Chapter Text
“I just can’t believe no one thought to get in contact, if it weren’t for Ingrid I wouldn’t have even known !” Claire cries into Chris’ shoulder. He rubs her back and sighs.
“Ingrid?”
“She’s his handler, s’been working with him since Spain, she has access to his emergency contacts. Said the DSO didn’t think to reach out to anyone because he doesn’t have any family listed.”
“He has you as an emergency contact?” He’s not sure how to feel about that, worried his sister was too involved, before she pipes up.
“It’s not like he has anyone else, Chris. I’ve been, like, his only friend since Raccoon, other than Sherry, but he probably doesn’t want her bothered. I told him to do it, so don’t get all iffy. I know you aren’t super close to him, but I am . He deserves better than-“ She cuts herself off with a sob, her voice having gotten shakier with each passing defense. She sniffles, wipes her eyes with her hands and then her hands with his shoulder for fucks sake , and then pushes away, looking down at her own lap. “He really deserved better. I told him that he oughtta get off fieldwork, like you did after Rose, but he kept putting it off.”
“It is the U.S government. I mean, I had to really kick and fight just to be taken off active field duty, and I’m literally on the BSAA’s founders board. I can only imagine how hard it’d’ve been being an agent, especially one good as Kennedy.”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s still horrible though.” Her eyes tear up again, chin wobbling a bit as she tips her head back and blinks at the ceiling.
“Do you know if they had a service?” He figures it’s a long shot, presumed dead means no body, and considering what he knows about the DSO, he can assume they didn’t feel the need to console with niceties if they thought he didn’t have anyone.
“No. No body to bury, no relatives to contact. Fuck , Chris, he was your age .” Her frown deepens. “I just hope he had his will in order. I know he talked about it with me a bit, but I can’t remember if he ever finalized anything or if it was just drunk bullshitting.” She lets out a heavy, final sigh, one that lifts and drops her shoulders. “He was such a jackass. God, I’m gonna miss him.”
Chris gets it. He recalls Leon. Recalls fighting him in China, recalls fighting alongside him in New York. Recalls the aftermath of that fight, finally getting through to the younger about getting help, about reaching out to the people around him. Recalls sitting him down on the ratty motel couch 20 klicks outside the city, extending his own shoulder to lean on and exchanging numbers to stay in touch when life got to be too much.
Recalls the way he sagged in Chris’ arms when he’d been hugged, how he’d said he only imagined dying every other mission. He’d meant it as a joke, but Chris knew better than to take it as one. He’d been there, after Wesker’s betrayal, after Piers . That passive suicidality, when you let yourself get sloppy and stop paying your rent cause you don’t plan on coming back from the next mission.
They’d only talked a few times since then, passing remarks at parties hosted by Claire and the occasional text when news on a mission reached the other. Leon had texted after Chris got back from Romania, rumors around DSO about your most recent. sorry about ethan. should be back from my own in a week, if you need. They hadn’t met up, but Chris had thanked him, wished him luck on whatever the government had him out chasing. He didn’t respond, not really, just liked the message and sent a thumbs up back.
He gets how this loss is devastating to Claire, considering he survived something as tough as Raccoon City alongside her. He knows it’s definitely gonna be a blow to the whole field, wonders how long it’ll take before he gets word while in the office, wonders who will break the news and how. A meeting? A company-wide email?
The baby monitor crackles to life, a sharp wail cutting through the static and his thoughts. Claire laughs wetly.
“You wanna check on Rose for me while I start dinner?” Chris offers, hoping it might work to cheer her up a bit.
“Yeah, yeah, lemme go check on my favorite niece.” She slaps her hands on her thighs and stands, stretching her back and wiping her face.
“Okay, pasta sound good?”
“Sure, just make sure you don’t burn the water this time.”
“One time, it was one time! I was like 20 years old! When will you let me live it down?”
“Ask me again in another 20 years, big guy.” Her laugh follows her up the stairs and he sighs, rolling his eyes as he makes his way to the kitchen.
About 10 minutes in, he hears his doorbell ring and stalls, wiping the raw ground beef onto a dishrag on his shoulder as he peers up at his camera system in his cupboard, seeing a figure standing on the front porch, looking around with a box in their arms- delivery driver, then? He grabs a gun from the same cabinet and tucks it in the waistband of his jeans, walking to the door while he tries to recall if anything was ordered.
The uniform clad figure that greets him is, in fact, a delivery driver. Hardly out of his teens and clearly intimidated by Chris’ looming figure, he mumbles something about a signature and holds out a beat up clipboard, a slightly chewed blue pen dangling by a tattered string. Chris furrows his eyebrows, scanning the page fruitlessly for any information before scrawling his name, holding a hand out for the small box.
Chris watches and waits for the driver to scamper down to his truck and drive off before he retreats into the house, kicking his door closed as he opens the package carefully. It’s obviously not a jostle-sensitive bomb, otherwise the dingy delivery truck wouldn’t have made it to his house to deliver it, judging by the way it had wobbled down his driveway, protesting as it went. Regardless, he’s cautious and slow as he goes, working to undo the tape instead of ripping the cardboard in a fit of what his sister would describe as “boulder-punching impatience”.
Speaking of Claire, he hears her feet hitting the stairs before he sees her head poke around the wall, “Who was that? Was I supposed to be expecting someone?”
“Nope, just a package, did you order anything?”
“Nnnnope, what is it, lemme see!”
“Hold off.” He sets it down, lightly sifting through brightly colored Easter basket filler grass before he comes across a small sandwich bag containing a phone.
Not a new phone, not even an outdated current phone. A grey slider, Nokia based on the text at the top.
He pulls out the baggie and opens it, palming the phone and switching it on instinctively while he scans over the info on the box, finding no return address. Funny enough, his own address is wrong. His name, more specifically, listed as…
Mr. & Mrs. Wong? Wong. Fuck, please be wrong.
As this settles in his brain, the phone rings sharply, startling him into almost dropping it. He reads the display name of “you know ;)” and sighs, begrudgingly hitting accept and shushing Claire as she opens her mouth.
“Clifford! You are a surprisingly difficult person to get a hold of!” Her voice chirps on the other end of the line, just as smug as she’s always sounded, sultry and syrupy sweet in his ear.
“Ada. What the fuck do you want?”
“Unfortunately, we’ve no time for pleasantries. We need to talk. In person.”
He listens as she lists off the when and where, rushing to scribble it down on an envelope off his bill pile.
“Why should I trust you?” He asks, knowing deep down that regardless of what she says, she’s well past got his interest, and even if he doesn’t do field work anymore, he’s planning his entrance as she speaks.
“Realistically? I understand why you wouldn’t. However, I have something you might be interested in, concerning a mutual friend. Do come off the clock, dear, please and thanks.” The phone clicks and the calls is disconnected.
Mutual friend sets alarm bells off in his brain, knowing the only person she could be talking about was just presumed dead.
-
Pulling up to the public park, Chris feels his hackles raise. He’s loath to bring his gun because of the presence of civilians and the worry they’ll get caught in the crossfire, but he also knows that, as is always the case in his line of work, they are all safer if he has it at his side than if he doesn’t.
He holsters his pistol and makes his way towards the coords, finding himself at a series of benches in the park, overlooking the jungle gym and the children playing among it. There’s a few men and women there, likely parents of the aforementioned children, none of which are interested in him or his arrival.
So, he sits and waits, figures that while it’s suspicious for Ada to be late , he’s not going to pass up her info outright. The parents give him a few weird looks, probably because he’s a large grown man, sat brooding by his lonesome in a children’s park, but he pays them no mind, and eventually they get over themselves and go back to conversing amongst each other.
It’s not until he’s been sat there almost 15 minutes and considers gathering himself and writing this off as bullshit does someone come into the park.
She is just as he remembers her, and it’s both infuriating and an odd comfort, as much as he hates to admit it. A svelte frame adorned in a red blouse and dark pants, top few buttons undone, dark hair cropped to her shoulders. And yet, she’s also decidedly not as put together as she seems, a tired heaviness evident in the curve of her shoulders and the bags under her eyes. Something has put her off her game.
He figures it has something to do with the kid at her side, a small boy, barely to her hip in height. He seems lively enough, scampering off to play with the other children as soon as she gives him the go ahead
She saunters over and sits less-than-gracefully next to him, laughing to herself as they brush shoulders. “Sorry for the delay. What do you know of Leon’s current…predicament?”
“KIA.” He flashes to the conversation between him and Claire, then to the files he’d managed to pull under the radar after she’d hung up. “No body found, presumed dead. Nothing released past that. What did you bring me here for, Ada?”
“Right. That kid? That’s Leon.” She pauses, waits for him to furrow his brows, and laughs. “ Yeah . I was… accompanying him on a mission, unofficially of course, when he was captured.” Chris knows ‘accompanying him’ is likely code for ‘working for whoever Kennedy was sent to capture or kill’. “I didn’t see them inject him with anything, but I got there just in time to watch him shrink. I was able to smuggle him out, kicking and screaming as he was, alongside a sample. It’s being analyzed, but in the meantime? I need a babysitter.” She looks at him and he’s talking before he even realizes.
“Why in the holy hell do you think I would agree to that? Hell, why shouldn’t I call the DSO and have you both taken in for this? If what you’re saying is true, you’ve successfully hidden a government agent from the powers that be, why would I-“
“I believe it was a set up. They sent him in with no information, told him it was supposed to be an easy one man job. Look, I know you’ve got a lot going on, but right now he’s entirely defenseless, and until this is settled, I need someone to keep an eye on him. He’s not-“ She cuts herself off, nodding at Leon, currently talking animatedly to another child among the playsets. “He’s barely an adult in a child’s body. I’m not sure how much he’s regressed, or how much he will regress, but he sure as shit is regressing,” With a vague gesture towards the boy she came in with, Leon S. Kennedy if she’s to be believed, she continues, shifting to face him on the bench. “We’ve had our differences, you and I, but he matters a lot more to me than any bullshit job I’ve taken. I am not above begging here.”
His resolve crumbles a bit at that seemingly earnest statement, and he sighs. “What’s the timeframe on the analysis?”
“Currently unknown, but I have a lot of important favors to pull with a lot of important people. I would be keeping in touch with you, of course.”
He looks to the park, watching the boy clamber his way to the top of the rope tower, enthusiastically encouraging a girl who looks a year or two younger, before he nods once and matches her pose, facing her. “Fine, I’ll keep an eye on him.” He pauses, holding up one finger. “If! You can prove that he’s actually Leon.”
“I understand. Give me a moment.” She shifts and faces the park, giving a quick shout of ‘Leon, sweetheart!’ and splaying her hands out as he comes barreling towards her. He falters a bit at Chris, presumably due to his frame, but hardly falls out of step before he’s right back to running, coming to a stop in front of Ada and looking up at her through blonde bangs. She sweeps them behind his ear with practiced care, smiling. “Hi, hun. This is Chris, I told you about him in the car, can you say hi?”
He’s a bit more subdued when he turns to Chris, and the older man can see a war in his eyes before his face seems to fall and he blinks, features becoming hardened in a moment. “Chris.” It’s small, meek, with a slight lisp that he’s caught a handful of times after a hard fight, when the other man had no energy to speak around it.
“Leon?” Chris can’t help but stare, watching this child move to rub the back of his neck, sheepishly, a nervous tick Leon had displayed in front of him times before, though less as the years wore on and he seemed to come out of his shell a bit. “Oh my god.” He shakes his head, wiping a hand down his face. “Oh my fucking god. Claire’s gonna flip her lid .” He laughs despite himself, genuinely dumbfounded. Always something new.
-
Laden with bags in one hand and a booster seat in the other, Chris watches Ada pull off in a fucking Jetta, sparing them both one last glance in the rear view with a tight lipped expression. She’d gone ahead and bought the kid-
Leon. She’d bought Leon a dozen outfits, two pairs of shoes, a few pairs of pajamas, and, despite Leon’s repeated protest, a car seat.
Leon himself seems fine, all things considered. He stands, staring after Ada until she turns and he can’t see her, and then sighs, turning to look up at Chris, presumably waiting for the older to make the first move forward.
Chris flounders for a moment more, fighting for composure, before he channels a forced calm that can only be accomplished by someone who has had to deal with Claire Redfield and her knack for trouble. He sighs heavily, turns to look at the bite-sized version of his sister's best friend and nods. “Alright, let’s go. We gotta stop for Dunkin’ before we bring you home. Hopefully that’ll help smooth over my getting saddled with another stray, no matter how temporary.” Chris stops, looks back down at Leon, cutting him off before he can open his mouth. “Coffee is not on the menu for you. But I will get you a sandwich or something if you let me get you in this car seat.” Laughing at the scowl on the younger’s face, he turns, nodding to his car a few spots down. “Hop to it, c’mon.”