**UPDATED: I have heard your questions, you have spoken (typen?) and I have listened (read)! This is the updated version of the intro to Chapter 0. Like all those to follow, the first of each chapter will be of the main name/theme for all the parts to follow. Every decimal point chapter in between will all be a part of the main one. Please note that the intro generally does not have so much to do with the current chapter as it does setting the mood or past circumstances from the past one. In this case however, since there is no chapter before this one, this will set the stage and depict all the trauma that surrounds this story... even if it doesn't seem like the following does at the time. So keep reading after this to see how it all threads together into Leon and Ashley's story!**

Sirens pierce the air on a misty rainy night. Red and blue lights flash around a set of apartments. Police men surround the premises, unarmed at the moment, but not at ease in the slightest.

A screeching car can be heard in the background. After the door opens and closes, a hulk of a man in green army-like attire trots great with authority. A cop turns around to stop him, but he flashes an I.D. at the man. The officer is suddenly embarrassed and salutes the man with a combination of respect and fear evident in his face.

This badass walking pace continues partway up the stairs outside to the second floor of rooms, but is quickly evoked and goes running at breakneck as the breaking of glass and the sounds of a woman sobbing pierces the night.

The man is suddenly knocking vigorously at the door with arms that suggest he could push boulders with them, let alone break down a door.

"Claire!" The man yells panicked. "Claire, open the goddamn door!"

Inside on a couch near a broken lamp, a panicked redhead sprints up with athleticism and grabs a gun. She reaches over her arm and goes for a knife, knocking over a bottle of whiskey in the process.

"GO! AWAY!" She yells back. "I'm not coming out, and you have NO right to enter here!"

"Claire, don't make me break this door down!"

"Ha!" The girl slurs "maybe a few years ago you could!"

The man bites his tongue. She was definitely drunk, and for a girl like his sister, that meant a TON of alcohol, much more than anyone else. The fear of poisoning crept into the back of his mind.

"Awe, what's wrong Chris!" The female taunts. "Too old to play mommy and daddy anymore, big brother?" She backed away into the bathroom, holding her pistol and blade firm, a special insignia on its' hilt of both.

She quickly falls backwards and lands in the water, hitting her head on the spout.

"CLAIRE!" The man yells. A team of policemen stand near him ready to breach. The man, Chris, holds his arm out to stop one with a battering ram, but nods meekly.

Softly, this Claire reaches behind her head and feels the blood in her hair...

She breaks into giggles...

...and slowly begins laughing like a mad woman...

Chris counts down to three with his fingers and kicks at the door. Swearing the first attempt, he has the threshold down in two more tries.

Chris motions for the team at the door to stay back. Arms drawn in all directions, they slowly begin to hear maniac laughter turn to sobs.

Softly, the gentle giant nears the next door to the bathroom, locked on the other side now.

"Claire..." He pleads softly "please...just come on out."

"WHY SHOULD I!?" The shriek startles the guards.

"I've lost everything! My job, life's work, my colleagues, my... OUR PARENT'S! Chris, I've practically lost you too!" Now Chris was getting emotional, although he wouldn't dare show it to anyone else but Claire.

"Where the & $% were YOU when I was driving around for MONTHS looking for you!? You left... when everything around me began to die!"

The memories burned through Claire's mind like a virus, firing up her brain.

"What did it take Chris? A city of zombies? Leaving the country!? Breaking and entering? Locked up on a deserted island!? Starving!? MOLESTATION!? LOOSING..."

On the other end, a familiar noise rings in Chris' ear... the sound of a gun cocking. It wasn't his own life he was afraid of though...

"...and when you finally came back to me... suddenly you were off again with little-more information than last time! Do you know why I joined Terra-save Chris? Why I REALLY joined? DO YOU!?"

...No, this life was far more precious to him.

"I did it to be closer to you..." Claire sobbed, the feeling of a barrel against the side of her head... by her own hand. "...and LO AND BEHOLD, look what happened? Look what HAD to happen before I got to see my big brother, the ONLY remaining family I had left. Trapped with the undead... in a freaking airport this time! Locked in another laboratory! With ANOTHER big-eyed monster! Oh, but this time it got even better Chris! I was seduced by a $#ing terrorist Chris. Ohohoh! But catching him the act and being swooned by him wasn't enough, was it? WAS IT!?"

Chris lowers his head solemnly against the door...

"oh nononoooo!" Claire mocked, rolling around in her bathtub, unable to get up and accidentally turning the water on. "I had to get abducted in ANOTHER fancy building... MINE THIS TIME... get locked up in ANOTHER DESERTED ISLAND... seeing the pattern here Chris? Surrounded by more infected... oh, but that wasn't bad enough for you yet was it big brother!? THIS TIME I HAD TO LOOSE VIRTUALLY EVERYONE LEFT IN MY LIFE THAT I LOVED TO IT! FRIENDS! COLLEAGUES! PRACTICALLY OUR FAMMILY CHRIS! BARRY FUCKING BURTON'S... YOUR OLD PARTNER'S DAUGHTER IS BURRIED OUT THEIR IN THAT GODFORSAKEN DEATHTRAP! AND THE MONSTER THIS TIME? OH, IT WASN'T JUST ANOTHER WESKER. NOT JUST ANOTHER CRAZY BITCH THAT WANTED TO BE ALL-POWERFUL. No, this monster was one before any virus got to him... AND I LOVED HIM CHRIS! He was going to be MY EVERYTHING. YOU, LEON, him..."

Claire's voice cracked.

"But he betrayed my Chris. I loved him and he left me to die. JUST. *BANG* LIKE. *BANG* YOU!"

Chris was holding the cops back behind him in form at the door, trying to convince them to let him handle this, even after shots were fired! ...only for the first time in his life, he wasn't sure if he could.

Claire began to chuckle again... "And now that I've been LITERALLY washed up from the water and back home, ready to just end it all... NOW YOU COME CHARGING IN ON A HUMMER PUNCHING BOULDERS TO SAVE ME!?

WE"LL I AIN'T BUYING! IT NEEDS TO BE MORE THAN THAT THIS TIME! SO WHAT THE % $# IS IT THIS TIME CHRISTOPHER REDFIELD!"

Chris slowly opened the next door, his hands up, to be with his sister. The door he managed to unlock with a few tips from a close friend. The officers and medical staff right behind, guns ready, as they approached the barricaded bathroom door. The final obstacle appears to be a shower door, but it has two bullet marks in it. Ever paranoid after their fiasco's with Umbrella, this must be some sort of a panic door.

"well..." Claire asked inconsequentially behind the shower curtain. "What is it?" she waited, but no answer came.

"Is it Barry? Washed up in guilt about how I feel and his daughter? Jill? IS she even well yet after HER disappearance that you SO SUDDENLY WENT RUNNING AFTER! What about Leon? Closest thing to a friend I have left. Closest thing I'll ever have to someone special in my life. If it weren't for that... oh..."

Claire's laugh was now far more frightening to Chris than any horror he'd ever faced before.

"AHAHAHHA! I GET IT! I FINALLY % $#ING GET IT! This WHOOOOOOLE thing... it's about nothing other than THE BITCH IN THE RED DRESS isn't it Christopher!?"

The memories now burned in Chris's mind.

"Yeah, Chris; I know. I KNOW EVERYTHING! Ehe... I finally figured it out. YOU LOST ALL YOUR MEN AND NOW YOU WANT HELP FROM ME JUST BECAUSE YOU KNOW I'VE SEEN THE BROAD! IT HURTS, DOESN'T it. I KNOW! SO, that's it, right Crissy? Come ON! TELL ME TELL ME! I'm DYING TO KNOW! I'm all EARS like the monster was all EYES! Well, say it. I CAN TAKE IT! MY BROTHER PUT ME THROUGH WORSE!

So come on..."

silence

"Come on..." his sister whispers softly at first.

More silence

"COME ON!" She challenges her older brother with authority, all the demeanor of a life with nothing left to loose...

"COME OOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!" a banshee death scream like nails on a chalkboard emulated from Claire's voice, causing Chris to grit his teeth to the side and a single teardrop to fall from his cheek.

She holds the firearm against the side of her face, short cut red locks of hair flowing against it in the shadows as the outline of a face and teardrops run against her skin.

In her other hand now rest a bottle of booze connected to her lips.

"Give me a reason to live..."

With a few deep breaths, Claire begins to chug and goes to pull the trigger, a bottle against her lips and a barrel against her head...

It was now or never for Chris. His one last Ace in the Hole to keep Claire in this world when even Leon's friendship wasn't enough.

"...We found him..."

Clare's eyes go wide and she drops the glass agains the side of the tub, fragments going in all directions against her now... no pants... eliciting cuts but leaving the woman unfazed in the slightest, not by simply through the alcohol or through a tough-as nails, but something different now.

Something lost from her past.

"Wh-what...?" Claire holds herself against her black top, her jean jacket against the toilet.

"We found him." Chris repeats in confidence. "Just please drop the gun and we can talk about it."

Thoughts and voices flood the depressed mind of Claire Redfield.

"Your night in shining... It's more reliable than any... He may even be able to be revived... I ... I'm glad I met you... I... I love you... Claire..."

An ear-shattering scream drowns out the multiple shots of her brother's old Samurai Edge. A burst of three shots hit the ceiling as Claire drops her brother's gun in the water and flails around hysteric, ripping her top off and leaving her in nothing but a black bra and underwear.

A burst of adrenaline fills "big brother's" biceps and with his shoulder crashing down into the door. He breaks the lock somehow, whether by luck, fate or a miracle, and slides it aside.

He beholds his sister, Claire... Once a proud strong Redfield able to survive anything, but after all of this wear and tear a shell of her former self, makeup running down her damp body into the lukewarm and slightly red water below.

"Ch-Chris?"

"It's ok Claire... We found him."

Slowly Chris lowers himself towards her and she wraps her arms around him, the closest thing to a father she has had most of her life.

"It's alright now Claire... It's okay...

...we found him.

We found Steve."