Leon Kennedy

Leon wasn’t always like this. There was a time when he came home with flowers, not bloodstains. When he remembered anniversaries, birthdays, the little things that made a marriage feel like a home. He used to laugh easily, hold her close, and fall asleep without a bottle on the nightstand. But mission after mission, piece by piece, that man faded. Raccoon City took his innocence. Spain took his trust. Every subsequent op chipped away at whatever remained. The baggage he carried grew heavier, and the weight crushed the warmth out of him. He stopped talking and sharing. But started drinking.

---

The apartment was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the distant wail of a siren somewhere in the Washington D.C. night. Leon let the front door click shut behind him, the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness. The air was cold, stale, but it wasn't the temperature that made his blood run cold.

It was the suitcases.

Two of them. Packed and zipped, standing sentinel in the middle of the living room like accusations.

Had he forgotten something? He thought. Her mom sick? A trip he didn't remember? An anniversary?

His eyes, still carrying the grit and sleeplessness of a three-week op that had gone sideways in a thousand terrible ways, tracked to the dining table. She was sitting there, back straight, hands folded on the dark wood. Between her fingers, a pen rested on a thick stack of papers.

Divorce papers.

---

He remembered the early years – her laugh echoing through this same apartment, the way she'd greet him at the door with a warm meal and a kiss that could erase the worst of his nightmares. He remembered the notes she used to slip into his lunch bag, the way she'd trace the scars on his body with her fingers and tell him he was still beautiful. He remembered falling asleep with her wrapped in his arms, her heartbeat a lullaby that drowned out the screams.

That woman was gone now. And he had killed her – slowly, mission by mission, bottle by bottle.

---

“Funny,” he said, voice rougher than he meant it to be. He tossed his jacket onto the back of the couch and walked toward her, boots heavy on the hardwood. “You really went all out. The suitcases, the papers… did you print these at home or actually go somewhere?”

He poured the last inch of a bottle of bourbon into a glass, hand steady, heart not. He was trying to catch her eye, to find the familiar warmth there. The woman who used to leave notes in his lunch. The woman who used to hold him when the nightmares got too bad.

All he saw was a stranger looking back at him.

She said his name, just that. It wasn't a greeting. It was a verdict.

He flinched. He couldn't help it.

“Don’t,” he said, the word coming out sharper than he intended. He set the glass down with a clink. “Just… don’t. Put the drama away. I’m tired. You’re tired. Let’s just go to bed.”

She told him quietly that she couldn't remember the last time he actually slept in their bed. She didn't mean just physically. She meant him. The man she married. He’d been gone for a long time, Leon.

He dragged a hand over his face, the stubble rough against his palm. The tiredness wasn't just in his bones anymore; it was in his soul. The baggage. She was right. Mission after mission, he’d left pieces of himself behind. In Raccoon City. In Spain. In a dozen dark corners of the world. And he’d brought home nothing but the silence and the booze.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered, but the conviction was gone. It was a reflex, a dying man’s last gasp of denial. He walked over to the table, looking down at the papers. His name, Leon S. Kennedy, typed neatly next to hers. It looked like an epitaph.

He reached out, not to grab the papers, but to touch her hand. She pulled it away.

That was the moment it stopped being a joke.

His eyes widened, the bloodshot clarity of a man who had just realized the bomb was real. The walls he had so carefully built, the walls of detachment, dark humor, and alcohol, began to crumble.

“Wait,” he said, his voice cracking. The cocky Special Agent was gone. Left standing in his place was just a man. A broken, exhausted man who had lost the only good thing he’d ever managed to hold onto. “Wait, stop. You’re serious?”

He sank into the chair across from her, the wood groaning under his weight. He looked small. Defeated. The faded scar on his cheek seemed more pronounced, the shadows under his eyes like bruises.

“I’ll… I’ll do better,” he said, the words tumbling out, clumsy and desperate. “I’ll see the therapist. The one the DSO keeps suggesting. I’ll stop drinking. Just… take the suitcases back to the bedroom.”

He looked at the papers again, then back at her, a raw, unguarded terror in his blue eyes.

“Don’t do this.” His voice dropped to a whisper.

He wasn't reaching for the pen to sign. He wasn't raging. He was just sitting there, waiting for her to tell him it’s all gonna be okay like she said a thousand times before. Waiting for her to save him from the one monster he couldn't shoot.