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Leon Kennedy has grown into a fine fighter. It’s something Jack would never admit, not if he wants to keep this fight going just the way it is now.
Their battle has drawn long. Even Jack’s body has begun to signal signs of strain, hints of sweat gathering beneath his clothing and breaths coming heavy. His rookie has tested him, is testing him, and is putting up with the pressure of battle remarkably well on his end. Jack has taught him well, as it so seems, and has managed to pick up a few little tricks on his own time. He’s lasted long beneath Jack’s offense, he’s maintained his defense and balanced it with his own attacks and counterattacks with a speed honed by time—he’s even made the space for his running mouth, a trait he’s kept even after the two years of their separation, but this is far beyond a simple spar. This is war, and the two of them, once brothers-in-arms, have found themselves on opposing sides.
This is the apex of Leon’s training, the final test of mentee against mentor.
They circle each other like dogs with fangs bared. Knives in hands, both coated in red, dribbling against the dusty brick underfoot with each slice of the air. Leon breathes as Krauser does, heavy and low, shaggy blonde bangs dotted with blood hiding those pretty blues as they stare daggers into Jack. As they watch, wait, analyze, rake up and down his mentor’s form, anticipate each and every move.
Leon’s eyes are on him and him only. He’s learning, taking the sights in. Good boy, Jack could say, just keep being a good little soldier.
“You rely on those pretty blues too much,” Jack instead instructs, right before he brandishes his knife and rushes forward. Blades clash, sparks flash, and in a dazzling array, a fireworks show is set off by their fight—as he has been this entire time, Leon responds aptly by blocking and parrying, wincing with exertion as he blocks against Jack’s brute force before parrying with a slash to his shoulder.
If he makes it out of here, he’ll have something beautiful to remember the boy by: an arrangement of scars he’ll be able to trace with his hands, a tapestry of their fight along his body that’ll remain till there’s nothing left of him. Jack grits his teeth against the inevitable pain of the fresh wound, then shakes it off and pushes forward. All those years ago, Leon would’ve never been able to make such a mark on his mentor; what a way he’s come.
They clash again. The sparks that arise from their unity are brilliant, nigh blinding in their intensity. “Too slow,” Jack taunts as he dashes Leon’s knife away and delivers a painful slash to his bicep, but Jack is then met with a roundhouse kick to his trunk, knocking him back opening him for attack.
Leon’s gotten stronger, but he’s still too reliant on those eyes. As he withdraws his gun from his holster, all it takes is a well-timed flashbang to throw him off his guard.
Jack closes in. He fixes his grip around the handle of his blade, springs forward and reaches out, then swings around and prepares to bury the steel between Leon’s ribs.
Instead, his forearm thuds against both of Leon’s in a last-second block. Leon grunts with effort, pushes against the knife as the tip just barely grazes his chest, battles for his life as Jack presses with every ounce of strength left in his body. Leon is so, very warm against him, running hot from hours of exertion with the back of his shirt dampened with sweat. Blood, warm and red, continues to pulse just beneath his skin, asking without words for Jack to spill it with every beat of his heart.
Pressed close like this, Jack can almost feel Leon’s heartbeat beyond the fabrics, muscles, and bones it hides behind. For just a moment, he imagines that their rhythms are synced, beating together as they fight against one another. It’s such a shame that he’ll have to put and end to it, but in the end, this was never Leon’s battle to win.
Jack releases a breath, then plunges the knife into Leon’s chest. It’s a rush of exhilaration before Leon’s scream overlaps the ringing in Jack’s ears, sounding out and bouncing off the surrounding stone walls and embedding itself into Jack’s very being before it gives way to bitter rasps of what his voice was only a moment ago. A sound that signals a job well done, one that precedes the next step in his pursuit of power; victory in auditory form.
When he withdraws the knife, blood—red, hot, thick and all-consuming—spills from the wound, onto Leon’s front and onto Jack’s forearms, onto the ground in splattering spots that grow into puddles the longer it’s left to flow. Leon can only paw and prod at Jack’s arms as a burbling begins to erupt from his throat, as he hacks and spits up blood that dribbles down his lips and chin.
It’s a sad sight, a sad sound, all that’s become of his rookie. Disappointment wells up within him, at the sight of Leon coming so close, yet so far to passing his final test. “What the hell were you doing for two years?”
Jack reaches the knife up to his lips and licks a line along its sharp edge, the tastes of iron and steel gracing his tongue before he rests the knife against Leon’s throat, presses it to his jugular, readies himself to deal the final blow that’ll put his rookie out of his misery—
—but he doesn’t. For some cruel, inexplicable reason, he refuses to let go.
Instead, he chooses to let Leon suffer, chooses to listen to the sounds of choked breathing and desperate scratching against Jack’s forearms. He must’ve hit a lung, if those crude sounds are anything to go off of; more blood bubbles at Leon’s lips as he sucks in raspy breaths and as his punctured chest flutters. At this rate, Leon will drown in his own blood.
Jack reaches his left hand around Leon’s jaw, then tilts his face upwards.
“Why was it you who came here?” Jack asks. Leon only looks at him with a frenzied sort of desperation, left unable to even beg for his life against the blood soaking his vocal cords. Letting even an animal suffer with a fatal wound is something he’d never let himself do, yet the blade still rests at Leon’s neck, going no further than surface layer.
There’s no telling how long it’ll take him to die. It could be minutes, or it could stretch to hours of him choking on his blood, left to suffer until blood loss finally takes him or until hypoxia renders him braindead. Jack has seen more than his share of death in his lifetime, yet now, letting go of his dearest protege is something he finds himself unready to do.
“When we were separated,” Jack mutters into Leon’s shoulder as Leon continues to claw weak lines into his arm, “I knew you’d go far. I knew you’d go so damn far, and that hurt, knowin’ my run was over.”
Leon chokes. More blood spills from his lips and his hands shake, his legs following suit as he starts to lean his weight into Jack, whether by volition or not. That sound grates against Jack’s ears—the sound of a job well done is satisfying like nothing else, but the sound of death itself is the furthest thing from a pleasant sound. Jack cradles Leon in his hold as he gurgles and shivers, as he struggles for breath, as he continues to claw with waning strength as the dregs of his fight spill from his lips.
The sound of death is a reminder of what Jack will sound like when he finally kicks it, because nobody ever lasts long in this line of work. His own mentee is a prime example of that acrid truth.
“Always knew you’d go further than me,” Jack continues to his unresponsive audience. His forearms sting with nail marks and each of Leon’s stuttery movements aggravates the fresh wounds against his torso, but the adrenaline makes it all-too-easy to tune out. “Reach higher, do better, get sent on creme of the crop missions, but—”
Jack grits his teeth. Leon lets out a hoarse whine as his body begins to sag, as his legs give out on him and he finally fails to support himself. It won’t be long now.
“There, there,” Jack whispers into Leon’s ear, guiding his rookie’s shaking body down to the ground with a sturdy hold. “I got you.”
Jack settles onto his knees as Leon’s boots scrape against the ground. They’re aborted, jerky movements, the weak moves of a dying man. Leon is going to die here, but this has always been a suicide mission, a sacrifice the U.S. government knew full well of when they sent him here.
They sent him to rural Spain to die. The fact that it was at the hands of the very man who trained him just happened to be the way it went.
“Why here?”
Jack’s knife slips from his fingers. It falls into Leon’s lap, but he’s no threat now.
“Why fuckin’ here, huh?”
Leon Kennedy is dying. Jack Krauser is the one who drove the knife into his chest.
“You were the best thing they gave me, yet now I gotta be the one to get rid of you.”
Leon stops clawing at Jack’s arms. His hands hover around the weeping wound on his chest, drooping down with every second, but those horrible, horrible sounds of his dying breaths signal that despite everything, he’s still here.
Maybe Leon’s already dead. At this point, Jack has little clue whether what lingers behind those eyes is truly him, or the basest instincts ingrained within every human that force him to desperately cling to his last scraps of life, even when the both of them know it’s all for nought. Whether or not there’s anything left but panicked desperation, whether or not there’s anything left but the slow shutdown of his soul. Yet when Jack tilts Leon’s face up towards his and he catches sight of those big, beautiful blues, he knows that Leon is still there.
The same Leon he trained. The same Leon he imparted his knowledge upon, the same Leon he served alongside. The same Leon that could’ve taken up what Jack left off when Jack could no longer continue; the same Leon that won’t be able to, because he’ll be dead in a few short minutes.
“What kinda shit turn of fortune is this, rookie?”
Jack sweeps his thumb along the line of Leon’s jawline, then lets his hand drift up to Leon’s forehead, as if he should follow by pressing a kiss to those shaggy blonde locks like a mother soothing a son—or a wife as she caresses her husband through his dying breaths. And as such, he finds himself envious of the women of the world, finds himself envious of the fact that he could never adore Leon in the way a woman could.
“There’s no such thing as fortune in this field,” Jack continues, letting out a breathy laugh. It’s too airy to hardly be considered one. “Only men who either die young, or watch themselves rot.”
Blood runs in rivulets from the corners of Leon’s mouth. Every time he inhales, every time he exhales, it’s the same sound of death, the same sound Jack knows all too well. The sound that’s already embedded itself into his psyche, the same sound that he’s going to hear for the rest of his life, whether it’s a late night and his mistakes torture him or it’s broad daylight and they remain in the periphery of his soundscape, never quite leaving him as punishment for all the evil he’s committed. It’s the sound of his rookie’s death, in and out, over and over and over and over—
“Fuck, don’t make me let you go yet. Just—stay a little longer.”
Jack lets Leon’s head rest against his chest, then reaches his right hand down, down, towards that crying wound. His left stays around Leon’s forehead until he notices the tear tracks lining his cheeks, lines that reflect the light off the industrial lamps surrounding them. He wipes them away with the pad of his thumb, the cold fluid smearing beneath his touch. A shiver runs up his forearm.
This had to happen. Jack has to keep moving, but not yet. Not yet.
Leon clasps his left hand around Jack’s forearm in a surprising show of strength. It’s weak, but more than Jack would’ve expected given the blood loss and probable hypoxia. At this point Leon has gone pale, but his eyes are still firmly locked on Jack’s own. Jack only pulls his gaze away for a split second to observe the pool of blood that’s gathered around them, soaking into his cargo pants where he’s kneeling on the ground.
Leon’s dark shirt reflects hints of sterile white and lurid red in the light. It’s damp, no doubt with blood instead of sweat at this point. There’s so much around them, and the pool is only growing. When Leon lets out another gravelly whine as more spills from his lips, Jack clasps his hand around the wound as if to stem the inexorable flow of his lifeblood.
“I know it hurts. I know, I know.”
When did his victory turn to defeat? Where is his bravado? Where’s that zeal, that ecstasy, that electricity of fighting and winning? Where has it all gone?
Where did it all go?
Where did it all go wrong?
Leon’s grip falters. The gaps between his attempts at breath increase and the blood seeps through Jack’s fingers, no matter how hard he presses.
“Leon.” Jack moves his hand away from the wound—it’s no use, his glove is soaked and despite the pool around them, the blood is yet to stop flowing—and takes ahold of Leon’s right hand, holds it tight as if to convince him to squeeze back. “Don’t go yet. That’s a goddamn order.”
Leon doesn’t make a sound. He breathes again, gurgling and stuttery, but he’s still breathing.
Then, he isn’t.
One last breath escapes him, one last rise and fall of his chest, before it stops altogether. His left hand slips from Jack’s forearm and his right goes limp in Jack’s, yet he’s still staring up at Jack, blue eyes as endlessly deep as the ocean he crossed to reach his grave. Except he’s not blinking, hasn’t in far too long, and one last tear drops from the corner of his eye before joining the impossibly wide pool of blood encircling his body.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Leon, don’t—”
Leon doesn’t respond to Jack’s choppy, curse-ridden plea, because he’s dead. He’s dead, killed by his own mentor’s hand, killed thousands of miles away from home in a place even God has turned away from. He’s dead, dead and gone, with nothing left to do about it.
Leon Kennedy is dead. Lifeless eyes stare up at Jack as the pool around them continues to grow. His chest remains still, his clothes are stained with his own red, those horrid sounds are gone in all but Jack’s memory. His heart has long stopped while Jack’s still beats, and his body has gone limp in Jack’s hold. And Jack Krauser, the bringer of his own protege’s end, does nothing but stare down at the unmoving body cradled in his arms.
This isn’t how it should’ve gone.
What the hell is he doing?
Leon is dead. It’s a job well done, so why does it feel so goddamn hollow?
This had to happen. This was always going to happen. It was never Leon’s fight to win; his deathbed was always going to be cold stone made warm only by his own blood. It’s done, it’s done, it’s done, but Jack can’t find it in himself to let go. Leon, the little hero he is—was—was never meant to be long for this world. The good ones always go first, after all.
Jack lets out a breath. Leon doesn’t. Only one of them is left alive, only one of them holds the memories of two years ago, the operation none of them should’ve made it out of. Operation Javier—they’ve both been living on borrowed time for far too long, and death is a stickler for unpaid debts. “It never should've ended like this,” Jack mutters, and Leon’s cooling body offers no reply.
Those shaggy blonde locks press against Jack’s chest. For just a split second, he imagines running his hand through them, but perishes the thought—the blood coating his hands would too quickly dull that golden luster. He held his rookie like this once before, all those years ago, when one untimely strike to his back during training knocked the wind clean out of him and sent him crumbling to the ground. Just like this, he wheezed and clawed at Jack’s arms; unlike this, he got up and continued the fight.
Jack's chest aches. Leon kicks like a horse, his mastery of the moves Jack taught him evident in the way his ribs burn. It aches until it burns, until each pound of his heart against his ribs is like a vice grip around everything inside his chest cavity. It hurts like hell because fuck, Leon knew how to kick, and he knew how to make it hurt. It doesn’t hurt enough to kill him, but maybe it should, because he knows deep down that he should’ve died long ago.
Jack pulls his hand away from Leon’s chest and moves it to his own. A red handprint imprints into the fabric covering his chest. His heart beats beneath his hand, pounding so painfully that maybe, after all of this, it does hurt enough to kill him.
He needs to go. Wesker is waiting on the sample. This place is crawling with Ganados. He needs to let go, except they both should’ve died on that operation. When he looks back into those eyes—those deep blue, deeply beautiful, dead and gone eyes—his chest hurts so goddamn bad.
“God, just let me come with you…”
It hurts so bad, he can’t breathe. He knows pain, he knows loss, but he doesn’t know this. His chest burns, his body aches, his skin is warm with Leon’s blood and cold with chills that source from within—every muscle in his body is still primed to seize, to move, to lash out at some unseen threat, but there’s none left. There’s nothing left to do but leave his rookie’s body to rot.
“Leon,” he mutters again. “Let me come with you,” but that is the one thing he cannot yet do.