no one is coming to save you

• read it on AO3
• Word Count:2,395
• Warnings:Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
• Pairing: Leon S. Kennedy/Chris Redfield
• Characters: Mentioned Ada Wong, Mentioned Sherry Birkin, Mentioned Luis Serra, Mentioned Jack Krauser
• Tags: Whump, Angst, Sad Ending, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depression, Eating Disorders: Anorexia, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Destruction, No Beta, Break Up, Mental Instability, Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, leon dies at the end, no happy ending, Implied/Referenced Sex, Addiction Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
• Synopsis:There is no happy ending.

No one is coming to save you.

Leon has said these words so many times, they are like a mantra. It’s something he has known deep in his bones since the rain seeped into them in Raccoon City. Since he was infected with the plagas in Spain. Since all sorts of other smaller circles of hell had met him in all the times since. No one is coming to save you.

He says it again now, as he feels the rebar pierce his lung.

He flails backwards, frozen with the shock of pain in his chest, gravity pulling him farther down it. He feels Matilda slip from frigid fingers and fall to the concrete with a clatter. And he stares, almost sightlessly, up and in front of him. The tyrant stares dead eyed at him before turning. Having done its duty, and Leon no longer moving, it carries on with whatever orders it was given. Leon looked dead enough. He probably would be, in a few minutes.

He’d been picked up and flung around so many times in his twenty odd years of this shit. Wrecked a lot of things and wrecked by twice as many, he’d been best in his twenties, then his thirties. Slowing down in his forties, he knew he wasn’t going to see his fifties. Not at the rate of candle burning he’d set.

It was bound to catch up with him eventually. He wasn’t the best at taking care of his body, and it wasn’t like people didn’t call it out. Sunken eyes and sallow skin to match a thinning body, obvious signs of something not right. No one said much though, as long as he got the job done. No one had reason too. And iIt wasn’t like he didn’t know it was a terrible idea. He just couldn’t stop it. He’d get by, coffee, with milk if he felt he deserved it, which wasn’t often, and whisky mostly, sometimes at the same time. He hadn’t this morning though. He never took it Irish on a mission, he wasn’t that much of a waste. Though if he’d known this was how it would go, he might have had a little last supper. But, who would have been there to play Judas? He couldn’t kiss his own cheek.

Really, he was too old for this, on the other side of middle aged and pushing close to fifty. Sherry would have called him over the hill, some sort of worry in her eye. She’s one of the people who saw it. It’s why he hadn’t seen her much of late. Another reason he hadn’t been eating much of anything, either. He hardly ate, except around people, and there’d been no people around to eat with. He couldn’t tell anyone. Please, with the neuroses of a little girl? People already told Leon he was a drama queen, when he pitched a rare fit. And besides. This wasn’t how it was supposed to kill you though.

He had felt it eating away for a long time. There’s lots of kinds of hunger, the kind that eats at you, to start. It begins as a pitting in your stomach, your traditional hunger pangs. Sharp and burning, almost nausea. But the longer it goes, it starts to spread out and soften, first to your chest, where it becomes a hollow in your ribs, compressing lung capacity and winnowing the heart string. You can’t get a good breath as young lungs beg for something to sustain them, something more than just air. You can feel it there like you can feel your ribs, diaphragm sucked in and they move like snakes under skin. It spreads to the limbs, which become weightless and dumb, knees offer to buckle, because that would be easier. Arms tremble at any strain, too much to hold even a pencil. Worst of it is the cotton hollow headache, feeling like your skull is emptied out and swollen, disoriented and dizzy. That's just the insides though. No one mentions the downy hairs or the tremors, the sway of unsteady knees. No one mentions how cold it is. No one mentioned that Leon never took off his jacket anymore.

It hid the bruises too, though he doubted anyone would notice a few extra bruises on his body. He was frequently a blooming ink wash of purples, yellows, and greens, sometimes with the strange grace of pale bone showing through, like paint on waxed paper. He sometimes thought it was beautiful, even, all the colors his skin became. No one else saw it though, except Ada, on occasion. Or Chris, more recently. And they neither had done anything about it, because he was still of use. Still enough of him left to use as a wash rag, and what good was something so thin and worn anyway. He could hardly do anything else. This was all he was any good at, cleaning up a mess for someone else.

‘No one is coming to save you’ was not always exactly true. It was, most of the time, but there had always been exceptions. And with exceptions came fine print. Ada’s to start. He could hardly call what she did ‘saving’ him. A few weapons tossed his way to take out some monstrosity in her path. He was more of an attack dog to be directed at her whim, than he was a person to her. And besides, she didn’t see him enough to notice, or care enough to try. She’d just seen the way he fell hard and fast, and ran with it. It happened so often, Leon hardly knew what hit him, and it was over before he could even feel anything. It was a shattering of shattered things, over and over and over. Too soft hearted, and you get eaten, but Leon hadn’t ever learned how to harden up. Krauser had become the thing no one was going to save him from, so any pleasantries from before that were moot points in Leon’s mind. Luis had died in front of him, Leon’s own fault. That was the other thing. People who did try to save him either did it for their own gain or they died about it. Often both. There was no exception.

Except. Maybe Chris.

Even then, though, the start of anything real between them had been because Chris needed him for something. Not because Chris had given a shit about Leon. Another week of whiskey, coffee, and bloodstained hands, and nothing else because he didn’t deserve it. In Chris had barged, only noticing the alcohol, not knowing Leon enough to see anything else but that. Nearly knocked it out of his hands, and left Leon grasping for straws on how to react. Leon had figured it was easier by that point to push people away, less hassle for him, or them when time came to let facades fall. But every push Leon made, Chris rushed back in blindly, either oblivious to or utterly disregarding Leon’s projected disdain. And God, Leon felt his resolve slipping. He was too easy.

From there, mission done and dusted, half of New York ashes in their reckless abandon. But by that point, what was a few thousand more bodies on the mountain at Leon’s feet. Just a little more blood in his laundry. No one would notice. No one ever did. Except the looks Chris gave him; puppy dog apologia. Leon couldn’t tell him no when he’d asked him for an ‘I’m sorry I ruined your vacation’ dinner. It’d been nice. First real thing Leon had eaten in days. The desert hadn’t been bad either.

After, Chris could see the sharpness of his ribs, the bruises spattered across like a Pollock. The bruises, Leon could brush off. Beatings and business as usual, but the ribs were a harder sell. Just busy, he told him. Hard to eat proper when you’re saving the world. Chris had given him those stupid puppy eyes again. Try a little harder? Was all he had to say for it. Leon had nodded, half listening. Chris offered to make him something else to eat, if it would help. He’d always found it was easier to cook with someone else around. Mostly out of desperation, Leon had agreed. So, they got up, and Leon had thrown a shirt on before Chris noticed anything else was wrong with him. And besides, once he wasn’t next to Chris, Leon found he was freezing.

And that went on a few months, almost a year even. They didn’t have everything, both busy with all the small ways the world can end, but enough to get comfortable. Enough to feel good about it. Enough that Leon could see where things were heading, on his end. He knew how this went. No sooner did he feel that euphoria in desire, did he feel himself crush it down, drown it out in the knowledge he wouldn’t be enough, eventually. And Chris noticed all the things wrong with him, and it made it harder to keep them. The alcohol, the bruises, the hunger. Chris made him eat, and he’d actually gained weight, which Leon hated. He didn’t deserve to. He wasn’t doing enough. That’s what killed it in the end.

Leon knew it was just a matter of time before Chris made it clear he wanted something, because everyone wanted something from Leon. Even Chris had, when this had first started. Leon told it to his face close to the end, when he was feeling stuck and itching for a fight. Chris looked bewildered, asked him what the hell he meant. He’d asked him for dinner, he hadn’t wanted anything out of it. Before that, is what Leon said. Chris had come to drag him to another mission, another little hell because he had needed Leon’s experience, not Leon. Chris’d looked at him, mouth open. Then that son of a bitch had the gall to apologize. Like that fixed anything. Like it did anything but make Leon feel more guilty for starting fights he knew he couldn’t win, because all he could ever do if he felt good was to ruin things. Life only felt right if he was in a fire, and if there wasn’t one, he’d set it. It’s what he was good at. By that point, all he was made for was violence.

Soon after that, Leon had ended things, because Chris was too stubborn to admit he wasn’t going to stick around. Even when Leon picked fights every time they saw each other. Even when Leon stopped eating no matter what Chris tried. Even when he was bitchy, and angry, and honestly just a nasty little shit. Even when Leon broke down and begged to know what it was Chris wanted, because it couldn’t just be Leon, everyone wanted something from Leon, and he knew he wasn’t giving enough for Chris to stay. This was too easy, what was the catch? He was going to leave him, right? Because nobody wanted just him, nobody was coming to save him, he was too much work and no reward, so what was it, what did Chris want, please, just say it, and he would give it.

Nothing.

That's what Chris had said.

You don’t need to give me anything.

Leon knew he was lying. He had to be. He stopped answering Chris’ calls after that.

Chris left messages, asked what he’d done, what had gone wrong, and Leon couldn’t tell him, because how hadn’t he seen that it was always going to end like this? How hadn’t he known, when the writing was so obviously on the wall? Men like them only saw things end by their own bloody hands, only ever ended things with a bullet or a blaze, or a glint of metal in the eye. Chris had complimented Leon’s knife skills, was he really so surprised then when Leon was quick to slice off necrosis? It was always going to end like this. That was the other thing Leon always told himself.

And so Leon went back to it, drinking, starving, throwing himself on swords because maybe then it would end, and he wouldn’t have to do it himself. Months of it, until one more time Chris came to find him, and ask him for something. Leon had given him a knowing look, and Chris had pressed his lips together to say he was still mad, that he still didn’t understand. Which Leon knew was a lie. And Chris had looked him up and down, eyes narrowed to say he did know that Leon was back to his old self, the pre-Chris self, the starving, dying dog self. Leon had begrudgingly agreed to whatever it was Chris wanted out of spite. He was still useful like this. More useful, even. An animal in a corner fought twice as hard. Chris had just told him if he was so desperate to throw himself in the fire, he better not get anyone else killed along the way. Leon had kept that promise.

In the now, he felt himself sliding further down the metal bar, felt it tear at him, but he didn’t bother to make any noise, because he wasn’t there anyway. Not really. It didn’t matter, because it was too late, and no one was coming to save him. Even time had given up hope to the holy ghost, and he was nothing but a shrine to self immolation. Even when it was all said and done, and the last dead was laid to rest, and someone found him hanging there like a shrike’s thorn, it was understood that no one was coming to save him. By then, he couldn’t even remember who it was in front of him, who was meant to be with him that day, whose hands it might have been to pull him off of the rebar. He felt it tug, somewhere that wasn’t here, felt hands that might have loved him once, rough, and calloused, and old. Older than he would ever be. He heard a voice that might have said his name like a promise, like it was the last word on a last breath and he wanted so much to tell them it was okay. That it was fine.

It was fine.

It was always going to end like this.