eris @moon-beam34 - Tumblr Blog

Hi sweetie! I would like to request this !

Summary:

You and Leon had been together since the Raccoon City incident. You have a secret that you don't want to let Leon know.

What if Leon found a file in ARK on you being a test subject and a spy to undercover DSO. He is angry. He confronted you. His eyes showed distrust, betrayal, and coldness that you never since before. Leon demanded you not to follow him as he needed space to think.

You are aware of the risk of creating a vaccine - which can lead to death. You have decided to use your blood to create a cure for Leon as an apology.

In My Veins

The air in the ARK Laboratory was stale enough to taste, thick with dust and the faint metallic bitterness of chemicals that had long since seeped into the concrete. Leon moved through the corridor with slow, deliberate steps, his flashlight carving a narrow path through the darkness. Every surface looked embalmed, sealed beneath years of undisturbed gray, as if the facility had been entombed rather than abandoned. Raccoon City had burned above this place, collapsed into a crater, been written off as a wound in the earth that was safer left closed. Down here, nothing had healed. It had only waited.

His shoulders had been tight since they descended into the ruins, tension settling into muscle memory he had never managed to unlearn. This city had been his first day on the job, his first night of real terror, the place where naïveté had died screaming. It was also where he had found you, half-injured, terrified, stubbornly alive. The two of you had clung to each other through smoke and blood and impossible horrors, strangers forced into partnership by the simple need to survive. Everything that followed, every year, every quiet morning, every mission he came home from, had grown out of that single night like something fragile insisting on life in poisoned soil.

A reinforced door stood ajar at the end of the hall, its security panel gutted, wires dangling like exposed nerves. Leon nudged it open with the barrel of his handgun and stepped inside. The room beyond had once been a control station, rows of terminals arranged in orderly lines, most of them dark and dead. One screen still glowed faintly, its pale light cutting through the gloom like a stubborn pulse. Emergency power, maybe. Or some backup system that refused to die, just like everything else Umbrella had left behind.

He approached cautiously, the chair scraping against the floor when he pulled it back, sounding unnaturally loud in the silence. Dust coated the keyboard in a fine, undisturbed layer. No one had touched this station in years. He brushed it aside with a gloved hand and tapped a key. The monitor flickered, brightness stuttering before stabilizing, lines of text and folder icons resolving slowly as if waking from a long sleep.

Research data. Personnel logs. Experiment records.

He was already reaching to close the window, planning to flag it for the tech teams, when something caught his eye. A single entry buried among the others, stark in its familiarity.

Your name.

For a moment, he simply stared, his brain refusing to process what he was seeing. It didn’t belong here. Not in a place like this. Not in the bowels of the city that had nearly killed you both. You had escaped this nightmare together. You had left it behind. The idea that any part of you could still be cataloged down here felt obscene, like finding a living person listed among the dead.

“There’s no way,” he murmured, the words barely audible even to himself.

His cursor hovered for only a second before he opened the file. The first thing that greeted him was a classification header dense with codes and warnings, most of them above his clearance even now. Beneath it, a designation printed in clinical, indifferent text.

SUBJECT.

Leon’s stomach tightened, a cold, instinctive reaction that had nothing to do with logic. He scrolled, jaw hardening as lines of medical data filled the screen. Charts mapping blood composition. Notes referencing abnormal markers, resistance patterns, controlled exposure trials. The terminology was technical, detached, the language of people discussing specimens rather than human beings. Dates ran down the margins, some from before the outbreak, others stamped during the chaos when the city had already been collapsing into madness.

His pulse began to pound, each beat heavy and uneven. You had never mentioned any of this. Another section header appeared, bolded against the sterile background.

FIELD OBSERVATION REPORT.

Leon felt a prickle of unease crawl up the back of his neck. He kept reading.

Subject demonstrates high survivability under stress conditions. Continued proximity to designated asset recommended for monitoring behavioral stability.

A line below it listed the asset’s identification.

Kennedy, Leon S.

The room seemed to contract around him, air turning thin and difficult to draw into his lungs. He read the line again, then again, as if repetition might change the words into something else. It didn’t. Your name remained at the top of the file. His remained embedded in its body like a foreign object.

Memories rose unbidden, sharp and disorienting. You grabbing his arm in the police station, refusing to let go even as the world outside fell apart. The two of you running through smoke-choked streets, sharing ammunition, sharing fear, sharing the fragile belief that if you stayed together, you might actually make it out alive. Nights afterward when neither of you could sleep unless the other was close enough to touch. Years of quiet routines built on the understanding that whatever else the world took, you had each other.

Had that been real?

Leon’s hand curled slowly against the edge of the desk, leather creaking as his grip tightened. A dozen explanations fought for space in his mind, each one grasped and discarded in the same breath. Mistaken identity. Fabricated data. Umbrella’s records were notoriously unreliable, full of half-truths and outright lies. That had to be it. It had to be.

He scrolled further down. Additional notes populated the screen, colder, more precise. References to behavioral attachment. Deviation from assigned parameters. Refusal to disengage from asset despite direct instruction. The language suggested frustration, as though whoever authored the report had been documenting a problem rather than a success.

Leon swallowed, throat suddenly dry. You had stayed with him when you could have run. When it would have been safer. When survival alone should have been the priority.

Leon didn’t realize he had stopped blinking until his eyes began to burn. The cursor pulsed at the bottom of the screen, a small, indifferent heartbeat marking time while his own felt too loud, too heavy, as though it were trying to escape his ribcage. He forced himself to scroll, thumb stiff against the mouse wheel, every line of text revealing itself with the slow inevitability of something already decided long ago.

A new document opened automatically, layered with higher clearance warnings and authorization codes that made his jaw tighten. This one wasn’t medical. It read like a field report, stripped of anything resembling empathy, written in the detached tone of someone cataloging weather patterns instead of human lives. Your name appeared again at the top, followed by a designation number and a status marker that had never been updated.

ACTIVE.

Leon exhaled through his nose, the sound thin and uneven in the dead air. Active. As if you were still down here somewhere, pacing the corridors like a ghost assigned to haunt him personally. As if the last several years, the apartment you shared, the quiet mornings with coffee and sunlight filtering through the blinds, existed outside the scope of whatever this was.

He kept reading.

Initial objective: Integration with local law enforcement presence. Maintain proximity to the designated asset to acquire intelligence on survivor networks and government response capabilities.

His stomach turned, a slow, nauseating roll that had nothing to do with the stale air. Integration. Proximity. Intelligence acquisition. The words rearranged his memories into something unfamiliar, like furniture shifted in a room he thought he knew by heart. He remembered the way you had grabbed his arm outside the police station, your fingers shaking but unyielding, refusing to let him walk into the dark alone. He had thought you were scared. He had thought you needed him.

Had you been following orders?

A faint tremor passed through his hand. He clenched it into a fist, grounding himself in the pressure, in the present, in anything that wasn’t the sudden vertigo of doubt opening beneath his feet.

Further down the report, the tone shifted.

Subject exhibits increasing emotional attachment to asset. Compliance with directive compromised. Multiple opportunities to disengage ignored.

Leon’s breath caught, sharp and involuntary. The sentence didn’t read like an accusation. It read like a complication. Like something inconvenient had developed where there should have been control. Ignored. You had stayed.

Images surfaced unbidden, vivid as if projected onto the dark walls around him. You collapsing against him in an alley, exhausted and shaking, your forehead pressed to his shoulder while distant gunfire echoed through the city. The way you had looked at him afterward, eyes red-rimmed but steady, as if the mere fact that he was still there had anchored you to reality. Nights after the rescue, when you would wake from nightmares and reach for him without thinking, your hand finding his wrist, his sleeve, any proof he was real. None of that had felt calculated. None of it had felt like a mission.

He scrolled again, slower now, dread pooling thick in his gut.

Recommendation: Continued observation. Emotional bond may increase asset stability and survivability. Risk of operational compromise acceptable.

Leon leaned back slightly, chair creaking under his weight, the sound jarringly loud. The report framed your connection as a tool, something useful, something measurable. Not love, which you told him just this morning. Not trust, which you'd built in the years since. Just a variable that improved outcomes.

His reflection stared back at him faintly from the dark edges of the monitor, pale and drawn, eyes shadowed in a way that had nothing to do with the poor lighting. For a fleeting second, he barely recognized himself. This wasn’t the rookie cop who had stumbled into hell with more determination than experience. This wasn’t even the seasoned agent who had learned to carry his scars quietly. This was someone hollowed out, a man watching his own life rewritten in sterile bullet points.

At the bottom of the page, a final addendum had been appended, time-stamped days before the city was destroyed.

Subject failed to report asset termination opportunity. Rationale unknown.

Leon’s chest tightened so abruptly it bordered on pain. Termination opportunity. The phrase sat on the screen with brutal simplicity, offering no context, no explanation, just the implication hanging heavy in the air between what was written and what it meant.

Were you supposed to kill him?

For a long moment, he didn’t move at all. The lab hummed faintly around him, some ancient system cycling air through vents clogged with dust, a mechanical breathing that made the silence feel almost sentient. Beneath the weight of the earth, beneath the ashes of a city that had once burned bright enough to be seen from miles away, he felt very small, very alone, as though he had uncovered something that should have remained buried not for secrecy but for mercy.

Anger didn’t come first. Neither did grief. What settled into him instead was a cold, creeping numbness, spreading outward from his chest like frost. It dulled the sharp edges of panic, muffled the chaos of competing thoughts, left behind a brittle kind of clarity. The kind that allowed him to stand up, straighten his shoulders, and step back from the terminal as if physical distance could put space between him and the words that had just rearranged the past, the present, and the future.

You saved him, but you lied to him.

Leon shut down the monitor with a decisive tap, the screen going dark in an instant, your name disappearing into black as if it had never been there at all. The sudden absence felt worse than the presence had, like a door slamming on answers he wasn’t ready to stop searching for.

He stared at the blank glass for a few seconds longer, jaw tight, eyes unreadable. Then he turned and walked out of the room without looking back, boots echoing down the corridor like the ticking of a clock that had finally started again.

It had been three days since Leon found the files. He had been distant, barely talking, saying he was 'tired'. He was working late hours, going in for early mornings. Hardly calling and texting throughout the day.

Leon came home from a late-night mission. Late enough that the apartment had already sunk into that fragile, after-midnight quiet where every small sound felt magnified. The lock clicked softly behind him, followed by the muted thud of the door sealing shut, and for a moment he just stood there with his hand still on the knob as if he had forgotten what came next. The familiar scent of your detergent lingered in the air, clean and warm, threaded with the faint trace of something you had cooked earlier. It should have felt like relief. Instead, it settled over him like a weight.

You stirred on the couch, where you had apparently fallen asleep waiting for him, a blanket pooled around your legs and the television casting dim, flickering light across the room. Your eyes opened slowly, soft with drowsiness, and when you saw him, they brightened in a way that used to loosen something tight in his chest.

“You’re back,” you murmured, voice rough from sleep.

Leon forced a nod, already moving past you toward the kitchen before you could sit up fully, before you could reach for him the way you usually did. He set his keys down with careful precision, each movement deliberate, controlled, as if any sudden motion might shake loose something he was barely holding in place. The overhead light stayed off. He didn’t want to see too clearly. Didn’t want to risk you seeing him.

“You okay?” you asked after a beat, more awake now, the concern in your tone sharpening.

“Yeah.” The word came out flat, automatic. He opened the fridge, stared inside without really looking, then closed it again without taking anything. “Just tired.”

You watched him in silence, and he could feel it, that quiet attention like a hand hovering just short of contact. Normally he would have crossed the room by now, leaned down to kiss your forehead, rested his weight against you like coming home meant something physical as much as emotional. Instead, he kept his back turned, shoulders rigid beneath his jacket.

“You didn’t call,” you said softly.

Leon swallowed. “Mission ran long.”

He heard the blanket rustle as you stood, slow steps approaching, stopping just short of touching him. Close enough that he could feel your warmth at his back, the faint brush of your breath against the fabric of his shirt. For a split second, he nearly turned, nearly gave in to the instinct to fold you into his arms and bury his face in your hair until the world stopped spinning.

Instead, he stepped sideways, creating space. The movement was small. It landed like a gunshot, sticking out like a sore thumb. Your hand, half-lifted, fell back to your side. The silence that followed now had an edge, thin and sharp as broken glass.

“Leon,” you said, and there was no sleep left in your voice at all. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

He hated himself for it immediately, but the alternative, the words clawing at the back of his throat, felt impossible to shape into something survivable. How do you ask the person you love if your entire life together was built on a mission report? How do you look at them and not see every memory overlaid with doubt?

You stepped in front of him, forcing him to meet your eyes. The concern there had deepened into something closer to fear, your brows drawn together, lips pressed tight as if bracing for impact.

“You won't even touch me,” you said quietly.

Leon’s gaze flickered past you, to the floor, to the dark window, anywhere but your face. He could feel the pull of you like gravity, the familiar comfort of your presence now twisted into something dangerous. If he looked too long, he might see the person he loved instead of the subject designation on a dead screen beneath a dead city.

“I just need some space,” he said at last, voice low, controlled to the point of strain.

Your expression crumpled slightly, hurt flashing across it before you could hide it. “Space? From me?”

He didn’t answer. Because yes... and no. Because he didn’t trust himself to say anything that wouldn’t either shatter you or give himself away. The quiet stretched until it became unbearable. Then you did something he hadn’t prepared for.

You squared your shoulders, lifted your chin, and asked, very clearly, “What did you find?”

Leon’s head snapped up, eyes locking onto yours for the first time since he walked through the door. There was no accusation in your face, no panic, just a terrible, steady understanding that made his stomach drop. Something inside him hardened, brittle and defensive. If you already knew, then the pretending was pointless. The fragile illusion of normalcy shattered with a soundless finality.

Without a word, he turned and walked down the hallway to the bedroom. He didn’t check if you followed. He didn’t need to. Your footsteps came a moment later, hesitant but determined, trailing behind him like an echo.

He stopped at the dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled out a thick manila folder. The paper inside had been handled too many times already, edges slightly bent, corners softened by the pressure of his grip. Printed copies of the files, because something about seeing them in ink had made them feel horribly real in a way a screen never could.

When he turned back to you, his face was composed in a way that felt wrong, stripped of warmth, stripped of the easy familiarity you had known for years. His eyes, usually so alive even when tired, looked distant, shuttered, cold in a way you had never seen directed at you before.

“You want to tell me what this is?” he asked.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He stepped forward just enough to place the folder in your hands, not quite touching you in the process. The weight of it made your arms dip slightly, the pages shifting with a soft, damning rustle.

For a moment, you didn’t open it. The color drained from your face anyway, recognition blooming like a bruise beneath your skin. Leon watched every micro-expression, every flicker of emotion, searching for something, guilt, deceit, indifference, anything that would make this make sense. What he saw instead was devastation. Not the panic of someone caught, but the quiet horror of someone whose worst fear had just come true.

“I was going to tell you,” you whispered, though it sounded like the words were being dragged out of you. “Eventually.”

“When?” His voice sharpened, the first crack in the ice. “After another ten years? Twenty? Or was I supposed to just never find out?”

Your fingers tightened around the folder, knuckles blanching. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It looks exactly like that.” The control in his tone was fraying now, anger seeping through in thin, dangerous lines. “Test subject. Infiltration. Observation. Termination opportunity.” Each word hit the air like a dropped piece of glass. “You want to explain which part I’m misunderstanding?”

Tears welled in your eyes, but you didn’t look away from him. “I didn’t kill you.”

The simplicity of it stunned him into silence.

“I could have,” you continued, voice trembling but steady enough to carry. “I had chances. Orders. I ignored them. I stayed because I wanted to, not because anyone told me to. I stopped reporting. I stopped being what they made me.” Your breath hitched, shoulders shaking as you struggled to keep control. “Everything after that night... that was real. You were real.”

Leon’s chest tightened painfully, something twisting deep inside where anger and grief tangled together. Part of him wanted to believe you so badly it hurt. Another part, colder, more wounded, whispered that he had already believed once.

"We..." you pause, pointing between the two of you. "We are real."

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, quieter now, the question stripped down to its rawest form.

Because you might leave. Because you deserved better. Because loving you was the first choice that was ever truly mine. The answers hovered in your eyes even before you spoke.

“Because I couldn’t lose you,” you said.

You wiped at your face with the back of your hand, breath shuddering in and out as if you were trying to steady yourself for something worse. When you spoke again, your voice had shifted, threaded with a grim resolve that made Leon’s stomach drop in an entirely new way.

“There’s something else,” you said. “Something you need to know.”

He went very still.

“The experiments didn’t just change me,” you continued softly. “My blood… it carries antibodies. A stable strain. They were trying to weaponize it, but it can also be used to neutralize active infections. A cure.”

Leon’s eyes narrowed slightly, confusion cutting through the emotional haze. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Your gaze flickered down, then back up, shining with unshed tears. “Because the process to extract enough of it is dangerous,” you said. “There’s a high chance I wouldn’t survive it.”

The words landed with the force of a physical impact, knocking the breath from his lungs. For a second, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only stare at you as the implication unfolded in slow, horrifying clarity.

“You were going to do it anyway,” he said hoarsely.

Leon felt something hot and violent spark through the numbness, cutting clean through the fog that had settled over him since he walked into the lab. Fear. Not the distant, professional kind he knew how to manage, but the raw, animal terror that clawed straight for his throat.

“Absolutely not,” he said, the words out before he even realized he was speaking.

Your shoulders flinched as if he had shouted, though his voice never rose above a harsh whisper. The denial in it was unmistakable, immediate, and total, leaving no room for negotiation, no space for compromise.

“You don’t get to make that call,” you said quietly.

His laugh was short and humorless, more exhale than sound. “Like hell I don’t.”

He dragged a hand down his face, fingers pressing hard into his eyes as if he could physically force the world back into something that made sense. Betrayal, love, anger, relief, horror, it all churned together until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. The idea of losing you, of you choosing to walk knowingly toward something that might kill you, sliced through him with a clarity that made everything else feel distant by comparison.

“You should’ve told me,” he said, voice rough, fraying at the edges. “Before it got to this point. Before you decided you were just going to... what, die quietly and leave me a suicide letter?”

"It's a solution to something plaguing this world."

"At your expense."

"If that's what it takes."

Leon dropped his hand, eyes snapping back to yours, and whatever you saw there made your breath hitch. The cold distance was still present, but it had fractured, exposing something far more dangerous beneath it, something desperate and furious and painfully alive.

“You don’t get to decide that your life is expendable,” he said, each word deliberate, as if he were forcing them past a barricade in his chest. “Not to fix this. Not for me.”

Your gaze softened, heartbreak bleeding through the determination. “Leon…”

“No.” He shook his head sharply, stepping back as if proximity itself was a threat. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to lie to me for years and then turn around and act like throwing yourself into a meat grinder makes it better.”

The cruelty of the phrasing seemed to wound him as much as it did you, his jaw tightening immediately afterward, but he didn’t take it back. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he needed the anger to keep from collapsing under everything else.

Silence crashed down, heavy and suffocating.

When you spoke again, your voice was barely above a whisper. “You think I want to die?”

Leon didn’t answer. He didn’t think that. Because the alternative, that you loved him enough to risk it anyway, was infinitely worse.

“I want to live,” you continued, tears spilling freely now, unchecked. “I want mornings with you and stupid arguments about takeout and complaining about your alarm going off too early. I want the boring stuff. I want all of it.” Your voice broke, splintering around the edges. “But I also want you alive. And if something happens to you and I did nothing when I could have done something, I wouldn’t survive that either.”

Leon felt his chest constrict, breath catching halfway in as if his lungs had forgotten how to work. He had spent so long assuming he was the one protecting you, the one carrying the weight, that the idea you had been quietly bracing yourself to carry him instead felt disorienting, like gravity had shifted without warning.

“You don’t know that I’ll need it,” he said, though the words sounded hollow even to his own ears.

Your eyes held his, steady despite the tears. "We both know you do."

A long moment stretched between you, fragile as a thread pulled too tight. The apartment, once warm and familiar, now felt alien, every object a witness to a conversation neither of you had ever imagined having. The folder still rested on the bed where you had dropped it, papers half-spilled like the aftermath of an explosion, silent proof that there was no going back to before.

Leon’s gaze flicked to it, then back to you. Something shifted in his expression, the anger draining away just enough to reveal the exhaustion underneath. The bone-deep weariness of someone who had been fighting too many battles for too long.

“You should’ve trusted me,” he said quietly.

Your lips parted, but no sound came out; the truth was too complicated, too painful to compress into something that wouldn’t shatter on contact. How could you explain that trust had never been the issue? That fear had been louder, heavier, a constant shadow whispering that if he saw the worst parts of you, he would finally realize you didn’t belong in the life you had built together?

“I was trying to protect you,” you said at last, the words thin but honest.

“From what?” he asked, though something in his tone suggested he already knew.

“From having to choose.”

That, more than anything else, seemed to break something in him. His shoulders sagged slightly, tension bleeding out as if the fight had drained away, leaving only the raw aftermath. He looked suddenly older, the hard lines of his face softened by something dangerously close to pain.

The distance between you remained, a physical gap filled with too many unsaid things, too much damage still fresh and bleeding. Neither of you moved to close it. Neither of you seemed sure how.

Leon’s hand curled loosely at his side, fingers flexing once, twice, like he was resisting the urge to reach for you. His eyes traced your face as if memorizing it, cataloging every detail with a quiet intensity that made your chest ache.

“I need time,” he said finally, voice low, stripped of everything but weary honesty. “I can’t... I don’t know how to process all of this. Not tonight.”

The words felt like another kind of blow, softer but no less painful. You nodded anyway, because what else could you do?

"Okay," you whispered.

He hesitated a second longer, something unspoken flickering across his face, then turned and walked out of the room. The quiet click of the latch echoed through the apartment like a period at the end of a sentence neither of you had finished writing. In the silence that followed, the absence he left behind felt louder than any argument.

The apartment felt too large without him in it, every room carrying the faint imprint of his absence like a bruise beneath the skin. Morning light crept through the blinds in pale stripes, illuminating dust motes that drifted lazily through the air, undisturbed by movement or conversation. You sat at the kitchen table long after the coffee in your mug had gone cold, fingers curled loosely around it as if the residual warmth might anchor you to something solid.

Leon had left before dawn. You had heard the front door open, pause, then close with painful care, as though even the sound of leaving might be too much. He hadn’t come back to the bedroom. He hadn’t said goodbye. Could you blame him?

The folder still lay on the bed where everything had unraveled, papers spilling out like exposed nerves. You had tried to put them away once, hands shaking too badly to manage it, and ended up sitting on the edge of the mattress staring at the clinical descriptions of a person you barely recognized as yourself. Subject. Asset proximity. Termination opportunity. Words that stripped away every soft, human memory and left only the machinery beneath.

Eventually, you had closed the folder and set it aside. Eventually, you had stopped waiting for the door to open again. By midafternoon, the decision had settled into your bones with a strange, terrible calm. Not impulsive. Not dramatic. Just inevitable, like stepping onto a path you had known was there all along.

You moved through the apartment slowly, touching things as you passed. The back of the couch where Leon liked to sprawl after long missions. The chipped mug he refused to throw away. The jacket he had draped over the chair two days ago, still carrying the faint scent of gun oil and laundry detergent and something uniquely him that made your throat tighten. Each object felt suddenly precious, painfully ordinary reminders of a life that had never been guaranteed to begin with.

At the desk by the window, you sat down and pulled a sheet of paper toward you. For a long moment, you just stared at it, pen hovering uselessly above the blank surface, the enormity of what you needed to say pressing down until breathing felt like work.

When the first word finally came, it opened a floodgate.

You wrote until your hand cramped, ink smudging where tears fell and weren’t wiped away quickly enough. Lines scratched out, rewritten, abandoned. Apologies that felt inadequate the moment they touched the page. Memories you couldn’t bear to leave unsaid. Confessions you had carried for years because speaking them aloud had always felt too dangerous, too final. The letter grew longer than you intended, pages sliding across the desk in uneven stacks, the sound of paper shifting loud in the quiet apartment.

When you finished, you didn’t reread it. You folded the pages carefully, smoothing the creases with trembling fingers, and sealed them in an envelope with Leon’s name written across the front in handwriting that barely looked like your own. For a moment, you held it against your chest, eyes squeezed shut, as if memorizing its shape, its weight, the last tangible piece of yourself you would be able to give him.

Then you set it on the kitchen table where he couldn’t possibly miss it.

Leon knew something was wrong the second he opened the door. The apartment looked the same, smelled the same, sunlight spilling across the floor in the late-afternoon glow he usually found comforting. But the silence felt different, hollow in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. No television murmuring in the background. No movement from the bedroom. No soft clatter from the kitchen.

"Hello?" he called, voice rough from disuse.

No answer. He looked around, gaze landing on the table.

The envelope sat in the center like a gravity well, stark against the wood, his name written across it in unmistakable strokes. A cold, sinking sensation opened in his stomach, instinct firing before logic could catch up. He crossed the room in three quick strides, picking it up with hands that were suddenly not as steady as he would have liked. It felt heavier than paper should. Leon didn't open it. Not yet.

His eyes swept the apartment again, sharper now, cataloging details with trained precision. Your shoes were gone by the door. The jacket you wore most often wasn’t on its hook. The folder from the lab had disappeared from the bedroom. Understanding crashed into him with brutal clarity.

“Damn it,” he breathed.

His thumb slipped beneath the flap and tore it open. Several folded sheets slid free, edges uneven, faint smudges where ink had been disturbed. He unfolded the first page with fingers that had begun to shake in earnest, breath already coming too fast, too shallow.

Leon,

If you're reading this, I couldn't find the courage to say any of this while you were here last.

I kept telling myself there would be a better time. After the next mission, after things calmed down, after I figured out how to explain without losing you.

The words began to blur as he read. He blinked hard, a single tear rolling down his cheek.

There was never a better time. I hate that you found out this way. I wasted the only time I had to tell you. Everything in those files is true. I was a test subject. I was placed with you on purpose. I was supposed to watch, report, and then disappear. But I couldn't.

His grip tightened, paper crumpling at the edges.

I stayed because of you.

The apartment felt suddenly too small, walls pressing inward as memories flooded in uninvited. Your hand in his that first night, sticky with blood and grime. The way you had refused to leave him behind, even when escape routes collapsed, and ammunition ran low. The quiet, fragile life you had built afterward out of shared nightmares and stubborn hope.

I stopped reporting long before it was safe to do so. They called it deviation. Compromising their operations. I was a failure to them.

I called it choosing you.

Leon pressed his free hand to his mouth, shoulders trembling despite his effort to stay upright, to stay composed, to not fall apart in the middle of the room where you should have been standing.

I need you to understand this one thing, even if you never forgive me. Nothing about us was fake. Not the way I fell asleep on your shoulder the first time we felt safe enough to close our eyes. Not the way I leave the hall light on when you come home late. Not the way I fix your coffee in the morning, or the way I say I love you.

Leon squeezed his eyes shut, a sob forcing its way out anyway, harsh and unsteady.

You weren't just an assignment to me. You were the only thing in my life that ever felt like it belonged to me. I know I should have told you. I know you deserved the truth years ago. I was so afraid to lose you that if you saw all of me, not just the parts I wanted to be, you would finally realize I wasn't someone you could love.

But I love you. I loved you that night in Raccoon City when we were too stubborn to die. I loved you every morning you woke up beside me afterward. I love you now, even if this is the last thing I ever get to say to you.

My blood will keep you alive. If you're reading this, it means I decided the risk is worth it, to save you, to save others.

“No,” he whispered, voice breaking completely.

I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you and knowing I did nothing when I could have done something. You’ve carried enough ghosts. I won’t become another one if I can help it.

His knees buckled, forcing him to catch himself against the table, the letter dragging with him, pages scattering slightly but never leaving his grip.

Please don’t think this is me giving up. It’s the opposite. It’s me fighting for the life we were supposed to have.

A drop of water fell onto the page, then another, his vision dissolving into wavering shapes.

I wanted to grow old with you. I wanted to see who we would become when the world finally stopped trying to kill us. If I don’t make it, don’t blame yourself. Don’t go back to being alone just because I’m not there to argue with you about it.

Leon bowed forward over the paper, shoulders shaking, breaths coming in ragged bursts that sounded dangerously close to breaking.

Thank you for choosing me that night. Thank you for every day after.

The last line blurred almost beyond legibility.

I love you. I always will.

The facility was colder than you remembered, sterile air humming through vents, fluorescent lights casting everything in a flat, unforgiving glow. Medical equipment surrounded you in silent readiness, monitors blinking patiently as if they had all the time in the world. The technicians who had once run experiments down here were long gone, but the machinery remained, obedient and indifferent to who used it or why.

You sat on the edge of the treatment table, hands folded tightly in your lap to keep them from shaking. A line had already been prepped, supplies laid out with meticulous care. Once you started, there would be no stopping midway without risking failure. No safe undo button.

Your gaze drifted to the doorway, a reflex you couldn’t quite suppress, hope flaring and dying in the same heartbeat. He wasn’t coming. Of course, he wasn’t. You hadn’t told him where you were. And even if he guessed, even if he found the letter in time, even if he understood, he might still choose not to come. He had every right to stay away. After everything, you had forfeited any claim on his trust.

Your chest tightened painfully, but you forced the thought down. This wasn’t about what you deserved. It was about what he needed.

“Okay,” you whispered to the empty room, voice trembling. “Okay. We can do this.”

Leon shoved away from the table so abruptly the chair toppled backward, barely registering the crash as he stumbled for the door, grabbing his keys with hands that no longer felt entirely under his control. The apartment blurred past him, every familiar detail now sharpened into something painful and final.

He drove like a man outrunning a bomb. Traffic lights blurred into meaningless color, the engine protesting as he pushed it harder than he should, one hand clenched white-knuckled on the wheel. His mind ran ahead of him, assembling worst-case scenarios with ruthless efficiency.

“Don’t you dare,” he muttered hoarsely, whether to you or the universe itself he couldn’t have said.

Every second stretched into an eternity measured in heartbeat spikes and shallow breaths. He kept seeing your face from the night before, tear-streaked and determined, the quiet resolve in your voice when you said you wanted him alive. He had walked away from that. Left you alone with it. Left you to make this decision without him. Guilt burned hot and corrosive, eating through the last remnants of anger.

By the time he reached the facility, his chest burned, and his pulse felt erratic, adrenaline pushing him forward on pure momentum. The corridors were bright, sterile, smelling sharply of antiseptic and something colder beneath it. No personnel. No voices. Just the distant, mechanical rhythm of equipment in use somewhere ahead.

At the end of the hall, reinforced doors stood sealed, a red indicator glowing steadily above them.

ACTIVE PROCEDURE.

Leon’s heart seemed to stop. He reached the doors in two long strides, grabbing the handle and yanking hard. It didn’t budge. He hit the panel beside it, pounded against the metal, every impact reverberating painfully up his arm.

“Open it!” he shouted, voice cracking. “Do you hear me? Open the damn door!”

He pressed his forehead to the surface, one hand flattening against it as if he could feel through steel and insulation, as if proximity alone might reach you.

“Please,” he whispered, the word stripped of everything but raw desperation. “Please hold on.”

Leon slid down until his back hit the wall, staring at the unyielding red light, chest heaving, the echo of your letter still ringing in his ears like a final goodbye he refused to accept.

The red light above the doors bled into everything, tinting the sterile hallway with a low, warning glow that never dimmed, never flickered, never offered even the illusion of progress.

Time stopped behaving like time. It stretched, warped, doubled back on itself. Minutes could have been seconds. Seconds could have been hours. The steady mechanical beeping beyond the door drilled into his skull until it felt indistinguishable from his own pulse.

He replayed the letter in fragments, lines surfacing and dissolving without order.

Nothing about us was fake. I chose you. I love you. I always will.

Leon pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until sparks flared behind his lids, as if pain might anchor him, keep him from drifting into the dark places his mind kept trying to go. Images he refused to fully form crowded the edges of his thoughts anyway. A silent room. A still body. Machines going quiet one by one.

The beeping beyond the door stuttered. His head snapped up. For a single, frozen heartbeat, there was nothing. No sound at all. Just silence so complete it roared in his ears. Then the tone changed. Faster. Irregular. Urgent.

Leon scrambled to his feet, palms slamming against the doors as if he could force them apart through sheer will. “Hey! What’s happening in there?” His voice came out raw, shredded, the sound of someone who had nothing left to lose. “Open it! Open the damn door!”

Nobody answered. No footsteps came closer, and nobody was in the hallway to talk to. All he heard was the escalating chaos of machines working overtime. And then, abruptly, the beeping slowed. One long, steady tone cut through the noise, thin and merciless.

Leon went completely still. The sound tunneled straight through his chest, hollowing him out from the inside. For a moment, he couldn’t even breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t process anything except the terrible, final certainty carried in that single note.

“No,” he whispered, shaking his head, the word barely audible. “No, no, no—”

The tone stopped. Silence crashed down, absolute and suffocating.

Something inside him collapsed under the weight of it. His hand slid down the metal door, leaving a faint smear where sweat and tears had mingled, his knees threatening to give out again. This was it. This was the moment the world tilted permanently off-axis. The moment everything before became something you survived, and everything after became something you endured.

“I’m here,” he said hoarsely, forehead pressed to the seam between the doors as if proximity could bridge the impossible gap. “I’m here, okay? I’m right here.”

A soft chime sounded overhead. Leon blinked, disoriented. The red light flickered once. Twice. Then shifted to green. He didn’t move, his brain refusing to reconcile what his eyes were seeing with what he had just heard. Green meant complete. Green meant safe. Green meant...

The locks disengaged with a heavy, mechanical thunk. The doors slid open.

Cold air spilled out first, sharp with antiseptic and something metallic beneath it. The room beyond was too bright, too white, a clinical space filled with equipment that hummed quietly now, as if nothing catastrophic had just occurred. At the center, a treatment bed stood surrounded by machines, cables snaking outward like the roots of some artificial tree.

Leon stopped breathing. You lay motionless against stark white sheets, skin drained of color, an oxygen mask obscuring the lower half of your face. Tubing ran from your arm to a collection unit now dark with blood, far more than seemed possible for one person to lose and still remain anything resembling alive. Monitors displayed fragile, wavering lines that dipped and rose with agonizing slowness. Still alive.

The realization hit so hard his vision went white at the edges. He staggered forward, each step uncoordinated, like his body had forgotten the mechanics of movement and was relearning them on the fly. By the time he reached the bedside, his hands were shaking uncontrollably, hovering over you without quite daring to touch.

“Hey,” he said, voice wrecked beyond recognition. “Hey, I’m here.”

Your eyelids didn’t flutter. Your fingers didn’t twitch. The only sign of life was the faint rise and fall of your chest beneath the tangle of wires and blankets, shallow enough that it barely seemed real.

Leon sank into the chair beside the bed with a dull thud, one hand finally closing around yours with painful gentleness, as if you might shatter under anything firmer. Your skin felt cool, clammy, frighteningly fragile. He brought your hand to his mouth, pressing it there, eyes squeezed shut as something broke loose inside him completely.

“You don’t get to leave,” he whispered against your knuckles, voice shaking violently. “You hear me? You don’t get to do that. Not after all this. Not after I finally know the truth. Not after—”

His breath hitched, the rest dissolving into a sound that was closer to a sob than speech.

“I love you,” he choked out. “I don’t care what was in those files. I don’t care who you were before. You’re mine now. You stayed. You chose me. That’s all that matters.”

Your fingers twitched. Leon froze. It was tiny. Barely there. Easy to dismiss as a reflex, a dying nerve firing at random. But he felt it, a faint tightening against his palm that sent a jolt through his entire body.

“Hey,” he said urgently, leaning forward, hope flaring so bright it hurt. “Hey, can you hear me? It’s me. I’m right here.”

Your brow furrowed slightly beneath the harsh lights, lashes trembling as if lifting them required more strength than you possessed. A soft, broken sound escaped behind the oxygen mask, almost lost beneath the quiet hum of machines. Leon’s free hand came up to cradle the side of your face, thumb brushing your cheek with infinite care.

“Easy,” he murmured, voice gentler now, thick with emotion. “You did enough. Just... just stay with me, okay? That’s all you have to do.”

Your eyes opened a fraction, unfocused at first, pupils struggling against the brightness. It took several seconds before they settled on him, recognition dawning slowly, painfully, like surfacing from deep water.

Tears spilled from the corners immediately. Leon let out a broken laugh that dissolved into another sob, pressing the back of your hand to his face.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, that’s about how I feel, too.”

Your hand tightened weakly around his, the effort visible in the tremor that ran through your arm. When you spoke, the words were muffled by the mask, barely audible.

“I’m... sorry.”

Leon shook his head sharply, tears falling freely now, landing warm against your skin. "No, don't do that."

Your eyes searched his face desperately, fear lingering beneath the exhaustion. “It... was real,” you whispered hoarsely. “All of it. I love you. I never stopped. Not for a second.”

Something inside him gave way entirely.

“I know,” he said, the words breaking apart as they left him. “I know. I read the letter. I know.”

A fresh wave of tears slid down your temples, your grip on his hand tightening as much as your depleted strength allowed, as if you were terrified he might vanish if you loosened it.

“I thought... you’d hate me.”

Leon leaned closer, pressing a trembling kiss to your forehead, lingering there as if committing the moment to memory.

“Not a chance,” he murmured. “I was hurt. But hate you?” He let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how. I don’t think I ever could.”

Your eyes closed again, exhaustion pulling you under now that the fight was over, but your fingers remained stubbornly entwined with his. Leon tightened his grip immediately, anchoring you in place.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised softly.

He settled beside the bed, one hand wrapped around yours, the other resting lightly over your heart as if he needed to feel each fragile beat to believe it was real. The machines hummed quietly, the harsh lights no longer feeling accusatory, just bright enough to illuminate the miracle of breath continuing where it had nearly stopped.

A doctor cleared her throat in the doorway.

“She’s stable,” the woman said gently, glancing between the monitors and the tangle of lines feeding into your arm. “But the extraction took a severe toll. She’ll need time. And rest. A lot of both.”

Leon nodded without looking away from you, thumb tracing slow, absent circles against the back of your hand as if reacquainting himself with the shape of it. Stable. The word sounded unreal, too clean for what the last few hours had been.

“There’s something else,” the doctor continued. “The serum synthesis was successful.”

He looked up slowly, eyes sharp despite the exhaustion carved into every line of his face. “Successful how?”

She held up a small containment case, no larger than a glasses box. Inside, cushioned in sterile foam, rested a single syringe filled with a faintly amber fluid that caught the overhead light like diluted honey.

“Enough for one full treatment,” she said. “It should neutralize the infection in your system completely.”

Leon stared at the syringe as if it might detonate. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even blink. The reality of it pressed in from all sides, heavy with implications he hadn’t allowed himself to consider while panic drove him forward. A cure paid for in blood, in pain, in the risk of never waking up again. Your blood.

His gaze drifted back to you automatically. You were watching him through half-lidded eyes, pale and exhausted, oxygen mask still in place, but unmistakably aware. Something fragile flickered there, hope tangled with fear, as if this moment mattered just as much to you as surviving had.

You shifted weakly, fingers tightening around his with surprising urgency. The effort made your brow crease, breath hitching behind the mask. He leaned closer immediately, free hand coming up to steady your shoulder.

“Easy,” he murmured. “You don’t have to say anything.”

You shook your head faintly, stubborn even now, eyes locking onto his with an intensity that burned through the haze of medication and exhaustion. Your voice, when it came, was hoarse and thin but unmistakably determined.

“Take it,” the words scraped raw, each syllable costing you more than it should.

Leon’s chest constricted painfully. “You almost died.”

“And you...” Your breath hitched, forcing you to pause and gather strength. “...you don’t get to die later.”

A broken sound escaped him, half laugh, half sob. He bowed his head, pressing his forehead gently to the back of your hand, shoulders trembling.

“You don’t fight fair,” he whispered.

Your fingers twitched, brushing weakly through his hair in a gesture so achingly familiar it made his vision blur.

“Please,” you murmured.

Leon lifted his head slowly, eyes shining, the last of his resistance dissolving under the weight of everything that had happened, everything that had almost been lost. For so long, survival had been something he endured, something he carried like a burden because someone had to. This was different.

“Okay.”

Relief washed across your face so quickly it was almost visible, tension draining from your shoulders, from your eyes, from the tight line of your mouth. Your hand slackened in his, not from weakness this time but from release, like you had been holding your breath for years and could finally let it go.

The doctor stepped forward, efficient and quiet, preparing the injection with practiced movements. Leon rolled up his sleeve without prompting, gaze never leaving yours, as if anchoring himself to you would make the moment less surreal.

“Ready?” she asked.

Leon gave one short nod, tightening his grip on your hand, thumb brushing over your knuckles in a slow rhythm.

The needle slid in with a brief, sharp pressure. Coolness spread through his arm almost immediately, a strange tingling sensation that traveled upward, threading through muscle and nerve like liquid electricity. He barely registered it. The only thing that mattered was the way your eyes stayed locked on his, wide and bright with unshed tears.

“It’s done,” the doctor said after a moment, withdrawing the needle.

Leon exhaled slowly, tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying draining out in a shaky rush. He flexed his fingers experimentally, then tightened them around yours again, unwilling to let go even for a second.

“See?” you whispered faintly. “Still here.”

He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh on another day, leaning forward to press a gentle kiss against your temple, lingering there as if memorizing the warmth of your skin.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Still here.”

Your eyes drifted closed, exhaustion finally claiming what adrenaline had postponed, but your lips curved just slightly, a fragile echo of a smile.

Leon settled back into the chair, still holding your hand, the containment case now empty on the nearby tray. For the first time since reading your letter, since seeing that red light, since imagining a world where he had to learn how to exist without you, the knot in his chest loosened enough to let a full breath in.

Thanks for reading<3 Just a reminder, my requests are open!

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