ex leon kennedy x ex doctor!fem reader
summary : six years after raccoon city , leon follows a classified lead that may just bring him back to the one person he never learned how to lose.
tags : exes to lovers, mutual pining, slow burn , fluff , angst ,smut , blood and violence, abuse of alchohol, emotionally constipated leon, mentions of y/n , leon and reader have a daughter
warnings : mentioned alcohol abuse, slight angst.not proofread
notes : i tried using the style i usually stuck with for my longer ao3 fics rather the one i use on tumblr for this one. please let me know if there's any grammatical error !!
The tile floor was cold against Leon’s back.His head was throbbing, the ceiling above him spinning no matter how hard he tried to focus, while the cheap whiskey from the bar down on Fourth Street still burned in the back of his throat.
Stupid. He had been so fucking stupid.
“You can call me back when you’re sober,Leon.I mean it.”
Her voice stayed in his head even after the door closed. She hadn’t screamed. She hadn’t thrown anything. She only looked at him with those tired eyes, like she had already reached the end, and said it quietly.
And somehow, that sound felt worse than any gunshot he had heard before.
He hadn’t called the next day, or the day after. Not for three weeks. By the time he finally poured every bottle down the sink and forced himself to get through the shakes, the sweats, and the craving that made his teeth ache, Raccoon City happened.
And then there was no one left to call.
The outbreak took everything in one night. The city. The streets. The people who had been alive only hours before. And after it was over, when the quarantine zone was set and the bodies were being counted, Leon went back to her apartment building.
Or what was left of it.Broken windows. Melted wiring. Ash everywhere.No sign of her. No record of her. No body.
Ms.Y/N Campbell. Age nineteen. First year Med student at Raccoon University. Daughter of Carmen Campbell, Secretary of HHS. Last seen—
Leon had stared at that word for too long.
For six years, he carried that silence with him. Through the training Krauser put him through. Through every report that had her name buried somewhere in the back of his mind. He tried to let it go, but it never really left. Not her. Not the door closing. Not the smell of vanilla lotion in the hallway, the same one she used every morning while sitting on the edge of the bed, taking forever to put it on because she knew it drove him crazy.
Nothing about this mission had gone right. Ashley was supposed to be a simple extraction. Get in, find her then get out. He'd done it a hundred times. But this—he cult, the Plaga, the mutations, the sheer scale of the horror, it had gotten under his skin in ways he didn't have words for.
Luis. Luis with the cigarette dangling from his lips, making jokes even as the life bled out of him. I've lived my life the way I wanted, eh? The way he'd said it—, like it was a comfort, like it was supposed to make Leon feel better about not being able to save him but it couldn't.
Ada, who'd saved him. Ada, who'd used him?Ada, who'd looked at him with something that might have been regret , manipulation or both.
"You haven't changed, Leon...You just think you have."
"....Have you changed, Ada? Or are you just doing all this to use me again?"
The question came before Leon could stop it. It slipped in the moment his mind went quiet, when exhaustion left too much room for memories he didn’t want to deal with. Six years had passed, and still, some part of him kept coming back to it.
The answer was never simple, but it always ended in the same place. He couldn’t let it go. He had made her a promise, her hand had been in his that morning, warm and real, and the last thing she told him before he left her apartment was I promise ,I'll be sober, I promise. Then the city fell, and he never saw her again.
The voice cut in and pulled Leon out of his thoughts. He blinked once, realizing he had been staring at nothing as the medbay came back into focus around him: gray walls, gray floor, and that same faint antiseptic smell every government medical facility seemed to have. The doctor stood in front of him with a clipboard in hand, watching him with professional concern that still somehow looked impatient. Leon had seen that look enough times over the years to recognize it immediately.
"You with me?" the doctor asked.
"Yeah." Leon's voice came out rougher than he'd intended. He cleared his throat. "Sorry. What?"
"I said you're clear to go. Your ribs are bruised, not broken. The lacerations on your hands are superficial- keep them clean and they'll heal on their own." The doctor flipped a page on his clipboard. "I'm recommending seventy-two hours of rest before you do anything strenuous."
"Rest." Leon repeats the word and scoffs. The word felt foreign in his mouth.
"Sleep. In a bed. For several hours.” The doctor gave him a look that said he had given this exact speech many times before and was already aware Leon wouldn’t listen. “I mean it, Agent Kennedy. Your body needs time to recover from whatever you’ve been through.”
Leon got off the examination table, his feet hitting the floor a little harder than he meant them to. The impact went straight up his spine and made his ribs ache, but his face didn’t change. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“I’m sure you will.” The sarcasm in the doctor’s voice was soft. Almost paternal, at least.
Leon grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door and shrugged it on, careful not to move his torso too much. The fabric scraped against his bandaged knuckles and he felt the sting sharply.
Outside the medbay, the corridor was long and gray, the lights humming quietly above him as Leon walked toward the exit. His mind was already somewhere else, going back through six years of silence and everything that came after, to a memory he still couldn’t leave alone..A house with terracotta walls, warm under the evening light. A lamp on the nightstand, glowing orange through his closed eyes while he lay there half-awake, listening to her breathe beside him. Slow, calm, unguarded. Nothing like the way she was during the day.
Leon shook his head, trying to push the thought away as he kept walking.Maybe some whiskey tonight wouldn’t be a bad idea. Right?
The bar was called Sullivan's. No sign outside, just a neon shamrock in the window that flickered on and off at irregular intervals. Leon had been here before a handful of times over the years, when the need to be around other people outweighed the desire to be alone. The inside smelled like stale beer and old wood and something that might have been regret.
Noise hit him first. Laughter, the clink of glasses, some old rock song playing from a jukebox in the corner. The bar was busier than he'd expected at this hour for a Tuesday night, small clusters of people gathered at tables and along the counter. He wove through them, his ribs protesting with every step.
And that's when he saw him.
Chris was leaning at the far end of the bar, one elbow resting against the polished wood as he talked to the bartender. She had red hair and the kind of smile that made it obvious she had heard every line possible and still wasn’t impressed. Chris seemed to be in the middle of a conversation, one hand moving as he spoke, looking way too relaxed for someone Leon had expected to find worried.
Leon made his way over and slid onto the stool beside him.
“You’re going to scare her off with that face.”
Chris turned to look at him, his eyebrows raising slightly before his expression shifted into something between amusement and concern.
“Kennedy. You look like shit.”
“Flatterer.” Leon lifted a hand to get the bartender’s attention. “Whiskey. Neat.”
“Came back from rough mission?”
The bartender placed the glass in front of him, and Leon wrapped his fingers around it without drinking right away. He only held it for a moment, feeling the cool glass against his skin.
“You,” Leon said, glancing at Chris, “look like you’re about to make a bad decision.”
Chris snorted. “I wasn’t going to do anything.”
“I was just being friendly.”
“That’s how it always starts.”
Chris opened his mouth like he wanted to argue, then seemed to think better of it. A small grin pulled at the corner of his mouth instead. “Fine. Maybe. But now you’re here, so I guess you can be my chaperone.”
Leon took a sip of the whiskey, letting the burn settle in his throat before setting the glass back down.
“What are you doing in DC anyway? Last I heard, you were in Europe.”
“I was.” Chris’s expression changed almost immediately, the easy look on his face fading into something more serious. “Got called back. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Leon looked at him for a moment, then set his glass down properly and turned more toward him. “Then talk.”
Chris glanced around the bar. The noise hadn’t changed. If anything, it had gotten louder, but he still lowered his voice. “Not here. Too many ears.”
“I mean it. This is classified, Leon. Above your clearance and ..mine. I’m not even supposed to be telling you this, but I think you need to know.”
Leon studied him. Chris’s jaw was tight now, his shoulders tense in a way Leon recognized too well. It was the same look people had before everything went to shit.
“Fine,” Leon said after a few seconds. “But if we’re doing this, I’m driving you home. You’re not walking anywhere if you’ve been drinking.”
Chris looked down at the half-empty beer in front of him. “I’ve barely had two.”
“And you’re a lightweight.”
“I’m not a lightweight , man.”
“You are, and we both know it. Jesus, give me your keys.”
Chris sighed, reaching into his pocket before handing him the keys on a simple metal ring. Leon took them without another word and slipped them into his jacket pocket, then left a few bills on the counter for the whiskey.
The whiskey still burned in his throat when he stood up from the stool, Chris’s keys already in his pocket. Around them, the bar kept going like nothing had changed. Someone laughed too loud near the back, a glass broke somewhere behind the counter, and the jukebox switched to a slower song that almost got swallowed by the noise. But Leon barely paid attention to any of it. His mind was still stuck on the word classified and the way Chris had looked when he said it.
He reached for his jacket, the movement pulling at his ribs enough to make him wince before he could stop himself.
Chris noticed. Of course he did. Chris noticed everything, which was exactly what made him annoying and useful at the same time.
“My car’s around back,” Leon said, his voice lower now. He didn’t wait for Chris to answer before making his way through the crowd toward the door. The second he stepped outside, the night air hit him, cool and damp, carrying that smell of rain that hadn’t fallen yet.
Whatever Chris needed to tell him could wait until they were out of here.
Right now, Leon only wanted to leave the bar, get away from the noise, and hear whatever answer Chris had been carrying with him.
The drive to Chris’s house takes about thirty minutes. The roads are quiet at this hour, almost midnight according to the dashboard clock, with only a few cars passing by every once in a while. The streetlights cast orange patches across the asphalt as Leon keeps one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh.
His ribs ache. His knuckles still throb. And no matter how much he tries to focus on the road, his mind keeps drifting to what happend on the island.
Chris sits silently in the passenger seat, his head leaned back against the seat and his eyes half-closed. For a moment, he almost looks asleep, but Leon knows better. Chris isn’t relaxed. Not really. The tension is still there, clear in his jaw and shoulders, no matter how much he tries to hide it.
Minutes pass. The radio remains off, leaving only the quiet hum of the engine and the occasional sound of another car passing by in the opposite direction.
Yet, Leon’s mind is burning with questions.
The classified intel. The mission Chris mentioned. The way his voice dropped back at the bar when he said you need to know, like whatever he had to say wasn’t something easy to hear.
“Uh, yeah?” Chris lifts his head a little, blinking. “Sorry. I think I almost fell asleep just now.”
“That classified intel,” Leon says, keeping his eyes on the road. “We’re alone now.”
Chris doesn’t answer right away. He only shifts in his seat, letting out a quiet breath through his nose.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “We are.”
Another pause follows, longer this time. Leon doesn’t look at him, but he can feel Chris struggling beside him, deciding how much he should say and how badly this could go if he says it wrong.
“Okay.The BSAA has been.. tracking something for the past few months,” Chris finally says, his voice lower now. “At first we thought it was just another Umbrella sample, but…it’s not. It’s something new. They’re calling it the S-virus,I think?”
Leon glances at him briefly. “New how?”
“New as in we didn’t even know it existed until six months ago. It’s…” Chris stops, pressing his lips together for a moment. “Do you remember the G-virus? From Raccoon City?”
Leon almost wants to laugh at that. “How could I forget?"
“From what we can tell, it’s connected to the G-virus,” Chris says. “Not directly. It’s not some clean "descendant" or anything like that, but the structure is close enough to know someone built it from the same nightmare. Most likely Umbrella, before they went down.”
“Of course it’s Umbrella,” Leon mutters.
“Yeah. But this one does something different,” Chris says. “Something we haven’t seen before. It doesn’t cure the G-virus, but it can make the body fight it off better. Partial immunity, basically.”
“Partial. Not complete to be exact” Chris turns his head toward the window for a moment, watching the dark streets pass. “And it comes with side effects well. Organ failure. Memory loss. Degenerative neurological symptoms. It’s not a cure, Leon. It’s a gamble. Some of the people infected with it survived and.. some didn’t.”
Leon keeps quiet, taking that in. A virus made to protect people from another virus, while still destroying them in the process.
What kind of sick shit is that?
“How many cases are we talking about?"
“Four confirmed ones. Alive, but still at risk.” Chris pauses again. “One is an old Umbrella researcher. A man in his seventies. He’s been in a coma for three months.”
The silence stretches inside the car, making everything feel heavier. Leon keeps his eyes on the road, but the streetlights outside begin to blur together in orange lines. His fingers tighten around the wheel before he forces them to relax, one by one.
Chris swallows. “The second was Claire.”
Her name hits Leon harder than expected.
“She’s alive,” Chris says quickly, turning toward him. “She’s okay. They caught it early, and she’s responding to the treatment. But when I found out…” He shakes his head, looking down at his hands. “I almost lost my mind. I wanted to go out there and break every door until someone gave me an answer.”
Leon understands that too well.
Claire Redfield. Bright, stubborn, impossible Claire, lying in a hospital bed somewhere, fighting a virus that could take her memories away.
“You said four,” Leon says after a moment. “Who are the other two?”
Chris stays quiet for so long that Leon almost asks again. Then he shifts in his seat, turning more toward him.
“Have you ever met a mercenary named Ada?”
Leon doesn’t answer at first. His hands stay on the wheel, his foot easing off the gas slightly without him even noticing. The car slows a little as the streetlights move across his face one after another.
Chris exhales beside him, like he has been holding that name in his chest for days.
Spain comes back for a second. The church. The way she looked at him across all that mess, wearing that half-smirk of hers, like she knew something he didn’t. Then the fall. Her hand slipping from his, her eyes meeting his one last time before she disappeared into the darkness.
She survived.Of course she did.
“We’ve met,” Leon finally answers, his voice colder than he expected.
Chris hears it too. The wall going up. “Right,” he says carefully. “Well…she’s one of the victims. We don’t know how she was exposed, but her status has been confirmed.”
Leon nods once, but doesn’t ask anything else.
He doesn’t want the details. Not about her. Ada is something he closed a long time ago, and he has no intention of opening that door again tonight.
“And the fourth?” he asks. “You said there were four.”
This silence feels different now.
Chris looks at him for a moment, almost like he’s already regretting what he is about to say.
“Do you know Carmen Campbell?”
Leon’s heart almost stops.
“Secretary of Human Services. Appointed under Clinton. She had a reputation for being…well. Let’s just say not many people liked her.”
“I know who she is,” Leon says, his voice steady enough.
At least, it sounds steady. Inside, something already begins to move. Something he kept buried for too long.
“We have reason to believe Carmen has been working with Umbrella. Secretly. Before and now too. We don’t have enough proof to make it hold in court, but the intelligence is strong. And one of her relatives might have been exposed to the S-virus because of it.”
Leon’s fingers tighten around the wheel again.
“A resident doctor,” Chris says. “Works at a children’s hospital in Washington. We don’t have the full name yet, the records are sealed and we’re still trying to get clearance. But Carmen wasn’t exactly private about her family. She had a daughter who would be around the right age now. Early twenties, maybe.”
The car swerves.Not enough to hit anything, but enough for Chris to grab the dashboard.
Leon corrects the wheel, forcing the car back into the lane. His heart is beating so hard he can hear it in his ears.
“I’m fine,” he says quickly. “Sorry. I had a rough night.”
Chris stares at him for a few seconds, his expression changing little by little.
“Wait,” he says slowly. “Do you know her? Carmen’s daughter?”
Leon doesn’t look at him. “I don’t know anything yet. That’s the problem.”
The words come out sharper than he meant them to. Chris lifts both hands slightly, like he doesn’t want to make it worse.
A few seconds pass. The engine hums quietly. The streetlights sweep over the windshield.
Then Chris speaks again, softer this time. “So what’s going on with you?”
Leon clenches his jaw. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, because that was definitely nothing.”
“You look like you just relived Raccoon City all over again.”
Leon lets out a dry laugh with no humor in it. “Something like that.”
Chris watches him for a moment, then looks ahead. “Girlfriend problems?”
The laugh that leaves Leon this time is bitter. “That hasn’t been my problem since I joined USSTRATCOM.”
“Right,” Chris mutters, and thankfully, he doesn’t say anything else.
By the time they reach Chris’s house, it’s already past midnight. The place is modest, sitting on a quiet street with the porch light on and the curtains drawn. Leon pulls into the driveway and kills the engine, but neither of them moves right away.
The silence comes back again.
Chris eventually opens the door and steps out, before turning back and leaning slightly to look at Leon through the window.
“Chris,” Leon says before he can stop himself.
His hands are still resting on the wheel. He hates how hard it is to ask.
“Those updates. On the S-virus. The victims. Carmen Campbell’s relative. If you hear anything new-”
“I’ll tell you,” Chris says firmly. “Right away. First thing. You have my word.”
Leon nods once. “Thanks.”
“Get some sleep. You really look like shit.”
Chris gives him a tired look, then closes the door and makes his way toward the house. Leon watches him unlock the front door, step inside, and a few seconds later, the porch light turns off.
Then Leon is alone again.
He doesn’t leave right away. He only sits there in the dark car, both hands still on the wheel, staring at nothing.
Her name alone makes his stomach turn.
How could he ever forget her? Her laugh. Her hand in his. The way she used to look at him when she was pretending not to care too much.
Carmen had been working with Umbrella. Or still was. And she had a daughter who would be in her early twenties now. A resident doctor at a children’s hospital in Washington.
His throat tightens at the thought. She’s a doctor at a children’s hospital, her mother might be connected to Umbrella, there is a virus that causes memory loss and organ failure, she is the right age, she is in the right city, and-
Leon stops the thought before it can go any further.
He is connecting dots that might not even belong together. For all he knows, Carmen has some niece or cousin nobody ever mentioned, someone completely unrelated to the girl he lost six years ago. It could be anyone.
But the worry is already there, sitting low in his stomach and refusing to leave.
Could she really have been alive this whole time?
The memory comes back without him wanting it to.
Washington, DC. The police station. The man behind the desk with that carefully blank face people make when they know they’re about to say something that will hurt.
Her remains weren’t recovered. Given the circumstances, she’s been listed as deceased.
Leon remembers standing there, waiting for the man to continue. Waiting for him to say but we’re still looking, or there is still a chance, or anything that didn’t sound so final.
She was gone. Listed as deceased. No body. No proof. Just a file, a stamp, and a folder that got put away like she had never mattered to anyone.
Leon had listened because he had no other choice. He nodded like it was just another piece of information to accept, then walked outside, got into his car, and sat there for almost an hour without moving.
After that, he searched for her.
Not in some dramatic way. Nothing that looked like it meant anything from the outside. Just him sitting in front of a computer, typing her name into databases that never gave him anything useful. Following leads that turned into nothing. Calling numbers that had been disconnected for years. Talking to people who knew Carmen, people who worked at the hospital Y/N volunteered at during high school, even one person who claimed they saw a girl who looked like her at a bus station in Pennyslvania.
None of it went anywhere.
And after a while, searching for her stopped feeling like hope. It became a habit. Something he did because stopping felt wrong.
Then one day, he stopped.
Not because he moved on. Not because it hurt less. He stopped because there was nothing left to follow, and because every dead end felt like it held the same answer , over and over again.
Chris’s words stay in the back of his mind, repeating themselves no matter how much he tries to shut them out.
For some reason, that last part makes the whole situation feel heavier than it should. This should be just another lead. Another possible connection in a case already full of unanswered questions. Yet, the more Leon thinks about it, the more it pulls him back to a life he hasn’t allowed himself to remember properly in years.
A quiet sigh leaves him as his gaze drops to the steering wheel.
Sometime before Raccoon City comes back too clearly. Her hand warm in his, her voice soft in the dark, telling him that maybe someday, things would be different. Back then, it had actually sounded possible. Stupidly possible. He told her he would visit whenever he could, that distance wouldn’t change anything, that somehow, they would make it work.
And then everything went to hell.
Whatever promise he made that night died with the city, along with the future they thought they still had.
Leon stays silent for a few more seconds, trying to push the memory away before it can settle too deep. There is no point in remembering all of this now. Not when it doesn’t change anything.
Still, his hands don’t move from the wheel right away.
“Fuck’s sake…” he mutters under his breath, closing his eyes for a second.
With a low exhale, Leon starts the engine again and pulls out of Chris’s driveway, heading home with his mind louder than before and Chris’s words refusing to leave him alone.
You should have known better than to ignore the headache.
It started behind your eyes around noon, a dull throb that you told youself was just fatigue. Twenty-one hours on you feet. Three emergency admissions. A code blue in the pediatric ward that had lasted forty-seven minutes.You counted, because counting was the only thing that kept you from falling apart while you worked.
By the time your shift ended at seven, You were running on fumes.
The hospital hallway was almost empty by the time you walked out, the white lights above making headache feel even worse. You had already changed out of your scrubs into a pair of jeans and a sweater after Hailey practically forced you into the locker room, saying you looked like you were about to collapse and that she would take care of the rest of your rounds.
Hailey. God, I didn't deserve her.
She had been waiting for you outside the nurses' station when you walked out of your last patient's room, arms crossed and clearly unimpressed. From the look on her face, you already knew she was about to give you a lecture, probably about how awful you looked and how you needed to stop acting like sleep was optional.
"You look terrible," she'd said, shoving a cup of coffee towards your hand.
"Thanks. You really know how to make a girl feel special."
"I'm serious. When's the last time you slept?"
You took a sip of the coffee. It was lukewarm and bitter. "Define sleep."
"More than three hours in a row?"
Hailey let out a sigh, and from the look on her face, you already knew she was about to say something you probably didn't have the energy to hear. But instead of scolding you again, she uncrossed her arms and gently placed her hand on you shoulder, her expression softening a little.
You wanted to lie. The instinct was automatic fine, busy, the usual but the words stuck in your throat. Because it hadn't been fine. The code blue had been a six-year-old girl named Macy who'd come in with what her parents thought was just a bad flu and turned out to be something much worse, something you still didn't have a name for. We'd almost lost her. Twice.
And all you've been able to think, while your hands performed the motions of CPR and your voice called out orders you'd memorized since years ago, was Lucine.
Lucine in her hospital bed. The black veins crawling up her neck, asking you when she could go home.
"It was hell" you said. Your voice cracked on the last word.
Hailey didn't flinch. She just squeezed your shoulder. "Then go see your daughter. I'll handle things here."
"How was she today? Lucine?"
Hailey's expression softened. "She was okay. A little better than last week, actually, the color was back in her cheeks. She was talking more and told me about the cat she clings to."
The cat. The plush cat with worn ears and a stitched-on smile , the little bell inside that still jingled when you shook it. The cat that Leon had won for you at a carnival when you were eighteen, after you'd spent an hour trying to knock over milk bottles with a ball that didn't fly straight. He handed it to over to you with that grin of his and said "Told you I'd get it for you."
That was almost 8 years ago. The cat was still here but Leon wasn't.
"She seemed better" Hailey continued. "The symptoms from last week, the veins, the confusion, they haven't come back so you can ease your worries a little.And by the way she also asked for you three times."
Three times. God.Your chest tightened. "I'll go see her. Hailey, thank you."
"Please don't thank me. Just promise you'll get some sleep after,okay?Take care of yourself."
You promised you would. You meant to keep the promise. But as you walked through the hospital toward the intensive care unit, the corridor stretching and shrinking in ways that didn't quite make sense, uou started to realize sleep might be farther away than I'd thought.
Your vision blurred before you could even make it past radiology.
It happend so suddenly.One moment, you were walking through the hallway, your eyes following the signs that pointed toward the ICU, and the next, you had to slow down, one hand reaching for the wall beside you before you could think twice. For a few seconds, you just stood there, blinking through the dizziness as your body tried to catch up with the fact that you had been on your feet for way too long.
Exhaustion. It's what you told yourself.
Twenty-one hours at the hospital would make anyone feel like this.
Taking a deeper breath, you waited until your vision cleared enough before pulling your hand away from the wall and continuing down the corridor, trying to ignore the heavy feeling still sitting in the back of your head.
The intensive care unit was quieter than the rest of the hospital. Fewer machines beeping. Fewer voices over the intercom. The air smelled like antiseptic and something else you'd never been able to identify but that always made yoir chest tighten the moment you walked through the doors. Hope, maybe. Or the absence of it.
Lucine's room was at the end of the hall. Room 247. You'd memorized the number months ago, the first time you checked her in, when the doctors said they needed to run tests and you sat in the waiting room for six hours with your hands shaking in your lap.
Lucine had been here for three months now.
You pushed the door open slowly, careful not to make too much noise to avoid waking her. The room was dim, lit only by the small lamp on the bedside table and the faint glow of the monitors beside her.
The blinds were drawn, the TV was off, and everything felt too quiet.
And there, on the bed, was your daughter.
Her blondish hair was messy against the pillow, probably from all the tossing and turning she had done before falling asleep. The hospital blanket was pulled up to her chin, and in her arms, she held the old plush cat close to her chest.
The same one with worn ears and the stitched smile.
The one she had found in your closet when she was three, and refused to give back after asking where it came from.
A friend gave it to you, that's wha you told her.
Someone I knew a long time ago.
She had been too young for that question.Or maybe you had been too scared to answer it properly.So instead, you only kissed her forehead and told her Yes , a lot.
Looking at her now, your chest began to ache in that familiar way it always did whenever you saw her like this. The IV in her arm, the monitors attached to her chest, her small face looking even paler against the white pillow. It was something you should have gotten used to after three months, but you didn’t.
Not really.In fact, tonight felt worse.
Maybe because of Macy. Maybe because earlier today, you almost watched a six-year-old die in front of you, and for a few horrible seconds, all you could see was Lucine lying on that table instead.
You crossed the room quietly and sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling the mattress dip slightly beneath your weight. For a moment, you only looked at her, taking in the way she slept with the blanket close to her chin and the plush cat still held against her chest.
Carefully, you reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from Lucine’s forehead. Her skin was warm beneath your fingers, making you pause for a second.
Not feverish, just warm and most importanly, alive.
The black veins hadn’t come back thankfully. Last week, they had spread from her neck to her jaw, dark and visible beneath her skin in a way that made your stomach twist the moment you saw them, and you still remember standing in the corner of the room while the doctors examined her, trying not to completely lose it. This week, they were gone. For now. The doctors said the S-virus was unpredictable, the symptoms could appear and disappear whenever they wanted, remission could last weeks, months, or only a few days, and there was no way to know when everything would start again.
Partial immunity to the G-virus. That’s what the researchers had told you in one of those meetings you wished you could erase from your head. But then came the side effects like organ failure, memory loss, and everything else they claimed happened in seventy percent of the cases.
You held onto the thirty percent like a lifeline. For three months. Through every test, every procedure, and every night you ended up falling asleep in the chair beside her bed.
Reaching down, you took her small hand in yours, feeling how warm and still her fingers were against your palm. You lifted them to your lips and kissed them gently, the same way you always did, the way your own mother never did with you.
Her voice came out soft and sleepy. Looking down, you found her eyes half-open, blinking slowly up at you through the dim light. Blue like his, but shaped like yours. Every time you looked at her, you found pieces of him in the smallest parts of her face, and you never knew if that should comfort you or make everything hurt more.
“Hey, sweetheart,” you whisper, keeping your voice gentle even though something inside you feels ready it's ready to break. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
"You didn't." She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, the other still clutching the cat. "I was just resting my eyes. Like you do."
"Yes!Sometimes you close your eyes but you're not sleeping. You're just resting them."
I smiled. "Resting your eyes is the same as sleeping. Technically."
"Then I was sleeping a little bit. But not a lot,” she murmurs, shifting slightly on the bed to make space for you. From that small movement alone, you already understand what she wants. Carefully, you stretch out beside her, making sure not to disturb the IV line, and almost instantly, she curls against your side, her head resting on your shoulder while the plush cat remains pressed between the two of you.
"I missed you," she said.
"I missed you too ,baby. More than anything."
"Hailey said you were working super hard today."
"I was. But I'm done now."
The question made your chest ache .Lucine asked you the same thing every time you came to visit. Every time you had to leave. And every time, you told her you would stay as long as you could, even though deep down, you both knew that it would never be long enough.
"I'm gonna stay," You said. "For as long as you need me."
She was quiet for a moment. Her fingers traced patterns on the cat's worn ears, a habit she'd had since she was old enough to hold the thing.
"When I get better—can we go somewhere?"
When. Not if. When. She'd never said if, not once, not even when the doctors were talking about seventy percent chances and experimental treatments and outcomes they couldn't guarantee. She was five years old and she'd never doubted she was going to walk out of this hospital someday.
You wanted to be that certain. You wanted it so badly it hurt.
"Where do you want to go?"
She thought about it. The cat's bell jingled faintly as she shifted. "The zoo? With Aunt Lana and Uncle Daniel? And maybe Lorie and Ethan could come too."
Lorie and Ethan. Her cousins. Your sister's children and your brother's son, who had grown up alongside Lucine and who asked about her every time they called. Your siblings had their own families now, Lana with her husband and two kids, Daniel with his wife and baby on the way, but they always made time to visit. They always brought flowers , books and stories about the outside world, stories that made Lucine laugh even when she was too tired to keep her eyes open.
"The zoo sounds perfect," I said. "We can go see the monkeys."
"And the penguins. Obviously."
"And then we can get ice cream."
"It's not a zoo trip without ice cream. I think that's a law somewhere."
She giggled softly, the sound tired but still real enough to make you smile a little. It was small, barely there, but after everything, hearing it felt like something you desperately needed.
"Do you think daddy would come to the zoo? If he was here?"
The question makes you go quiet for a moment, your eyes lowering to the plush cat she still holds against her chest.
You had told her the truth about it years ago, or at least the part you knew she could understand.
It was a gift from your father. After we finished high school together.
You hadn’t said much more than that, because how were you supposed to explain something like this to a child? That her father was someone you loved a long time ago?That he died in a city that no longer exists?That she never had the chance to meet him, even though sometimes, looking at her face, it felt like pieces of him were still right there with you?
You swallowed. "I think he would, sweetheart. I think he would have loved to take you to the zoo."
"Especially the penguins."
She was quiet for a moment. Then : "I wish I could meet him."
Your chest begins to hurt even more at her question, but you only lean down and press a soft kiss against her forehead, trying not to show how much it affects you. “Me too, baby. Me too.”
“Was he nice? Like Aunt Lana said?”
Lana. God, what had Lana told her? Your older sister had always been the one who pushed and asked the questions you didn't want to answer. You need to tell her about her father someday, she'd said, more than once. She's going to start asking.
"Yeah," I said. "He was nice. He was really nice."
"More than anything." The words came out before I could stop them. "More than I knew how to say."
Lucine seemed to think about it for a moment, her fingers still playing with the cat’s worn ears. “Okay,” she finally murmurs, her voice getting softer as sleep starts to take over again. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” you whisper, looking down at her. “It is.”
She doesn’t answer anymore. Her eyes are already closed again, her breathing slowly becoming steady as her small body relaxes against yours. You stay there beside her, holding her carefully in your arms, trying to convince yourself that somehow, everything will be okay.
Still, the thoughts came back. No matter how hard you tried to keep them away.
After Raccoon City, after you received the news that the city had been destroyed, that a bomb had been dropped and almost no one made it out alive, you didn’t really know what to do with yourself. The frustration you had felt toward Leon, the anger that he hadn’t called when he promised he would, disappeared the second fear settled in instead. Real fear. Which made made you feel sick for months and years to come.
And then the official answer came. A man in uniform, standing in a police station in Washington, DC, his face giving you nothing. No one named Leon Scott Kennedy has been registered among the survivors. Given the circumstances, he’s been listed as deceased.
You just stood there. You listened. You nodded, like this was something normal, something you could accept and move on from. And then you walked outside, got into your car, and sat there for almost an hour, staring at nothing.
Two months later, You discovered you were pregnant.
The timing was almost cruel. Two months after losing him, you found out you were carrying his child, a part of him that had survived, that was growing inside you, that you would have to raise alone. The fear had been overwhelming. The loneliness. The grief that you'd been trying to bury, trying to push through for the sake of medical school and residency and the life I was supposed to be building.
Your mother, for all her flaws, had been supportive in some ways.Not warm, because Carmen had never been that kind of woman, but supportive enough. She helped you find a place to live, helped with Lucine while you finished your studies, and never once told you that keeping her had been the wrong choice.
But she also never really let you grieve. Not the way you needed to. You need to move on, she had told you more than once. You have a child to think about now. You can’t spend your whole life mourning someone who’s gone.
So you did what you always did. You pushed it down and forced yourself to focus on something else. Medical school. Lucine. Becoming someone who could save people instead of standing there and watching them disappear from your life.
But sometimes, when everything went quiet, when you were alone after a long shift or lying awake at night with nothing to distract you anymore, you let yourself remember. The carnival cat. Graduation night. The way his voice sounded the last time you heard it, over the phone, that morning before everything fell apart..
I'll call you tonight, okay? Something weird is going on in town, but I'm sure it's nothing. I'll call you tonight.
Lucine shifts beside you, her hand already loose around the plush cat while her breathing becomes slow and even again. You watch her for a moment, the small rise and fall of her chest, the way her eyelashes move slightly in her sleep, and you feel that ache coming back in your chest.
She has been asking about him more often lately. Her father. The man who gave you the cat, who loved you a long time ago, who isn’t here anymore. You never really know what to tell her. The truth is too much for a child to understand, but lying to her feels even worse.
He's very far away, you'd said, the first time she'd asked. But he loved you very much.
It wasn’t a lie. He would have loved her. You knew that, even if it made no sense after six years of silence and an official report that listed him as deceased. Leon would have loved her. He would have been good with her. You could picture it too easily sometimes, him taking her to the zoo, buying her ice cream even after you told him not to, teaching her to drive stick in some empty grocery store parking lot when she was older.
But he never got the chance. And for six years, you had been trying to accept that.
At some point, you must have fallen asleep, because the next thing you knew, the door creaked open and a nurse peeked inside. Not Hailey. Someone from the night shift. You blinked awake, confused for a few seconds as the lamplight blurred your vision.
“Dr. Campbell?” the nurse says softly. “Are you all right?”
You sit up slowly, blinking a few times as you try to understand where you are. Your neck feels stiff, probably from sleeping in the chair. At some point during the night, you must have moved away from the bed and ended up beside it instead. Lucine is still asleep, the plush cat tucked close to her chest, her face peaceful in a way you haven’t seen in days.
“I’m fine. ” you say, though your voice comes out hoarse. “What time is it?”
Midnight. You had been asleep for hours. The headache from earlier isn’t as bad anymore, but there is still that strange dizziness you can’t fully get rid of, a slight blur at the edge of your vision that you keep blinking away.
“Do you need anything?” the nurse asks.
Your eyes move back to Lucine. To the monitors beeping quietly beside her. To the worn cat in her arms, with its stitched smile, soft ears, and little bell that jingled earlier when she moved in her sleep.
“No,” you answer quietly. “I have everything I need."
The nurse nods and leaves, closing the door halfway behind her, just enough for the hallway light to slip inside. You stay there in the dim room, Lucine asleep only a few feet away from you, and somehow, your thoughts go back to Leon again.
You think about him more often than you would ever admit out loud. More than you told Hailey, Lana, Daniel, or even your mother. The carnival cat. Graduation night. His hand in yours, warm and real. The way he used to look at you sometimes, like he couldn’t believe you were standing there with him.
And now here you are. A resident doctor at a children’s hospital in Washington. A single mother to a five-year-old girl fighting a virus you still can’t cure. A woman who, after six years, still can’t make herself throw away a stuffed cat with worn ears.
Reaching out, you take Lucine’s hand again, careful not to wake her. Her fingers are small and warm in yours, and you lift them to your lips, kissing them gently the way you always do.
“I’m going to get you through this” you whisper. “I promise.”
She doesn’t move, still deep asleep against the pillow. But then, somewhere in the quiet room, you hear the little bell on the cat jingle again, soft and barely there
It was probably just Lucine moving in her sleep.Still, for a second, you don’t know what to think
tags : @deathrye @leon-kennedy-pegger
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