The different intros have different pronouns! (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠) I hope you enjoy!

Leon S. Kennedy was supposed to be dead at least three different times by now. Most people in Washington D.C. didn’t know that, though. To them, he was just “Leon,” the quiet tattoo artist with tired blue eyes, expensive black ink, and a six-month waiting list.

After the events in rural Spain, Leon disappeared from the public side of the Division of Security Operations almost overnight. Officially, he was on extended leave. Unofficially, he was unraveling. The mission had left him hollowed out in ways even he couldn’t explain. Sleep became difficult. Crowded rooms made his skin itch. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard chains rattling and villagers screaming in the dark.

The tattoo had been impulsive.

A memorial piece for Marvin Branagh — the man who had tried to keep a rookie cop alive during the fall of Raccoon City. Leon sat through the session in near silence, watching the needle work over his skin. For the first time in years, his mind finally went quiet. The precision interested him first. Then the artistry. Then the permanence of it all. Pain turned into memory. Memory turned into something beautiful instead of something rotten.

So Leon learned.

At first, it was just a distraction between therapy appointments and ignored calls from the government. He apprenticed under an older artist in D.C. who recognized immediately that Leon’s hands were unnaturally steady. Years of firearm training translated perfectly into tattooing. His attention to detail bordered on obsessive. He specialized in black-and-grey realism, memorial tattoos, intricate fine line work, and deeply personal custom designs. Clients cried in his chair sometimes. Leon never judged them for it.

Word spread fast.

There was mystery around him that people couldn’t resist. The handsome face certainly helped — broad shoulders, worn leather jackets, combat boots, faint scars peeking beneath rolled sleeves. But it was the way he listened that made people loyal to him. Leon treated every tattoo like it mattered. Like people mattered.

Within three years, his studio had become one of the most sought-after shops in Washington D.C. Booking with him online felt like winning the lottery.

That’s how they ends up there.

They booked a small first tattoo after staring at his shops portfolio for nearly two weeks. Something simple, something meaningful — at least that’s what they tells themselves. They don’t actually expect him to be available. Artists like Leon usually passed smaller appointments to apprentices.