SAVEGUARD ⟼ leon s. kennedy

xl. heavy doses

ｃｈａｐｔｅｒ ４０
ｃｌｅｍｅｎｔｉｎｅ
２ ｄａｙｓ ｌａｔｅｒ
ｂａｃｋ ｉｎ ｔｈｅ ｓｔａｔｅｓ

"Clem? Hey, I'm going to need you to look at me."

The words are muffled and distant, even though Chris is standing right next to the hospital chair I'm sitting on. He pokes me gently on the shoulder, twice.

"Did you get any of that?" He tries again.

I tear my eyes off of Leon for one second, and it already feels like one second too long. "I'm sorry Chris. What?" I hear myself say.

"They've cleared the possibility of a stroke. He hasn't had one yet, which means it's highly unlikely he'll have one at all," Chris says softly, crouching down next to my knees trying to get me to look at him. "And they're positive there is no brain damage."

I nod quickly and stare somewhere close to him. Not at him, because I can't.

Not yet.

The guilt isn't letting me do anything except wait.

Wait for Leon to wake up.

"Clementine," Chris tries again, placing his hand on mine. "He'll be okay."

When I speak, my voice is quiet and low, brittle, like a twig about to snap. "Why hasn't he woken up yet?"

Chris sighs. "He lost a lot of blood. He had already had that injury on his knee, from when I found you guys on the foredeck."

When that thing had attacked us. When Leon had protected me even though he had orders to take me out. When he directly disobeyed his superior just because he trusted me.

He trusted me.

And what had I done to him?

Left him behind. His bulletproof vest on my chest instead of his.

What had I done to repay his trust?

I hadn't shot that bitch Jessica the second she stepped onto the fucking foredeck.

"He's lucky, you know. Our Leon," Chris says, snapping me out of my thoughts. "It was a clean shot. It went clean through his pectoral muscle. Scraped a bit of his bone off. Had he turned just half an inch to his left, it would've went straight through his heart."

The words attack me in a way that seems physical. Vicious. Carnal. My breath gets stuck in my throat and I feel my bottom lip start to give, so I hide my face in my palms because I am sick of people seeing me cry. I don't want to make any of this about me.

Chris pats my knee, and squeezes, still crouched in front of me. "He'll be okay. I promise. He still needs a lot of blood. And he's still healing from that broken rib. But he's been through worse."

"Has he?" I ask Chris without even so much as looking up.

He laughs softly and stands up, turning to look at Leon, who looks so vulnerable asleep in the hospital bed, his soft blonde hair brushed away from his face, cuts and scratches all over his skin, his long eyelashes resting against the curve of his cheek. Tubes are coming out of him, going in him, going around him.

Chris smiles, and cross his arms across his chest. "Kennedy has been choked out by a Tyrant, dragged through sewers by mutated G-virus sacks of shit, slammed against more walls than I can count, slashed through by regenerating nightmares... He's ruined more bulletproof vests than almost anyone I know, he's been injected with Las Plagas, this disgusting parasite that lives in you, chased by chainsaw wielding twins... What am I forgetting?" He turns to look at me, his features light as he runs a hand through his dark brown hair. "I remember reading his reports when I was in Africa trying to look for Jill... Sheva—my partner then—she had the same reaction as you. Couldn't believe how that man is still alive."