Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

〔 If I am reborn and come to meet you, do you think this shredded up heart of mine will heal? You see, I was manipulated by someone else, and was intoxicated by that pair of fake wings. 〕

The night settles in quietly, the quiet that feels earned after a long, exhausting day where everything seemed just a little more draining than it should have been. Work, university, family, everything was nothing short of exhausting. It was as if the world had it out for you that exact day, having every single possible thing that could go wrong, go terribly wrong.

By the time you finally push your door shut behind you, hoping to find some mental peace in the comfort of your bedroom, all you really want is something simple. Anything to be able to turn your thoughts off, something mindless enough to let your brain rest without asking for anything in return.

Your bag slips from your shoulder with a dull thud against the floor, abandoned somewhere near your desk without much care; you didn’t have the strength to care, anyway.

You don’t even bother turning any of the lights on, deciding to walk towards where you think your computer is, completely in the dark, trusting in your knowledge of your bedroom’s layout.

Did it work? Yes, you made it there.

Did you manage to hit your sides against one too many pieces of furniture you somehow didn’t even remember you had? Absolutely.

You blame the lack of spatial awareness and such on the mental and emotional fatigue. Your poor mind definitely can’t work well under such conditions.

Finally, you reach your objective. Your fingers brush against the edge of the desk first, blindly searching for that one button that would finally bring some light to the room, then keep going, skimming across its surface, hoping to bump your hand into the corners of your pc tower, though what you find instead is basically everything else.

A pen rolls under your palm, which you were so sure you had lost approximately two months ago, because it was that one specific pen that was gifted to you during one of those Secret Santa events at work you were forced to participate in, and how could you ever forget that pen? Beautiful, wonderful even, with that cat-shaped rubber on top. Which is cute, but also, the budget for the gifts was set pretty high, so why would you get an erasable pen of all things?

You keep searching. A notebook shifts, something plastic tips over with a soft sound that makes you pause for a second before continuing anyway. Whatever it was, it didn’t break, so it wasn’t an immediate concern. Your hand knocks lightly into what feels like a stack of cases before grazing the smooth, familiar shape of a controller.

You huff quietly under your breath, half amused, half exasperated. You were so sure you had put that away in its right spot last night after your nth gaming session.

You didn’t, though.

“I should definitely clean this room on my next free day,” you murmur, though there’s no real intention behind it. “Whenever that will be, if I’ll ever have one.”

Your fingers keep searching, moving past cables, which you almost tugged, and if that happened… You don’t want to think about all the things that would’ve ended up on the ground, and you would’ve had to clean up. Then, past something that might be a mug you forgot to bring back to the kitchen, past the corner of your keyboard, would you look at that, you actually might have a computer amidst that mess of a desk! Until finally, they find the edge of your computer tower tucked just beneath the desk.

Yes. Your brain also made you forget that it was under it, not on it.

Perhaps two hours of sleep weren’t enough to go through an eight-hour work shift and four hours of university classes. Who would’ve guessed?

You lean down slightly, blindly feeling along its surface until your fingertips catch on the small, circular power button, and with a soft press. A low hum answers you, and you almost sigh in relief.

The machine whirs to life, quiet at first and then steady, and a moment later your monitor flickers, casting a soft, bluish glow into the darkness, while the tower with its LED lights casts another light, but in a vibrant red colour.

And just like that, your room comes into view.

It’s messy.

Not overwhelmingly so, not in a way that feels chaotic or out of control. It’s messy in that lived-in, comfortable way where everything has a place, even if it isn’t exactly there at the moment. Certainly, if your brain wasn’t giving up on you and castigating you for an absurd lack of knowledge regarding the human need to sleep, and no, naps don’t count, you wouldn’t have struggled orienting yourself in your own room.

Your desk is scattered with small things you recognize immediately now that you can see them properly. Your notebook is half open, a pen resting diagonally across its pages, some of the words impossible to read, probably written during yet another ‘sleep is for the weak so i’ll just rest for 30 minutes tops’ kind of day, and so many things you promise yourself you will put in their right place.

Just not now, not tonight, not anytime soon. But someday, for sure.

Beyond that, the rest of the room reveals itself slowly in the dim light.

A corner is dedicated almost entirely to gaming, consoles neatly arranged despite everything else, because you’ll be damdned if you have anything happen to your gaming gear. Nothing shall happen to the ultimate stress relief method.

Shelves lined with comics, some stacked properly, others leaning slightly like they’ve been taken and put away one too many times. A few plants sit by the window, well taken care of, certainly better than you take care of yourself.

And then there are the figures.

Small ones, mostly, scattered across your desk and shelves alike, characters from different games, different comics, from all sorts of genres. Looking at them brings some sense of comfort, of home. You don’t buy a lot, but if you do, it’s definitely because those series or those specific characters helped you in their own little ways, and looking at them just feels like… everything will be okay? You can’t put it into words quite well. It’s a thing you don’t understand yourself, and you don’t talk about those things to, well, anyone. You don’t feel like it and don’t want to.

Your gaze keeps skimming along various shelves, until it lingers, inevitably, on one section in particular.

Resident Evil.

Two entire shelves of merchandise for one single series, while some shelves have five or six series, all cramped onto them.

You almost let out a small laugh as you look at your figures and merchandise.

You obviously don’t have a favourite.

You say, looking at the four Leon figures you have, aware that you have none of any other character from the franchise.

In your defence, his small, chibi-like one was too cute to pass on.

Most of it all leans heavily toward the Resident Evil 2 Remake. Therefore, rookie Leon, in his rookie uniform, with softer features, that particular mix of determination, uncertainty, and hope that he can still save as many people as possible, whom you’ve grown impossibly fond of after replaying it more times than you can count. One figure doesn’t stand on the shelf; it stands near your monitor, slightly off-center. Like a gaming buddy of sorts.

Thinking about it, you’ve never quite gotten around to adding as much from other games. You played the seventh game, you played Village, you played the remake of the third, but the weirdest thing was that you had nothing from the remake of the fourth game.

Not yet, anyway.

You haven’t even finished it.

Maybe once you’ll finally finish it, instead of replaying through Raccon City for the twenty-first time in a row.

You sink into your chair as the monitor’s soft glow settles around you like a quiet reassurance, and without really thinking about it, you let out a small breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, your shoulders dropping just slightly as the tension from earlier begins to loosen its grip.

Because this space, messy as it is, cluttered and imperfect, is yours.

And somehow, just being here is enough to make the day feel a little less heavy.

“Today was hell,” you murmur to yourself, voice low and tired, not even bothering to define it further because it hardly matters anymore, and you don’t want to think too much about what happened.

Work had been long.

University had been confusing.

People had been annoying.

Everything had required just a little too much effort.

Every single day requires a bit too much effort, and it’s slowly chipping away at your sanity and strength.

And now, now you just want to not think.

Your fingers find your mouse, waking your computer fully with a few absent-minded clicks while your gaze lingers on the screen, unfocused for a moment as your mind slowly catches up with your body.

There’s a brief flicker of hesitation, the faint, intrusive thought that maybe you should do something productive instead, something responsible, something that tomorrow-you might actually thank you for, like getting a full eight-hour sleep as most responsible people do.

…and you dismiss it instantly, of course.

“Absolutely not,” you decide, shaking your head once as a small, tired smile pulls at your lips. “I deserve this. Sleep is, as always, for the weak. Which I am, but not weak enough.”

Your cursor hovers for a moment before clicking into Resident Evil 4 Remake, the familiar startup sound filling the quiet of your room in a way that feels disproportionately satisfying, like slipping into something familiar after a long day.

Because really, what better way to unwind than this?

“Listen,” you say to no one in particular as the game loads, leaning back slightly, one leg tucked beneath you as you settle in, “sometimes you just need a little escapism, and by escapism I mean two things.”

The menu appears.

Your smile grows, faint but genuine.

“Eye-candy Leon S. Kennedy and shooting things.”

Obviously, he was more than eye candy. He was a handsome, elegant, intelligent, charming, kind, thoughtful, strong, courageous, creative, brilliant, gentle, humble, generous, passionate, wise, funny, loyal, dependable, graceful, radiant, calm, confident, warm, compassionate, witty, adventurous, respectful, sincere, magnetic, bold, articulate, empathetic, inspiring-

Wait. Why were you even making excuses for yourself in your head? If you want to play Resident Evil instead of sleeping, you will. If you want to call the quite masterfully crafted 3D model of Leon S. Kennedy ‘eye-candy’, you absolutely will.

Free will is a thing, and you were gifted it, so whoever is judging can turn the other way and leave you alone.

‘Let me compliment the man. They made him handsome for a reason,’ you thought.

Anyways, as you were thinking: perfect combination.

Therapeutic, even, despite your therapist most likely not agreeing with it.

You roll your shoulders once more, letting yourself sink into the moment as the day finally begins to loosen its grip on you, your fingers moving more confidently now as you load your save file, the familiarity grounding in a way that feels easy and comfortable.

“This is self-care,” you add, almost defensively, in case those judging eyes and voices that totally don’t exist were listening or something. “This is what happiness is made of.”

And just like that, your world narrows to the screen, to the dimly lit corridors and distant ambient sounds, to the steady rhythm of movement and tension that replaces the noise in your head with something far more manageable.

It takes you only a second to recognise where you left off.

Chapter 13.

Fuck.

Your shoulders sink slightly as realisation settles in, your grip loosening just enough on your mouse as a long, slow exhale leaves you.

“…Yeah, okay,” you murmur, tilting your head back before letting it fall forward again, eyes still fixed on the screen. “Now I remember why I stopped playing for, what, months?”

On screen, Leon stands in the kitchen area, the one place in this section of the game that feels almost deceptively safe.

The room is dim, lit mostly by that strange violet flame burning steadily beside the Merchant’s setup, casting an unnatural glow over the worn wooden table and the scattered supplies around it. It was wonderful for photo mode, and you had a whole folder of nice photos of Leon and Ashley taken right next to the aesthetically pleasing flame, but that was about it; you probably skipped any lore regarding the Merchant and his weird flame if there was any. Oh no! Anyway.

Pots and pans hang quietly in the background, the tiled walls dulled with grime and age, while the checkered floor beneath Leon’s boots looks scuffed and stained, like it has seen far too much use over the years. There’s a stillness here that feels deliberate, like the game itself is giving you a moment to breathe before it inevitably takes that away again in the rudest way possible. Namely: ugly regenerating monsters.

Your eyes flick toward the Merchant.

Still there, still silent, still entirely unhelpful.

You angle Leon slightly toward him, crossing your arms loosely as you stare at the screen.

“Ah, yes,” you say, your tone dripping with dry sarcasm, “my favourite business partner, standing there as always, watching me suffer and offering absolutely zero assistance beyond selling me things I can’t afford because I spent every single Peseta I had on fixing my knife becauseI sure as hell am not getting Branagh’s knife destroyed.”

The Merchant doesn’t move.

He doesn’t care. Well, he can’t hear you, but even if he could, he still wouldn’t care.

You gesture vaguely at the screen with your free hand.

“You ever notice how I can be getting chased by, like, ninety-seven enemies, and you’re just standing there like this is a normal Tuesday?” you continue, shaking your head. “Not even a ‘hey, watch out,’ nothing. Just vibes. Just capitalism.”

You pause, then add flatly:

“Thanks for that, by the way. Really appreciate it. I don’t care if you’re a Ganado, I would still appreciate a bit of support every once in a while. Damn.”

Your gaze shifts toward the door at the far end of the kitchen, the one you know leads forward, as it’s the only way to proceed.

The exact door you’ve been avoiding.

It’s heavy, metallic, industrial-looking in a way that contrasts sharply with the rest of the room due to the working, warm light shining right onto it, its surface worn and slightly discoloured, with reinforced panels and small, opaque windows that don’t let you see much of what lies beyond. Even through the screen, it feels unwelcoming, like a threshold you’re not entirely ready to cross.

You stare at it for a moment longer than necessary.

“…Okay,” you say quietly, straightening just slightly in your chair. “We’re doing this, Leon.”

You are not scared.

In fact, you’re not scared at all; you are absolutely terrified. It’s quite different, really.

But you move anyway, because you’re brave, courageous, and if you can survive working in a customer-facing role despite your disdain for ninety per cent of the customers you meet daily, then you can do this. Nothing’s harder than that.

With a small, steadying breath, you guide Leon forward, his footsteps echoing softly against the tiled floor as he approaches the door, your fingers tightening again as he opens it.

It swings inward with a dull, heavy sound.

Beyond it is only darkness.

The lab area is colder, harsher, the lighting dim and unreliable as it flickers intermittently, making you feel even more uneasy. The walls are lined with pipes and equipment, the floor cluttered with debris that crunches faintly underfoot as Leon moves forward, the sound of his steps reverberating in the otherwise quiet space.

Hadn’t you been regretting all of your choices, you would’ve been praising the sound designers for making it somehow even more eerie.

This place has been overtaken by decay, like whatever this was meant to be has long since been abandoned to something worse. You have yet to find advance far enough to find enough documents related to the lore to find out what exactly had happened to bring it all to ruins, but you’re not all too eager to find them, to be quite honest.

You slow Leon’s movements instinctively. Slow walking, not even thinking about running, because you already know what lurks around there. Go into it too fast and rashly, and Leon will suddenly not look all that handsome anymore.

Or alive, for that matter.

Your eyes scan every corner of the screen as Leon inches forward, your earlier resolve thinning just slightly under the weight of the atmosphere, the splatters of blood scattered around the place, either on walls or on the floor, were not helping in the slightest.

“Okay,” you murmur under your breath, leaning forward a little more, as if Leon could hear you. “We’re fine, Leon. We’re just going to turn the power on, get a keycard, and then we’re going to leave to the next area which is not going to be that scary and that’s totally not going to contain another Regenerador, and everything is going to be-”

A sound cuts through your thoughts: low, wet, the sound of constant wheezing gasps from not too far away, and with your headphones on, they sounded too real and too close for comfort.

You freeze.

Leon’s flashlight clicks on, the beam cutting through the darkness ahead as you instinctively adjust the camera, looking left and right, your breath catching as tension spikes sharply in your chest.

“Please no.”

There, at the edge of the screen, something moves.

You shift the camera slightly, so slowly, hoping that if maybe if you go slow enough the game will take pity on you and make that thing go away.

Then you see them.

Those red glowing eyes in the dark.

Your entire body goes rigid.

“Why are they glowing like that?!” you whisper, horrified, your voice rising despite yourself as the shape of the Regenerador becomes clearer in the dim light, its body twitching faintly, its breathing uneven and deeply, deeply wrong.

It steps forward, swaying, so inhuman with its grey skin and sharp, way too long, rows of teeth.

You immediately recoil in your chair, your grip on your mouse tightening to the point of discomfort.

“Leon,” you say, in the tone of someone trying very hard to stay calm, “I need you to understand that I picked hardcore difficulty like an idiot, and now we are both suffering for it.”

You hit the key to reload Leon’s gun, having forgotten to check if his Red9 was fully loaded beforehand, your fingers slipping just enough to make everything worse because somehow you almost missed the button.

If you were there with him, Leon would probably look at you in disappointment.

If he could, he’d be looking at you in disappointment right now, as you’re the one stumbling and scared when you’re playing behind a screen, while he’s the mass of pixel having to deal with invincible monster, parasites, flying bugs the size of a small car and crazy people, with extreme calm.

“Well, okay, technically it’s my fault,” you correct quickly, your words rushing out faster now, “but you’re the one standing there looking competent while I’m actively losing my mind, so I feel like responsibility should be shared. You should turn on your plot armor or invincibility or something to pass this area.”

You fire.

You hit a poor cardboard box behind the ugly thing.

Fire again.

This time it lands, but to your utter disappointment, despite the max upgrade, your gun does nothing.

The Regenerador keeps walking forward, unbothered, almost as if it was mocking you.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, through the panic and the noise and the rising dread, something clicks into place.

“…Wait.”

Your eyes flick to your ammo count, then your inventory.

Barely anything, you’ve only got three bullets, all other weapons empty, no gunpowder, but an abundance of kitchen knives.

Then, even worse, realization hits you like a brick to the face.

“I don’t even know if I can kill this thing, can I? Can it die?! Regenerating is in its damn name, so it can’t die, maybe!?” you breathe, your voice dropping into something strained and incredulous as realization fully sets in. “I literally cannot deal with you right now, why are you here, where are the instructions on how to kill you, why is this allowed-”

The thing lurches closer, way faster than you feel it should legally be allowed to.

Your heart jumps into your throat.

“This isn’t fair,” you mutter, shaking your head as your grip tightens again. “I don’t even know what you are yet, like properly, and I’m supposed to deal with this? Get a life and stalk someone else, go fight the Merchant or something-”

It moves again, way too close for comfort, actually landing a hit on Leon.

You see too much of it. You’re done, see you later.

You physically lean back, recoiling from your own screen.

“No.”

That’s it, that’s the decision. The only possible correct choice.

You spin Leon around and run.

Just running for your life, the camera shaking slightly as you guide him back the way you came, footsteps echoing loudly in the narrow corridors as the Regenerador lets out that horrible, wheezing sound behind Leon.

“Why are you so fast?! You weren’t fast last time!” you blurt out, your voice rising again as you push Leon forward, your fingers pressing harder than necessary against the keys.

The door comes into view.

You rush through it, and you’re back into the kitchen.

You don’t stop moving until Leon is practically right in front of the Merchant again,

“Heh heh. Having a rough day, stranger?”

You stare at the screen for a second.

You let out a breath, seriously trying not to pick a fight with a bunch of pixels on a screen.

“Oh, hi again,” you say, your voice edged with strained humor as you angle Leon slightly toward the Merchant. “Me. Back again. For the eighth time, because I’m terrified of whatever that thing is, you asshole. You’re not funny.”

You gesture vaguely at the screen again, shaking your head.

“You ever think about helping?” you continue, obviously fighting a character of a videogame who can’t even talk back is a normal thing to do, “Like, I don’t know, if you see your number one client sprinting back to you repeatedly in sheer panic, maybe you could, just a thought, step in and deal with the almost immortal, regenerating nightmare chasing her?”

The Merchant remains silent, completely useless.

You sigh, leaning back slightly in your chair.

“Yeah,” you mutter. “Didn’t think so, asshat. I’m not buying shit from you anymore. I hope your business fails.”

You let out a long, strained breath as the tension lingers stubbornly in your shoulders, your gaze fixed on the screen where the Merchant stands in his usual place (He was mocking you. You’re so sure of it, the bastard.), unmoving and entirely unbothered by the panic you just dragged back into his presence, and for a moment you don’t move at all, your fingers hovering uncertainly over your keyboard as though your body has momentarily forgotten what it was supposed to do next.

Then, with a quiet sound of frustration that escapes before you can stop it, you pause the game.

The screen freezes mid-motion, cutting off the oppressive atmosphere just enough for the silence in your room to rush back in, and you lean back into your chair, dragging both hands slowly over your face as if you could physically peel away the stress that has settled there.

“No,” you mutter after a moment, your voice low but firm, tinged with disbelief as you drop your hands back down, staring at the paused image. “That is actually ridiculous, that entire section is a complete hellhole and I refuse to believe anyone played through that and thought, yes, this is perfectly reasonable even on hardcore mode.”

You shift slightly in your seat, propping your elbow against the desk and resting your headagainst your knuckles as your thoughts spiral, irritation clear.

“Who thought this was a good idea?” you continue, your tone incredulous as your gaze focuses on the screen. “Like genuinely, what was the design philosophy here? Throw the worst possible representation of unkillable body horror that looks like a melting statue made of butter at the player and call it a day? Freaking Mendez looked less scary than those things and at least he died fast and like an idiot and Ashley was somewhere outside to be my cheerleader when it happened. Whatever. Amazing, incredible, fantstic. I love being set up for failure. Life is pain.”

A quiet huff leaves you, your lips pressing together briefly before you let your head tilt back slightly, eyes unfocusing for just a moment.

The frustration ebbs just enough for something heavier to settle in its place, because the worst part isn’t even the difficulty itself.

It’s the fact that you’re stuck with it.

You glance back at the paused screen, jaw tightening slightly as the reality of it settles in again.

“I’m not restarting this,” you murmur, quieter now, though there’s a stubborn edge beneath it. “There is no way I’m going all the way back just to lower the difficulty, that would be such a waste of time after getting this far, I’m not doing that to myself.”

And yet, it didn’t look like such a bad idea. You could go back to the title screen and change it.

Or… there is something else you could do.

Something that’s easy, simple, source of very free and easy serotonin.

“I could just replay the remake of the second,” you mumble, the idea slipping out almost absentmindedly, as though it had been waiting there all along. “That was fine, that was easy enough, at least I knew what I was doing and I didn’t have to deal with… whatever those things are.”

Your nose wrinkles faintly at the memory.

“Zombies were simple,” you continue, your voice gaining a hint of certainty as you justify it to yourself. “Groan groan, you shoot them, heaad goes boom, they go down, maybe they get back up, but at least it’s predictable and they’re slow, at least it makes sense. Worst case scenario, a licker, oh no. And Mr. X, yeah, okay, big unkillable guy following you around constantly, but even that wasn’t that bad once I got used to it.”

A small, reluctant smile tugs at your lips despite yourself, the memory softening your expression just slightly.

“Especially with mods,” you add, a quiet breath of amusement slipping through. “The one that replaced his footsteps with squeaky rubber ducks and the one that gave him that ridiculous meme song as his theme durinbg chases, like, he stopped being threatening real fast after that.”

The smile fades as quickly as it came, your gaze returning to the screen, to the game you’ve been avoiding finishing for far too long.

You exhale slowly, shaking your head as you straighten slightly in your chair, your expression shifting into something more resolved.

“Nah,” you decide, more firmly this time. “I can’t just keep doing that, I can’t keep replaying 2 forever just I don’t wanna have to deal with an ugly unkillable red eyed blob .”

Your eyes settle back on Leon, frozen mid-stance on your screen, waiting.

“The things I do for a pretty blonde fictional man, I swear,” you continue, your voice quieter but steadier now. “I’ll finish this just because I like you, agent man. You should feel special. I suck at horrors but I’m still here. Find yourself a woman that loves you as much as I do, I’m way too loyal to you blondie.”

That, and there are other games you haven’t touched yet, other entries you’ve been meaning to get to, and you know perfectly well that you won’t get to any of them if you keep circling back to the same one over and over again. Sure, you might’ve started from Seven/Biohazard, then went to Village, then played the remake of the second, third, and now you’re stuck on the fourth, but hey. At least you were attempting to rectify your mistake and follow a timeline.

You said, having yet to play the spin-offs and the first game. In your defence, your focus was on another entry now.

“I want to play Requiem,” you mutter under your breath, almost as an afterthought. “There’s no way I’m starting that without finishing this first, that would feel illegal.” Five and Six? …They can wait, maybe once they’re on sale.

You let out another breath, slower this time, letting the tension settle into something more manageable as you adjust your posture, your fingers returning to their places on your mouse and keyboard.

Because at the end of the day, this is still your escape.

Even if it scares you, even if it frustrates you.

It’s still something familiar, something that lets you step outside of everything else for a while, and Leon… well, Leon is still Leon, still steady in that quiet, dependable way that makes the experience easier to handle, even when everything else isn’t.

“…You could at least throw me a one-liner right now,” you mumble, glancing at the screen as if expecting some kind of response. “That would help a lot, actually, even if they make me die a bit on the inside everytime you say one.”

Silence answers you, as expected. You huff softly.

“You’re of so much help, thanks, love you too.”

With one final breath to steady yourself, you unpause the game.

The world resumes instantly, the ambient sound rushing back in as movement returns, and you lean forward slightly as you guide Leon toward the door once more, toward the part you’ve been avoiding, your nerves tightening despite your earlier resolve.

“Okay,” you murmur under your breath, almost like a promise. “We’re actually doing this now. No running away, we’re beating this chapter tonight.”

You press forward.

But, uh.

Small issue.

Tiny teeny itty-bitty one.

The door opens on its own.

You freeze immediately, your fingers going still against your controls as your eyes lock onto the screen.

“…I didn’t press F. I didn’t even get close enough to the door for it to open.”

The door swings inward slowly, heavily, the sound stretching just a fraction too long, just enough to feel wrong in a way you can’t quite articulate, and something uneasy coils in your chest as your grip tightens again.

“Who the hell is opening that door right now.” you add, your voice quieter now, edged with confusion.

Before you can process it further, the Regenerador steps through.

Into the kitchen.

Into the safe area that, uh, was supposed to be safe by definition.

Your entire body goes rigid, your breath catching as your mind struggles to reconcile what you’re seeing with what you know shouldn’t be possible.

“No, absolutely fucking not, that’s not right,” you rush out, shaking your head as if that might somehow fix it. “You’re not supposed to be here, that’s literally not how this works. You’re programmed to stay outside this area.”

The screen flickers violently.

The lighting glitches, shadows stretching unnaturally before snapping back, the Regenerador’s form distorting for a split second as it continues moving forward regardless, unaffected by the rules it’s clearly breaking. Was his AI even working?

The Merchant doesn’t react.

Leon doesn’t react.

Nothing reacts.

“Okay, that’s a glitch, a bug, something.” you insist quickly, your voice rising with urgency. “That has to be a glitch, there’s no way that’s how it was programmed, it never did that and I’ve been stuck here for like four hours in total.”

The image tears, the audio crackles. Something was clearly wrong.

Then, a window appears.

⚠︎  re4.exe - Fatal Application exit ↺

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RESIDENT EVIL 4 BIOHAZARD RE4\re4.exe Fatal error ( 111 TRSMGRT_PROCESS_ERROR, 0x444123911)

【 I AGREE 】 【 THAT’S FINE 】

You stare at it, confusion immediate and absolute as your eyes flick between the identical options.

“What does that even mean,” you mutter, leaning forward slightly, your brows furrowing. “What even are those options, that’s not even a choice, they’re the same. Isn’t there supposed to be button to report the issue or close the ga-”

The background spasms, yet another window appears.

Then another.

Then another.

One over the other, overlapping, filling your screen completely. They all said the same things, yet, as more of them appeared, the text got more and more distorted and glitched.

⚠︎  re4.exe - Fatal Application exit ↺

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\RESIDENT EVIL 4 BIOHAZARD RE4\re4.exe Fatal error ( 111 TRSMGRT_PROCESS_ERROR, 0x444123911)

【 I AGREE 】 【 THAT’S FINE 】

⚠︎  r̷e̵4̴.̶e̷x̶e̸ ̴-̸ ̵F̵a̸t̶a̸l̴ ̸A̶p̸p̶l̵i̵c̸a̷t̷i̸o̵n̷ ̴e̶x̷i̸t̴ ↺

̵C̶:̸\̸P̶r̴o̷g̶r̴a̶m̸ ̴F̴i̷l̷e̴s̵ ̴(̷x̵8̸6̷)̵\̵S̶t̴e̴a̷m̶\̸s̴t̴e̴a̴m̷a̷p̶p̶s̶\̴c̴o̴m̶m̵o̴n̴\̶R̶E̶S̸I̶D̴E̷N̶T̴ ̷E̵V̸I̶L̴ ̷4̷ ̵B̷I̶O̴H̸A̷Z̸A̵R̶D̸ ̸R̴E̵4̵\̷r̷e̸4̷.̷e̴x̴e̶ ̴F̸a̷t̷a̶l̴ ̴e̵r̶r̶o̵r̵ ̴(̸ ̶1̴1̸1̴ ̷T̸R̸S̴M̶G̶R̵T̴_̷P̸R̶O̵C̶E̷S̷S̶_̶E̷R̷R̷O̵R̴,̴ ̸0̴x̷4̶4̸4̵1̸2̵3̴9̶1̷1̵)̴

【 I AGREE 】 【 THAT’S FINE 】

The text distorts further with each new window, characters breaking apart into unreadable symbols, the entire screen devolving into something chaotic and incomprehensible as panic begins to creep in at the edges of your thoughts.

You press one of the buttons, just to make it stop, and the windows disappear all at once, as if nothing had happened.

Then, a voice.

“Having trouble with the game, are we?”

Your breath catches sharply, your eyes snap back to the screen.

The Merchant is staring right at you. Not at Leon, but directly at you, right into your eyes.

You heard it, you know you did. You’re not tired enough to start having allucinations of any sort yet.

“What?” you whisper, something cold settling in your chest.

“Okay, no, I don’t like this,” you say quickly, your voice tightening as your hand moves instinctively toward your keyboard. “This isn’t funny anymore. Is my computer going to break?”

The screen cuts out.

Instantly.

The hum of your computer dies with it, plunging the room into complete silence, the sudden absence of sound pressing in around you in a way that feels suffocating.

“Are you serious?” you breathe, staring at the dark monitor. “The power got cut off?”

Before the thought can fully form, the screen turns back on, blindingly bright.

A flat, overwhelming blue floods your vision, forcing you to squint as your eyes struggle to adjust, your hand lifting instinctively to shield yourself from the sudden intensity, your eyes having been used to the dim lights of the dark game ambience.

The blue flickers and goes away,

Your desktop appears.

Your wallpaper, your screenshot from the second game made with a free camera mod, Leon standing in the R.P.D., frozen in a moment you captured yourself.

For a second, everything seems normal again, then the light comes back, brighter than before.

Spilling outward from the screen in a way that doesn’t make sense, stretching beyond its edges as it floods the room, flooding your vision until it becomes overwhelming.

Sudden pain follows right after it, it’s sharp, as if someone’s stabbing you repeatedly in the head. It’s the kind of pain that burns.

It starts behind your eyes and spreads quickly, a throbbing pressure that makes you gasp, your hand flying to your head as your vision blurs and warps, hoping that putting pressure on yourself with your hands might somehow alleviate the burning pain.

“What the hell is happening-”

Your voice falters, your thoughts slipping as the sensation intensifies, your stomach twisting uncomfortably as dizziness sets in, the room around you tilting in a way that feels completely wrong.

Your hands move to your desk, then tighten their grip on it, your knuckles whitening as your body begins to feel unfamiliar, disconnected, like it’s no longer entirely yours to control.

‘I swear, if I die and it’s because of the lack of sleep and the stress-’

Your breathing grows uneven, you start to feel your heart beat loudly in your ears as the light grows stronger, way too strong.

You try to focus, but you can’t do that; it just hurts too much. Your vision falters, everything is gradually getting more and more blurry, to the point you can’t see your own hands clearly anymore.

Your strength disappears, and as the world around you dissolves into blinding light and overwhelming noise, the last thing you feel is the ground beneath you vanishing before everything goes black.

Consciousness does not return to you all at once, but rather returns slowly and unevenly, each sensation arriving before you are capable of understanding it as your mind struggles to surface through a thick, disorienting haze that clings stubbornly to every thought.

Your body feels as if it weighs a ton, it’s a deep and unyielding heaviness that settles into your limbs and chest as though you have been emptied and filled with something unfamiliar, something that does not quite belong to you.

It doesn’t feel like you. It doesn’t even like you’re inside your own body, you can’t even begin to describe what it is you’re feeling. You’re feeling both too much and nothing at all at the same time.

With the confusion comes a dull, lingering ache behind your eyes. Your mind, your brain, feels as if it’s pulsating. You’re trying to understand things, but that sensation is so distracting, as if your brain does not want to collaborate.

Your eyes remain closed, not because you want them to stay closed but because opening them feels like too much effort, as though even that small act requires more strength than you have ever had in your entire life, and it does feel exactly like that.

So, for a few seconds, you stay like that, aware, but not fully present, drifting between unconsciousness and reality.

The little strength you have is being used by your mind, trying to recall what happened before your body gave up on you. Your room, a light, weird messages… what else?

You give up, you should let your body rest for a second, and you did.

It’s only after a minute of complete mental silence that you manage to feel something that tells you you are indeed still alive.

A soft warmth is what reaches you first in any meaningful way, felt persistently against your left side in a way that contrasts sharply with the cold, rough surface beneath you, and though you cannot yet understand it, your body reacts instinctively, leaning ever so slightly into it, clinging to the only sensation that does not feel entirely wrong. The one thing that makes you feel anchored to reality.

Your hearing follows shortly after, though it comes in fragments. Each sound is distant and distorted, as filtered through something that aims to make it unrecognisable to your ears, preventing you from realising what it is, only contributing to the fog in your mind, as not even your hearing is clear.

None of your senses want to collaborate immediately, it seemed. Was the lack of sleep and the stress really the cause of all this? Sleep isn’t for the weak, you’ll never say it ever again.

It is only yet one other minute later that your brow furrows faintly, and your fingers twitch weakly against the ground as sensation slowly returns to them, the texture beneath your skin rougher than anything that belongs in your room, uneven and cold and rough and wet in a way that does not make sense, that feels unfamiliar, weird, wrong.

Your room.

That wasn’t your room. You’re not here. Nothing you are feeling screams ‘organized mess of a comfort space’, it all screams ‘you’re not safe’.

The thought surfaces is persistent enough to disturb the momentary calm you were in, because something about it does not align with what you are feeling now, nothing about it makes sense, and as your mind is slowly waking up, it becomes even clearer.

Your breathing shifts, becoming slightly uneven as awareness continues to build, and with it comes agitation, threading through your thoughts as you try, unsuccessfully, to piece together how you got here, wherever ‘here’ even is, cause it sure as hell wasn’t your room or your apartment complex.

Your throat feels dry as you swallow, the motion uncomfortable, your throat so damn dry. It only deepens your unease, and slowly, hesitantly, your eyes begin to open.

It feels like a herculean task, your body is actively fighting against it, but you somehow manage to do it.

Your vision greets you with nothing but blurry silhouettes, colors bleeding into one another without meaning, shapes impossible to recognize as your eyes struggle to focus, and for a moment, you remain still. You can’t process what you’re seeing besides a warm light coming from your side.

You blink, once, then again, your eyelids heavy as your gaze drifts without direction, your head turning slightly as your senses begin to sharpen, each detail emerging gradually, painfully.

You were right, you are not in your room, nowhere near that.

The walls you’re resting against appear made out of dark and worn bricks, their surfaces marked and uneven, and they’re cold, so cold.

You feel a drop of water sliding down the wall and onto one of your shoulders, and it’s only then that you realise that it’s pouring. You’re outside, under the pouring rain, with no clue how you got there or what happened to you. Your mind is a mess.

Your breathing stutters, your chest tightening as your heart begins to pick up its pace, each beat louder than the last as confusion gives way to what resembles fear.

‘What the hell kinda dream even is this?’ You think to yourself, because, of course, this can’t be anything but a dream, can’t it? What a weird dream at that.

You try to rise. Your arms shake with the strain, palms digging into the dirt, but your body's refusal to cooperate makes it futile.

Your arms are shaking from that effort alone.

A faint sound escapes you, barely forming into a syllable as your voice struggles to cooperate, and it is then, in the silence that follows, that you become aware of something else.

It slips through the blur slowly until it becomes impossible to ignore, and though your mind cannot immediately place meaning or sense into it, your body reacts anyway, tension creeping into your muscles as your head tilts ever so slightly in its direction.

Your gaze follows, unfocused at first, searching without understanding until a shape emerges from the blur and makes itself slowly more and more defined. It moves in a way that feels wrong, its steps uneven, its form swaying as it advances.

At first, you try to make sense of it, because it resembles a person, it moves like one, the shape is that of one, and everything in your mind screams that it’s a familiar, safe shape.

But something about it is making every single bell and siren in your head ring, they’re telling you there’s nothing safe about it.

Something about it feels deeply, instinctively wrong. Not even feels, something about it is wrong.

As your vision clears further, the details begin to sharpen, and with each one that falls into place, your unease grows, twisting into something far more visceral as the view in front of you is nothing short of horrifying.

It is a woman.

Or at least, it looks like one. It probably was one at some point in time, but not now.

Her skin is wrong, she’s pale. It’s a sickly grey that lacks any sign of life, as if there’s no blood running inside her veins. Her eyes are clouded and milky, devoid of anything human, yet her gaze is still fixed on you with an unsettling intensity that sends something cold rushing through your veins.

Her hair is matted, strands stuck to her face, dark and with something that drips steadily from the ends, staining what remains of her clothing. The fabric is torn and soaked through with a deep, unmistakable crimson, clinging to her form.

One of her limbs bends at an angle that should be impossible, twisted in a way that suggests a level of pain that should not be survivable. The sight alone makes you glad you had eaten nothing in the past at least six hours, or it would’ve all come out. Despite the nightmare-inducing sight, she continues forward regardless, as if she’s not feeling the pain that would’ve had you crying on the floor, or passed out from it. Her steps are uneven, she shouldn’t even be able to walk. Yet, she doesn’t stop, her entire being driven by something that does not resemble life in any way you understand. It’s something completely different, something primal you don’t want to think about.

And then your gaze catches on her neck, or…

God, you really want to puke.

What is even left of her neck? A section of flesh is gone, torn away to reveal the ruined, mauled muscles that should lie hidden underneath her skin. Blood is spilling freely from the wound, thick and dark as it trails down her body, and along the edges of the gory injury are unmistakable marks that even you can understand, despite your vision not being totally there yet.

Her skin, it was bitten of. Those are teeth marks.

Your breath catches because despite everything and despite how the thought makes you feel like you might be currently drunk out of your mind or going crazy in ways you previously didn’t think possible, there’s only one thought that crosses your mind looking at her.

One single word that is nothing related to reality, all fruit of someone’s fantasy, things people read about or play games about because… You genuinely never understood it. Attraction to the macabre, perhaps?

She’s a zombie.

The thought hits you all at once as panic surges through you, all-consuming, your chest tightening as your breathing becomes erratic and shallow, your body reacting faster than your mind can process.

This cannot be happening. It can’t be real. It makes no sense, there’s no possible reason behind this, nor scientific, not any kind because what is going on and what is that and why is a zombie so agonisingly slowly inching towards you with eyes that tell you you’re about to die in the most horrific way you could’ve ever thought about-

It can’t even be a dream. Your dreams have never been this vivid or detailed. Never this real, and yet every sense tells you otherwise.

Desperation drives you to act, your hand moving clumsily as you pinch your arm with what little strength you can muster. You can only hope that the action will make you feel nothing so that you know this is a dream, or even better, maybe it will just somehow wake you up so you can forget this terribly realistic nightmare as soon as possible.

Neither of these things happen.

The pain arrives instantly.

This is real.

God, this is real.

Your thoughts are all over the place, frantic and confused as your mind tries to find any explanation that might make sense of what is happening, but nothing comes.

Your chest tightens further, each breath coming quicker than the last as your lungs struggle to keep up. There's a dizzying lightness creeping into your head as your vision begins to blur again and your hands tremble uncontrollably as they press weakly against the ground.

You cannot fight.

You do not know how.

Damn it, you were never taught to fight fucking zombies, even if you did know how to defend yourself, it wouldn’t work here, you’d still freeze!

Your body is too weak to even stand properly, let alone run, and the realisation crashes over you with suffocating weight. You’re trapped in place, sitting on the cold and wet asphalt, resting your back against the brick wall, as the figure continues its slow, torturous approach, each step bringing it closer.

She’s so slow, why must she be this slow. She’s torturing you.

Do zombies even know what torture is? Are they capable of thinking they want to torture a human for the sake of, you don’t know, play with their food or something?

It feels as if she’s playing with her food.

In reality, she’s going that slow because one of her legs is at a costant ninety degrees angle and moving like that is obviously not optimal, but in your panicked mind, it just feels like life is playing a cruel joke on you.

It’s not fair. What did you even do to deserve this?

You do not want to die.

Not like this.

Not here, in a place you don’t even know, in a situation straight out of a horror movie, when you don’t even have the strength to fight back.

Your body moves before your mind can catch up, dragging itself backwards with what little strength you have, your movements clumsy and desperate as you slide against the rough ground, trying to press yourself even further against the wet wall. It’s not possible, you’re already as close to it as humanly possible, and your aching joints aren’t thanking you for the strain you just put them through.

However, you don’t even register the pain. You just want to make yourself as small as possible, in the stupidly naive hope that maybe she will just forget if you make yourself small enough.

Your breathing breaks entirely.

The sound that tears from your throat is not something you choose, it’s not even something you think about, you just let it out because it wants to be let out.

It’s forced out by pure fear as a scream rips through the air, raw and uncontrolled, the first show of strenght on your part, echoing through the alley in a way that feels far too loud.

In hindsight, it is a terrible mistake.

One you can’t recognise in the moment, because your mind is no longer functioning in any rational way. Survival has reduced everything down to instinct, and your instinct was stupid.

It is loud, of course something else heard it besides her. Other undead must have heard it, will they all come to end you?

You’re done.

What a shitty life.

All stress, no enjoyment besides what, late-night gaming and comfort characters? It was all do this, do that, tasks upon tasks and expectations upon expectations.

Yes, you were tired of it, but not enough to want your life to end, not like this.

You resign yourself to it. You’re about to die.

A sound cuts through everything

It’s loud, even louder than the thoughts plaguing your mind.

You’re thankful for it saving yourself from whatever thought you were having, and from your own mind.

Then, you realise, it was a gunshot.

It reverberates through the alley, sending your heart lurching violently as the sound of something collapsing follows almost immediately after, heavy and unmistakable as a body hits the ground.

You flinch, your entire body tensing as the echo fades, your breathing still uneven, your mind struggling to catch up with what just happened as another sound reaches you.

It’s a voice, at first distant, but you know it’s calling out to you. You cannot answer it, though, your body is still in shock, having you locked in place, plagued by the panic that has yet to leave you.

Warmth.

It’s sudden, but it’s there.

It settles against your shoulder, firm but careful, somehow gentle, grounding in a way nothing else has been, and the contact sends something through you that you cannot quite explain, but it cuts through the panic just enough for clarity to begin returning.

Your breathing stutters, then slowly steadies, all while your heart starts to slow down, going back to what a normal, healthy pace should be.

The world stops overwhelming you for a second, and with hesitant, uncertain movement, you open your eyes.

It’s cautious and slow, perhaps too slow for someone in your situation who might have alerted a horde of undead to your location.

Your gaze lifts, unfocused at first, trailing upward until it catches on something achingly familiar.

Seemingly soft, blonde hair, messy in a way you recognise immediately.

Then they drift down to a dark jacket, worn open over a button-up shirt you have seen countless times before.

And then, your gaze goes up once again, and your heart stills for the nth time that night.

Those blue eyes.

They’re focused on you with unmistakable concern, so, so common for him. These eyes are full of a desire to help whoever they gaze upon, belonging to someone good and heroic almost to a fault.

Your thoughts stop.

Because the face in front of you, the man kneeling before you, the one who just saved you.

Is Leon Scott Kennedy.