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Your youngest daughter fell asleep on the couch over an hour ago, clutching to one of Leon’s old hoodies and not caring the slightest you’d told her it wasn’t bedtime yet.
Your eldest, however, was sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to do her homework while her gaze kept going toward the front door, waiting for her father to come back.
You couldn’t blame her.
You’d been doing the same ever since you received a message from Sherry saying that things had got complicated.
Before leaving, Leon’d told you something like this might happen, but he always said that, and it never actually did, so you didn’t think much about it and just laughed at his occurrence.
Since the moment he walked out the door, since you watched him drive off in the Porsche to who knows where because, of course, he hadn’t told you where he was going or what he was going to do, your mind had been running through a thousand different scenarios. The only thing you knew was that he desperately needed to find out what was killing him and the rest of Raccoon City survivors, and how he could stop that illness that was consuming them faster and faster.
Leon, as stubborn as ever, had refused to sit back and do nothing or send someone else in his place.
He wanted to put an end to everything himself, specially for you and for your daughters.
In the past, his future had been taken from him, but now he refused to let that happen again.
“Mom?”
You turn around and look at your eldest daughter, who is nervously chewing on her pen.
“Dad… he’s on his way, right? Do you think there’ll be much traffic? Maybe he’s coming tomorrow morning while we’re at school…”
You swallow with difficulty.
“You know your dad’s always late. Don’t you know him? Bet he’s taking his time.”
You force a smile and try to sound as convincing as possible, though it’s pointless.
A few minutes later, you hear the sound of a car engine on your street getting closer. You don’t expect it to be Leon, but the moment a pair of headlights lights up the living room window, you can’t help but sigh in relief.
“He’s finally here,” you whisper, quickly standing up and heading to the door.
Your youngest daughter’s still asleep, but your eldest mirrors you, jumping up from her chair and practically running after you, relief written all over her face.
That changes the moment you open the front door.
Instead of Leon’s Porsche, you see a dark green Skoda, one you know all too well, and then you see someone you know just as well stepping out of it.
Sherry looks deathly pale and completely exhausted, as if she hasn’t slept in days. You can see how hard it’s for her to walk toward you, how her lips seem to move as she looks for the right words.
Your whole body goes still except for your eyes, darting around in search of your husband. Leon must have come back with her. He has to have. Maybe he just fell asleep in the car, or maybe he got hurt and, before coming to see you, she took him to the hospital…
Your stomach churns the moment Sherry finally stands in front of you and all she can do is shake her head.
“Where’s dad?” your daughter asks, confused.
As you already expected, Sherry doesn’t answer her.
All she does is finally look at you.
She doesn’t need to say anything for you to understand what happened.
“Can I come in?” she asks, her voice breaking.
You grip the doorknob tightly while your mind screams at you to say no, to tell her to fuck off and go away because letting her in would make everything become real.
You don’t want reality to hit you yet.
“Of course… Yeah, come in…” you finally say, betraying your own mind.
Sherry steps inside but doesn’t dare move past the hallway. You notice how she plays with her hands, nervously, and how her eyes stay fixed on the floor, not able to meet yours again.
Your daughter, however, goes from being confused to being quite frightened, as if she already knew what was coming.
“Sherry. Where’s dad?” she repeats.
The blonde opens her mouth, but closes it again when she realizes she can’t bring herself to say it.
You’re so confused, so desperate, so on edge that your sense of time completely slips away. You don’t know how much time passes, or how many times you hear your daughter begging Sherry to tell her where Leon is.
“What happened?”
You don’t even realize you’ve said it out loud until Sherry steps closer and pulls you into a tight hug.
“I’m so, so sorry…”
You pull away from her immediately, too abruptly. When you look at her again, you see tears streaming down her face with no shame.
“No… Sherry, don’t say that…”
Your daughter looks at both of you, then at her little sister, still asleep on the couch.
“Say what, mom? Sherry: dad’s okay, right?”
“Leon…” Sherry begins cautiously. “The FBI agent, Grace, was in danger…”
She forces herself to stop.
She can’t do it. She can’t say it.
“No…” you repeat in disbelief, though the truth is slowly sinking in.
“Where’s he?”
You glance at your daughter and see desperation taking over her more and more. You don’t know what feels worse, her truly believing Leon is alive, or knowing you’re going to have to tell her that he—
You feel a wave of dizziness. You close your eyes, trying to steady the nausea rising in your stomach.
“Sherry…”
She looks at you and, then, at your daughter.
“Sweetheart… your father didn’t… Your father didn’t make it.”
Your mind refuses to process the meaning behind those words even you force yourself to. You hear your daughter’s breathing grow fast and uneven, and you feel like the worst mother in the world because you can’t do anything to comfort her.
You’re in shock. You don’t know what to do.
You want to scream, to cry, to grab the gun you keep in your nightstand and shoot yourself in the head just to end this nightmare.
You feel the urge, but you can’t.
You need to keep going for them.
They had just lost their father. You couldn’t take away the only thing they had left in this world.
You.
And Leon… You know he would’ve wanted you to keep going and not having those thoughts he dealt with as well for many, many years.
“No,” your eldest says suddenly, almost shouting, making you turn back to her and Sherry. “That’s not true.”
“Sweetheart, I—”
“Sherry, damn it, you’re wrong!”
Instinctively, you glance toward the couch, hoping your youngest’s still asleep, but you’re not surprised to see her awake, rubbing her eyes as she slowly sits up.
“Mommy?”
A knot tightens in your throat, making it hard to breathe, but you rush to her, pulling her into an embrace that catches her completely off guard.
“No,” you hear your eldest repeating just a few steps away. “No. No. He promised us. He promised he’d come back.”
“Mommy? What’s wrong?” your little one asks in your arms, her eyes moving between you and her sister.
You can’t answer her because you don’t know how to tell her, but neither Sherry nor your eldest daughter seem able to either.
You see as the blonde wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, shyly, as if she was ashamed of grieving the man who was like a father to her.
“Things got pretty bad, so there wasn’t much we could do,” Sherry continues, speaking to your eldest. “Your dad… thinking about what might happen… he just wanted to save that FBI agent, Grace…”
You can’t keep listening.
You feel your body give out as you collapse to the floor, dropping to your knees. Your youngest kneels beside you immediately, bursting into uncontrollable tears as she asks what’s wrong.
You can’t tell her.
You can’t.
Your inability to breathe is joined by a growing pain in your chest. A broken scream escapes your throat, and you’re not even aware of what you’re saying.
As your eldest and Sherry rush to join you and your youngest, memories crash over you all at once.
Leon laughing because the pancake batter he’d promised to make for your daughters on a Sunday morning slipped from his hands and fell to the floor.
Leon cradling your daughters when they were babies, and how he’d kept the habit of reading them a story, no matter how old they got, before bed.
Leon promising all of you that he’d come back, that he’d take you all to Disneyland before your eldest left for college the following year.
Your whole body begins to tremble with spasms to the point it genuinely frightens you.
“That’s not… That’s not possible, Sherry…” you whisper, denial taking all over you.
Sherry cups your face, forcing you to look at her.
“I heard gunshots. And Grace told me how—”
You grab her coat and start shaking her angrily, not being able to think straight.
“If you knew he was in danger, you should’ve told him to leave!” your voice breaks. “You should’ve warned him he could die! You should’ve reminded him he promised us he’d come back!”
Your eldest stands up and goes to her sister, who’s beyond confused but from just hearing the conversation she’s beginning to understand what’s happening.
“Mommy?” your youngest asks, though your eldest starts stroking her hair, asking her to give you a moment. “Mommy? Are you okay?”
“Get out of here.”
“But, mommy—”
“Fuck, get the fuck out of here!”
Your youngest flinches, her eyes instantly filling with tears.
“I want daddy to come back…”
Those words shatter what little composure you had left. All you can do is cry harder and let the grief finally take over.
Your eldest can’t take it anymore either. She ends up beside you again, hugging you the way she used to when she was little.
“Dad said he’d come back,” she sobs. “He promised us, mum…”
Sherry covers her mouth to muffle her crying as she watches you, wrapping an arm around your youngest.
“Did daddy die?”
The youngest Kennedy’s question hangs in the air while you, at least you, try to figure out how to tell her that yes, that her father’s dead and he’s not coming back… not even his body, probably.
Your eldest, however, immediately shakes her head.
“No. Dad’s coming back any minute…”
Your vision blurs as you look at her, while your ears fixate on how she tries to convince her sister and herself that he’s just in the hospital and it’s only a matter of days before he comes back home.
Your youngest’s wearing one of Leon’s hoodies, the same one he last wore when you talked about adopting a dog once he got back.
You can’t help letting out a bittersweet laugh.
“Yes.”
The word slips from your lips at the same moment a broken sob escapes hers.
Your youngest throws herself into your arms, crying that she wants Leon back. You hold her tightly, desperate, rocking her as you cry into her hair while stroking it.
“I know…” you whisper, trying to stay calm, though your voice breaks. “I know, sweetheart. I know…”
Your eldest joins you, wrapping her arms around both of you. You feel her whole body trembling.
Sherry clears her throat, and you force yourself to pull yourself together. You want to stay there, on the floor, crying, but once again you remind yourself that you have to be strong for your daughters.
You stand up, gently separating from them, straightening your clothes and your hair, and wiping your tears, though you know it’s useless.
“Leon… He gave me something before all this happened,” Sherry tells you.
“What…?”
“In fact, now that he’s gone…” she closes her eyes and shakes her head after saying it. “Every time he went on a mission, he’d give me one of these in case something happened to him. I kept them, because obviously he always came back to you… but now that he’s not… I’ll find them and bring them to you…”
She pulls a black USB flash drive from her jacket pocket, its edges slightly worn.
You stare at it, then at Sherry, who doesn’t seem able to hand it to you, as if doing so would make Leon’s death even more real.
“What is it?”
You carefully reach out and take it from her open palm, handling it with care.
“I have no idea,” a knot tightens in your stomach as she says that. “Every time he gave me one, he told me that, no matter what happened… not to open it. You know what Leon was like.”
Was.
You feel your daughters move closer to you, still clinging to each other. You turn slightly to look at them. Your eldest can’t stop staring at the USB drive in your hand, clearly wanting to take it and put it into the computer herself. Your youngest just tugs at your sleeve to get your attention.
“Is that really from daddy?” she asks.
“Yeah, looks like it.”
“Is it… like a message?” she asks again, now looking directly at Sherry. “Is it a secret he didn’t tell us? Is he going to tell us there that he’s hiding because bad people are chasing him and that he’s not really dead?”
Dead.
You can see Sherry’s discomfort, and you understand it.
“I should go,” she says quietly. “There’s… a lot to do. Figuring out how we’re going to fix this—” she lifts her hand, darker than the last time you saw it. “And you… I guess you’ll have to start preparing… you know…”
You nod, though the truth is you don’t even know where to begin, or even if you’re even capable to begin preparing his funeral and everything that comes with his death.
Above all, you don’t know how to go on with your life without Leon after nearly thirty years.
You walk Sherry to the door. Before leaving, she hugs each of you and tells you that if you need anything, you go and call her no matter what it is, and no matter the time.
“Leon never stopped talking about coming home,” Sherry says, a little more composed now, offering a sad smile. “He loved you three. Don’t forget that.”
Your eyes burn, but you force yourself not to cry and, like her, you manage to fake a faint smile.
You end up placing the USB drive on the kitchen table, next to your eldest daughter’s unfinished homework, and run your hands over your face, desperate. Now that it’s just the three of you, reality is finally hitting you all at once.
Leon isn’t coming back.
Leon’s dead.
“Are you going to see what’s on it?”
You feel your youngest take your hand, and you hug her instinctively. Your eldest is gathering her homework, though her eyes never leave the USB drive.
You don’t answer, and you don’t dare say anything else the next few hours either. The only thing you do is make several calls, mostly to your relatives and some of Leon’s friends so they know what happened.
You don’t bother calling a funeral home because, without a body, you don’t even know if it’s worth having a traditional funeral. At least, that’s how you feel at that moment, but maybe in a few days…
You don’t know exactly when the girls fall asleep, both of them on the couch, clinging to Leon’s hoodie. You’re grateful they did because you know that’s the only way they can rest, even if their dreams will still torment them with their father’s death.
You don’t know how long you’ve been sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, staring at the USB drive still lying on the table.
You want so badly to grab your laptop and see what’s on it but, at the same time… you know this is it.
This will be all that’s left of your husband.
You won’t have anything else about him except what’s stored on USB drives from years ago.
“Okay… Guess it’s time to see what you put in here, Leon…”
You sigh and finally decide to stand up, though you move as if you’re afraid. You approach the table carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible so you don’t wake the girls. You pick up the USB drive with extreme care and, just as quietly, head for the stairs and go up to your bedroom.
You sit on your side of the bed and take the laptop from Leon’s side, unlocking it by entering your wedding date while avoiding looking at the wallpaper, where the four of you are smiling at Claire, who took the picture.
You insert the USB drive, and within seconds a single folder appears.
For them.
A knot tightens in your throat, and you feel unable to go on—but you do anyway.
You click on the folder. There’s only one video inside, though you can’t tell what it is—the thumbnail is just a black image.
You can’t click on it.
You’re not ready for a final goodbye, specially not one like this, but at the same time you know that, if you wait any longer, you might never be able to watch it.
You don’t think about it anymore.
You click on it and there’s Leon, sitting exactly where you are now, playing with his hands, nervous, avoiding the camera for the first few seconds.
You notice that even though he’s tired, even though he knows what might happen and why he’s recording that, he’s still smiling.
Your breath catches when you realize that, there, he was still alive, but now…
Leon leans forward, adjusting the camera before sitting back again and finally looking straight into the lens.
At you.
Your Leon, looking at you, as if nothing happened.
“Well…”
He lets out a soft sigh, rubbing the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable.
“So… if you’re watching this… things probably didn’t go the way I hoped.”
Your vision blurs again. You cover your mouth to stifle a sob.
Leon exhales slowly, glancing from side to side as if he was looking for the right words.
“This isn’t something they taught me how to do when I worked for the government, you know?” he says, rubbing his hands together nervously again, letting out a small laugh. “How are you supposed to record a goodbye video without it sounding like a goodbye?” he sighs again. “There’s no happy way to do it, that’s for sure…”
He leans forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees.
The nausea returns the moment he smiles at you.
“Hi. Hey, love.”
Those words break you even more, and this time you can’t hold back the tears. They start falling down your face quite quick.
You see his eyes linger on the camera, as if he’s imagining you there with him.
“I know you probably hate that I did this,” he continues softly. “Yeah, I know, you always say I prepare for the worst, and yeah, you’re right… but this mission’s different. And I think you know it as much as I do.”
You’re forced to set the laptop down on the bed, gripping your hands as they tremble uncontrollably.
“Yeah… I know,” he says quietly after a few seconds. “I know I promised I’d come back, and I meant it.”
Meant.
He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated.
“The truth is, right now… Yeah, today, fucking September 30th, while I’m recording this, I still believe that. But, if something happens… if this doesn’t go the way we expect…” his voice shakes. “I didn’t want you to be left without anything from me, even if it’s just this stupid goodbye video.”
“Leon…” you whisper, shaking your head through tears.
You watch as he lowers his gaze and reaches out.
You stifle a broken cry when you see the photo in his hand, the one of the four of you from last summer at the lake.
You’re sitting in a chair with your youngest on your lap, your eldest behind you, hugging you both. Leon is right beside you, his arms wrapped around all three of you.
The Leon in the video stares at the picture for a long time, his eyes shining. It breaks your heart to realize he’s holding back tears.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” another sob escapes your lips. Any composure you had left disappears. “I know I don’t usually say things like this because… well, you know I’m not great at expressing my feelings. And emotional speeches aren’t really my thing either,” he carefully sets the photo on the bed and looks back at the camera. “But I think that today, of all days, you should know something: you saved my life.”
You can’t help reaching out to touch the screen, as if somehow you could comfort the Leon from the past.
“You made everything way easier for me.”
A tear slips down his cheek, and he doesn’t bother wiping it away.
“You gave me a home. You gave me two incredible daughters, and you can’t deny it… they’re my copies, so I’m glad you have two little ones that are exactly like me now that I’ll be gone,” he lets out a faint, tearful laugh. Your breathing falters even more. “I know that by the time you’re watching this, you three might be far from okay, but tell them a few things for me, or show them this video. Tell our oldest to stop pretending she’s strong and that she doesn’t have to carry everything on her own. And to our little one… tell her to keep bringing that joy like she always has. Oh, and let her keep my hoodies, we won’t have to fight over them anymore,” he laughs softly through tears. “Tell them that even I’m not there anymore…dDad will still be with them. Always.”
Leon falls silent again, though his expression shifts slightly.
“And, hey… of course I haven’t forgotten about you…” his voice softens. “I wish I could tell you this in person, but… I’m so sorry. I know you never wanted this kind of life, and that it was hard for you at first… and, still, you chose not just to stay with me, but to build a life with me. You know, I’ve never been afraid of dying, but what scares me most about all this is the thought of leaving you behind,” he exhales. “And, listen…” he sighs, and you find yourself doing the same. “Just letting you know that, no matter what, I’d choose you again. Every single time. Because you made my life worth living.”
You lower your gaze, crying, unable to stop.
On the screen, Leon reaches out his hand, as if he was trying to touch you. You can’t help but to the same as him, really feeling him in some way you can’t explain to yourself.
“Take care of our girls, okay? And try to be happy again someday… for them, for me, and specially, for yourself.”
Leon sighs, then leans closer to the camera and presses a kiss to it.
“I love you. And I’ll always love you. See you in our next life, love.”