Chapter Text
The sun was doing its level best to cook Leon Scott Kennedy alive, and he was starting to think that was the point of afternoon formation. There was nothing quite like standing in a line sweating through your undershirt while a man with a clipboard assessed the new batch of recruits, Leon's batch of recruits, like a herd of cattle at auction. Bensen had assigned him here. After days of not strictly legal holding and interrogation, his body and mind still recovering from Racoon City, Leon had been given a very limited list of options. This had somehow been the better one. Standing in the Mojave at 1600 with eleven other guys who had either wanted this, trained for it, or at least shown up voluntarily, which was more than Leon could say.
He had wanted to be a cop to help people. Not . . . this. Now that his eyes had been opened to cooperate corruption, greed, and the government status quo, he missed the naivety he'd still possessed when he woke up that Monday morning with the worst hangover he'd managed to brew up in his twenty-one years of life.
Raccoon City had been destroyed on just another Tuesday.
Ten weeks of basic training had come and gone in a blur of shouted orders, sleepless nights, aching muscles, and lessons beaten into him through repetition and sheer stubborn endurance. Somehow, Leon had survived it. He stood at attention now on an entirely different base, shoulders squared and hands clasped behind his back as unfamiliar faces mirrored his posture alonside him. Not a single man in formation was someone he recognized from basic, but that was fine. He hadn't made any friends there. He had been shipped off to STRATCOM without being asked or given a chance to to argue otherwise. Leon clung to the tide not caring if he made it to the other side or not. No one had explained to him what exactly the United States government had planned for Leon S. Kennedy, not that it would make a difference to him if they did. Regardless, it was clear this was another beginning. He was getting tired of these. As the sun blinded him from above, he could feel the back of his neck baking. Leon kept his gaze fixed forward, expression carefully neutral, while a knot of tension settled in his stomach. Basic training had taught him how to survive. Whether that would be enough here remained to be seen.
The lieutenant working his way down the line was a short, barrel-chested bald man. From Leon's perspective, he held the energy of a man who had always wanted to be the biggest dog on the porch his entire life and had finally found a porch small enough. Hell, even Leon was taller at 5'11'', a fact that shouldn't have made the corner of his mouth twitch, but it did. Leon tracked him in his periphery, eyes still straight ahead.
The lieutenant stopped in front of another recruit three rows down. Leon couldn't see the expression on his face, but didn't have to in order to know it wasn't a welcoming one. "Recruit! Are those tears in your eyes? We haven't even gotten started yet!"
"Permission to speak, Sir."
"Granted, Crybaby!"
"N-no Sir. It's sweat. Sir!"
"You're dripping like a broken faucet, Crybaby! You're a disgrace!"
"Yes, Sir!"
The lieutenant continued down the line, looking for what, Leon wasn't sure.
The lieutenant stopped in front of him, his bald head shining in the Socal sun.
Leon kept his gaze forward, his chin level, and eyes fixed on some neutral point beyond the officer's shoulder. There was a very intentional pause while Leon felt himself being measured up to some unknown standard. With no word or warning, a hand shot out and snatched a fistful of Leon's hair, yanking his head to the side hard enough to strain his neck. Leon's jaw locked, his hands remaining still at his sides through sheer will. He did not want to find himself back in CIA custody. Or worse, he might not get a second chance and Sherry's life depended on his actions here. As did his own, after the things he had seen, but his own life wasn't on his list of priorities. It wasn't even in the same hemisphere.
"Look at this nonsense!" the lieutenant said, to no one and everyone. He gave the fistful of hair a rough twist, which Leon tolerated without remark despite the dry comments in his head. The officer's lip curled like he'd found something stuck to his boot. "Pretty Boy shows up to my formation with salon hair!" He released Leon with a shove, like touching him any longer was beneath him, and stepped back to look Leon over with open contempt. "You got any idea where you are, Pretty Boy?"
Leon said nothing, biting back a sarcastic remark about Wonderland. He reset his gaze forward. This was just what he needed, to be singled out on day one.
"I asked you a question, Pretty Boy!" The lieutenant stepped in closer. Then, with the deliberateness of a man who had done this before and enjoyed it, he hawked and spat on Leon's left boot.
The formation went very still. Leon moved for the first time since he'd been here, glancing to his boot then immediately past the lieutenant again. Think of Sherry. He was doing this for Sherry.
"This mop on your head," the lieutenant said, "is not regulation. How the fuck did you make it through basic with this, Pretty Boy?! Someone should lost their job over this. You will drop and give me one hundred pushups. Then you will go get that pretty boy mess shaved down to something that doesn't embarrass this unit." A pause. "My pushups, now, Recruit!"
At basic no one had mentioned Leon's hair. He'd been dragged directly from the custody of Adam Benford, director of the CIA, and thrown right into the thick of military training. His officers and fellow privates had been scared of him and his mysterious circumstances. No one questioned where the quiet, new recruit with nightmares and the fresh gunshot wound in his shoulder had come from or why. Leon had assumed they had been ordered not to just as he had been threatened with federal prison if a single syllable of Raccoon City or Umbrella passed between his lips.
As such, no one in basic had batted an eye at his hair. Leon had been so unstable those first few weeks anything might have pushed him over the edge, besides. Even something as minor as being stripped of his hair. He hid behind it even now in am attempt to keep the annoyance on his face from getting him into even deeper shit.
Leon breathed in through his nose. He tried to think about the options he'd been given, but there was only so much of this bullshit he could take. Just because the US government wanted him here didn't mean he had to make it easy on them.
"If you wanted a hair donation, you only had to ask," Leon spoke calmly, still not looking at the officer. "Sir," he tagged on. He wasn't used to this. Even ten weeks of basic hadn't prepared him for this. He'd wanted to be a cop.
A fist connected with his stomach. He should have expected that, probably.
Leon doubled forward, the air punched clean out of him, and spent three seconds reminding his lungs what they were for. He did not go down, which he counted as a win. Around him, the line hadn't moved. Eleven other recruits continued staring forward like they were made of concrete. Originally there had only been ten in this unit, but Leon made eleven and twelve made an even number. One of the fortunate applicants had made it in solely because of Leon's misfortune.
The lieutenant leaned in while Leon still struggled to catch his breath. "Two hundred pushups! And I will cut your hair myself. I hope you like mine." He ran a hand over his polished scalp. "Sorry, it's the only haircut I can do. And if you open your mouth with that smartass shit again," The officer glimpsed to the patch on Leon's chest, "Kennedy!" He spat his name like an insult, "you will be cleaning latrines with your toothbrush for the next six months. And you will not get another one for the entirety of your military career. Do you understand me, Pretty Boy?"
Leon straightened up slowly, his stomach begging him not to. He looked somewhere past the lieutenant's left ear, a sarcastic comment fighting to be heard. "Sir, yes sir." Leon couldn't stop it. "Though for the record, I think you've got great hair."
The second punch made his eyes water, Leon stumbling as he folded again, but still remained on his feet. That big bastard in the trenchcoat had hit much harder. Still, the pain spread up through Leon's ribs and, for a moment, made him consider regretting his attitude, but couldn't bring himself to give a shit. Racoon City had been destroyed on a random Tuesday and this was his life now whether he liked it or not. If he was bitter, well . . . Who could blame him?
"You think this is funny, Recruit?"
"Lieutenant."
One word, spoken evenly with a tone that left little room for argument. The authority in that voice made even Leon straighten himself a little taller despite the pain in his ribs. A figure appeared from the left, standing at command before the lieutenant, though Leon still kept his eyes forward. Judging by the shadow cast over the smaller man, the newcomer towered over most everyone else here. He obviously didnt need to raise his voice, Leon noted, as the bald man's hand fidgeted nervously beneath his clipboard.
"Major Krauser, Sir!" The lieutenant snapped upright like a marionette yanked on a string.
Leon was still fighting the ache in his ribs when the Major stepped into his line of vision and he finally got his first look at Jack Krauser.
He was massive, broad through the shoulder, solid through the chest and held himself like he'd been in this line of work for a very long time. His stare was hard and intimidating. For a moment, Leon's heart pounded in anxiety he hadn't felt since that night trapped in RPD. He had to remind himself this was not Raccoon City. It wasn't even Tuesday.
"Is there a reason you're laying hands on my recruits, officer?" The Major came to a stop a few feet away and stared down at the lieutenant, immovable as he waited for a response.
Leon kept his gaze forward still, though this time, instinctively, out of respect rather than boredom.
"The recruit refused a direct order, Sir," the lieutenant said. "His hair is not regulation and he has a smart mouth that needs to be ran out of him."
The Major was quiet for a moment while Leon felt the weight of being observed. He had to remind himself to blink.
Then the Major stepped in front of him and Leon's eyes moved involuntarily.
He met Krauser's gaze, paler blue than his own, like ice in both color and demeanor. His expression was not kind, and supported by a hard jawline that was leant an intimidating presence by the jagged scar cutting through one eyebrow, through his left eye, then disecting the Major's cheekbone and down through his mouth like a lightning strike. Leon wondered about the story behind that scar. Krauser's icy stare moved notably to Leon's hair, still displaced from where the lieutenant had grabbed it, and then back down to Leon.
"Kennedy keeps the hair," he stated without breaking eye contact, as if his word was final even though Leon figured the dress code likely came from a station even higher than the Major.
Krauser's attention had not left Leon when he'd said it. There was something there just beneath the surface, fleeting but sealed away back behind a wall of glass before Leon could get a good look at it.
"Sir, " the lieutenant started.
"Two hundred pushups for the back talk," Krauser ordered before finally stepping out of Leon's space.
"Yes, Sir," he answered without complaint, the disrespect from earlier nowhere to be found as Krauser turned and walked back the way he'd come, not sparing Leon, the Lt. or any of the other recruits a second glance.
Leon dropped into position. The pavement hot under his palms, and struggled through 200 pushups. Which was fine. He doubted he would look very good bald.