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Grace is safe.
Leon repeats this to himself like a mantra the entire helicopter ride back to the base of the DSO. Grace was taken care of on site, but is still coming back there to be monitored for a few days, to pump her full of antivirals and give her a few days to rest before she gets the all clear to go.
It’s the only thing bringing him a little bit of comfort right now, knowing that Grace is safe at the DSO and Chris’ soldiers are down there, searching for that little girl she had taken a liking to, Emily. The other thing bringing him comfort is his wedding band, which feels tight on his finger, grounding and solitary. He rubs the band without even thinking about it, a small semblance of comfort until he can get to the real thing.
He’s lucky he doesn’t have to be watched over. His gnarly infection cured from the Elpis, bruises healed over and scars stitching themselves back together for him, like he’s just good as new. Eventually they’ll want to run tests on him, see how the antiviral affected him if it did at all, if it changed his blood, if it’ll make him age slower like Jill and Sherry, but Leon trusts that Hunnigan will keep the rest of the DSO off his back for the time being.
There are people surrounding him, Chris’ men and people who work with them, the ones that he sent out for them, and it’s not that Leon doesn’t trust them, but he keeps his heart close to his chest, keeps wandering eyes from seeing too deeply into the things he loves, he has since this all happened, kept everything close to him, didn’t let it run, didn’t let anyone see what he cared about if he could help it.
But the photo in his pocket, the one he knows he shouldn’t carry while he’s on missions but does anyway so he’ll always remember them, burns a hole through him. He closes his eyes softly, imagining the photo in his mind, the curve of a smile on her face, the missing tooth in his oldest daughter's mouth. Too identifying to ever leave the house, but Leon can’t seem to go anywhere without it.
The landing at the DSO goes smoothly, he grabs his belongings from his locker that he had left inside what feels like years ago, but could’ve only been a couple days. He visits Sherry on the way out, tells her that they’re going to synthesize the antiviral to create as many as they need, he had given them the other four vials of it, but this one is for her, an almost glowing green vial of it. Sherry thanks him, and she won’t say it, but Leon knows she thought she was going to die, that she would leave behind Jake and the kids of her own that are probably waiting up at home for her.
Emily is extracted and in the base by the time he finds Grace, in the viewing room of the surgery center, watching as they operate on the wounds Leon left her. Grace is in a hospital gown and probably shouldn’t be walking around on account of all the bandages and the splint on her ankle, but no one would be able to stop her. Leon leaves her his number, not just for emergencies, but for anything, and Grace tears up when she says she’ll call him when Emily’s out of surgery, and Leon promises to be there.
Grace reminds him a lot of Sherry, a lot of saving Sherry, of the few months they spent on the road after Raccoon City, of the first time Leon ever remembered being a father, at 21, with Claire Redfield by his side, younger than him but so much better at this whole parenting thing. She had good ones, Leon didn’t really have any at all.
Leon has to get a rental car to get home, on account of the fact his Porsche is somewhere in Raccoon City still, rotting until Leon can face his issues and return there to get it. The keys sit heavy in his pocket, and when he drops into the driver's seat of his rental he pulls out the photo, traces their faces with careful fingers, his touch featherlight so he doesn’t ruin the photo with the grime of his fingertips.
The ride home is long, it always seems to stretch when there’s nothing more he wants than to be home. He speeds on the empty highways and it still doesn’t feel fast enough, even as he pulls in the driveway, his house glowing faintly yellow. Leon knows what that means, someone is awake, even if they shouldn’t be. He takes careful, slow steps up the stairs, anxious to just be inside, he fumbles with his keys until the door unlocks before him, and he heads in.
The house is not illuminated by any over head lights, but just by the faint light of the lamps on the end tables, the TV is playing some old kids movie on a volume so quiet Leon can barely hear it, and when the door softly clicks shut behind him and the first of many locks slide into place he hears a thump on the floor, and the rushing of footsteps, and instinctively he crouches down despite the bone deep ache in him and holds out his arms for his youngest to barrel into him like a very small, very hyper train.
Ada has been trying to teach her to be gentle when he gets home, but she’s only six, and he doesn’t think she quite understands why she should have to be gentle, and Leon door and wants to have to explain why.
She’s solid in his arms, warm and alive and breathing, face shoved in his neck, and he can feel her rapidly talking but he can’t hear any of it. Her long black hair falling down her back and brushing his arms, she’s real and alive and her heart beats against his chest. He feels another solid form hit him, a mop of unruly blonde hair that seems to get more brown by the day, and Leon wraps and arm around her too, kisses the side of her face to listen to her giggle.
It’s like he melts into a puddle of goo, his limbs go lax and his mind seems to forget the past week, and he’s not Leon S. Kennedy, the agent anymore, he’s Dad.
“We missed you,” his oldest, Alice, says into his hair, wrapped practically around his back like a koala bear, she’s almost ten now, but she has yet to grow out of her clingy phase, and Leon isn’t so intent to rush her out of it.
“Missed you too,” Leon says softly, “so much.”
He picks up his youngest daughter, Cassandra, and holds her close to his chest, she’s tired, eyelids fluttering over her deep blue eyes as she fights to keep them open.
When he rounds the corner he sees the other half of what he had been searching for, his wife, Ada, splayed out on the couch like she owns more than half the place, their lithe black cat laying in her lap, her fluffy robe half tied across her pajamas, looking like a supervillain from an old movie.
“Mama! Daddy’s home!” Cassandra cheers happily, never removing her face from the crook of his neck.
Ada looks up at him, and he knows that she knew he was there the whole time, that someone at the DSO probably told her something already, she had connections to some of Chris’ little wolf pack. But she smiles at him, soft and a little teasing, she’s relaxed and happy, not nervous like she normally is when he gets home, the fear never quite leaving her that maybe one day he won’t come home.
“Honey, I’m home,” he says teasingly, and with two small children hanging off him like monkeys he leans down, patting their cats head gently and placing an almost rough kiss on Ada’s forehead to feel her. He can’t hear her heartbeat but he can feel her warmth, her chest rises and falls and for right now it’s all he needs, knowing she’s alive and here and happy and smiling at him, really smiling at him.
“Just when I finally thought I’d get some time to myself, you go and wake them up.” Leon knows it’s all teasing as she slides up off the couch, cat meowing in response, she grab Cass and holds her close, pecking him on the lips, fast and fleeting, but it makes him feel like he’s on fire.
Leon wondered for a while if that feeling would ever go away. The familiar jolt of electricity that seems to make him short circuit whenever Ada kisses him, like the first time in the train car almost 30 years ago, he thought eventually it would fade, that he would grow used to kissing her. But every time she does, without fail it feels like the first time, unexpected and new and exciting, no matter how fast of a peck or a deep prolonged kiss, all of it makes him feel like that giddy rookie over and over again.
They don’t have to talk as they return to their bedroom, kids in tow, it’s ritual by now. They all sleep in the big bed after Leon comes home from a mission after the first night, because Leon gets antsy when he’s not in the same room as the girls he loves, and because they miss him so much they’ll crawl in their bed in the middle of the night anyways. It’s easier to just start with them there.
Ada tucks Cass in the middle while Alice crawls up and flops backward, eliciting a small laugh from the girl while Leon heads to the adjoining bathroom, where Ada, just like always, had left out his pajamas. She only does it on the nights he back from a mission, because she can somehow always just feel it when he returns, because she knows he can’t think about small stuff when he comes home, she’s familiar with that bone deep exhaustion that comes after a mission, and so if she can lighten his load just a little, she will.
Ada doesn’t do missions much anymore, not because she doesn’t want to, but because now she’s a lot more particular about the things she does. They’re not 20 something’s willing to put their lives on the line anymore, 25 years ago they didn’t have something to come home to, now they do. So the missions get shorter and more infrequent, and they both know they’ll stop entirely one day, probably sooner than later, they’re getting old, and so are the girls, and they want to be around to see them get old enough to have their own kids, if they’re lucky.
Leon changes fast, and when he comes back in to the bedroom he finds his girls, all sprawled out across the bed, he gently shoves Alice over so he can actually have some space to slip under the covers, and over the bodies of their two sleeping girls, he presses his forehead to Ada’s, relishing in the sound of her breathing, in the warmth of his kids in his bed, of the knowledge that they’re all alive, at least for one more day.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Ada says. Another rule. Unless it’s an emergency or you want to talk about, mission talk waits until the next day, until the girls are off to school or one of their many weekend activities to keep them occupied.
Leon’s only broke it a few times, when a mission really wore him down, when for once bottling it in didn’t feel like the right choice anymore, when a friend he made in the two weeks he had been stationed in Australia had been killed right before they could escape. Some things need to be talked about immediately, to be free of the weight of them.
This is not one of those things. He can tell Ada all about Grace Ashcroft and her clone Emily tomorrow, about the infection, about how she must notice it’s gone, about Elpis and Raccoon City and Victor Gideon and everything else that’s happened in the last few days. It can all wait until tomorrow when Leon doesn’t feel sleep pulling him down roughly.
It can wait because right now Leon is in bed with his wife, his hand adorning the ring she had custom made for him resting on her side, their daughters in between them, cat at the foot of their bed until she eventually curls herself up on his chest like she always does.
Tomorrow, when the sun rises and the girls run off to be normal at school, Leon can stop being Dad, for just a moment, and he’ll be a husband, telling his wife about his day at work like a normal couple might talk about their boring office jobs, and Ada will pretend like hearing about his stupid stunts doesn’t make her worry, and Leon will greatly understate what he had done out there until she gets the truth out of him like she always does.
But for tonight, he’s Leon Kennedy, a very tired married man, with his two daughters asleep between him and his wife, and he’s going to rest, for just a little while longer.