Chapter Text
Leon hadn't stepped foot in a hospital since he was a kid, and yet, when he entered through those doors, holding them open for a gurney to slip past, he discovered that the distinct fumes of antiseptic still hadn't left him.
The fumes made his spine twist and curl with unease. It begged him to leave, to just go back to the station and wait it out; but there was a protocol he had to follow, and he wasn't going to let it pass him by again.
Lagging back, he watched as the man from the forest was wheeled down a busy hallway, his gurney nearly catching the hem of a doctor's coat while whizzing past. The doctor, even though surprised at the sudden tug, quickly joined in wheeling the man. Leon watched as she began talking to the paramedics, but he was only a bystander for a short while before the medical staff pushed through a double door.
Leon let himself release a deep breath as the doors obscured his view. With nothing to do except let himself be distracted by the sounds around him, he resolved to sit himself in one of the stiff blue chairs placed beside the double doors.
This event was a bit more than he felt he could handle at the moment, but no one ever said this line of work would be easy. Leon almost felt foolish for hoping that moving posts would potentially alleviate some of that stress he'd grown so accustomed to.
He's prone to being emotional, he knew that better than anything. Whether it's a stray animal or a mutilated corpse on the side of the road, Leon's heart was the furthest thing from stone; and though he's discovered that potential gift to be a liability on the field, he knew he wouldn't be himself if he tried to snuff it out.
Projections shouldn't be allowed on the field, they complicated things and risked improper techniques, but damnit, was he concerned for the man.
Leon should had left the scene in the forest as soon as the ambulance arrived. He should had walked the distance back to his car and driven back to the station to work on whatever they needed him for; but he couldn't stand just leaving the man there.
Still, the mechanical sound of a gurney being unloaded from steel steps brought something out of him that he'd been trying to bury for fourteen years.
'It's crazy', he told himself as he climbed into the ambulance to be among the paramedics. 'I'm crazy.'
Leon was sat in the far corner away from the workers, where he was asked questions concerning the man's clear declining health. He answered to the best of his ability while watching them ensure the man survived the journey to the hospital.
When they finally arrived at the hospital, the streets of Banger had been near empty, unusually so for what Leon was slowly beginning to know as a city bustling with nightlife just as much as daylife. The absence of traffic made him grateful, but also lull on the thought that asked where all the people had gone.
Upon pulling up to the emergency entrance, he began to help in unloading the man's gurney from the ambulance. He was careful to avoid a wrong step while descending the steps, however, as the last thing anyone would want was an extra injury that could've easily been avoided.
The gurney's metal sides were cold against the warmth of Leon's skin, almost piercing in nature during the act of lowering the wheels to connect with the wet tarmac. Leon caught a glimpse of the man's eyes open for a second, uncoordinated as they were, before the paramedics quickly began rushing him towards the hospital doors.
Leon decided it was his duty to run ahead in order to hold them open for convenience sake, and that's how he ended up sitting in the quiet halls of a sterile corridor, waiting for news he hoped would reach him first.
He had spread the man's ragged jacket across his lap, inspecting the sewn-on patches and trying his best to keep himself occupied in his more than drab surroundings. Other than the sharp forest green of the worn jacket, there was nothing within the foreseeable halls of the hospital that stood out in the aspect of color.
It made a thin string of worry saw at Leon's raw nerves.
Nothing about being in a hospital was easy for him. The last time he was in one, it meant the end of his childhood proper. There were people he knew as a child that he'd never see grow old alongside him. He often wondered where his life would be if he were still celebrating their birthdays instead of visiting their graves.
One of the doctors, a woman with her hair up in a ponytail, pushed through the double doors with an armful of semi-sheer bags in her arms. The sudden sound and motion startled a reminiscing Leon, though he found it to be a more than welcome change in scenery.
The doctor looked to be struggling with the amount of bags, fumbling and constantly rearranging them in the short time that Leon saw her. She passed by him, and he couldn't help but catch a glimpse of a certain brown leather jacket with plush lining that pushed against the lining of a bag that dangled over her forearm.
He decided this would be a good time to satiate that need for something to distract himself.
Leon promptly rose from his chair and quickly approached her from the side, "Need any help with those, Ma'am?"
The doctor turned her head towards Leon with a quizzical expression. He watched as her eyes travelled from his face down to his uniform before finally returning to his face. She shifted her weight and handed off a few of the bags for him to hold.
"Follow me." She instructed.
Leon threw the man's still damp jacket onto his shoulder and quickly accepted the bags into his arms. From there, he followed the doctor down the corridor, past the reception desk, and into a room whose name plaque beside the door read 'staff only'.
An officer was basically staff, though, right?
In the room stood large, metallic boned shelves arranged in a traditional patterned in which a typical library would be fashioned. It contained two columns of the shelves, with about six rows that went from the front of the room towards the back in a relatively neat order.
On the levels were boxes. Plain, cardboard boxes of various sizes. Some were stacked up on each other while others took up too much space and had to reside on the top level, where Leon could tell dust had gathered thickly from months of neglect.
The doctor lowered herself to the floor and pulled out a box that looked relatively new. When she opened it, Leon saw that it held only two other similar semi-sheer bags, of which contained some clothes that looked to belong to a kid.
She began to place the bags in her hands into the open box, only stopping when she motioned for Leon to hand her the ones he had.
All of this was done in a comfortable silence. Until Leon realized once more that silence was dangerous for him.
"I'm Leon. Leon Kennedy." He broke through the thick blanket of quiet. "And you?"
Despite his sudden introduction, Leon swore he saw the beginnings of a smile ebb their way onto her face.
"Claire." The doctor pulled out a few boxes to begin rearranging a few for easier access. "My name's Claire Redfield, Mr. Kennedy."
"Nice to meet you, Ms. Redfield."
"Please, call me Claire. Ms. Redfield makes me sound old."
"Then you can call me Leon."
With a soft smile, she nodded, "It's nice to meet you, too, Leon."
He watched from the table as Claire rearranged the boxes, a sight that made something in the back of Leon's mind tense up. With all these reminders of times that deserved to stay in the past, he felt as though they wanted nothing more than to exist with him in the present.
"Were you the one who found Mr. Sunderland?" Claire questioned as she rose to her feet to place a box on a different shelf level, though she still carried a bag on her left arm that held something that looked to be blue jeans.
"Yes, I was." Leon responded with a tilt of his head. "Hold on, do you know him?"
Claire quirked an eyebrow and held up the lone bag in her possession. She unzipped it before laying its contents out on the metal table in front of her, displaying the torn and mud covered jeans out for the world to see.
She reached into one of the back pockets of the pants to retrieve a black leather item -- a wallet, Leon realized, damp and still dripping with water between her gloved fingers.
"This was in your guy's pants." Claire smiled. "Not much I can do with it. Thought you might want to take a look."
Leon hummed and swiftly accepted the wallet into his own hands. The leather was absolutely soaked through. The material felt rough and slippery under the pads of his fingers, making it so that the only way to properly hold it was to pinch firmly against the fine stitching.
Opening it, Leon would have only a few of his questions answered, though they were definitely more helpful than building the case from the ground up.
The man's name was James Sunderland; his driver's license was registered to Ashfield, Massachusetts, a town just a few hours from Bangor and about a day's drive from Silent Hill; and he's about twenty-five as of the fourteenth of February.
The wallet held nothing else of much importance. A few cards here and there, but nothing that would answer the question of what a man from Massachusetts was doing in an abandoned town in Maine.
"I take you'll make use of it, then, Leon?"
Leon rose his head to Claire, who was watching him with her hands placed on her hips. He took a moment to nod slightly.
"Yes. This is incredibly useful. Thank you, Claire."
She relaxed her arms and smiled, "Always happy to help. So, Mr. Sunderland is being treated for -- hm -- a few broken and bruised ribs, a fractured tibia, broken toes, and a very, very nasty head injury. Safe to say, we have him on some strong medication. It may take him a while to ease out of it."
To her left, Leon was slowly growing invested in the tiny details of the wallet, gradually blocking out the world around him to better focus on the manner in which the indented leather had been fashioned.
In the span of a few seconds, Leon had taken to staring back down at the driver's license, where he let his eyes pinpoint on a rather low-quality picture of James. He was either high during the photo being taken, or he'd blinked mid-photo; Leon felt that the latter was most suitable.
"Leon." Claire snapped her fingers in front of his face, making him yelp in surprise. "Hey, you kinda got lost there."
Leon cleared his throat and tucked the wallet into his pocket, "Right. Sorry. What did you say?"
"I said, we'll call your department when he wakes up. He's off it on pain medication right now."
"Oh. Thank you, Claire." Leon smiled awkwardly. Before he turned to leave, however, Leon remembered something at the last second. "Hey, I know it sounds funny, but I think you have my jacket."
After leaving the hospital with only a glance sent towards the double doors James' gurney was wheeled through, Leon decided it was only proper he went back to the station to try finding out some more information about him.
His main goal was to get in contact with any familial or close relatives who could potentially provide aid in the situation and be a source of stability.
It wasn't until Leon entered the parking lot that it suddenly hit him that his station wagon was still parked at the east observation deck in Silent Hill. A good way's walk from Bangor.
Well, like Ada used to say, never pass up a good opportunity to work out your leg muscles.
When Leon arrived at the station, he discovered it to be just as abandoned as the city streets, save for a few officers who were sat behind their computers, most likely catching up on paperwork. Leon wanted to question the absence of the many people he'd grown used to, but decided against it.
He didn't really have anyone to talk to in Bangor. All anyone knew him as was the rookie who just appeared out of the blue with nothing but a few bags in the back of his car; and, oftentimes, it felt like that was the most anyone cared to know him by.
He had better matters to work through anyways.
So, with no greetings exchanged between anyone, Leon sat himself down at his desk and booted up his computer.
After a good thirty minutes of searching, the only item that properly surfaced was a missing person's report filed five months ago by a Frank Sunderland. That last name caught Leon by his throat and made him immediately click on the file without a second thought.
Lo and behold, there was that dazed face from the forest once again, though this version of James looked more put together. Though Leon would make the wild guess that he looked so fitting in the picture because he hadn't been through what looked like he took on five bears and lost.
Nothing was holding Leon back, so he started reading.
James Sunderland. Six feet, three inches. Ashfield, Massachusetts citizen. Missing since June 20th, 1998. Report was filed by his father, Frank Sunderland, who hadn't seen him since he went in for work on Thursday. Car missing from driveway the day of his supposed disappearance.
Leon felt unusual about this report though, as it had been filed five months ago. That would mean five months of James unaccounted for, doing God knows what up until Leon found him.
It left a bad taste in Leon's mouth.
Soon, the night shift officers began finding their way into the station, readying up for a patrol around Silent Hill for a crashed car they may never find. Leon wasn't alone for a while as the officers got their gear. He wasn't sure if he liked the company or not, though; and he wasn't sure if he liked the silence that accompanied them leaving.
Deep into the night, it was just him and another officer on the other side of the room, who claimed away at her keyboard with a strong cup of coffee at the ready. Perhaps Leon would get himself a cup as well, just to stave him off through the night.
He'd start his self-appointed assignment of talking to Frank Sunderland to inform him of his son's discovery, if the hospital hadn't done so already. After that, Leon didn't know. Continue as normal? But how could he when James was laying in a hospital bed, hopped up on morphine with a head full of empty?
Why was Leon so worked up over a man he'd only exchanged a brief conversation with? He used to get invested in a few domestic cases at a time, but this wasn't a domestic case -- this was a disappearance with a huge missing window of content.
Leon still couldn't get over those five months.
In the morning, when Leon drove out in a BPD registered police car to Ashfield to inform Frank Sunderland about his son, he discovered that the very man he felt knew all the answers to this mystery had died three months ago. Heart failure, the tenants of Mr. Sunderland's apartment complex told him.
Great. Just great.
It took a good few days, a week even, for the hospital to ring Leon; and though the call made him feel like he was getting somewhere with the task, he couldn't stop that constant, nagging sensation that he wasn't getting anywhere. Roadblock after roadblock, it told him.
Hopefully James himself would be able to shed some light on what happened to him.
Leon decided to walk to the hospital this time around; and he discovered that it was the right thing to do, as the people who had been completely absent from the city for a while suddenly found it in themselves to perform a resurgence. That's to say that traffic was horrible, and walking the sidewalks was much more efficient.
Ten minutes later, Leon was sitting in the lobby of Bangor General, worrying at the hemmed leather of his jacket as the scent of antiseptic began to overtake his senses.
It wasn't until minutes later that he heard fingers snapping above him that he became aware of his surroundings once more. He raised his head to find Claire, every the same with her loose ponytail, staring down at him.
"You tend to get lost in your own head a lot, huh?" She mused.
Leon rose from his chair and released a deep breath, "Sometimes, yeah."
"And how often does it happen?"
"Hey, don't go all 'doctor' on me."
Claire gave him a smile, "Sorry. Anyways, you were called in because Mr. Sunderland finally woke up. Still a bit loopy, but that should wear off gradually as he continues through the day. Follow me."
Leon walked after her as she began to lead him down a familiar corridor. He caught a glimpse into some of the rooms, where a few residents were being taught how to properly apply a tourniquet to a simulated patient. It reminded Leon of the Academy, in an odd way; and he felt his jaw tense up in anticipation.
He continued to follow Claire down the corridor and through the double doors. There, Leon could safely say he had stepped foot in a more intense area of the hospital, as the corridor there was a rush of doctors and nurses all trying to keep up with the demands of the severely injured. Leon tried to keep his eyes affixed to Claire in case he saw anything he wouldn't be able to forget.
"For now," Claire began over the sudden intercom call for a doctor to the operating room, "I'm confident in saying Mr. Sunderland could have retrograde amnesia."
Leon twisted a curl of wool from the cuff of his sleeve, "Amnesia? You're sure about this?"
Claire nodded.
"Usually, cases like his are rare -- they don't happen as often as the media would like you to think." She clarified while leading Leon past a particularly bad room. "They normally happen because of extremely severe brain trauma. Vehicular accidents, major physical abuse -- intense incidents like that."
"Do you have an idea of what caused this? For him?"
"Too early to tell. His leg bruising and fractured tibia could assume to have been caused by the front of the dashboard, and maybe even the wheel itself, collapsing on them, but that's really just speculation."
Claire cupped her hands idly over her stomach while walking, "The major injury on the front of his head was caused by blunt force, though; if we're going with the car accident theory, then that could've been caused by a sudden connection with the steering wheel and a sharp jolt back against the headrest. Multiple times. It's a common injury in severe car crashes."
"So, it's a miracle that this guy's even alive." Leon sighed.
"Did your guys find any abandoned cars along Silent Hill?"
Leon tiredly shook his head, "No. A few nights ago, they searched everywhere a car could logically be, but they found nothing."
Claire came to a sharp stop outside of a closed door, causing Leon to stumble slightly behind her. She turned to look at him properly before speaking again.
"Mr. Sunderland came in with drenched clothes, correct?"
"Yes, he did." Leon confirmed.
Claire stared at him with her left eyebrow quirked. He furrowed his own in confusion, not catching what she was implying.
"It wasn't raining when you found him, Leon." She clarified to an oblivious Leon, whose eyes slowly widened as the realization slowly set in around him.
How did he not remember that? He remembered saying over his radio that the man might have fallen into Toluca, but the events that followed must have clouded his thoughts.
"I'll let them know to try searching Toluca for a car."
Claire nodded, then motioned towards the door they were standing in front of "First, I think you'd like to have a talk with him."
She twisted the silver plated door knob and gently pushed open the door for him to enter. Leon glanced at her with uncertainty, but entered the room after she made it apparent that she was needed elsewhere in the hospital.
The soles of Leon's shoes made harsh connection with the floor inside the room, making his presence all the more disruptive as he rounded the corner to the space where he knew the man would be.
James was sitting in the hospital bed, nursing a cup of water in his hands when Leon entered the room. Immediately, the man raised his head to see who had entered, and his expression sharpened at the sight of the officer.
Leon was watched intently as he slowly made his way closer to the bedside, stopping just short of an arm's reach to truly inspect the man, now tended and treated to within the respects of a hospital.
The cuts that littered his face had taken their time to heal, and now they were just plaster that intersected in abstract pieces of art against his pallid skin. James was mostly bandages, from what Leon could tell, save for the flecks of dried blood that weaved through the cracks of his lips.
James' eyes were still blown, unevenly so. What Leon would assume to have been twin hazel were now fraternal, with one being a deep, dark black against bloodshot white.
Even when Claire claimed he had just woken up, it looked as though James hadn't slept in days.
Leon cleared his throat to break the silence.
"Had me worried there for a sec, Sir." Leon teased while pulling up a chair beside the hospital bed. "Thought you coded on me back there in the forest."
Leon watched as the man's eyes slowly followed him as he sat down next to him. Nothing but confusion was worn on his bandaged face and Leon wasn't sure whether or not to be glad it wasn't because of drugs.
After a moment of what felt like the world's most tense staring contest, Leon broke his eyes away from James' and reached into his jeans to take out his ID.
"I'm the officer who found you." He attempted to clarify by showing the man his police registration.
James leaned closer to take a glance at the badge, but he only spared it a single second before returning his eyes to the officer's face, "Everything's kind of a blurry mess, but I think I remember you, yeah."
"Good." Leon smiled, tucking away his ID. "That's really good."
James swallowed nothing and winced, making Leon waver slightly. He motioned towards the cup in James' lap, but said no more on that matter.
"Alright, Sir, I'm here as a follow-up on what happened when I first found you, okay? Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions very similar to the ones I asked you back on the road. I want you to answer to the best of your ability."
Waiting for a nod that never came, Leon made the decision to begin the questions.
"Can you tell me your name?" He asked.
"I... I don't know."
"Where is your current residence located?"
"I don't know."
"Do you have any relatives or close partners we could contact?"
This question appeared to catch the man at first. He stared into Leon's eyes with those same, unevenly blown pupils, though they now held an awareness to them that the officer found he very much preferred to the dazed ones he first got to know.
The man shook his head, however. "No."
Leon popped his tongue against the roof of his mouth and hummed, "Okay. So, the nurses will answer any questions you have concerning your health. They'll have you stay here for as long as you need to recover."
He leaned forward slightly, his arms rested over the back of the chair, "I understand this entire situation is extremely stressful, but I need to know. Can you remember anything that led to you finding yourself in Silent Hill?"
Leon watched as James' expression began to conflict with the stoic output he'd since been exhibiting. He pursed his dry lips together, making the raw wounds open and for blood to make a sheer gloss over his top lip. He shook his head and let out a shaky breath.
"I'm sorry." The man's voice wavered as he spoke. "I wish I could remember -- really, I do -- but I just can't."
Leon nodded gently, "That's completely alright, Sir. No one's asking you to recount your entire story in one sitting. I imagine it isn't something anyone would be able to do, especially after what you've been through."
James nodded and shut his eyes, trying to regain his composure through the use of regulated, deep breathing. Leon was tempted to reach out to draw circles on his arm, but held himself back in favor of his professional exterior.
"Silent Hill -- that's the town's name?" James spoke again, his voice still weak but capable.
"Yes, it is." Leon stood to slide the chair back up against the wall. "Quiet place, from what I've heard. Very secluded. Not a whole lot of people go there anymore."
Leon reached into his breast pocket and took out a small item, "Except for you, Mr. James Sunderland."
He held out the item towards the man -- the wallet he received from Claire when he first arrived at the hospital.
The man stared at the wallet for a while, then hesitantly lifted a hand to take it into his own. He held it tightly, as though he were holding a butterfly by its two wings.
"You do look like a James." Leon commended softly.
"And you look like a Leon." James retorted.
"Touche." Leon smiled, but tilted his head in response. "Hold on. You remembered my name."
"I... I don't see why I wouldn't?"
"Well, it's common for someone to not be able to create new memories after a traumatic head injury. The fact that you remembered my name proves that fear wrong to a degree."
"Well, I'm glad I have that going for me."
Leon hummed, "Same here."
After a few moments of silence, Leon grew to notice that James seemed to like it when he could simply hear nothing. The ceiling-mounted television across the room was off, the blinds to his left were drawn, and the little radio on the beside was turned all the way down to nothing.
Despite this, there was something that was clearly worrying James. He seemed shifty, though Leon himself would be shifty if he were in the man's situation, but he still found it peculiar. There were times where it looked like James was trying to banish something from his vision, with sharp and precise blinks and twitches that looked almost painful.
"You've got something on your mind." Leon ultimately pointed out. "What's going on?"
He watched James pick at the creased edge of his wallet, the man's eyes darting along the foot of the bed before looking up to land on Leon.
"I think hospitals make me nervous." James finally said. "Being here is making me very nervous right now. I feel like... like I need to leave. As soon as I woke up, I wanted to leave."
Leon let a soft smile edge at the corners of his lips, "That's what hospitals will do you you, I guess. Being here makes my skin crawl, y'know?"
It was when James parted his lips to say something when Leon's cell began to beep. He blew a curse with his breath while digging into his pocket to fetch the source of the noise; and, once it was in his hand, he paused to simply stare at the caller ID.
Ada.
He looked back at James, who was staring at him almost expectedly, as though he too wanted to know who was calling him.
"I'm so sorry." Leon apologized. "I'll only be a minute, okay? I'll be right outside."
James nodded, and Leon tried to ignore the sensation of a pair of eyes watching him as he left the room.
Leon shut the door behind him, narrowly avoiding being hit by a stray cart of medical supplies.
He flipped his cell open and answered the call, "Hey, Ada."
"Leon! It's been a while since I've heard that voice!" Ada spoke cheerily from the other line. "How's Maine coming along for you, rookie?"
"It's fine, really. Gorgeous sites." Leon chuckled dryly and leaned against a nearby wall. "Calm."
"Well, aren't you ever the chatterbox?"
"It's just that I'm on a real interesting case right now. I'm having to fill in lots of missing pieces, you could say."
"And your new teammates are no help, I take it?"
"Ada, they... they're doing their best." Leon shifted his feet absentmindedly. "As far as I can tell, a lot of them aren't really prepared for stuff like this. Now, I'm not saying that I am -- don't get it twisted -- it's just... big city, y'know? You'd think the force here would be trained better."
"No two districts are the same, Leon."
"You've got that right. At least the RPD's file room was properly categorized."
"Only because we had the best rookie in town."
Leon felt something bittersweet catch in his throat at that. He nodded softly and smiled, "Yeah. Thanks, Ada."
A long beat resonated through the static of his phone before his former superior decided to speak once more.
"So, tell me about this interesting case. I want all the juicy details."
Leon hummed, "Okay, so, I was assigned night patrol to a deserted town, right? Silent Hill, it's called. And, when I'm out patrolling the area, I find a man drenched head to toe in water. I thought he was higher than life, y'know? But he wasn't -- nope, he wasn't.
"I had to call in an ambulance because he fell unconscious. I'm at the hospital, I get the man's driver's licence, and -- guess what."
"What?" He could practically hear Ada smiling.
"The man's been missing for five months. Five months! And -- you'll never guess -- he has amnesia, Ada. Amnesia!"
"That is some case you've got there, Leon"
"Right?" Leon lowered his voice when a doctor passed by. "The man's been missing for five months, and then he just turns up out of the blue -- literally. We think he fell into Toluca Lake after a car crash, but we haven't pieced together what he's been doing in that five month window."
He heard papers flutter from the line, "Maybe he was on the run?"
"That doesn't check out. He was an office clerk in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and it looked like he was content with where he was. I went to talk to the father, but he died three months ago of heart failure."
"Ooh, so dead end?"
"That's what I said!" Leon raked his fingers through his hair. "So, now, I'm talking with him, but he can't really tell me much because he can't really remember much. I might go back to the station, though, to dig up more stuff on him."
"Alright, Leon. Hey, I'm happy that you're finding some cases up there that make you excited."
Leon worried his lip and swallowed down a deep sigh. He'd be lying to himself if he said he didn't miss being around Ada. She was his support when he was near collapse, like glue to a house of cards.
Being so far from her felt terrifyingly unnatural.
"Thanks, Ada." He replied.
"Take care of yourself, Leon." Ada spoke to him gently. "You do that for me, you hear?"
"10-4, Ms. Wong."
"Over and out, Mr. Kennedy."