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The irony wasn't lost on him.
Just not too long ago, his body had taken a severe beating, the kind of pain that was bone deep and unforgiving. He felt every muscle losing the fight and he was powerless to stop it. He had made his peace with it, more or less. You couldn't do this job for as long as he had and not know how to look at your own death in the eyes.
Then the cure came. His body reclaimed itself instantly, his limbs regaining strength, the feeling almost surreal after being ill for so long. It even gave him an extra boost of energy, the kind that felt almost supernatural.
None of that could stop a building from annihilating them, though.
He had a clear, unflinching vision of how it might end. A cinder block falling down on his skull and snuffing him out in an instant. If he was lucky, it would be lights out before the pain even had time to register. If he was unlucky, if fate had a sense of humor, then he'd feel every broken bone, barely alive, not even strong enough to put a bullet in his head.
He forced the thought away. Not now. Not with Grace Ashcroft sobbing beside him, her breath shaking, the sounds of her cries mixing with the sounds of the walls caving in around them. It made him angry, not at her, but at the situation. At the fact that he couldn’t look her in the eye and tell her it was going to be okay this time.
He knew the odds. The chance of crawling out of this was slim, close to zero. But he had been near death countless times, and he knew what it did to the soul. He could still offer her something. Even with the air thick with dust, the room already narrowing as debris piled in the corners, he could offer her something to hold onto.
“Grace." He turned his head in her direction despite not being able to see his own hand in front of him. “Grace, listen to me.”
“Leon…” she sobbed. “I don't wanna die…”
“Hey, don't think about it," he said, with a bit more force. “We’re not done yet. We’re not dead.”
But it was easier said than done. He could hear the shudder in his own voice and knew she could too. The space they’d huddled themselves into was already shrinking, he could taste the dust in his mouth.
Grace coughed in between sobs. He wanted to wrap a protective arm around her but one wrong move, especially in pitch darkness, might be fatal. He decided to stay put.
“Grace. Focus on my voice,” he said with more authority. “Let's just wait this out and then we'll find an opening, alright?”
She made a strangled sound. “There’s… no opening…”
“You don't know that.” His voice steady. Calm.
A small, idiotic part of him had still believed he’d make it to retirement and die of something boring. Some respiratory illness, maybe, or a car accident with no one to blame but himself. But he owed it to Grace to pretend like there was a way out.
He was out of reassurances.
But he wouldn't let Grace's hope die here in the darkness. Not when so many others had their final moments stolen from them in Raccoon City.
Hope wouldn't guarantee their survival. But fear wouldn't either.
Fear was inflicted by other people. Hope was something you chose for yourself. Hope was a protest. Hope was defying your circumstances. And he refused to let her spend what might be her final breaths believing she had no say in how she faced them. He could at least give her that. It was all that hope was, really. Something to hold onto.
Did it matter? Right now, it did. It was the only thing that did.
So he racked his brain for whatever else he could offer, some scrap of comfort, some trivial little thing to push back at the terror.
“Listen, you know what I’m thinking?” He kept his tone measured, even as his voice vibrated with the ground's tremors. “I’m thinking about that lunch that my wife packed for me this morning.”
He heard a sniff and then a long pause before she spoke again.
“W-what?”
“Chicken pesto.“ He let the words sit there, ordinary and ridiculous against the sound of the building dying around them. “She grows the basil herself. Little pot on the kitchen windowsill. Makes her own sauce from scratch.“ He paused, allowing himself to smile at the warm memory. “Shame I didn't get to eat it. She's gonna give me hell for that.“
Another pause from Grace, longer this time.
“Grace? Still with me?”
“Y-yeah…“ She sobbed, quieter now, trying to hold it together. “Your wife… she sounds nice.“
A chunk of wall plummeted past Leon’s right shoulder, slamming into the floor with a crack that made the side of his head ring. He ducked reflexively, breath held, waiting to see if it triggered anything larger. It didn't. Not yet.
If it was up to him, they'd go out at the same time, so she wouldn’t have to be alone in the dark for whatever came after.
He tried not to think about how they looked: two people waiting for the last domino to fall.
“She is,“ he said, when his voice was steady again. “She's always on my case about eating. So she started packing me food. Been that way since we started dating.”
A tiny crack in the wall allowed a sliver of light to filter through, probably emergency lighting from whatever part of the facility was still standing. It wasn't much. But it was enough to see the outline of Grace beside him, knees drawn up, shoulders still shaking.
He focused on her silhouette. Still here. Still breathing.
“How did you…” she began, and then trailed off, forcing casualness in her tone. “H-how did you meet?”
“Hell of a story, actually.“ He kept his voice easy, conversational, like they were sitting across a diner table instead of waiting for the ceiling to close in on them. “I was assigned to a rescue mission in Spain. She'd been kidnapped and it was my job to bring her back home.“
“Kidnapped.“ Grace repeated it like she was filing it away. “Who kidnapped her?“
“Some religious cult.“
“A cult?“
He shrugged, even though she couldn’t see it. “Los Illuminados. They’re long gone now.”
She fell quiet, and he imagined her piecing together the obvious parallels. He kept going, hoping the story would work its way through the terror.
“It was supposed to be a straight extraction, but nothing ever is. So we had to fight our way out, while we were both infected. She was the reason I made it out, to be honest.”
A small silence followed. “Infected? With what?“
Good. Keep talking, Grace.
“Something that takes over your mind. They were going to use her as a vessel. She was the key to their grand plan.” He let that land. “Sound familiar?“
Grace breathed, he couldn't tell if it was a laugh or sob. “Yeah,“ she managed. “Little bit."
Leon huffed a laugh despite himself.
"Did she... Is she okay?"
"Yeah, she's good. She works with survivors, bioterror policy, that kind of thing. She'd love to meet you. You have more in common than you think.”
“Y-you think we're getting out of here?“
He sighed. “Well, if we don’t, she'll kill me."
Grace let out a breathy sound, the best version of a laugh she could manage.
"Or the president himself will kill me for making his daughter a widow."
“What do you mean?" She paused and then continued before Leon could answer. "Y-your wife is the president's—”
Another crash cut her words short. This time, Leon felt the vibration travel through the floor beneath them, the concrete shifting slightly. He waited a moment, seeing if the floor would give out. When it didn’t, he continued.
“Former now, but yeah,” he replied, tone calm and even despite his adrenaline spiking.
She fell silent for a moment. He could almost sense the next question that was about to come.
"You're DSO, that's uh... that's a conflict, right?"
"Sure is. We didn't start dating until years later. She had to finish college, but we kept in touch. Took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure out why I couldn't stop thinking about her." A small, self-deprecating huff of a laugh escaped his lips. "Then one day, I decided to make an ass out of myself and asked her to get dinner with me. The rest is history.”
"T-that's... that's quite the love story," Grace whispered. She sounded steadier.
At least she wasn't sobbing anymore. Good. That was the idea.
The building made an unsettling sound somewhere above them. He waited, trying to sense which wall was going to give out.
“Did you always…“ Grace started, then seemed to reconsider the question, reshape it. “Did you always know you were coming back home? From missions, I mean.“
“Not always.“ He was quiet for a moment. Honest. “When she agreed to marry me, she made me promise, swear on my life, that I’d never go on any suicide mission.” He let that hang in the air. “She told me as long as I planned on coming back, I’d always find a way to do it.”
“But you were sick. You didn’t know there was a cure.“
“I didn’t. We didn’t.” His chest tightened at the memory of the look on her face when she'd seen the infection in his neck, the way her tears spilled when the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. “This wasn't even the first time we faced something like this together. She knows what it looks like when the odds aren't good. She wanted me in a hospital where they could try and fix me up. But she also understood why I had to go and get to the bottom of this.”
“Did she know you were…”
“Dying?” He said it for her. "I don't know if she thought that. Every time I walk out that door, we both know it's a possibility. Has been for years. She learned not to treat every goodbye like it's the last one, otherwise you'd go crazy." He paused. "When I left that morning, she just did what she always does. Got the baby settled, packed my lunch, sent me off. Just another morning."
The silence between them was different now.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
He considered that for a moment. There were a few honest answers. He picked the one that mattered most.
“Because I want to try and keep that promise,” he said, his voice as gentle as the circumstances permitted. “And maybe you could too. For yourself. Or for whoever is waiting for you.”
A long pause. “No one's waiting for me,“ Grace said at last.
He didn't push back on that. Just let it breathe.
“You shouldn't have stayed here,“ she said, her voice smaller now. “You should have found a way out. Gone back to her.“
“Yeah,“ he said. “But when she finds out I left you and saved myself, she'd be wondering where her real husband was.”
She let out a shaky exhale.
“She sounds like a good person.”
“Too good for me,” Leon replied. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to see the outline of Grace's face, tear-streaked and dust-covered.
Grace said nothing for a long time. The dust settled on his eyelashes as he strained to see her outline in the dim light. Another tremor ran through what remained of the building, and his muscles tensed, bracing for impact. Then, a startled cry escaped her throat.
“You okay?”
“There’s a rock or something, it hit my shoulder. I’m fine.”
"It'll be over soon," he said quietly. "Just stay with me a little longer."
He let the ambiguity hang in the air between them, not clarifying whether “over soon“ meant the building would stabilize or collapse entirely. The mercy of uncertainty seemed kinder than a promise he couldn't keep.
She must have nodded, because the conversation ended, and the only thing left for a while was the pieces of rocks falling around them. He counted each second as time seemed to stretch out the agony, to see if you would break before the building did.
Then, bright lights appeared on the ceiling, blinding Leon for a second. Ropes dropped, neat and orderly, followed by boots, gloves, and people behind masks. The rescue team looked like angels from where he sat.
“How 'bout that,” Leon muttered, not sure if Grace could hear him over the noise. He glanced her way.
She was still crying, but her tears looked less like surrender and more like relief.
He tilted his head skyward, watching the synchronized descent of the rescue team.
“Hey. Do me a favor?”
“Yeah?” She said, not taking her eyes away from the ceiling. As though looking away would make it all disappear.
“When you come over for lunch, don't tell my wife about the ceiling caving in, yeah?”
This time, Grace laughed. A real one, nodding through happy tears.
The rescue squad landed moments later. The first one to reach the ground spoke clearly through the mask:
“Leon S. Kennedy?”