Chapter Text
“Again.”
Leon was shaking but he didn’t argue, forcing himself up despite the pain rattling from the last kick. He pulled his knife at the ready and nodded at Krauser. He was shaking from the pain, his footing wasn’t right, but he managed to parry his major’s knife effectively.
Leon felt pride as he landed a hit hard enough to knock the major down and that smirk told him Krauser was proud too.
---
“Rookie.”
Leon glanced up from cleaning his gash wound on his forearm, it wasn’t deep enough for stitches, but Raccoon City’s sewers had taught him an important lesson he will never forget infection sat in fast if you don’t properly clean your wounds.
“Major,” he acknowledged before going back to methodically rubbing his bar of soap into the long gash. It burned and bled but Leon kept a steady pressure and speed. It was unlikely to be infected, on some level maybe Leon knew that, but he would never chance it again.
“Arm,” the major stated as he finished thoroughly rinsing it with water and Leon held his arm out straight without complaint. He couldn’t help the flush of his cheeks and the minute sigh of relief at the gentleness Krauser applied as he dried him off and wrapped his wound so tenderly.
Major Jack Krauser was not a tender man; he was strict and hard and believed in tough love but sometimes he did like to throw the dogs under him a bone. Leon wanted so desperately to believe in moments like this that he cared about him. He wanted to image there was a gentle man under his gruff demeaner. After each brutal training session, he just wanted to know this was done out of care like his old instructors at the academy. They pushed him because they wanted him to succeed and he wanted to believe despite everything that Jack Krauser only pushed him so hard because he wanted him to live.
He couldn’t accept the possibility anyone who agreed to stop Umbrella’s monsters enjoyed the suffering of people beneath them.
“Get some food, Rookie, you did good today.”
Leon was glowing with the praise, Major Krauser laying his hand on his shoulder in pride made him smile brightly even after the man pulled away and left the washroom. This good mood could have lasted forever if he wasn’t reminded of his current predicament when one of his teammates snorted.
“Getting an erection from a little attention, fag?”
The other two men in the room laughed at the insult. Leon felt himself deflated; it wasn’t just Krauser he had to prove himself to. The other twelve men in the camp were all war veterans who had experience in this field and felt Leon’s training was a waste of their time. They would already be deployed to South America and on the way to getting the major pay out Adam Benford had promised if it wasn’t for him. Raccoon City wasn’t good enough experience in their opinion and didn’t understand why they needed some kid to pull off a covert operation like this.
Even though this wasn’t just Leon’s training, they were supposed to be working as a team to prepare for how to properly fight something no one had lived to give proper reports on.
---
It was a warm night, Leon hadn’t been able to sleep well since Raccoon and the heat was making his insomnia worse. The small compound had to be in an old Arizona base for their training. Jack had requested it personally, miles of desert meant his men couldn’t escape him.
Leon stepped out of the sleep quarters and walked to the mess hall, the only building that had a working AC. Leon wasn’t surprised to find a few of the other men had a similar idea, sitting at one of the plastic tables in a small clump smoking and playing a card game.
“Rookie,” one of the men called gesturing him over, “Sit over here. We’re hot and bored, you might be the remedy.”
Leon was far from naïve and knew this meant they intended to degrade him verbally as they often did. A desire to fit in was greater than common sense. He had never belonged. In foster homes, overworked adults overlooked him and the children had sensed something wrong with him, never physically harming him or verbally abusing him, but keeping a distance. He had tried to belong so long in sports settings and had found some comradery in track and field and the skating parks but those were always temporary as he was constantly packed up and moved.
There was a twinkle of hope in his eyes as he shook hands with Chief Irons one August evening so long ago, but it burned to ash in the ruins of what could have been his home.
He had longed to find that sense of finally belonging with Claire and Sherry, the only ones who would ever understand him, but fate had other plans for him.
A man with chemical burns marring his face and right arm, smiled almost friendly at him scooting over to make room for him at the wide table where the four large man sat hunched over hands of cards.
All four men were intimidating in size and all shared the same tattoo of orange tiger stripes running down their shoulders. Leon didn’t know them well, but had remembered their names and remembered during orientation they had said they had been in the same unit in Vietnam. All looked similar enough with their large frames and buzz cut hair, Leon hoped he didn’t mix up their names.
“What brought you into this shit anyway, boy?”
Leon frowned, not fully understanding the question, they should know. Krauser hadn’t been shy about singling him out and telling everyone he was to be their guide once they got to South America because of his survival in Raccoon City and his knowledge of Umbrella.
“I was there in Raccoon City,” he began, maybe if he could speak one on one with the men on what that meant maybe it could help increase their chances of survival. He once more felt Chief Irons smiling and looking him over in the academy’s interview room, firmly shaking his hand and welcoming him to the RPD family. He once more felt that pride in his chest and hoped it didn’t burst this time.
“Yeah, we got that,” the man waved off setting his cards down and staring at him, eying him up and down, “You went for a little vacation into the city the news was saying was full of rioters and some nasty skin rash or some shit. You waltzed in, got shot like a little bitch and limped out with your tale between your legs.”
Leon’s lips thinned and clenched hard in his effort to immediately not argue. They weren’t there. They would never understand what it meant to be there in those streets that night. The blood he was sure they could understand, the ash, the fire, but no one would ever comprehend what it felt like to shoot something and it kept crawling towards you with its intestines dragging behind it. How deafening a licker’s shriek was when it finally found you.
“You don’t understand what they want you to face out there,” Leon tried to reason looking desperately into the man’s eyes, “Umbrella did things to those poor people, they turned them into monsters.”
“Monsters,” the man snorted, “Pretty boy thinks he knows monsters. You were still sucking on mommy’s titty when me and my boys saw real monsters out in Nam.”
Leon said nothing, he wasn’t stupid and knew he couldn’t say the dead were walking. They had read the debrief forms that gave detailed descriptions on what umbrella had made in Raccoon but he knew most of them snorted and made the same ‘we’re coming to get you, Barbara’, jokes. No one believed what Umbrella had done until they saw it. Leon hoped the bravado they liked to give off was enough to save them.
“You know why I think you’re here, pretty boy?”
“You think someone up top wants to hand me glory in this operation and make me into a war hero overnight,” Leon stated staring back at the glare the larger man gave him, “I’ve heard it all before. I’m a no one orphan whose parents were junkies before they killed themselves, I have no one paying my way. Like it or not, but I’m only here because I want to do what’s right. I can’t allow what happened to Raccoon to happen again.”
He rose to leave, but large hands slammed him back down, he glanced up seeing another of his team enter the room he hadn’t noticed before. He must have been part of this group judging by the matching tiger stripes tattoo, but Leon felt like an idiot not even noticing him beforehand.
“I think you are here to keep morale up.”
The hand on his shoulder slid down and cupped his breast, kneading into it. Leon reacted physically, he shoved the man away and practically tripped over himself in his haste to leave. The disgust he felt couldn’t be masked, their smiles making his stomach boil. He longed for someone to invite him in and give him a place to belong, but he was no one’s whore.
“Come on pretty boy,” the leader cooed grabbing his arm in an iron grip, “The real men haven’t felt the touch of a woman in so long and you’re about the closest thing we got right now.”