Archive of Our Own ^beta

Leon’s neck won’t stop itching. 

He scratches at it gently, nails ripped and jagged from too many sleepless nights spent staring at a computer, trying to pull together threads that don’t seem to have any tangible beginning or end. The sensation brings no relief. 

When the elevator dings, he silently pushes himself off the far wall. His eyes scan the back of heads—coworkers, if that applies when half of them look at him like a hero, the other half like he’s already dead—and his hand finds his gun as the doors slide open. 

They’ve said this building is secure, built to withstand, but he knows better. 

After all, so was he. 

His neck itches again.

Ignoring it, ignoring everyone’s eyes, their striped ties and skirt suits, he walks to his office. Swipes his badge through the lock like habit and opens the door into the darkness.

His desk light is already on and his grip tightens around his gun, fingers pressing into the grooves of the wings. It’s far too small a space for anyone to be hiding but there are drones and ventilation systems and water bottles aplenty in the world; he scans every corner for anything amiss.

Nothing.

Satisfied as he can be, he flicks on the overhead to bathe the room in a blinding white light that makes every angle garish. It all seems to concentrate on a manilla envelope sitting innocently atop his desk. Not something he left there last night. 

Only once does his heart beat too fast, the fear smothered by the instincts that were trained or injected into him. Clearing his throat, he kicks the door shut and hears it lock automatically. No air blows through the vent, and he isn’t thirsty. 

His chair creaks when he sits down, and he briefly entertains the thought of submitting a replacement request to Hunnigan just to watch her roll her eyes at him, only for there to be a shiny new chair in his office by the end of the week.

As if she knows, his phone beeps once, and her extension appears on the small screen. He answers without a word. 

Click.

“Look at the file.”

She doesn’t wait for him to answer.

“I’m sorry, Leon.” 

Click. 

“Great,” he mutters into the silence, but it all comes together when he sees the label at the very top of the folder. Small, as if no one wants to acknowledge its existence, but the ink is dry. It’s going to demand to be seen whether they want it to or not, which is likely why it’s ended up on his desk.

Then he reads it, and his heart wilts in his chest. That’s why it’s on his desk.

Raccoon City, 1998-

-

A dash, barely a flick of the wrist or a stroke on the keyboard, followed by nothing. 

No answers.

No closure. 

No end. 

Just memories he can’t shake. A terror that lives in his soul and only visits at night, at gas stations, whenever it rains, when he watches red walk away. 

His breakfast splashes back in the small garbage can underneath his desk. Acrid.

It’s hard to breathe once he’s able to sit up, the itch becoming secondary to the clammy sweat flushing over his neck, cheeks, forehead. His fingers flex for something to hold onto it but there’s nothing there. 

Him and this file. 

“Get it together, Kennedy,” he murmurs to himself, though his voice is weak to his own ears. 

Weak. 

Exhausted. 

All of a sudden, he’s 22 again. Six months into training with Krauser. The distinct feeling of a gun against a palm not yet calloused beyond repair. Three bullets left. 

It would only take one. 

His phone rings again, and he scrambles to clear the memory and answer before even looking at who it is. 

“Leon?” The voice is soft, edged with pain and anger. Older now, but still hers. He’d know it anywhere, even in death.

Especially in this.

Sherry. 

“Hey, Kid,” he breathes out, uncaring that it’s a tapped line. “What’s going on?” 

“Did you see the file?” 

“See? Yes.” 

His hand opens the top drawer and finds a pack of stale mints without looking; the clean flavor coats his mouth like cardboard over acid. 

“Did you read the file?” 

He brushes his fingers down the front of the folder at her words. He already knows it’s an assignment—he sees briefing pages in his sleep every night—and tries to convince his body it’s like any other. Flipping it open, he gives the stark white pages a quick scan, searching only for anything that’s absolutely necessary. 

Anything that could kill or save him, in that order.

Page 1

Raccoon City, 1998-

The Raccoon City Outbreak began officially on…

Prior to the September outbreak, deaths occurred in the Arklay Mountains and surrounding forest…

On October 1st, 1998, Raccoon City was destroyed via nuclear bomb… supposed to wipe out any remaining infected… an approximate uninfected death toll of…

The Outbreak and Raccoon City’s destruction were officially declared… the Umbrella Corporation and… the United States Government, led by…

Continual monitoring over the years has revealed that the site has yet to recover habitable soil conditions or potable water. 

Persons of interest include Birkin, Sherry; Burton, Barry; Kennedy, Leon S; Oliviera, Carlos; Redfield, Chris; Redfield, Claire; Valentine, Jill; Wong, Ada.

Other known survivors with no other ties to Umbrella and/or bioterrorism have been monitored via field agents since 1999. These citizens are, to their own knowledge, living normal lives. Reports are filed quarterly—copies are included here. 

Since 2021, six survivors have died with their only connection being Raccoon City. Autopsy files report similar causes of death believed to be compounded and delayed effects of exposure to the T-Virus. Including: muscle atrophy, skin necrosis, blindness, lesions on the brain. 

At this time, the DSO has deemed it necessary to send an agent to Raccoon City to better understand what lingers there, and its possible implications for national security.

Page 2

Operation start date: 2/25/2026

Operation Objectives 

• Recover any “living” infected for DSO research and testing. 

• Recover at least two infected corpses for research and testing.

• Recover any remaining files left in NEST. 

• Eliminate all remaining BOWs. 

Multiple large containment cases have been dropped at various locations within city limits for any infected or corpses (to be contained separately). Locations are embedded into the Agent’s comm device. These cases will be recovered after the operative has reported the operation complete, or no later than 3/14/26 if the Agent is killed or missing in action. 

No recovery operation will be held if the Agent is considered killed or missing in action. 

Operation Personnel

Lead Agent: Kennedy, Leon S. 

Field Agent(s):

Operations Handler: Birkin, Sherry

Other: Hunnigan, Ingrid

• History with Kennedy, Leon S. as an agent. Responsible for backend monitoring—to have no direct contact with Agent Kennedy in the field. 

It’s funny, after so many years, the feeling of free fall that lands with him crashing onto a pile of bricks. 

Unsure if it’s him or the world that’s shattered. 

“Absolutely not.” 

“Leon—” Sherry tries to break through, her voice hardening in a way that makes his chest stick uncomfortably. His fingers flex white around the folder, the tension tearing its edge. 

“No.” He demands. “It’s one thing for them to send me back. They don’t get to do this to you.”

“I asked them to.” 

No frills. No fanfare. Just the simple truth that Sherry’s sure of. 

They didn’t force her. 

They might not have. 

She put herself in this position. 

His first instinct is to argue. To pull rank and seniority and pure physical skill on whoever brought this to her attention in the first place. 

“Why?” He hears himself ask instead, and the word sounds so much smaller once it’s in the air. His forehead rests in his too-hot hands, fingers desperately knotting into his hair. 

A soft sigh through the speaker burns him, and his body braces for the impact he can see from a mile away. 

“I got into your file. I know what happened after they picked us up.” 

She says it like she’d say the weather is bad or she needs an oil change before the engine seizes up—unfortunate, yet inevitable. Not something she’s sorry for. It makes him want to laugh. 

Scream. 

Sob. 

“Sherry—” her name grates against his throat, trying to coat grief in anger but it’s all falling apart at the wheels. “You shouldn’t—that’s not—” 

“It’s right there in black and white, Leon,” she counters, as calm as Hunnigan but with Claire’s storm raging below the surface. “And they digitized the interrogations a while back, so I saw that, too. They would’ve killed us—me—if you didn’t agree to work for them.” 

A shaky silence fills the space and he can practically see Sherry’s shoulders deflate, her eyes cut to her window before looking down at the black plastic again. 

“I always had a feeling things were worse than you and Claire were letting on.” 

“It’s my—”

“It’s not anyone’s fault.” She cuts him off, voice emboldened like she’s saying what she is because she knows they’re listening and she isn’t afraid of death like he was at the time. “Except for Simmons. He’s the reason this happened to both of us, not each other. And he might be long dead, but I know he was involved with Raccoon more than he ever said. I can feel it. So, since you have to go back there, I’m going too, however I can.” 

He knows a lost fight when he sees one. His chest is like a black hole, his heart tearing in two inch by battered inch, bursting with too much love for Sherry and too much volatility for the world to keep it intact inside him. Coughing until his vision settles, he looks up from his hands and scratches his neck. 

“Okay, Sher. We’re doing this together then. Thank you.” 

He hears her smile, and the corners of his lips turn up despite himself. 

“Thank you,” she says softly. “For saving me back then.” 

His lungs press against his ribs when he shakes his head as if she can see him.

“Easiest decision of my life.” 

She lets loose a short, wet laugh, and paper shuffles around on her end before she blows out a breath to steady herself. 

“There is one more thing we need to talk about.” 

“What’s that?” He asks.

“Claire.” 

Fear grips him like a vice. 

A crash he never did see coming. That he was already part of, surrounded by twisted, bloodied metal, before he realized the face he was—Is. Always.—desperately searching for in the wreckage. 

Redfield, Claire: person of interest in the Raccoon City Outbreak, 1998-. 

Redfield, Claire: public figure in three other DSO files.

Redfield, Claire: hostile civilian in nine, possibly ten.

Redfield, Claire: potential national threat in two. 

Claire, who's bound by nothing other than her own heart, which beats too loud and too proud in her chest for anyone to stop her once she's made up her mind about something.

There’s a list of people in these walls that would prefer if she were dead. People who know how to push others into mud while avoiding getting any under their own fingernails.

Simmons was like that, until he wasn’t.

Which all means only one thing. Leon’s certain of it, even if it makes 2006 look like a drizzle to the monsoon it will cause.

Assuming he lives. 

“She can’t know.” 

His words leave no room for doubt, but that doesn’t stop Sherry from trying.

“Leon, that isn’t—” 

“No, Sher,” he demands, voice entangled with a hurt that pulls far tighter than any anger towards either of them ever could. Hurt for all of them, for what could happen. Hurt that he’d do anything to not come true. If he had anything left in him, he’d be over the garbage can again. Instead, he leans back in his chair, body sliding out from underneath his control as he continues. 

“If she knows, she’ll show up. And I don’t know what’s going to be waiting when I get there, but I’ll have resources. I can’t—I don’t love the idea of you having to go back there at all, but at least you’ll be physically far away from it in DC. If something happened to her—to either one of you—but if something else happened to her out there that I can’t stop, something that I can’t even plan for… I wouldn’t be leaving there, either, Sherry.” 

The words land with a finality that he hasn’t felt since he was 21, sitting in a too-bright, too-small room, in a chair designed specifically for him to submit and sign his life away. 

He doesn’t like being on this side of the table any better. 

His fists close, ripping the folder further, and his stomach roils with fire that could burn the whole place down. 

Footsteps outside his door kill the desire like a leash pulling back a dog. Cool flushes over him in its place—not soothing, tempering. 

“Okay,” Sherry whispers, sounding closer to 12 than to 40. Memories of her smiling, waving at him through glass, and biting her lip, tugging at Jake’s arm in China come back to him like anchors. He’s unwilling to cut them loose anymore. 

“I won’t tell her.” She promises, and he hears her tapping out something on her keyboard, each keystroke flush with irritation. He waits for her to finish without a word, and his body automatically begins to take stock of itself in the negative space. 

What itches. What tugs. What blurs. What’s getting worse, and the very few things that have managed to get better. 

His pride. Not in himself. Not in his work. For knowing what actually matters.. 

Hunnigan’s extension lighting up his phone. As if telling them they’re to have no contact actually means a goddamn thing. 

Sherry’s house key on his ring.

A minuscule chip in an envelope, in the safe in the back of his closet, Claire’s name written on the front in perfect cursive. The truth of his heart hidden on the inside flap: I know you know. If you still decide to give them hell, just please get out first.

Her wings on his gun. 

Her head on his pillow twenty-three years ago. Fifteen. Eleven. Four.

“You still there?” Sherry breaks the silence, her tone more grounded—the real world pulling her back, fading the moment at the edges.

He blinks once as the memory in his hands dissolves, too. 

“I’m here, Kiddo.” 

“Then I need you to make me a promise.” She starts, steadier than ever. “You have to, if you don’t want me to tell Claire. And I already know that it’s stupid but I don’t care. You have to promise me and you have to keep it, Leon. Whatever it takes.” 

A laugh almost escapes him, his hand splaying out over his chest as if he can hold himself together. 

“Anything.” 

“Don’t let it kill you out there. Make it back to DC in one piece, and let’s be done with this.” 

There’s only one answer to be had, and not because of her half-baked threats. His life flashes before his eyes as if he’s dying, as if maybe he already has, and it ends with him stumbling bloody past a Mizoil sign, his weight kept upright by two smaller bodies. 

Pieces of his heart that only beat in their back pockets and the palms of their hands. 

He allows himself the smallest of smiles, and, for a fleeting second, the world feels like it's giving him one last chance for the only good thing to happen to him on September 30th, 1998 to come true. 

“Okay, Sher. I promise.”