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cherubify · 8 days

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the best finale for a series- what a way to end it! i love the mentions of cognitive dissonance, and i loved peering into his mind, seeing what led to all this. loved the depiction of the reader going thru the trauma n struggle of processing it all + coming to terms wif it. it circled back to the start, to the reader's mama n how it all began. n also how both the reader and leon will hav to live on convincing themselves that they are both good people, though for different yet similar reasons. loved this series so much, em! <3 thank you for your hard work! this was amazing and will live on in my brain til i return to the earth as dust and ash.

SHOULD’VE BEEN A SON, finale!

MDNI, corrupt cop/dad!leon kennedy x fem! reader

word count. 6.5k

cws. daddy-daughter incest, noncon (m receiving), discussions of past noncon, p in v, unprotected, gunplay, death threats, coercion, slapping/hitting, degradation, allusions to death, intoxication, references to suicide

note. happy sbas sunday!! i did not mean to make this so long, honestly — illness kicked my ass for a second but we’re back!! a million thank-yous to all of my readers — your input and attention means more than i can express. love y’all!!

tags. @bunnyclaire , @leonseyeliner , @sqiim , @xoxostarlet , @d10nyx , @ressespearlz , @shiawaseorii , @wherenymphsroam , @arminsbf , @localkiss , @admirxation , @bonnibuckets , @lilyberrythoughtss , @boredmantaray , @argreion , @mrswint3rs , @fairry1 , @valslullaby

index. [pt. 1] [pt. 2] [pt. 3] [pt. 4] [pt. 5] [Bonus.]

Chatter rang strong from the RPD’s West Office. Hums of the upcoming day off. There’d been an influx of rookies, some strange rekindling of justice’s allure. Leon paid it little mind. Rookies were rightfully understood as wet behind the ears. Gifted with the sort of optimism you couldn’t put a tax on. If anything, he was thankful to be rid of the label. Didn’t suit him well since he’d drawn Irons’s attention.

Amongst the buzz, Leon slipped into the hall overlooking the dark room — nodding to his superior as he approached.

“Lieutenant Branagh? You wanted to see me?”

Marvin looked up, gaze stern. Brow furrowed in a sort of exasperated disappointment. “Yeah, I did,” he sighed, unsure how to begin. He cleared his throat, gaze slowly trailing to Leon’s. “I’m leaving the RPD. Just cleaned out my desk.”

Leon shifted his weight to the heel, lips parting in bewilderment. “Lieutenant, you…” he started, unsure where to continue. He gave up rather quickly, shaking his head in disbelief as he spoke again: “Why?”

He sighed, letting the motion muffle itself behind closed lips. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” he asked, nodding briefly to the chief’s quarters. Leon noticed him keeping the motion subtle — not that he didn’t understand. Irons prompted a sense of unease within just about anyone with an amygdala, and the RPD seemed to relearn it daily. “Bastard’s got this place in a chokehold. He’s getting older every day, y’know?”

Leon chewed on his bottom lip. Had he been spending too much time with Irons as of late? Being old wasn’t much of a crime. It should be, he’d declared to friends over gas station beer. They’d dreamt of champagne, but come Leon’s first day, they’d not saved enough for it — even in a celebratory context. Long was his second day’s hangover, but before then, he’d decided that the geriatric fools handling the finances of higher education ought to be stopped. Escorted back to their nursing homes. Wasn’t fair for him to bear the fruits of incompetence — until the tree itself was displaced. Rather, until he was displaced. The rookies fell beneath Irons, now — he got to reap what bubbled at the top.

Marvin gave him a minute to respond, but he didn’t. He didn’t know quite what to say. A year ago, he would’ve agreed — but that was before he garnered favoritism from the geriatric fools. Now, he profited from the system. Wasn’t worth criticizing anymore. Marvin only seemed to get it when Leon averted his gaze.

“I’m saying this is wrong, Kennedy,” he said, slowing the sentence. “I’m saying that Irons isn’t retiring. You know what that means? I’ll be covering up patchwork taxidermy till I retire if I stay here.”

“It’s a hobby,” Leon defended — the sentence coming out a little harsher than he’d aimed for. Nothing Marvin hadn’t already suspected. “Keeps his mind sharp.”

“Verbatim,” Marvin chuckled, low and humorless in his chest. “Christ, son… you’ve gotta get away from that man.”

“He’s not hurting anyone,” Leon argued, glancing down at his badge like it was going to defend him. “I don’t see why this matters, Lieutenant. The station’s fine, the city’s fine, we’re fine. A stuffed tiger’s not gonna take your job.”

“You know it’s more than that,” Marvin said, voice intensifying with his gaze. “You were in the office when she came in to file.”

Leon’s eyes darted instinctively to the woman in question — a rookie behind the glass that Irons had taken abrupt interest in. Not the sort he took in Leon after noticing that he was a strong boy who knew when to keep quiet. She’d garnered the immediate sort. The sort Leon’s mother had discouraged exhibiting before her demise.

And, shit, Marvin made sense for a moment. She’d looked scared that day — Leon hadn’t gotten the report directly, but he’d heard the way her voice ebbed and rasped. He’d seen the way the whites of her eyes made themselves more prominent than her pupils. Her hands trembled a little when they had something to hold onto. They trembled a lot when she couldn’t even grasp her own. And he’d known what happened, in time — managed to catch ‘Irons’ from behind the door. They spoke quietly; the word was just repeated often.

“What did you tell her?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly. Marvin glanced at the girl, avoiding eye contact for a moment as he cleared his throat.

“I told her to get the hell away from here,” he admitted, shaking his head. “In any other instance, I could’ve arrested the bastard. Made sure he didn’t get the chance to make good on those threats. But I knew I wasn’t gonna have any power here…” he sighed, eyes suddenly downcast. “Only way I’ll get the power needed for this job is to defend him. That’s why I’ve decided to leave.”

Leon clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, unsure what to say. Marvin was right. That girl wasn’t safe. It’d be better if she sought alternative employment. He’d never have to see that report — he could go back to sifting through the cases of sexual assault that he’d managed to detach himself from.

But he didn’t want to lose Lieutenant Branagh. When Irons ran him dry during that first week, Marvin took over the patrols he personally deemed excessive. Coached him when he froze. His friendship with Irons, while it was good to feel important, was political.

Marvin sighed again, seeming to recognize that Leon had drifted a little too deep into the role. “You’re not a bad man, Kennedy. You just can’t expect it to stay that way if you keep eating straight from his hand.”

That was the last time the two spoke, but in Leon’s mind, the conversation looped. Leon found himself muttering the first sentence under his breath often. The one he wanted to remember. The one he still wanted to be true.

“You’re not a bad man, Kennedy,” rang through his head as he helped Irons forge the third incident report of the week as faulty. He’d gotten a little better at it — Irons was going senile, surely. You couldn’t go overboard when trying to make a victim seem malicious or insane. A little did it when you worked at the RPD.

“You’re not a bad man, Kennedy,” hummed with the cars as he decided which of Irons’s enemies to fine excessively for fictional speeding. It felt stupid, carrying around that notepad, but at least it helped him keep his false charges straight.

“You’re not a bad man, Kennedy,” carried itself with the wind as he stumbled across the same girl that had fled with Marvin one night. Speeding down a backroad after a particularly bad shift. Leon had been having a rough week — hell, a rough month. Being Irons’s lapdog was increasingly developing into a burden, rather than a privilege. Still, her features softened in relief when the shadows cast away from his face. Unaware that Irons had instilled a little bit of himself in Leon’s brain. A parasite, slowly eating away at his frontal lobe. Leaving bits of his brain in shambles. The bits one would need most to be a good cop.

Leon had liked Psychology enough in school. The Academy had required its students to be well-versed in the brain’s mechanisms — after all, how was one supposed to police what they couldn’t understand? Not that Leon understood well enough to avoid a criminal’s psyche. As much as he’d generally forgotten, one lesson still stuck out to him, perhaps at random — the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. The lecture that rang through his ears as he stared into the former rookie’s eyes.

On one hand, he knew his strength. He knew that this woman, albeit strong in her own right, had the sort of frame he could splay across the hood of a car. Or a tree. Or the asphalt. He knew that he was pent. The still-hard-post-masturbation sort of pent. And he knew that the woman before him was pretty enough to get the job done.

But on the other hand, wasn’t he supposed to be a cop? Wasn’t he supposed to cuff the men with these sorts of thoughts and interrogate them till they cried? Leon wasn’t supposed to be a rapist — he was supposed to be some sort of savior. But he’d failed to be one in the face of the police chief’s harassment, and now, he had to decide if he wanted to fail this woman again.

The thing about cognitive dissonance is, he realized, that it’s impossible for it to last long. Sometimes it’s a gradual process — sometimes it’s an instantaneous switch. Either way, the contradiction demanded to be eased. He either apologized to that woman and kept his dick far away from where it wasn’t wanted, or somehow justified it to himself. Turn rape into a mistake, rather than a felony. Hardly anyone wants to be a bad person, him included.

“You’re not a bad man, Kennedy,” buzzed with the hospital’s ventilation as he looked newborn you in the eyes for the first time — seeing enough of your mother in them to make him sick. He hardly had an excuse for that. Hell, she had all the reason in the world to shove you off into his arms and

It should’ve stopped with that gathering at the RPD, but it didn’t. He’d seen her again on the side of the road. And again at his front door. And again at the hospital, you in tow. And again in his bed. And again, and again, and again. He let her haunt him for awhile. It was the least he could do. Regurgitating the same quote wasn’t enough, sometimes, so he kept a log of his charity — until guilt became an afterthought.

It didn’t feel like anything, you realized abruptly. Having sex didn’t feel like anything.

Your friends had conveniently remembered you tonight. The bar they often occupied had a deal each Saturday — the Night Out special. If you came with a group of five or more, you’d get one round of free drinks per person. Their fifth had gotten into a particularly nasty fight recently — and while you’d typically argue that alcohol could numb the ache, you weren’t one to deny long-forsaken socialization. So you tugged on a coat, shook the dust off of your car keys, and drove out to meet them — fully prepared to be cast as their designated driver.

You didn’t care for this bar much. They liked it because the staff were relaxed to a nearly absurd degree — hell, you’d never even caught sight of an ID being retrieved here. But the music was shitty and the social scene was shittier. The room reeked of alcohol poisoning and sexual desperation. Your friends, as expected, largely cast you aside in favor of discussing their own affairs, leaving you to soak up the atmosphere. And soak it up you did. Every last drop of shoddy service and grime.

“Whatcha drinking?” a deep voice resonated behind you — suddenly enough to make you flinch. Everything seemed to make you flinch nowadays, sure, but this was a little more justified. You put a hand over your heart to steady it. He laughed. You found yourself laughing with him.

“Uh… Coke,” you’d said when the breathiness subsided. Took a second for you to remember — you’d hardly consumed any of it. He glanced over to your friends, seeming to connect the dots.

“Mmh. You’re designated driver. Mind if I have a seat?”

You shook your head, gesturing that the stool to your left was open. Truthfully, the one to your right was, too, but you hoped one of your friends would move back into it. Disclusion could be a memory, if they let it die, but they seemed to shift one space away from you anytime you inclined yourself toward them.

He inhaled, taking a long drink from his glass. You hadn’t encountered polite attention from men in a long time, now. You hadn’t met a man who looked at you like you meant something in months. And hell, if he was buttering you up by coaxing you into talking about the hobbies you used to enjoy, you accepted it, because that felt like normalcy — and lord knows you needed more of that as of late.

So when he asked to fuck you, you said yes.

He was conventionally attractive. Roughly your age — perhaps a couple years your senior. Let you work out a little arrangement to fuck, drive your wasted friends home, come back to his apartment, and fuck again. Held the door open for you on the way out of the bar. Laughed at your jokes about your friends ditching you. Bare minimum shit. But ‘bare minimum’ seldom described men today, you’d come to find. Courtesy had shriveled, paused to dig its own grave, climbed in, and silently died before the body could be found. Thank God, you thought, legs crossed in the passenger side of his car.

Problem was, you’d never really had consensual sex. That occurred to you as you shifted on the mattress beneath him, watching his brows furrow as he spoke: “Are you comfortable?” And you were. For once in your goddamn life, you were. His body felt big in the way a weighted stuffed animal did, not a hydraulic press.

And you liked kissing him. Aesthetically, anyway. You liked the way his stubble grazed your cheek and the his tongue slowly integrated itself instead of forcing itself down your throat. You liked the way his finger dipped beneath the elastic of your panties tentatively, the way he locked eyes with you to make sure nothing he did was too fast or too harsh.

But you didn’t want this.

Not in the sense that you were being taken by force. No, that probably would’ve gotten you wet, you realized. When he paused for a moment, seeming to contemplate why you weren’t, you lied and said that you were on antidepressants. Antidepressants would probably do you good, even if they didn’t reverse this. The disconnect. You wanted to revel in the fact that his cock was big and his hands were strong, but unless one of those hands wrapped itself around your throat, you couldn’t. Your father was a sick bastard who’d had the audacity to pass on the sickness.

And you knew that was it. Sex and your father had become entwined in your brain, and by further association, rape had wrapped itself in the guise of pleasure. You didn’t know if it was a coping mechanism or a disorder. A mix of both, probably. But rape was inherently greedy. For now, it wasn’t a matter of having a kink. It wasn’t a porn category you’d pray the network didn’t pick up on. To your mind, rape was sex, and consent wasn’t anything meaningful. Consent wasn’t what was supposed to get you off, anymore. Consent made you zone out, somehow, and when you came to, a man other than your father was pulling out of you.

So, of course you didn’t cum.

“You’re satisfied?” he asked, brow furrowed in confusion as you fixed yourself up in the bathroom. Clean, you noted, hurrying to clip your bra and ensure the neckline of your dress was even. It felt wrong, lying to such a gentleman, but you’d been coerced into burying the truth next to the grave you were digging for yourself. It’s not like you could tell him what really got you off, so you settled for a ‘mhm!’

He gave you a look. Like he didn’t really believe you. Probably thought you were following customs you’d inherited from some patriarchal nightmare. “The female orgasm is a myth” sort of bullshit. You offered him another smile, slinging your bag over your shoulder. “Thank you, I had a nice time…” you said quietly. You meant it, for once. He seemed to believe that much.

“Yeah, uh… of course. You leaving?” he asked, nodded briefly to the hand you’d sneaked to his doorknob. You bit your lip, shifting your weight awkwardly between each foot. Exposed in half a second.

“Yeah…” you chuckled, unable to convert the awkwardness into anything more palatable — leaving it to uncomfortably marinate in the air. “I don’t want my friends to try and go home without me. They’re probably already pissed.” (That wasn’t a lie. They were probably pissed.)

He didn’t ask if you planned to come back after — the door didn’t lock behind you as you closed it. It was open, should you choose to come back and rejoin him, but there was a mutual understanding that you wouldn’t. That this sort of connection wasn’t for you, as much as it could’ve been.

As you drove back, drunken friend group crammed into the backseat, you thought of him and the way he seemed to regard you. Sheer guilt concealed his name, but he was warmer than you remembered men could be. The kind of man that Mama would probably want you to marry, if she was still around. And you could hear him, too, laughing over the table that had only seemed to get colder with every year that she was gone.

You could’ve married that man, maybe. If not him, someone like him. If your father hadn’t done something unforgivable to you, that would’ve been your first time. It could’ve been soft and slow. Could’ve been something beautiful. You’d understand why they called it ‘making love’ instead of failing to understand why your father would rip your body to shreds. If your father hadn’t ruined your perception of intimacy, you could still be capable of it.

You clenched the wheel, anger bubbling up in the way your pillow usually stifled. You weren’t exactly sure what to do with yourself. Maybe you should’ve been getting out more. Tried to find new ways to diffuse your anger before it pooled like this.

You ended up slamming the car door a little too hard once you pulled in, disappointed that you’d forced yourself to go home. Disappointed that you’d forced yourself to be realistic, after all — even when reality incessantly oscillated between drab and horrific.

You waved to your dad out of courtesy as you stepped in, somewhat disturbed by his presence — he wasn’t one to sit up and wait for you. Although, you weren’t exactly one to go out much anymore.

“Where the hell were you?” he slurred, trying to lift his chin enough to get a good look at you. Didn’t work — the muscles in his neck refused to stiffen accordingly, slumping him back over. Heavy lids drooped over his blue eyes — you couldn’t tell if his gaze was meant to convey lust or sluggishness. The latter, you rationalized, even as your gut pleaded you to reconsider.

“I was out with friends,” you muttered, tossing your bag onto the table. He winced in the dark as your keys came into contact with the wood, shoulders flitting upward — as if that would do anything to block the sound. Thankfully, he’d rendered himself pathetic while you were gone.

He thought on it for a moment, taking longer than he usually did to produce a sentence. Hopefully, you thought, his mind was starting to go, just like that police chief’s had when you were young. Unfortunately, you found the true culprit of his mugginess before the fantasy could blossom to fruition — a half-downed bottle of vodka. You’d been wondering when he was gonna drink that. Pondered drinking it yourself more than you’d like to admit, but your father wasn’t the sort to show you kindness.

“You’ve got friends?” he chuckled, the sound rasping a bit in his throat. “Figured you would’ve gone off with one of ‘em when things got bad around here.”

“I tried,” you narrowed your eyes in the dark, unsure why you were mentioning this in the first place. “I reached out. Then you decided to record yourself fucking me in my sleep.”

His face seemed to still in shock for a moment, like he’d genuinely forgotten — before his expression relaxed again. “Mhm…” he mumbled, the corners of his mouth upturning slightly. “You still keep that Polaroid?”

“I don’t want you to disperse it while I’m gone,” you admitted, suddenly very aware of the photo’s presence in your wallet. Your eyes darted to it on the table, and he laughed — mental acuity suddenly regained, in part.

“You keep it in there,” he realized, glancing from your own wallet to his on the coffee table. “I’ve got one of my own. If I wanted to show your tits off to my friends, I would’ve done it already.”

Something about that made your blood boil. Scalded your veins a bit too much to feign indifference. You’d almost gotten used to the way he talked down to you while raping you — but for him to brush off the event with such casualty outside of it had always chipped at your patience. You couldn’t respond to him, mouth suddenly dryer than it’d been in a few days.

“Were you looking to get hammered?” he asked, seemingly unable to compute that his daughter had a life (ish) and friends (ish) outside of him. “You look fine. Saw your car pull in straight.”

“I’m not an idiot,” you spat back, starting toward your room — too infuriated to be around him at all. He straightened a little, registering that you were leaving.

“Hey, no, not done talkin’ to you…” he slurred, as if you two were somehow acquaintances. Drinking buddies, if he still thought you’d had anything to drink. You turned around with a scoff, eyes catching his hastily-discarded equipment in the corner. Bastard probably planned to get shitfaced the moment he changed. The moment his pistol was reasonably far from him. You wished, for the split second before you snapped, that you hadn’t caught sight of the grip — that the gun had remained forever obscured from your thoughts. But it didn’t. Before you could stifle your anger, the same way you’d done a thousand times before, the gun was in your hand.

“Don’t move,” you spat, voice shaky as you stalked toward him. And he stopped when you asked, for once — watching your every move with wide eyes. Only thing he’d dared to do was flinch. You wouldn’t have pulled the trigger over a flinch — surely. That narrative was more comforting than the reverse. And you needed comfort. For his sake, too, you needed to breathe. In half a second, you’d crossed the living room’s rug, pressing the gun flush to his adam’s apple for support as you straddled him. He wheezed, airflow restricted for a moment, stilling once more when your thighs settled themselves over his hips.

“Gonna fuckin’ kill you,” you muttered, pressing the service pistol to his temple and tapping a manicured nail to the trigger. He flinched, ever-so-slightly, each time the tip of your index made contact with the safety — as much as he willed himself to stop. Like a button wired straight to his nervous system. You found it amusing, briefly — but not in the way that could satiate you. Your head was racing too fast for real thoughts to complete themselves, but you’d let one concept cloud your brain — an eye for an eye.

As many times as you’d been raped by this man, you hadn’t quite made a guide on how to rape him back. Consciously. Whatever devil in the opposite hemisphere of your brain was doing just fine while you went on autopilot. Semi-autopilot. You trailed the gun from his temple to the hard line of his mouth, tapping the muzzle between his lips. “Open,” you hummed, letting your hand trail to the button of his jeans. “Nice and easy.”

He parted his lips, letting the barrel slide flat along his tongue — lowering his jaw with a grunt to accommodate the weapon. Seemed like it would taste bitter. Perfect. You silently thanked your friends for getting too drunk to stay out longer — otherwise, you’d have to deal with one of the insufferable belts he’d pair with his uniform, rather than a pair of jeans. Those belts provided a rape alibi by themselves — they were nigh impossible to remove in an efficient manner. Horrid. It disturbed you, for a minute, how easy it was to think of belts while prying your father’s cock from his boxers, wetting your fingers with your own saliva — but only for a moment. You were past rationality. Past being kind to the man who had ruined you.

He grimaced as you forced the gun back further, prompting another wheeze. You held his cock to your palm for a moment, briefly smiling to yourself — sick bastard was getting hard to you doing this. You abruptly shoved the gun back again, feeling him twitch in your hand, precum uselessly drooling against your wrist. At least he knew how to make this easy.

“You’re getting off to this?” you laughed — but you paused for a moment. The voice didn’t quite sound like you. You kept speaking, trying to shove away the dissonance. “You’re getting off to getting raped?”

“No,” he gasped out as you withdrew the gun, airflow suddenly restored. A string of saliva snapped from his tongue to the muzzle. “No, fuck—“

The way he looked at you — all pale and wide-eyed — made you feel sick. Guilt, probably. Satisfaction was a greedy emotion, though, so rather than stopping, you backhanded him as hard as you could muster — pumping his cock as his hips involuntarily bucked into it. Fucker was just like you, at the end of the day. Getting raped got him hard enough to fuck your fist like a fleshlight. Getting hit made precum drip down to the base, as hurt as he looked by it. Maybe it was shame. He was long overdue to feel shame, somehow.

“You’re pathetic,” you hissed, striking him again as you adjusted your panties to the side — tugging them by the gusset. “Real fuckin’ pathetic, asking me to stop—“ you gripped his cock a little harder than necessary, sandwiching the tip between your folds. Shit almost made your legs shake — forcing your father like this to begin with had gotten you wet enough to make your head fuzzy.

“Baby… baby, you don’t have to do this…” he groaned, words slurred a little more heavily than you remembered. You rocked your hips gently, grazing the tip inside for less than a second. His eyelids fluttered, another grunt rising from his throat.

“Your cock doesn’t want me to stop,” you retaliated, dragging the tip up to your throbbing clit — thighs trembling slightly at the tentative nudge. You found yourself tempted, for a moment, to get yourself off with that — but you felt that would spare him a fraction of his dignity. That would defeat the purpose. You wanted him, for once in his fucking life, to crumble as low as you had.

You straightened yourself, sliding yourself down onto his dick — letting him bottom out faster than his mind could take. You were fine, for once. You’d gotten fucked earlier. You could take it. All that mattered was that he couldn’t. His breath staggered, eyes wide as his head fell back — chest rising and falling in a sort of hushed panic. Oddly reminiscent of the way animals go still when they’re scared and hopeless. That didn’t phase you as you slid your hips up to the tip, letting your cunt clench around every overstimulated part of him.

“You happy?” you taunted, breath going a little ragged as you fucked him into the couch. Slick had started to make the motion audible — you’d be embarrassed if you were the victim. “What’s wrong, dad? Isn’t this what you wanted? Isn’t this what you asked for?”

He opened his mouth, closing it when the pistol was guided back to his temple. As if he would’ve been able to coherently respond to begin with. Tears beaded across his waterline — but you weren’t sure if they were reflexive or emotional. You’d never seen dad cry. Not at mama’s missing reports, not when you moved out, never. Crying solely because he was forced to take what he inflicted was enough to piss you off further, somehow — pussy spasming at the mere sight of humbling him. Your free hand found its way to his throat, gripping around it as you felt yourself throb around him.

That’s all it took for you to cum, ultimately — the sight of his face, somehow more broken than you could’ve fantasized of. You dug your fingernails into his throat, gasping out as your thighs trembled, riding him till your cunt twitched and sex started to hurt. That was your cue. This was for you, not him. If he wanted to jerk off and cry to the bruises you’d left, good on him — that wasn’t why you’d raped him. You eased yourself off of him, dressing yourself before you had to look him in the eye. The orgasm high took most of the anger with it as it faded.

You curled up in bed that night, thoroughly exhausted, leaving him to rot in the living room. Metaphorically, for now.

That sort of post-rape uncleanliness you’d grown so accustomed to typically hit in the mornings — and this case was no exception.

You took the same scalding shower. Scrubbed the same skin raw. Unfortunately, most of the distress came from sheer confusion. You’d been the perpetrator, for once — why were you disgusted with yourself? Didn’t he deserve it?

Confusion gave way to guilt. You couldn’t breathe, couldn’t process how you’d live for a moment — realizing what you’d done to your father. Wouldn’t this make you two even? Couldn’t you go, finally? Couldn’t you find a therapist in the outskirts of Raccoon and grant shelter to a couple cats?

In the early hours of the morning, that seemed like a wonderful plan. Getting away in general, anyway. You didn’t know if you could bear to face him as you stepped back into the living room to retrieve your bag, heart lurching at the sight of him still there. You capitalized on the prospect of him being out cold for your plan — though, predictably, it was rather short-lived.

You crept by, breath hitching with his as he woke up — chest releasing with his as he cracked his neck. You reached for your bag, dragging it halfway across the table when he finally spoke up.

“Thought you’d be more eager to stay,” he slurred, groaning as he rubbed his temples. “Seemed like you wanted to rub it in my face a little.”

You bit your bottom lip, not anticipating how blunt he’d be about it — regret flaring up in your chest when you noticed the dark bruises strewn across his skin. Like you’d left a bit of yourself into his face when you hit him. Deserved, you reminded yourself, and you knew that you were right, but it didn’t sit well that you’d fallen into this. That you’d resorted to this sort of thoughtless brutality, like he had. You weren’t supposed to be capable of what he was.

It became apparent that you weren’t going to respond, so he made do — he filled in the gaps where conversation should’ve gone by himself. “I realized something, last night…” he mused, looking up at the TV. It’d stayed off for longer than you could remember; the remote’s absence had rendered it more useful as a mirror. He squinted as he spoke, peering into it more deeply. “I look old.”

Your face remained stoic — but you permitted the slightest bit of confusion to downturn your expression. Stepping forward, part of you couldn’t help but agree — between the white hairs sprouting across his scalp and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, he looked older than your mind’s eye had conjured up. Wasn’t anything you’d take much note of, personally — but he seemed nothing short of bewildered.

“I mean, you look… forty-whatever,” you shrugged it off — as if you didn’t remember exactly how old your father was. Of course you did. You hand-made cards for him for every birthday he had, till you turned fifteen and realized it wasn’t reciprocated. You wondered where those cards had found themselves, nowadays — perhaps there was a second box of Playboys you hadn’t encountered. As if you’d go hunting after the first.

“Yeah, I know,” he muttered, expression tensing in irritation. “I’m saying that I didn’t get it till last night. Knew I was getting older, didn’t know I was looking the part.”

You pursed your lips, unsure if false sympathy would be an adequate apology for sexual assault. He seemed to imply that — but you didn’t particularly want to make amends with your father. You’d been raped more times awake than you could recall off the top of your head, and more times asleep than you could begin to process. So, you settled on: “Oh.”

“Time stopped after I joined the RPD,” he said, glancing back at the uniform, still draped over one of the kitchen chairs. “After about a year in, or so. Maybe two. Around the time I met your mother.”

You paused, suddenly intrigued — sure, it’d been easy to guess what had happened between your parents, but he’d never outright said it. Didn’t mention your mom unless it was to compare you to her. You straightened up a little, arms folding as you implored him to continue. He looked at you for a long moment and sighed, realizing you expected for him to elaborate.

“She was, uh… the first girl I… y’know,” he said, shifting his gaze in discomfort. Only drew discontent from you.

“Raped?” you said, words laced with a bit more venom than anticipated. Not that it wasn’t necessary. “You’ve assaulted your own daughter more times than you can count, but you’re scared of the word rape?”

“No,” he scoffed back. “No, I can say it. I’d rather not, now. Doesn’t feel good to recall.”

You wanted to scream back something at him — about how he was sick, how he was the worst hypocrite you’d had the displeasure of knowing. But the words lodged themselves in your throat. You knew he didn’t deserve your sympathy, but something within you still saw dad in that man. The stupidest fucking part of you, sure — the part that you wanted to cut off and roast over a spit, absolutely, but nonetheless, a part of you. Fuck, you’d hurt dad — you’d done something unforgivable to dad. It wasn’t enough to prompt an apology, but it was enough to cease the will to scream.

“Of course it doesn’t,” you settled on, rationalizing the response. “You don’t think mama felt the same way? You don’t think I feel the same way?”

“I didn’t think at all,” he chuckled. Sounded hollow. “You can’t think after you’ve done that to someone. I wasn’t thinking much at all when I met your mother — just thought about how I could still consider myself a good man after that.”

“First step’s probably not raping another girl,” you muttered, voice bitter as you heard out his attempts to save face. If that’s what this was. Didn’t seem organized enough to have much of an intent at all, once you thought about it.

“You can’t stop,” he responded. “Stopping means thinking about all of the shit you’ve done, instead of the ways you’ll get away with it. Thinking about all of the people you’ve hurt. I can’t do that, sweetheart — the guilt… it’s gonna kill me.”

“So die,” you said flatly. To your benefit, nothing much at all seemed to shock him anymore. He laughed off the remark, gesturing to the service pistol you’d discarded last night.

“Do the honors.”

Your mouth curled into a frown. Admittedly, you considered it. Really considered it. But you were far from dumb. “The RPD practically worships the ground you walk on,” you sighed in disinterest. “I’d rather not get convicted of your murder.”

“Well,” he sat up, groaning as he re-positioned his head. “You’re not leaving ‘cause I’ve still got that video, and I’m not leaving ‘cause you’d go straight to the station,” he shrugged. “What do you propose we do from here?”

You didn’t bother to think on it. “I’m gonna kill you someday,” you said, “You ruined me like you let the force ruin you, and I’m gonna kill you for it.”

He chuckled, amused by the threat. “I’ll be looking forward to it. Shame nobody’ll be there to pull the trigger when you can’t forget that you’re a rapist.”

The retaliation didn’t hit correctly. You stood there, lips still pursed, acting as if you felt neutral to the fact that you’d raped your father in an act of revenge. Logically, you knew — blaming yourself for the act was futile. When you trap an animal, it bites. Living within one’s childhood home in the context of captivity was enough to make anyone go stir-crazy. What you did was a natural response. What you did was realistic. You’re not a bad person — you knew it.

The opening of a cardboard case stirred you from your thoughts. Your father extended a cigarette to you, eyes still a little dull from the previous night’s intoxication. That didn’t do his presentation any favors.

“No, thanks. I’m saving my lungs,” you said, wrinkling your nose in exaggerated disgust.

“Smoke half of one, then. You’re gonna need it,” he insisted, pressing the cigarette to your palm before you could object and nodding to the lighter on the coffee table. You lit your own with a sigh, absentmindedly tossing the lighter to your father.

“Thought you drank.”

He shrugged, taking a drag. “Got too reliant on it. Tried to wean myself off with cigarettes. Now they’re both my vices.”

Mentally chastising him, you pressed your lips around the cigarette, taking the sort of drag you’d seen in the movies — immediately coughing as your lungs singed in protest. You groaned, nearly dropping the thing — feeling your dad’s hand steady yours till the fit subsided.

He made the motion of holding a breath before you let it go, so you tried that — you still coughed, sure, but your head started to go a little fuzzy. Your own actions started to root themselves out of your excuses. You were sick, your father was sick, and this whole house ought to be burned to the ground — but the revelation only prompted acceptance. Neutrality. Long-forsaken calm.

So you breathed in again. Cough. Let the dread stifle itself. Good people make mistakes. Rape, in this case, was a mistake. You made a mistake. You are good.

Your father laughed at the cough, again. You phased him out. Another drag, another breath, another beat.

You’re not a bad woman, Kennedy.

#🔖:inarecs:#resident evil #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy x you #dead dove do not eat #minors dni

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