Chapter Text
Leon Kennedy was excited when he got his first homicide case. Prior to it, all he'd been doing was working paperwork on domestic cases, where the repetitive nature of events and procedure had grown on him as typical.
That wasn't to say that Leon didn't enjoy typical, he rather liked knowing when and how things would happen, but he did have to admit the taste of the expected had begun to grow stale after a month or two. So, after finishing filing away a nasty divorce and custody battle, he put in his request of something more physically demanding, something that would get the blood pumping in his ears.
Until then, he busied himself with categorizing file cabinets and the like.
Leon worked across multiple shelves of current and past cases, which oftentimes made him feel as though he had lived through hundreds of different lives without ever leaving his small little filing room. He'd learn about these people's lives and how it all came crumbling down on them, whether from their own differences or from physical powers outside of their control. In the end, however, Leon always placed the papers into aged manilla folders and categorized them in boxes by date.
He tried not to think about how the names in the documents belonged to real people. Leon could've walked past any one of them on the commute to work without ever knowing it. Such an idea made his skin crawl with uneasiness, so he stuck to just visualizing the people as nothing more than a name.
When Leon was sifting through the 10/12 1977 box, he made the realization that he could've been nothing more than a name, too.
Then, on a cold, overcast day in February, two weeks after his request for on-field action, Leon was called in to report for a hit and run out on a main road leaving Raccoon City.
A hit and run victim. That was what broke him. Not the domestic cases he constantly read through where the many instances of a simple divorce had been slim to none. Leon Kennedy was done in by a poor girl who had been left on the side of the road and was subsequently run over by a careless driver.
Even though his heart was racing with an urgency to arrive hastily to the scene, there was that growing, ever present darkness that made Leon despise the excited part of himself. A girl died. It was nothing wonderful to write home about.
His superior, Ada Wong, had driven him to the crime, where a group of familiar faces from the station were present and blue-clad, standing around a mess of something unidentifiable. Leon followed Ada out of the town car, but halted when his eyes caught sight of what his co-workers were crowded over.
The girl. Broken, mutilated, and absent of life. Gore travelled along the hot asphalt to the side of the road where what remained of her lay. Her body was spread like a crumpled marionette whose seams had been ripped apart to let its stuffing burst forth.
It made Leon sick. Metaphorically and literally. It wasn't until the smell hit him that he found himself doubling over to be sick. He didn't even make it past the front of the car. Vomit pooled at his shoes while Ada rushed to get him back into the passenger seat.
Keep face. It's a basic lesson that Leon had previously been confident that he'd mastered; yet there he was, shivering in a police car heading back to the station while Ada consoled him.
"It happens to every rookie, Leon." She had said. "No one expects you to be ready for something like that."
It was easier just to tell him he wasn't fit for field work. That was what Leon gathered from the talk.
When Ada dropped him off at the station, Leon made a beeline for his usual spot at the back of the filing room, where he stayed for the rest of the day organizing then reorganizing files. He skipped lunch. The very thought of touching food made his stomach lurch.
Leon grew to hate himself for how he reacted to the scene. It was a constant thing, him beating himself up over not braving through his uneasiness. He clocked into work everyday, relieved, yet soured, at the fact that he was just going to end up in the same routine of paperwork until it killed him.
Maybe he was fine with it. He'd learn to handle it. He always did.
If only he could forget the smell.
After months of relative normalcy, he still hadn't forgotten the stale, acrid scent of dried blood that complimented the fumes of decomposition. He still hadn't forgotten how his throat burned from the stomach acid that spilt over his cracked lips. Leon had dared himself to fight a losing battle by trying to forget the brief sight of the young girl's mangled body, viscera and all still seeping from wounds that were more akin to an animal attack rather than the usual hit and run.
To his lieutenant's apparent satisfaction, Leon started leaning towards the more mundane of assignments rather than his usual paperwork. Parking tickets, parole, the occasional robbery -- things he could stomach.
Leon didn't like going home with ghosts haunting him; and that little girl's ghost followed him wherever he went.
During an all too familiar bout of depression that made him prefer rotting away slowly in his bed until he melted into the mattress, Leon made the ultimate decision to step away from his position at the Raccoon City Police Department. He knew he wouldn't miss it. He didn't even think any of his co-workers would miss him.
He'd miss Ada, though. Leon made sure he kept her phone number so they could still be in touch.
Before he went off to do his own things, Ada invited him over to her place for a mini farewell party just between them. It was nice. Well, nice from what Leon could remember -- he'd gotten pretty shitfaced as soon as he got to her house; but it was a sweet gesture from the one person he considered his friend.
Leon left the morning after, hungover and groggy, but with a warm feeling in his chest at the knowledge that someone cared for him. He remembered still picking out pieces of multi-colored confetti as he drove home.
At a red light, Leon stared down at a reflective bit that stuck to his fingernail, thinking about what he was supposed to do next. He'd once been told that he was the writer of his own story, but what if he never finished it? What if he just left it in a box to slowly collect dust?
He had to stop thinking like that. Ada told him it wasn't healthy; but it was just too easy to fall down that hole.
Leon pulled into his driveway five minutes later, but didn't leave his car. He sat in silence, simply staring down at the wheel before him until the image of it burned into his vision. This was his story, and he refused to let it end with not even a spark to bid farewell.
With a newfound rush of determination, Leon pushed his side door open and rushed into his house to collect the things that could logically fit in his car.
If Leon had carried with him even the smallest ounce of reason, he would have waited until the morning to call a moving company to help him load his possessions before trying to find an appealing location to relocate to; but he digressed.
Leon left Raccoon City during a sudden downpour and sought refuge north, where he hoped to rid himself of the growing uneasiness that grinded into his skull like a mortar and pestle.
He found a new job in a city in Maine, called Bangor, as a patrol officer, a career which he found he liked much better than what his life had become in Raccoon City. Leon still wanted the action, however, but he couldn't help it when his hands would shake at the thought of ever having to see a sight like that girl again.
Besides, when working patrol, he got to see the thick forests that towered over his little town car. Beautiful, lush things that lifted a weight from his shoulders to tell him that there still was beauty in the world. He just had to seek it out.
It was October when Leon was set to patrol the outer roads of Silent Hill, an apparent ghost town that drew in troublesome teens around Halloween. Leon normally wouldn't think anything of it, except for the fact that the town is notorious for causing injuries to those few who decide to be careless in it.
Most of the injures came from the Lakeview amusement park, where the teens would try to climb the decaying structures only to either fall or cut themselves on the built-up rust. Neither resulted in happy endings, it turned out. Leon really couldn't bring himself to be surprised.
So, with nothing but a solitary and relatively unfurnished apartment waiting for him, Leon volunteered to take the night shift driving to and around Silent Hill's back roads. He was told to be more attentive to the areas around old entrances, such as the gates and dirt paths, because those were the most common ways delinquents entered the town.
Leon decided to stake out a particular trail just past the east observation deck to kick off his night.
He drove his car up through the winding dirt roads that rounded Toluca Lake with the only sound within the car being the faint music that played from the beaten up radio. The local radio station barely put out any hits, but sounds are sounds, and Leon was just passing the time as fast as he could push it.
A chill breeze blew over his face from a crack in the driver side window, making him take one hand off of the wheel to turn up the woolen collar of his jacket. The cold in Maine got ridiculous, Leon came to find. It bit at him in ways he only ever imagined. It made his teeth ache and his eyes pulse in pain against the plates of his eye sockets; but he'd get used to it.
He had to get used to it.
Leon parked his car at the barrier near the observation deck's steep drop into Toluca, then made sure he had all of his equipment secured to the utility belt at his side. He didn't exactly need much on him, as this assignment was a simple 'observe and report' kind of thing. No need for heavy firearms or the like. Though Leon did make sure to take a canister of bear spray from the passenger glove compartment. Just in case.
The view from the observation deck was beautiful despite the thick fog that blanketed most of Silent Hill. It made Leon curious as to what the small tourist attraction turned local legend hid from the public eye.
He had heard from a handful of his co-workers back at the station that Silent Hill wasn't only notorious for being a place where horrible injures happened on the daily, but that it was also know for its infamous disappearances.
Children and adults alike went missing in the quiet nature of Silent Hill. The leading theory around the station for it was that they drowned in Toluca Lake; however, some people would rather say that there's a good reason why the place is called a ghost town.
Personally, Leon was indifferent to the idea of ghosts. He'd prefer them not to exist, especially when the townspeople of Bangor, Maine would claim them as nothing short of vengeful. He liked to imagine that the disappearances we're nothing but the results of people getting lost and trapped in a town whose infrastructure suffered from rust and rot.
They were human disappearances. Plain and simple.
For the past two weeks, Leon has had to walk past bulletin board after bulletin board of missing persons posters when working within the police station. Sometimes, he would take the time to really stare into the pixelated faces of the men and women, and the boys and girls, trying to burn whatever features of theirs he could see into his memory. Just in case.
Leon shut his car door before lowering his hand to his hip to unhook a mini flashlight from its fastening. The sun began to set a while ago, and the last thing Leon wanted to do was travel the woods in pitch darkness. Despite the limited reach of the small light, he knew it to be better than nothing.
Leon released a deep breath from his chest and set off into the back roads on foot.
After five minutes of continued walking, Leon realized he would have felt much safer if he had just cruised through the woods in his car; but one look at the thin, uneven path ahead made him quit toying with the idea. Because of how low and close the tree branches were, the chances of his car's exterior being turned into grated cheese was more than likely.
Hell, he even almost tripped over what remained of a bench because of how much it blended into the coiling roots of the imposing trees.
Eventually, as he listened to the chirps and calls of the local wildlife that surrounded him, Leon grew to appreciate the nighttime of Silent Hill. The dense fog provided him with a loneliness that was somewhat comforting, oddly enough. The moisture in the air clung to the skin of his neck, but didn't make him feel heated up at all. It was unusual, really; but Leon ultimately decided not to question it, and instead opted to mimic the hoots of a far away owl.
Then the figure appeared.
It resembled a man, from what Leon could tell. Tall, but not remarkably so. Well-built, but clearly prone to clumsiness, as seen with how he stumbled recklessly onto the path seemingly without a care to the thought of tripping.
Leon could barely make out the outline of a person at first through the dense fog, but the dull image alone was enough to make his throat run dry. He settled his left hand over his gun's holster and advanced slowly upon the man.
As Leon drew closer, his breath catching in his throat whenever his shoes snapped a twig in half, he began to see the man's details in clothing. A dark green jacket and blue jeans -- nothing truly notable, Leon determined. The jacket had a chance of concealing something, however, so Leon didn't let his guard down entirely.
The man's walk was uneven to the point of Leon's brows furrowing with a newfound sense of pity. The sight tugged at Leon's mind as he gradually quickened his pace. The man's steps were sloppy, his feet dragged against the uneven terrain of the forest floor, and Leon witnessed many a time when the man visibly stumbled over his own feet when the ground dipped in its natural inconsistent manner.
If he noticed when the piercing light of Leon's torch cast his shadow against the branches that littered the ground, he sure as hell didn't show it.
"Hey, pal," Leon called from a few feet away, "you okay there?"
The man craned his head awkwardly towards Leon, his movements sloppy and disjointed. Leon took notice of how the man's light hair stuck to his forehead, messy and appearing almost wet -- as though the man had dunked his head into a bucket of water and never dried himself off.
Now that his mind clung to this fact, Leon realized that it wasn't just the man's hair that was wet, but that the man's clothes were as well. They were soaked so completely that the grey work shirt he wore had suctioned to his black undershirt. The man's military green jacket must've weighed him down to Hell with how much water it looked to have soaked in.
Leon's hand gradually fell from his holster, and he tightened the grip on his flashlight, choosing to point the beam directly at the man's face.
The man gave a delayed reaction to the brash light: a simple wince as he squinted his eyes. Other than that, he didn't move his hands to block the light, nor did he at least try to run away. He remained still, almost as though he didn't want to take another step out of fear of collapsing.
It wasn't that difficult of a conclusion to reach, since the man was already swaying dangerously in place. Maybe it would be a good idea to get him to sit down sometime during the conversation.
"Yeah." The man rasped from pale lips.
Leon held back a soft cringe at the man's voice, which sounded as though he were talking through a heavy line of static. Had he been crying in order to fry his vocal chords so horribly? If so, then for how long? How loud?
Despite this thought playing at the back of his mind, Leon determined that he held responsibility for seeing this odd conversation through.
"Care to tell me your name?" Leon requested, lowering the light's beam from the man's wincing face.
"My name?"
"Yes, Sir, your name."
With the man's face now unobscured by the flashlight, Leon could discern the pure confusion that made up his expression. With cautious soles, Leon slowly began to walk closer to the conflicted figure.
There was something just so familiar about his face, and those simple features nagged horribly at Leon's memory, trying to jog something that he just couldn't reach.
"I can't... I don't." The man mumbled. He stared at Leon with unfocused eyes that darted across the officer's face in miniscule, but noticeable, ways.
"This entire town is restricted from the public, Sir. I think it's best if you come with me, alright?"
"No... no. I -- I need to stay here." He stammered out, finally taking a halted step backwards from the officer. "I need to stay."
"I'm sure you do, Sir, but you're unsteady. I imagine your legs are in a lot of pain right now. There's a bench over there a few feet back. Let me help you to it."
Leon held out his free hand towards the man, who stared down at the appendage for a few seconds before raising his eyes once more. His expression was that of disbelief, if Leon marked it down right. Even so, the officer stood his ground and extended his arm out just a bit further.
Only a split second later, the man hesitantly intertwined his hand with Leon's and allowed himself to be led down where the officer claimed a moment of rest was. Either the man was too quick to trust a stranger or he was simply desperate, because Leon, if in his situation, would have high-tailed it out of there as fast as he could.
Then again, this man didn't look to be in his right mind.
"There, there -- easy now. Try not to slip." Leon firmly held the man by his forearms to guide him towards a damp bench that was slowly being eaten away by rot. It was better than the ground, Leon guessed. He sat him down before holding the flashlight up to the man's field of vision.
"Look towards me for a second, alright, pal?" He commanded, though his words appeared to only graze the man's ears, as Leon met with his eyes for only a split second. He wasn't really making this easy. "Sir, I need to see your eyes. It'll be quick, I promise."
The man kept his head low as a response, his lips quiet and his form shivering from the chill that wracked the air.
Leon placed his right hand over the man's left shoulder and created small, tight circles with his hand. He moved slow, wanting each and every loop to be received and catalogued as nothing short of safe.
Back in Raccoon City, when he still went over domestics and similar cases, Leon ran into the occasional stray file or two that contained what looked to be annotated pages of therapy notes. Nothing remarkable at all, but, when you've been crammed in a back office for most of your career, you start to get desperate for any sort of change, be it positive or extremely negative.
Most of the time, the notes had contained detailed instructions on how to handle differing levels of panic attacks, though some handled general self-soothing as a broader topic. On the papers, the annotations would occasionally scratch out certain sentences and even go as far as to provide a piece of scrap paper to write over the large amounts of paragraphs that the annotator completely disagreed with.
Leon learned about a handful of grounding techniques from those annotations; and even though he didn't have anyone to ground, he often found himself personally relying on the knowledge throughout his stay at the Raccoon City Police Department.
He'd have to thank that mystery annotator someday. Maybe he'll start some annotations of his own too.
"You don't have to talk right now. Just let me talk, okay?" Leon began before drawing from the air a deep breath into his chest.
"My name is Leon Kennedy. I'm twenty-one. I'm from Raccoon City, Missouri. Don't ask me about the drive here -- it was horrible. I like pizza, chewing gum, and nature. One of the reasons I moved here to Maine is because of the beautiful sites here. There's a lot of forests like this one we're in right now. Lots of animals all around us. Chirping and laughing into the night.
"I love owls, and I'm really happy that I can listen to them just by being here. I know it's a bit basic, but my favorite one's the Barn Owl. When they're young, they look like these horrible alien creatures, but, as they mature, they grow these gorgeous feathers and become so regal.
"Their calls, though, are really interesting. When you think 'owl', you think of 'hoo-hoo', you think of a Great Horned Owl, but Barn Owls have this harsh screech that's a scare at night. It's a really unique call that reminds me a lot of a cougar's scream, which sounds like a woman screaming for her life.
"I think I should go bird watching around here someday, really. I'm hearing so many birds around here, and maybe I'll end up actually seeing a Barn Owl somewhere up in the trees. That would be a real sight, don't you think?"
Sometime during the short ramble, Leon felt the tense bundle of muscles within the man's arm gradually relax, becoming slightly malleable underneath the pads of his fingers. The officer sighed softly and allowed himself to relax as well.
"Okay. Now that we're both somewhat calm," Leon resumed, "why don't you show me those eyes of yours, hm?"
Something had changed in the man's demeanor after Leon had taken those few minutes to help him ease into the situation at hand. With an uncertain purse of his lips, the man opened his eyes and looked up at Leon, who gave him a light smile in return.
"Thank you, Sir." And with that, Leon positioned the flashlight accordingly.
His pupils were blown, as expected. Dozens of possible drug paraphernalia passed across Leon's mind, but he did his best not to assume the worst out of this guy, who just looked more dazed than anything.
As he took in more of his degraded appearance, Leon's hand gravitated downwards to rest over the man's own. It felt right, in a way, like maybe the contact was helping both of them through the unusual situation.
A few cuts and bruises littered the man's face, all of which appeared to have been recent. He noted how the cuts were barely in the beginning stages of developing scabs. His hands themselves were dusted with light cuts and scars all around, which Leon's thumb now grazed over from time to time.
What kind of freak accident had this man been in?
Leon set the flashlight on the bench beside the man, then lowered himself to his knees before him.
"Sir, can you tell me the name of the town we're nearby? Do you know where you are?" He asked in a voice that, to him, blended seamlessly into the background cacophony of nighttime creatures.
Leon rubbed small circles into the back of the man's cold right hand, watching as an expression of hopelessness slowly ebbed its way onto his face.
"I... fuck -- I can't." A gut-wrenching whimper fell from the man as a thin line of blood fell from his scalp to crest over his eyebrow. "Where the fuck am I?"
"Okay -- Sir, everything's gonna be alright, yeah? I'm gonna drive you to Bangor General, alright? My car's just down the path."
Leon moved to stand until the man took him by his wrist, making his active legs turn still like a statue's. He was staring up at Leon, blatant worry pressed deep into the canvas of his face.
"Then we'll come right back here," his voice sounded like it hurt to use, every syllable strained and tactfully used, "right?"
When all Leon replied with was silence, the man spoke again.
"I need to do something here. I -- I don't know what it is, but I need to come back. Please."
"I will do my best to make sure that happens, Sir -- but we need to get you to a hospital first. After that, you can talk to the staff about being released."
Leon watched as the man released a shaky breath prior to whispering a soft 'okay'. After his wrist was reluctantly released, Leon wrapped his hands around the man's forearms and helped him to his feet.
It turned out that Leon's previous assumption of the man being near collapse was correct, since, as soon as he was upright, his feet immediately gave out beneath him. He held on tightly as Leon caught him to carefully help him rise once more.
He shouldn't have assumed that his balance would be intact after what looked to have been a nasty head injury.
With a new partner held at his side, Leon directed himself to his left and gradually began the walk back to his town car.
Around the two, the forest had descended into darkness. The fog felt thicker around Leon's eyes as he tried to accurately tell if the ground in front of him was solid enough to support two pairs of feet. The flashlight proved no help. It's short beam of light only got lost in the threads that did nothing but consume its surroundings with an unprecedented fervor.
He felt like a lighthouse trying to guide nothing in a vast sea of everything.
With all of his focus and energy going towards walking a straight path, Leon was startled by the man's voice suddenly making itself known.
"'Leon...Kennedy'." The man pronounced slowly.
Leon cleared his throat and nodded, "That's the name."
"What're you? A cop?"
"Yes, Sir, I'm with the Bangor Police Department."
"Huh." The man hummed. "Is this Bangor? Are we in it right now?"
"No, Sir, this is Silent Hill. Well, the outskirts, at least." Leon answered. "Bangor isn't for another hour or so."
The man made a soft noise of acknowledgement, but said no more. He allowed himself to be guided by Leon, held firmly against the officer's side while trying to move his feet in tandem.
Leon could feel him begin to shiver whenever a swift breeze ran them over. To his left, the officer could feel every cold vibration the man radiated, a trembling of which steadily grew in intensity the longer he stayed in those soaked clothes.
"Take your jacket off." Leon instructed abruptly.
Like expected, the man reacted with even more confusion than he'd since shown, "Excuse me?"
"It's cold out and you're dripping wet." Leon slowly stepped away to shake off his jacket and pointedly reveal the woolen inner lining to him, "This'll warm you up. I've been wearing it long enough so that its pretty hot. Take it."
With trembling hands, the man's fingers worried the hem of his own jacket, soaked to a deep green, before shrugging it off. Leon took it and had to stop himself from losing balance at the sudden weight on his left arm.
He held his jacket out for the other to wear, then began to wring out the water from the one given to him. Just from the first seconds of holding the green material, Leon found his hands quickly growing a burning chill deep in their bones. He winced slightly, but continued with the action nonetheless.
Leon raised his head to the man, smiling at the sight of him wearing his brown jacket, "Warming up?"
The man nodded with his hands tucked loosely in the soft pockets.
"Let's get you to a hospital now, alright?" Leon pat him on his shoulder, letting his fingers linger as he began walking forwards.
The man, however, did not continue walking with him.
The man remained static, though gently swaying in a manner that made Leon's eyebrows knit in worry. He walked closer and prepared himself in case he collapsed like before.
"Sir?" Leon questioned, his hands were mere ghosts against the man's shaking shoulders. He tilted his head slightly in order to get a proper look at the man's bowed face. "Sir, is everything okay?"
"I can't..." The man murmured. "It's..."
The officer stared intently at him as the man's sentence slowly strayed off into the sound of wind rushing through the overhead branches.
Just like that, time slowed to a century's pace as his legs crumpled beneath him like a house of cards.
Leon immediately followed him to the ground, slipping his hand underneath his head before it met with the ground. For a few seconds, Leon remained frozen in place, knowing entirely what he should do, but his body avoided his mind's directive entirely.
He just stared down at the man before him, laid unconscious with blood still dripping from his scalp. In a moment of panic, he almost lifted his head to call for help amidst the fog, but that instinct was immediately repressed by the simple fact that, logically, no one would be around to hear him.
That wasn't quite right, however.
With one hand permanently resting on the man's arm to keep him on his side, Leon used his free hand to activate the radio scanner hooked onto his shoulder.
Someone was always around to hear him. He just had to make himself known.
"This is Officer Leon Kennedy near Silent Hill. I have a 10-52 here in the forest left of the east observation deck. Subject is a man, possibly mid-to-late twenties; unconscious, breathing shallow, and may have fallen into Toluca Lake. Possible head injury. Copy."
Leon released the button on his radio to wait for a response. When a voice didn't respond immediately, he moved to activate it again.
"I repeat: this is Officer Leon Kennedy. 10-52 for an unconscious man. East forest of Silent Hill. Does anyone copy?"