SAVEGUARD ⟼ leon s. kennedy

xxx. rift between us

𝕝𝕖𝕠𝕟

Leon can't sleep. His mind is going a thousand miles an hour. He's trying to control his heart rate, breathing as slow as possible.

But his mind won't shut the fuck up. Possible theories about what happened aboard the Queen Zenobia. Anxiety about what awaits them on the Queen Samiramis. Nausea at the idea of you getting hurt. Jessica's bizarre ideas about the possibility of you being a spy.

It can't be— right?

But then again, the idea of Ada being anyone other than who she said she was never even crossed his mind back in Raccoon City. But then he saw her again, six years later in Spain, after having to deal with the trauma of the belief he let her fall to her death. It was like seeing a ghost, come back to haunt and torment him. And again, she had played him, taking from him the thing he was supposed to control and destroy, leaving him again with the guilt of losing the last trace of Las Plagas, guilt gnawing away at him, worry eating away at his energy about where it is now, if it ended in the wrong hands. And all the while always being two steps ahead of him, feeding him little bits of information as if to prove she actually cared.

But he knows that Ada is one of a kind. Not many people can pull of that level of deception as effortlessly as she could.

Besides, at this point, he was still worried about losing you. No matter who you really were.

He knew, deep down, that you were genuine. Everything about you pointed to that, and if Leon was being honest with himself, it just makes him feel worse.

Why did he have to meet you here? Now?

He wonders on what planet is it fair that he met you under these circumstances... Why couldn't he have met you back home, where you were relatively safe from all danger? From this type of danger? From bioweapons and bioterrorism and backstabbing and lying and the constant threat of death and devastation around every corner?

He knows he would never let anything or anyone harm you— he wouldn't have let anything happen to you on the first day he met you, let alone now. Now? Well. Now things have changed. His walls, the ones he painstakingly built brick by brick, are crumbling down around him.

You've seen and touched parts of him that he thought were long dead and buried. Parts of him that he shed in 1998. Parts of him that were forcefully stolen by the spy back in Raccoon City. You make him feel feelings that he thought were permanently severed.

He doesn't know exactly how deep his feelings go for you— it's only been a couple of weeks. But in those weeks, you two have been through so much shit, so many feelings, more trauma and problems and excitement than the average person endures in a lifetime. And that shit creates lifelong bonds.

What if something happens to you? Leon shuts his eyes tight, an array of possible deaths flashing in his mind's eye.

No. He can't think like that.

It would drive him insane.

So here Leon is, in the middle of the night, trying his hardest to stay awake even though his mind is torturing him. The longer he stays awake, the longer he prolongs tomorrow, and the longer he can hold you in his arms. Something about you makes it easier for his eyelids to grow heavy, maybe it's the fact that you're so small in his arms, so warm and smelling so nice— maybe it's the feeling he gets from knowing he's protecting you from anything that comes your way, a heavy burden, but one he'll bear silently and happily.

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𝕔𝕝𝕖𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕖

It's the middle of the night and neither Leon or I can sleep.