Saudade: Leon Kennedy x Reader

Enmity

"The autopsy is inconclusive." The pathologist repeatedly said; each susurration causing the man's lips to pull further down in dismay. With a pout, he dropped his chattels on his desk: a stack of coffee-stained documents. Dread overcame him as he watched the papers disseminate. This feeling, however, fed into a blinding surge of rage. He leapt to his feet, taking a pen before slashing at the margins indignantly, laminating the paper in black ink.

In the dark office, the dingy-haired man hovered above his desk. He tried to air out his smock with ink-daubed fingers. But his shirt, dank with sweat, had begun to stick to his sunken shoulders. His lip rolled between his teeth before he parted with a belated sigh as his lanky, fleshless body relaxed. His expression was somber; He was focused on something far beyond the window, and he sat there patient, watchful, unmoving, implacably prescient.

The man exited his office, marching towards his that of his boss's. His wizened countenance peered out from beneath a wedge of a bowler hat, complimented by the muffler wound about his neck. The old man appeared to be sleeping, as his wrinkled eyelids formed a hood above his eyes, yet the cold kept the man alert as he dredged through the sleet.

There was no oncoming traffic, so he careened down the boulevard. The dreary landscape appeared more miserable than usual in the waning daylight. The sun seemed to pause momentarily, penetrating the fog to land upon him mockingly, as if it were telling him that he was running out of time. As if to make a statement, the man held his wristwatch to his face and read aloud the time.

The scientist passed by several dull, concrete high rise offices, many of which bore new scars of vandalism. His greatest grievance, however, was the lack of adornments that the buildings bore. No longer were the buildings' edifices blanketed in tapestries of black, red, and white insignias. Rather, the company had outgrown and abandoned the campus. The corporation's tenure of virtue had expired; what had once been a righteous association aspiring to affordably aid the ill in United States had fallen to the clammy mitts of commercialization.

The only building which still bore Umbrella's logo was a diminutive cabin on the riverbanks. It had once been home to several executive offices, although it had been gradually vacated with the company's relocation. Melting snow though the gelid seasons had warped the boards of the small building, causing the roof to sag beneath the parapet and the veranda to become asperous. The masonry forming the foundation hasn't fared much better, as the crevices in the stonework had become footholds for the vines that crept up from below. The dilapidated edifice was not a unique sight among the inauspicious neighborhood it occupied.

He entered the building and wiped his shoes on the entrance mat, awaiting an amanuensis to guide him towards the interrogator's office. Although he hadn't appraised himself to be prying, he glanced around corridor, transfixed the eclectic decorative choices, especially with the perversely charming angle in which the sheriff's portraits hung. He disregarding that the clock had struck a quarter-hour past her scheduled appointment before an amanuensis guided him to a crimson door at the end of the hallway by a light that emanated from a stained-glass lamp atop a teetering three-legged stool.

He placed his pudgy palm on the copper knob before tugging, where he was met with harsh artificial light and a tiny bureau. The elderly pathologist squinted while lingering in the brightly-lit threshold, essaying to delineate the amorphous mass that beckoned him inwards. The contour materialized into a man who was emaciated and bedraggled, with a husky ashen coiffure and growing stubble. He abraded his palms on his smock, sighing as the geriatric man debouched towards him. His agitation quickly changed into shock among hearing a single utterance.

"I need your authorization to redo the autopsy."

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