distress, institutional control, and psychologically complicated intimacy.

Summary: the wedding day arrives with rain, silk, and everything still unresolved.

as the house prepares for the ceremony, you write leon the only truth you can give him before the aisle. while you get ready upstairs, leon faces the morning with a friend at his side — and when the time finally comes, both of you have to decide what it means to walk toward each other scared.

⚠️ chapter content warnings ⚠️

forced captivity / loss of autonomy coercive control dynamics forced marriage / forced wedding wedding under duress power imbalance DSO / government control institutional coercion surveillance / security presence legal union under protective classification binding security language wedding-related distress emotional shutdown / numb acceptance grief and traumatic bereavement sibling grief mentions of presumed dead brother absence of family at wedding trauma reminders nightmare imagery referenced blood imagery referenced storm imagery panic aftermath fear of manipulation lying / secrecy conflicted love trauma bonding undertones complicated consent dynamics attachment rupture emotional dependency letter writing / vulnerable confession Leon POV Chris Redfield appearance brotherly support / emotional confrontation Leon crying / emotional vulnerability reader crying public vows off-script vows confession of love kissing intense emotional intimacy brief heavy making out after ceremony sexual tension explicit language

Morning comes like a warning.

Not soft this time. Not gold.

Gray.

The kind of gray that presses itself against the windows before the sun has fully risen, turning the glass silver and the trees beyond it into dark, trembling shapes. Rain moves in thin diagonal lines across the pane, not heavy yet, but steady. Persistent. The sky over the estate is low and swollen, clouds folded over one another like bruises. Somewhere beyond the mansion, thunder rolls far away, quiet enough that it could almost be mistaken for the house settling.

You are awake before it.

You are not sure you ever slept.

Maybe for a few minutes at a time. Small, shallow scraps of sleep that didn’t count. Your body would drift, your head would tilt against the window frame, and then some sound would pull you back: a footstep in the hall, the low murmur of voices downstairs, the groan of old wood, Mara shifting in the bed behind you.

Now you sit curled in the window seat of Mara’s room, knees tucked beneath the blanket she wrapped around you sometime after midnight. Her hoodie hangs loose around your body. The bracelet is still on your wrist beneath the sleeve. You have not taken it off.

You told yourself you would.

You didn’t.

Across the room, Mara sleeps on her side, one arm thrown over the pillow, hair tangled around her face. She fought sleep hard, like staying awake could physically protect you from morning. Eventually, exhaustion took her anyway. Even now, she doesn’t look peaceful. Her brow is faintly drawn, her mouth pressed into a line, one hand curled in the sheets like she is ready to wake up swinging.

You watch her for a moment and feel something quiet move through you.

Guilt, maybe.

Love, definitely.

She shouldn’t be here.

None of this should have touched her.

Then again, nothing about this day belongs where it should.

The wedding is today.

The sentence sits in your mind without impact at first, like a fact written on a page you don’t have to pick up.

The wedding is today.

Women probably don’t sleep much before their weddings. That thought comes to you with such strange clarity that you almost laugh. Somewhere, in a different life, a woman wakes before dawn because she is excited. Because her bridesmaids drank too much champagne the night before. Because her mother cried during the rehearsal dinner. Because the flowers have to arrive by eight and the photographer by ten and she is worried about the weather but only in the way brides worry about weather, as an inconvenience, not an omen.

Maybe she lies awake thinking about the dress hanging in a garment bag.

Maybe she wonders if her makeup will last.

Maybe she texts the groom something silly she is not supposed to send because tradition says they shouldn’t talk before the ceremony.

Maybe she feels nervous because joy is a kind of fear too, when something matters enough.

You sit in Mara’s borrowed room, wearing yesterday’s grief in your skin, and wonder what your wedding day would have looked like if your life had been allowed to arrive at it normally.

Small, you think.

You had said that to Leon.

Small. Maybe a courthouse first. Food after. Nothing dramatic.

But now, in the gray light, you let the thought unfold more honestly.

There would have been flowers, but not like the ones downstairs. Not perfect white roses arranged by strangers under federal supervision. Maybe wildflowers. Something loose and uneven. Blue delphinium. Yellow ranunculus. Daisies, even though they’re simple. Maybe jars on tables because you would have pretended it was a budget choice and not because you liked things that looked handmade.

Mara would have been there.

She would have complained about her shoes, then cried anyway.

Marcus would have walked you down the aisle.

That thought lands with quiet force.

You close your eyes.

Marcus would have worn a suit badly. You know that with absolute certainty. The tie would be wrong. The sleeves would be too long or too short because he would insist he didn’t need tailoring and then act offended when someone pointed it out. He would make jokes until the last possible second, probably something terrible under his breath as the doors opened just to keep you from panicking.

You can hear him.

Don’t trip, kid. Lotta witnesses.

Your throat tightens.

You open your eyes before the tears can come too hard.

The rain thickens against the window.

Thunder rolls again, closer this time.

The sound crawls through the old house and settles under your ribs.

You think of the night you ran.

The storm. The mud. The woods. Your bare feet tearing over wet ground, branches catching at your clothes, your lungs burning with cold air. Leon catching you, pinning you down in the mud before you could hurt yourself worse. His body over yours. His voice furious. Your foot split open. Your anger still clean then, in a way it hasn’t been since.

You had hated him so much that night.

Or thought you did.

It almost feels simpler now.

That is ridiculous. It wasn’t simple. You were terrified, injured, trapped.

But there had been clarity in it.

He was the captor.

You were the woman running.

The woods were outside.

The house was the cage.

Now the cage has softened in places. That is the cruelty of it. It has learned your shape. It knows which rooms you read in. Which mug Emily gives you. Which side of Leon’s bed you curl into. It knows Mara’s laugh in the kitchen and the sound Leon makes when he is trying not to be amused. It knows you wore black silk by the lake and let yourself talk about motherhood as if the future was something that might touch you gently.

You rest your forehead against the window.

The glass is cold.

Your reflection looks back at you faintly: tired eyes, damp hair around your face from last night’s shower, Mara’s hoodie pulled over your knees, the locket at your throat, the sleeve hiding the bracelet you can feel anyway.

A bride.

You do not look like one.

Maybe that is why you can breathe.

The grandfather clock downstairs begins to chime.

One deep note.

Then another.

It carries through the floorboards, through the walls, through the closed door. Slow and hollow. The kind of sound that makes the whole mansion feel like an animal with a heart too large for its body.

You count each chime without meaning to.

Six.

Six in the morning.

Preparations begin at six.

You wonder if they are already downstairs with the dress. If someone has unzipped the garment bag. If the silk is hanging in some room waiting for you, beautiful and innocent and impossible. You wonder if the flowers have been arranged. If the chairs have been set. If Halden is awake. If DSO agents drink coffee black because sweetness would imply weakness.

You wonder if Leon slept.

The thought comes unwanted.

Then stays.

You picture him in his room. Your room. The room you left. Maybe he didn’t go there. Maybe he stayed in his office, sitting at his desk with his bruised hand swelling around the knuckles, the phone within reach, the lie still locked behind his teeth. Maybe he stood in the foyer after you went upstairs, surrounded by wedding flowers and agents, holding the sentence you gave him.

You were the only part of this place I stopped being afraid of.

Your mouth trembles.

You wish you had not said it.

You are glad you did.

Both truths sit beside each other without fighting this morning. Maybe you are too tired to make them fight. Maybe this is what grief does when it runs out of sharp edges for a while. It doesn’t become peace. Not real peace. More like a sheet placed gently over a broken piece of furniture, hiding the shape without repairing it.

Leon said he loved you.

The thought has been circling you all night, coming closer and then retreating.

He said it in front of everyone.

Not in bed. Not in darkness. Not against your skin when desire could confuse the meaning. In the foyer. Under the chandelier. With DSO agents listening and Mara standing between you and the rest of the world. He said it with tears on his face, with nothing left of his control except the decision not to touch you.

I love you.

You press your fingers to your mouth.

The words still frighten you.

Not because you don’t believe them.

Because some terrible part of you does.

You believe he loves you.

That is not the same as trusting him.

That is the part no one warns you about. Love does not clean the blood off anything. Love does not unlock a door automatically. Love does not make a lie harmless because it was told by someone bleeding while he told it. Love, you are starting to think, may simply be another room inside the house. Warmer. Softer. Still capable of locking.

And yet.

When you imagine a groom, it is him.

That is the thought you have been avoiding, the one sitting under all the others like a stone at the bottom of water.

You try to imagine anyone else at the end of the aisle. Some faceless man from a life where your choices unfolded normally. Someone kind. Someone safe. Someone who met you at a grocery store or a friend’s birthday party or the diner in another town. Someone who learned your coffee order before your threat profile, like Leon said.

But the face does not come.

Only Leon.

Leon in black.

Leon at the end of an aisle.

Leon turning when the doors open.

Leon looking at you like the sight hurts.

You hate that your mind offers him so easily.

You hate that even after everything, your heart recognizes the shape of him before it recognizes safety.

A soft sound comes from the bed.

Mara shifts but doesn’t wake.

You look over your shoulder.

She is still sleeping, one hand tucked under her cheek now, lashes dark against tired skin. You have an urge to crawl into bed beside her the way you did when you were younger, when life fell apart in smaller rooms and the solution was always someone else’s blanket, someone else breathing next to you.

But you stay in the window seat.

The rain keeps falling.

The clock ticks below.

You begin thinking of Marcus again, because of course you do. Weddings belong to the living and the dead in equal measure. Maybe that is why they hurt so much. Every chair is an accusation. Every absence gets dressed up and walked down the aisle with you.

What would he say this morning?

Not the ideal version of him. Not the saint grief has tried to make out of him. The real Marcus.

He would be angry.

Furious.

He would hate Leon on principle and then hate him more for making it complicated. He would probably pace. He would probably say stupid things because fear made him blunt. He would ask if you were sure. Then he would tell you that you didn’t have to be sure to survive the next five minutes.

That was Marcus at his best.

Not fixing the whole life.

Just the next five minutes.

You touch the locket.

The little hinge has worn loose from how often you open it. You do not open it now. You don’t need to see the photo. You know it by heart.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” you whisper.

The room keeps its secrets.

Mara sleeps.

The rain answers only by hitting the glass harder.

You wonder if Marcus would know the difference between loving someone and being trapped with them.

You wonder if anyone knows that from the inside.

Maybe from the outside, everyone is confident. Maybe Mara can see more clearly because she isn’t the one whose body learned Leon’s warmth. Maybe Halden can reduce it all to asset and compliance because she doesn’t know what his mouth felt like against your forehead after the lake dinner. Maybe Emily can apologize for the food reports because she lives in the machinery but doesn’t know what it is like to become the thing reported on.

From inside, everything touches everything else.

The cage.

The care.

The sex.

The grief.

The lie.

The love.

You can separate them for a second, maybe two, and then they run back together like rain down glass.

On the desk near the window, Mara has left a notepad from the guest room drawer. Cream paper. A pen beside it. The top sheet is blank except for a faint impression where someone wrote on the page above and tore it away.

You stare at it for a long time.

Then you reach for the pen.

You don’t decide to write to him.

Your hand simply moves.

At first, you only write his name.

Leon,

Then you stop.

The ink looks too dark on the paper.

Too final.

You sit with the pen hovering, listening to the clock below, to the rain, to Mara’s breathing behind you.

You don’t know what this letter is. A goodbye. A warning. A confession without the word. Something to leave behind in case tomorrow swallows you before you can speak. Something to give him if you lose your nerve. Something to tear up before Mara wakes.

Your hand starts moving again.

Leon,

I don’t know if I’m going to give this to you.

That sentence feels honest enough to continue.

I don’t know what I believe right now. I don’t know what part of yesterday was real and what part I’m supposed to be afraid of. I don’t know how to hold the fact that you lied to me and the fact that I still looked for you when I woke up scared.

You pause.

Your eyes sting, but the tears do not fall yet.

That feels strange too. Like your body has decided to wait.

You keep writing.

I think that is what hurts the most. Not just the lie. The reaching. The way my body went looking for you before my mind remembered it shouldn’t. I hate that. I hate that I don’t hate you enough to make this easier.

Thunder rolls again, closer, the sound spreading over the estate.

You glance at Mara.

Still asleep.

You write smaller now, like the page might overhear.

You said you loved me.

I keep replaying it. I wish I didn’t. I wish it had made everything simple, but it made everything worse because I believed you. I still believe you. I just don’t know what that saves.

The pen stills.

Your hand shakes.

There are so many things you cannot write.

I love you.

You do not write it.

Your chest aches with the effort of not writing it.

Instead, you write around it.

I don’t know how to walk toward you today. I don’t know if I’m walking toward the man who hurt me, the man protecting me, the man who loves me, or all of them at once.

Your breath catches.

All of them at once.

That is the truth.

Awful, unbearable, too heavy for one sheet of guest room paper.

You look down at the bracelet peeking beneath the sleeve. You push the fabric back enough to see it clearly. Gold links. Blue enamel. The tiny chip near the edge.

His mother’s.

Something from before.

You touch it once, then return to the letter.

I couldn’t take off the bracelet.

I tried to want to.

I couldn’t.

A tear falls then, hitting the page near the margin, blurring nothing important.

You wipe your face quickly, almost annoyed.

The grandfather clock continues below. Tick. Tick. Tick. Slower than your heartbeat. Or maybe your heartbeat has slowed to match it. Maybe the whole house is counting down inside your ribs.

You write the last line before you can overthink it.

If I walk toward you today, please understand that some part of me is still walking scared.

You stare at that sentence.

It feels unfinished.

So you add:

And some part of me is still walking to you.

The pen slips from your fingers.

You sit back, breath shallow, staring at what you’ve written.

There it is.

Not love.

Not forgiveness.

Not enough.

But something.

Something true.

Behind you, Mara stirs.

You fold the paper quickly. Once. Twice. Your hands move with sudden urgency, as if the letter is a living thing that might escape if left open too long. You do not write his name on the outside. You tuck it beneath the cushion beside you, hidden in the seam of the window seat.

Maybe you will give it to him.

Maybe you won’t.

Mara’s voice comes rough with sleep. “Y/n?”

You turn.

She is awake now, pushing herself up on one elbow, hair wild, face creased from the pillow. For a second she looks disoriented. Then she remembers. You watch yesterday return to her eyes.

The wedding.

Today.

She sits up slowly.

“How long have you been awake?”

You look back out the window.

The sky has lightened fully now, though the storm keeps the morning dim. Rain runs steadily down the glass. Beyond it, the grounds are blurred and green, the lake hidden somewhere behind trees and weather.

“A while,” you say.

Mara follows your gaze.

The room holds the two of you in a quiet that feels almost gentle, though nothing about the day is gentle.

After a moment, she gets out of bed and comes to sit beside you in the window seat. She doesn’t ask if you’re okay. She doesn’t say today will be fine. She doesn’t tell you what to do.

She only tucks the blanket more securely around your legs and leans her shoulder against yours.

Together, you watch the storm.

The clock keeps ticking below.

And somewhere in the house, the dress waits.

Mara comes to sit beside you in the window seat.

She doesn’t ask what you were doing.

Maybe she sees something in your face that tells her not to. Maybe she notices the way your hand stays tucked against the cushion beside you, guarding the folded paper hidden there. Maybe she is simply too tired to ask questions she isn’t sure you can answer.

For a while, neither of you moves.

The rain keeps working its way down the glass in crooked lines, making the grounds beyond the window look blurred and dreamlike. The trees bow under the wind. Somewhere below, the grandfather clock ticks steadily enough that it begins to feel less like time passing and more like time closing in.

Then the first knock comes.

Not harsh.

Not official.

Three soft taps against the door.

Mara stiffens anyway.

You turn from the window, heart jumping so hard it almost feels embarrassing.

“It’s Emily,” a voice says gently from the hall.

Mara gets up first. She doesn’t rush to open the door. She crosses the room in bare feet, pauses with one hand on the knob, then looks back at you like she needs permission.

You nod.

The door opens.

Emily stands in the hallway holding a tray with both hands. Behind her are two women you’ve never seen before, each carrying a large black case. One has dark hair pulled into a neat bun and a raincoat folded over her arm. The other is older, maybe in her fifties, with silver threaded through her brown hair and reading glasses pushed up on her head. Neither of them looks like DSO. That helps, a little.

Emily’s eyes find you immediately.

There is no bright smile today. No rehearsed softness. Her face is pale and careful, her mouth pressed together as if she had practiced what to say and then lost all of it the second she saw you curled in the window seat.

“Good morning,” she says.

The words are ordinary.

They sound impossible.

Mara steps aside just enough to let her in. “Are they with you?”

Emily nods quickly. “Yes. They’re the approved hair and makeup artists. I checked their names against the list myself. They’re not agents.”

The older woman lifts a hand slightly, not quite a wave. “I’m Elise. This is Nora. We’re just here to help you get ready.”

Just here to help.

You wonder if people know how often those words sit beside terrible things.

Still, Elise’s voice is kind. Nora keeps her eyes down instead of staring at you like a spectacle. They wait in the hall until Emily looks at you.

“Is it okay if they come in?”

The question catches you strangely.

Is it okay.

Such a small piece of power, offered gently.

You nod again.

Your voice doesn’t work yet.

The room changes once they enter. Not dramatically. Not enough to erase the storm or the dread or the folded letter hidden beneath the cushion. But their presence brings movement, and movement is dangerous because it means the day is truly beginning.

Cases are set on the vanity. Zippers open. Brushes wrapped in black rolls. Glass bottles. Curling irons. Pins in little magnetic trays. A garment steamer carried in by someone from the hall and left near the bathroom door. Emily places the tea tray on the desk and begins moving quietly through the room, clearing space without making you feel cleared out.

Mara watches everyone like she is prepared to bite.

Elise notices, because she would have to be blind not to, but she doesn’t comment. She only looks at you with calm, practiced eyes.

“We can go slowly,” she says. “There’s time.”

There is not time.

Everyone knows it.

No one says so.

You unfold yourself from the window seat. The blanket slips from your shoulders. Mara’s hoodie hangs loose around you, sleeves pulled over your hands. The bracelet stays hidden beneath the cuff. Your hair is half-dry, half-wild from the shower and the sleepless night, falling unevenly around your face. You can feel the exhaustion in your skin, the puffiness around your eyes, the rawness of your mouth from crying and biting back words.

Nora gestures toward the vanity chair. “Would you like to sit?”

You look at Mara.

She comes with you without being asked.

That is how the morning begins.

Not with the dress.

Not yet.

Just a chair.

A mirror.

A tray of cooling tea.

Mara standing close behind you, one hand on the back of your chair.

You sit in front of the mirror and try not to look too closely.

At first, they do very little. That is almost worse. Elise brushes through your hair with slow, careful strokes, starting at the ends so nothing pulls too hard. Nora lays out makeup in neat rows on the vanity, then pauses to ask if there is anything you absolutely don’t want.

You almost say this.

Instead, you say, “Nothing heavy.”

Nora nods. “Soft, then.”

Soft.

You look at your own reflection and wonder how anything about you can still be made soft.

Emily pours tea and brings it to you in a cup with both hands. “Chamomile with honey,” she says. “Mara said your throat was hurting.”

You glance at Mara in the mirror.

She pretends to be fascinated by a makeup brush.

You take the tea.

It is warm enough to hurt your fingers through the porcelain. You sip because everyone is trying so hard to offer things you can accept. Warm tea. Gentle brushing. Soft makeup. A chair instead of a command.

None of it changes what waits downstairs.

But it keeps the next minute from swallowing you whole.

Elise begins sectioning your hair, clipping pieces up and away from your face. The sensation is familiar in a distant way. You remember sitting between someone’s knees as a child while your hair was braided too tightly. You remember prom hair that fell out before you got to the dance because the humidity had opinions. You remember doing your own hair in apartment bathrooms under yellow lighting, curling one side better than the other, giving up halfway because no one was really looking that closely anyway.

Today, everyone will look.

The thought moves through you slowly.

Today, the whole room will turn when you enter.

You set the tea down.

Mara’s hand moves to your shoulder.

Not a question.

An anchor.

“You okay?” she asks quietly.

You look at yourself in the mirror.

“No.”

“Okay.”

Elise continues working, careful enough not to react.

Nora begins on your face. Moisturizer first, cool against your skin. Then something under your eyes, tapped gently with the pad of her finger. She does not ask why your eyes are swollen. She does not tell you the makeup will hide it. That makes you like her more.

The storm pushes harder against the windows.

Rain ticks against the glass in quick, nervous bursts. Somewhere far below, another door opens and closes. Voices move faintly in the hall and then fade.

Every sound makes your body check for Leon.

You hate that.

You do it anyway.

You imagine him somewhere downstairs, already dressed maybe, or half-dressed, sitting in a room with his bruised hand wrapped and his face wrecked from not sleeping. You wonder if anyone is helping him with a tie. You wonder if he will wear black. Of course he will. You wonder if he has seen the flowers again. You wonder if he is thinking of what you said.

You were the only part of this place I stopped being afraid of.

Your chest aches.

Then the letter beneath the cushion seems to burn across the room.

You keep your eyes on the mirror.

Elise curls the first piece of your hair, letting it fall over her fingers in a soft wave.

“I’m going to keep it loose,” she says. “Pinned back a little, but not too formal. Emily mentioned you didn’t want anything severe.”

Emily’s eyes flick to yours through the mirror.

“I hope that was okay.”

You nod.

“It’s okay.”

Your voice sounds more human now.

Emily looks relieved enough that it hurts.

Nora dusts something light across your cheeks, then pauses. “Do you want lipstick or just a stain?”

You think of Leon’s mouth. Of the lake. Of the bedroom. Of waking up with the word you would not say trapped behind your ribs.

“Just a stain.”

Nora nods.

Mara shifts behind you. “Water?”

You shake your head.

“Food?”

Another shake.

“I will eventually become annoying about it.”

“You already are.”

It comes out quiet. Hoarse. But real.

Mara’s eyes meet yours in the mirror, and for one second her face nearly breaks with relief. She swallows it down and lifts her chin.

“Good. I’d hate to lose my brand identity.”

The smallest breath escapes you.

Not a laugh, exactly.

But close enough that Emily looks away too quickly, blinking hard.

Time moves strangely after that. Your hair begins to take shape: soft waves, pieces pinned away from your face, not bridal in the traditional sense, but tender. Intentional. Your makeup makes you look less destroyed than you feel, which is its own kind of betrayal. Your eyes still look like yours, though. Tired. Bright with too much held back. Nora doesn’t try to cover that completely.

Maybe she knows better.

At some point, the dress arrives.

Not on a person.

On a rolling rack pushed in by two staff members who do not meet your eyes.

The garment bag is ivory.

Long.

Zipped.

Silent.

The room stops around it.

Even Elise’s hands pause in your hair.

Mara’s fingers tighten on your shoulder, then loosen when she realizes.

Emily steps forward quickly. “Not yet,” she says to the staff, voice firmer than you’ve ever heard it. “Leave it there.”

They do.

Then they leave.

The door closes.

The dress remains.

You do not look at it directly.

Not yet.

You look at it through the mirror, which is somehow worse. A pale vertical shape behind you. A future hanging in plastic.

Your stomach rolls.

Mara bends near your ear. “We can cover it.”

You shake your head.

If it is covered, you will imagine it.

If it is visible, at least it has edges.

“I’m okay.”

No one believes you.

No one argues.

The next half hour passes inside the strange intimacy of preparation. Hairpins slide against your scalp. Powder settles over your skin. Emily brings more tea. Mara eats a piece of toast with one hand because you won’t, then hands you the crust and waits until you take a bite. You do, mostly to make her stop looking like that.

The whole time, the letter waits.

You wait with it.

When Elise steps back finally, she tilts her head, studying her work.

“There,” she says softly.

Nora smiles faintly. “Beautiful.”

You look in the mirror.

For a moment, you do not recognize yourself.

Not because you look unlike yourself. Because you look too much like a version of yourself you never expected to meet under these circumstances. Your hair is soft around your face, pinned back enough to show your neck, the locket resting at your throat. Your cheeks have color. Your mouth looks bitten rather than painted. Your eyes look enormous.

You look like someone about to be mourned and married at the same time.

Mara’s face appears behind yours in the mirror.

Her eyes are wet.

She smiles anyway.

“You look like you,” she says.

That is what almost undoes you.

Not beautiful.

Not bridal.

You.

You reach up and touch the locket.

Then, beneath the sleeve, the bracelet.

Elise and Nora begin packing up some of the makeup, leaving out only what might be needed later. Emily gathers cups from the tray.

“I’m going to get fresh tea,” she says quietly. “And maybe something warmer to eat. Soup again, or—”

“I’ll go,” Mara says immediately.

Emily shakes her head. “No. Stay with her. I’ll be quick.”

Mara hesitates, torn.

You see the moment open.

Small.

Maybe the only one you’ll get.

Your hand moves before courage can fail.

You reach beside you, fingers slipping under the edge of the window seat cushion. The folded paper is still there, warm from being hidden. You pull it free and close your hand around it, the cream paper disappearing into your palm.

Your heart begins to pound.

Not loudly.

Deeply.

Emily turns toward the door with the tray balanced in her hands.

“Emily,” you say.

She stops at once.

Mara looks at you.

So do Elise and Nora.

You suddenly feel every eye in the room. Every breath. Every possible meaning.

You stand.

The room tilts. Not much. Enough that Mara moves forward, but you lift one hand slightly, asking her to wait.

You cross to Emily slowly.

The folded note feels impossibly heavy.

Emily looks down when you reach her, confusion flickering across her face. Then she sees the paper.

Her expression changes.

Not surprise exactly.

Understanding.

You hold it out, low between you, where the others cannot easily see.

Your voice is barely more than breath.

“Can you give this to him?”

Emily’s eyes lift to yours.

She does not ask who.

She knows.

The tray trembles slightly in her hands. She sets it down carefully on the small table beside the door before taking the note from you. She handles it like something fragile, like she knows it contains more than paper should be asked to hold.

“Of course,” she whispers.

You hold on for half a second too long.

The edge of the paper stays between your fingers and hers.

For one terrible moment, you almost take it back.

Almost say no.

Almost return it to the window seat and let the words remain yours alone.

Then thunder rolls outside, low and close, shaking softly through the glass.

You let go.

Emily folds her fingers around the note.

Her eyes are wet again, but she keeps her voice steady.

“I’ll make sure he gets it.”

You nod.

Your throat hurts too much to answer.

Mara is silent behind you.

You do not turn to see her face.

Emily tucks the note carefully into the pocket of her cardigan, close to her chest, then picks up the tray again. At the door, she pauses.

“I won’t let anyone else see it,” she says.

The promise lands quietly.

You believe her.

“Thank you.”

She leaves.

The door closes.

For a second, the room is unbearably still.

Then Mara says, very softly, “Y/n.”

You close your eyes.

“I know.”

“What did it say?”

You turn back toward the window.

Rain runs down the glass, blurring the grounds, the trees, the house’s reflection in its own storm.

“The truth,” you say.

Mara doesn’t press.

Elise lowers her eyes and gives you privacy the only way she can, by pretending to reorganize pins that are already organized. Nora turns toward the vanity and wipes a brush that does not need wiping.

You return to the chair.

The dress waits behind you.

The clock below keeps ticking.

And somewhere in the house, Leon is about to hold the only version of your heart you were brave enough to give him before the aisle.

Leon—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He got ready alone.

That was the first mistake.

He had insisted on it, partly because there were too many people in the house already and partly because he did not know what kind of man needed help buttoning a shirt on the morning of a wedding he had no right to call a wedding. The room assigned to him was not his bedroom. He had avoided that room since before dawn, since the empty bed and the black shirt on Y/n’s body and the look on her face outside his office had split the night open.

So he stood in one of the smaller upstairs guest suites, in front of a mirror framed in dark wood, trying to make himself look like a man who had not spent the last twenty-four hours losing everything.

The suit was black.

Of course it was.

The shirt beneath it was white, crisp, expensive, laid out by someone from the staff who had not quite been able to meet his eyes. The jacket hung from the wardrobe door. His tie rested on the dresser beside a pair of cufflinks he had not chosen. Someone had polished his shoes. Someone had set a glass of water near the basin. Someone had thought of every detail except how a man was supposed to breathe while getting dressed for this.

Rain tapped against the windows.

Not a storm yet. Not fully. But close enough. The sky outside was low and gray, the grounds blurred by water, the trees dragging their wet branches against the wind. It made the morning feel smaller than it was, as if the whole estate had been wrapped in weather and sealed off from the rest of the world.

Leon buttoned his shirt with his left hand.

His right was bruised badly enough that the knuckles had swollen, the skin split in two places. He had wrapped it himself in white gauze because he didn’t trust his own hands around anyone else’s throat if they tried to examine it too closely. The DSO medic had offered. Leon had looked at him once, and the man had decided the injury was not urgent.

Smart.

The buttons were tedious. Small. Stupidly delicate. His fingers fumbled once near the middle, and he stopped, jaw tight, staring at his reflection.

He looked like hell.

Not enough for anyone who didn’t know him to notice right away. That was the trick. He could still pass as composed from a distance. Broad shoulders. Straight posture. Clean shave. Hair damp and combed back, though a few strands kept falling forward no matter how many times he pushed them away.

But his eyes gave him away.

They always had, if anyone knew where to look.

And you knew now.

That was the problem.

You knew how he looked when he was holding back. When he was angry. When he was afraid. When he was trying to turn care into something less dangerous by making it sound like logistics. You knew the silences he hid inside. The small pauses. The way his hand flexed before he stopped himself from reaching.

You knew him well enough to wound him with almost nothing.

You were the only part of this place I stopped being afraid of.

Leon closed his eyes.

The words had stayed with him all night.

Not repeated exactly. Not in a clean loop. Worse than that. They had settled somewhere beneath his ribs and turned everything else tender around them. He had stood in the foyer after she went upstairs, unable to move, surrounded by wedding flowers that smelled too sweet and agents who had no idea they were lucky to still have teeth.

Halden had said something. He couldn’t remember what. Some instruction. Some warning. Some polished little threat wrapped in procedure.

He remembered none of it.

He remembered you on the stairs.

Barefoot. Exhausted. Wearing someone else’s clothes. His mother’s bracelet hidden beneath Mara’s sleeve.

He remembered the way she had looked back at him like she was seeing him without armor for the first time and hating the cost of it.

He had thought, absurdly, that he would rather be shot again.

At least bullets were honest.

The door opened without a knock.

Leon’s eyes snapped to it in the mirror before his body turned.

Chris Redfield stood in the doorway holding two coffees and wearing the expression of a man who had walked into a room full of explosives and decided humor was cheaper than a bomb squad.

“Well,” Chris said, looking him over. “You look like shit.”

Leon stared at him.

Chris stepped inside and shut the door with his heel. “Good morning to you too.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Apparently attending your government-threat-wedding. Very traditional. Very romantic. Lotta armed men downstairs. Really sets the tone.”

Leon turned back to the mirror and resumed buttoning his shirt. “Not the time.”

“That’s why I figured it was the time.” Chris crossed the room and set one coffee on the dresser near Leon’s tie. “You didn’t answer my calls.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah. I gathered that from the agent downstairs with a split lip and a thousand-yard stare.”

Leon’s hand stilled on the last button.

Chris leaned back against the dresser, arms crossed. He was dressed for the ceremony too, though not as formally as the DSO would have preferred. Dark suit, no tie yet, shirt collar open. He looked older in the gray morning light, but solid. Familiar. A person from a different kind of war. A different kind of damage.

Someone who could stand in a room with Leon and not flinch at the worst parts of him.

For a moment, Leon hated how much relief that brought him.

“I’m surprised they let you up here,” Leon said.

“They didn’t.”

That almost pulled a laugh out of him.

Almost.

Chris picked up his own coffee. “Relax. Claire distracted them.”

Leon looked over.

Chris shrugged. “She’s very good at looking harmless until she isn’t.”

“Halden will love that.”

“Halden already hates everyone with a pulse.” Chris studied him over the rim of his cup. “Especially you.”

Leon looked back at the mirror. “Good.”

“Not sure that’s the strategic win you think it is.”

“I’m done being strategic with her.”

Chris’s expression shifted.

There it was.

The room changed around the sentence.

Leon regretted saying it immediately. Not because it wasn’t true. Because Chris heard more than most people, and today Leon did not have the strength to lie well.

Chris set his coffee down.

“What happened?”

Leon reached for the tie, then stopped. The silk hung over his bruised hand, black and limp.

“What version did you hear?”

“That you lost control.” Chris’s voice lost the dry edge. “That she tried to run, DSO put hands on her, someone threatened sedation, and you nearly took the house apart.”

“Nearly?”

“Trying to give you credit for restraint.”

Leon’s mouth twisted. “Generous.”

“Also heard she ripped you open in front of everyone.”

Leon’s reflection looked back at him, pale and still.

Chris softened, but only slightly. He wasn’t a soft man by nature. His care came practical first, blunt second, tender only if the situation had gone completely to hell.

Leon picked up the tie again and tried to loop it around his collar. His bruised hand did not cooperate. The fabric slipped. He cursed under his breath.

Chris watched for about two seconds before stepping forward. “Give me that.”

“I can tie my own tie.”

“Clearly.”

“Chris.”

“Leon.”

They stared at each other in the mirror.

Leon let go first.

Chris took the tie from him and stepped in front of him with the matter-of-fact annoyance of a man who had patched too many field wounds and seen too many proud idiots bleed through their shirts because they didn’t want help.

“This is embarrassing,” Leon muttered.

“Good. Builds character.”

“I’m forty-five.”

“And somehow still need adult supervision.”

Leon looked away, but the corner of his mouth moved despite himself.

Chris worked the tie into place with practiced hands. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The rain filled the silence. Somewhere downstairs, a radio crackled faintly and cut off. The house felt distant from here, though not distant enough.

Chris adjusted the knot, then said, quieter, “Do you love her?”

Leon’s breath stopped.

The question should not have surprised him. It didn’t, really. Not after the foyer. Not after the way he had stood in front of everyone and said the words like tearing open his own chest might somehow give her a place to stand.

Still, hearing Chris ask it made the answer feel different.

Not less true.

More dangerous.

Leon looked at himself in the mirror. At the black suit. The wedding clothes. The bruised hand. The man he had become by degrees, one mission and one compromise and one locked door at a time.

“Yes,” he said.

Chris’s hands slowed on the tie.

Leon swallowed, eyes fixed forward. “Yes.”

The second one came rougher.

Chris finished the knot but didn’t step back right away. His expression in the mirror was careful now.

“Does she know that?”

“I told her.”

“Did she believe you?”

Leon looked down.

Chris exhaled through his nose. “That bad?”

“She believes me.” Leon’s voice was low. “That’s the problem.”

Chris nodded slowly, like he understood more than Leon wanted him to. “Believing someone loves you doesn’t fix what they did.”

“No.”

“And you did do something.”

Leon’s eyes lifted.

Chris did not look away.

There were very few people who could say that to him and survive it. Fewer still he would listen to.

Chris stepped back and picked up his coffee again. “I’m not here to tell you you’re the villain or the hero. I’m too old for that shit, and frankly, so are you. But if you love her, you can’t keep using protection as the reason she doesn’t get choices.”

Leon’s mouth tightened. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you know it until you get scared.”

That landed.

Leon looked away first.

Chris leaned against the dresser again. “You’ve spent a long time being rewarded for deciding faster than everyone else. Field calls. Life or death. Who gets evacuated first, who gets left behind, which door gets breached, which truth gets buried because the wrong people knowing it gets someone killed.”

Leon said nothing.

Chris’s voice softened, but only a little. “That skill saves lives. It also makes you a nightmare in a relationship.”

A short, humorless laugh escaped Leon before he could stop it. “Is that what this is?”

Chris raised an eyebrow. “You tell me.”

Leon looked toward the rain-blurred window.

Relationship.

The word felt almost obscene in this room, on this morning, with flowers downstairs and DSO agents lining the halls. Too small for what this was. Too normal. Too clean.

And yet he saw you in the bookstore holding that used copy of The Count of Monte Cristo like it mattered because it had belonged to someone before. He saw her across the table by the lake, candlelight touching her face while she told him about wanting a child to have snacks and clean socks and someone who apologized when they got it wrong. He saw her standing in the foyer, saying he had made her feel loved like it was an accusation and a confession and a wound all at once.

“If there were another way,” Leon said quietly, “I would take it.”

Chris studied him. “Would you?”

Leon turned his head.

Chris held his stare. “Really?”

The old anger flared on instinct.

Then died.

Because that was the thing about Chris. He did not ask questions for the pleasure of cornering someone. He asked them because the truth was usually already bleeding under the bandage.

Leon’s voice dropped. “I don’t know.”

Chris nodded once, grimly appreciative of the honesty.

Leon rubbed a hand over his face, careful not to drag gauze over his cheek. “At first, I told myself there wasn’t. I told myself this was the only way to keep her alive. Keep her contained. Keep the DSO from turning her into a bargaining chip.” He stopped, the next words harder. “Then she started looking at me like I was a person.”

Chris’s expression shifted.

Leon stared at the floor.

“And I wanted it,” he said. “I wanted her to keep doing it. Even when she hated me. Even when she fought me. I wanted to be the thing in the room she came back to.”

The room went quiet.

Rain struck the glass harder.

Leon’s voice was almost nothing now. “That’s the part I don’t know how to forgive myself for.”

Chris did not answer quickly.

When he did, his voice was low. “You don’t get to make that her job.”

Leon closed his eyes.

“I know.”

“Good.” A pause. “But you also don’t get to decide you’re beyond redemption because it’s easier than doing the work after.”

Leon opened his eyes and looked at him.

Chris shrugged, uncomfortable with his own sincerity. “What? I’ve been to therapy.”

That startled a laugh out of Leon.

Small. Broken. Real.

Chris looked pleased with himself. “There he is. Thought you died standing there.”

“Give it a few hours.”

“Dark. Very groom-like.”

Leon’s mouth twitched, then faded. “She may not walk to me.”

Chris’s expression sobered.

“She might,” he said.

“You didn’t see her last night.”

“No. But I know what you look like when you’ve already decided you don’t deserve something and are trying to make it hurt less by predicting the worst.”

Leon looked away.

Chris stepped closer and clapped a hand on his shoulder, firm enough to anchor, not soft enough to insult him.

“You love her?”

Leon nodded once.

“Then if she walks toward you today, don’t make it about getting her. Make it about meeting her where she is.” Chris’s grip tightened. “And if she doesn’t, you let her not. Even if it ruins you.”

Leon’s throat worked.

“That’s not the kind of brotherly pep talk I was hoping for.”

“Sorry. Left the pom-poms in the car.”

Leon huffed faintly.

Chris let go of his shoulder and turned toward the jacket hanging on the wardrobe. “Put the jacket on. You look half-dressed and emotionally flayed.”

“I am emotionally flayed.”

“Yeah, but no need to be sloppy about it.”

Leon took the jacket from him and slid it on. The movement pulled against his bruised hand, and he winced despite himself.

Chris noticed. “You need that looked at?”

“No.”

“That means yes.”

“It means no.”

“Still stubborn.”

“Still annoying.”

“Stable friendship dynamic.”

Leon adjusted the cuffs. The suit fit perfectly because of course it did. Nothing about it felt like his. The man in the mirror looked like someone stepping into a ceremony. A groom, if one only glanced at the surface.

Underneath, he felt like a man approaching a cliff and hoping the fall would at least be useful.

A knock sounded at the door.

Both men turned.

Leon’s whole body tensed, expecting DSO. Expecting Halden. Expecting another update, another threat, another clean little sentence that would make him want to break something.

Instead, Emily stood in the doorway.

She looked nervous.

Not the polite nervous of staff entering a private room.

This was different. She had one hand pressed to the pocket of her cardigan and her eyes were too bright.

Chris glanced between them, reading the room immediately. “I’ll give you a minute.”

Leon didn’t look away from Emily. “Stay.”

Chris paused.

Leon’s voice was rougher when he added, “Please.”

That one word made Chris stay.

Emily stepped inside and shut the door behind her. Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached into her pocket.

“She asked me to give this to you,” she said.

Leon stopped breathing.

Emily crossed the room and held out a folded piece of cream paper.

For a moment, Leon only stared at it.

It looked impossibly small.

Too small to contain whatever was suddenly happening to his chest.

Chris shifted quietly near the dresser, giving him space without leaving.

Leon took the note with his left hand. The paper was warm from Emily’s pocket, slightly softened at the fold. No name on the outside. No seal. No dramatics.

Just you.

His fingers tightened around it.

“She wrote it this morning,” Emily said softly. “Before they started with her hair.”

Her hair.

The dress.

Preparations.

The reality of it made the room tilt faintly.

Leon nodded once, because he did not trust his voice.

Emily looked like she wanted to say more. Maybe that she was sorry. Maybe that you looked beautiful. Maybe that you were scared. Maybe all of it.

Instead, she only said, “She told me to make sure no one else saw it.”

Leon’s eyes lifted to hers.

“No one will.”

Emily nodded, then slipped out quietly.

The door closed behind her.

For several seconds, Leon did not move.

Chris stayed silent.

Good man.

Leon unfolded the letter carefully, as if moving too quickly might make the words disappear.

The first line hit him hard enough that his knees nearly forgot their purpose.

Leon,

I don’t know if I’m going to give this to you.

His breath left him.

He kept reading.

I don’t know what I believe right now. I don’t know what part of yesterday was real and what part I’m supposed to be afraid of. I don’t know how to hold the fact that you lied to me and the fact that I still looked for you when I woke up scared.

Leon’s hand tightened around the page.

The paper trembled once.

Chris looked away.

I think that is what hurts the most. Not just the lie. The reaching. The way my body went looking for you before my mind remembered it shouldn’t. I hate that. I hate that I don’t hate you enough to make this easier.

Leon pressed his bruised hand against the edge of the dresser, not caring when pain sparked through his knuckles.

You said you loved me.

I keep replaying it. I wish I didn’t. I wish it had made everything simple, but it made everything worse because I believed you. I still believe you. I just don’t know what that saves.

His eyes burned.

He blinked once.

Too late.

The next tear fell before he could stop it, striking the edge of the paper and blurring nothing. He wiped it quickly with the heel of his hand, angry for half a second, then too tired to be angry even at himself.

I don’t know how to walk toward you today. I don’t know if I’m walking toward the man who hurt me, the man protecting me, the man who loves me, or all of them at once.

The room disappeared.

There was only her handwriting.

Careful in places. Messier in others. The letters tighter where she had pressed harder. A tiny smudge near the margin that might have been a tear or rain from her sleeve or nothing at all. It did not matter. He saw her in every line. Her fear. Her anger. Her terrible honesty. The bravery of giving him any of this when he had given her so little back.

I couldn’t take off the bracelet.

I tried to want to.

I couldn’t.

Leon covered his mouth with his hand.

The sound that came out of him was quiet.

Not a sob, not fully.

Something worse.

Chris turned back then, face softening with the kind of grief men like them usually pretended not to know what to do with.

Leon kept reading because stopping would kill him.

If I walk toward you today, please understand that some part of me is still walking scared.

And some part of me is still walking to you.

The last line ruined him.

Leon lowered the letter slowly.

For a long moment, he could not speak. He could barely stand. The suit, the room, the rain, the ceremony, all of it felt thin compared to the small folded paper in his hands.

Some part of me is still walking to you.

Chris said his name quietly.

Leon shook his head once.

Not to stop him.

Because there was no language for this.

He folded the letter with more care than he had ever given any mission order, any classified document, any piece of paper that had ever passed through his hands. Then he slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket, over his heart.

His hand stayed there.

Chris watched him.

“She loves you,” Chris said.

Leon closed his eyes.

The words hurt too much to accept cleanly.

When he opened them, his voice was hoarse.

“She’s scared.”

“Yeah.”

Leon looked toward the door.

Downstairs, somewhere, the house was preparing to take her from one room to another and call it tradition.

“She shouldn’t have to be.”

Chris’s face tightened with something like sorrow.

“No,” he said. “She shouldn’t.”

Leon adjusted his jacket once, though it did not need adjusting. His fingers brushed the pocket where the letter rested. The paper was there. Real. Warm. Hers.

For the first time all morning, he breathed like his lungs might actually work.

Not because anything was fixed.

Nothing was fixed.

But because somewhere upstairs, afraid and furious and still wearing his mother’s bracelet, you had written him the closest thing to a hand reaching through the dark.

And he would meet it carefully.

Or he would spend the rest of his life regretting how much damage his hands had already done.

thinking of you always. i am your dependable dog. i'm here for whatever you decide you need and i'm always thinking of new ways to serve. remember, John 15:26.

Washington — President Trump declared Friday he would seek to bypass Congress and require voter identification in the November midterm elections as legislation on the issue appears doomed in the Senate.  “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.  He said there should also be proof of citizenship and a ban on…

The way pride gets in the way of relationships. Father Xanatos probably came to this wedding hoping for some sort of reconciliation with his son, hoping to find that he's found meaning in human connections. But he saw it just more of his son bloated under his own piles of money.

And what it comes down to in this universe's version of timetravel is that it is immutable. Given that, it's funny that something like the Phoenix Gate even exists. It's amazing they came up with a solid additional storyline for going back in time in a later episode. XD