SAVEGUARD ⟼ leon s. kennedy

xliv. safety first

ｌｅｏｎ

Leon's heart jolts and then skips a couple of beats.

Time stops around him, suspended like in all of the movies he's seen.

She thinks she's in love with me, he thinks. Me? Love? In love with me?

No. It's just a crush, right? Just a case of infatuation? Trauma bond? She can't be in love.

You're still on his lap, and he's still holding you by the small of your back, and he knows he should speak, he should reply, some declaration of his own feelings.

But... What even are his feelings? How does one even know one's in love?

Is it the way his heart flutters for a few seconds when he sees you? Or maybe it's the way his entire body relaxes when you're close to him? Is it the way he feels warm somewhere deep in his chest when he hears you laugh? The way he can't help but smile if you're smiling? Is it love to feel like you're coming undone piece by piece yet simultaneously being put together when someone casts their eyes on you?

Leon has never been in love before, not really. He hasn't had a long list of women, no such thing as 'notches on his bedpost'. He's had one girlfriend—an ex now, a bitter memory—but was that even real? He was twenty-one, and even back then he knew how tremendously naive he could be. How he used to let feelings devour him alive and take control of his life. She didn't make him laugh like you do, she didn't make him feel safe, she didn't spark a connection so raw and so deep and intimate like the one he felt grow and grow with you.

And then there was Ada. The mysterious woman. Love was never an option there. Back in Raccoon City, he had let her kiss him, sure, because he was scared and worried and she seemed to be in the same boat as him—it's laughable now how wrong he was about her. She had let him think she had died at his hands for six damn years, and in those years he mourned her, never really understanding why he missed her.

When their paths crossed again in Spain, she was the same cold mercenary he had in his memory. Unfeeling, unemotional, straight-to-the-point Ada. But he wasn't the same puppy dog she had so easily manipulated.

No.

He was hardened, scarred, beaten, broken, and put together again. He endured six years of torture, rigorous training that broke him repeatedly and without prejudice. It shaped not just his body, but his mind. He too, then, became unfeeling. Cold. Jaded.

Did he have any other option after the suffering he went through?

How could that suffering ever leave space for an emotion like love?

As if Raccoon City and the death of everyone and everything he knew wasn't enough. He thought he had found solace in Claire after they survived, but she had other priorities—she had to find her brother, leaving Leon, wounded and traumatised and so lost and confused, to take care of Sherry, a child, weakened and distraught and carrying more trauma in her shoulders than anyone else Leon knew.

Two orphans, left alone again. How fitting.

When Leon realised he couldn't keep her safe alone—he needed medical care, after all, and his ammunition wasn't exactly infinite—he sought out the help of those he trusted. Those who, like him, were supposed to help and protect.

The military.

What a joke.

They apprehended both Leon and Sherry. The scream that Sherry let out as they dragged her away from him—her fingers had been so tightly wrapped around his that she almost snapped them—sometimes replays in his nightmares. He had never felt so useless.