Twenty minutes had passed since the red-lipped secretary had led her into the waiting room. Twenty minutes! Who the fuck did they think she was? Claire had been tapping her heels so hard onto the white tiled floor that her feet began to hurt. It wasn't the first time she visited the Capcom offices –actually, it was the fifth– and she hadn't expected them to treat her any better than the first times. Had her name been Kennedy, they'd already rolled out the red carpet for her.

"Stupid Leon," she hissed to herself as she remembered how easily the blond made friends everywhere he went. "Always playing everybody's slut."

Of course, she herself hadn't let them bend her that easily into the quiet little damsel they wanted her to become. She was Chris Redfield's little sister, for god's sake! The stupid scene in Code Veronica, where she'd had to cry that stupid kid's death had been far enough. Hadn't it been enough to get her ass stared at all the fucking time? And she'd only played that part because they'd promised her that she wouldn't get such lame partners like Steve Burnside ever again.

They had kept their promise, admittedly. In the next game she'd partnered up with Moira, only that it had taken them about fifteen years to give her a stupid revelations flashback game. And now, the fucking remake. Her anger seemed to boil so loudly in her guts that she didn't even hear the footsteps approach.

"Miss Redfield?"

Claire looked up and met eyes with a young man in an oversized dark business suit.

"It was about time," she hissed and got up, ignoring the hand the man offered her, walking past him out of the waiting room in hasty steps. She was about to turn to the directors' office when the young man called her back.

"This way, Miss Redfield." He pointed down the corridor towards a large door. "Let's talk in conference room three."

Conference room 3. It wasn't even conference room 1 they gave her. She sighed and turned back to the man, following him into the tiny room that looked more like a larger office than like a conference room.

"So," the man said and had a seat at the table, nicely pointing at chair in front of him. "Please have a seat."

Claire clenched her teeth and sat down, pouting a bit. Now that she had him closer, she clearly saw how young the man was. She had wanted to speak to the directors and they sent a kid to attend her –a kid from the PR department, apparently. She couldn't hold back a soft grunt. Did she really deserve to be treated that bad?

"I want to speak to the directors."

The kid nodded.

"I know, Miss Redfield, but they are currently busy with other projects." He smiled widely. "But I have their full trust to take care of your problem. How can I help you?"

Claire's teeth snapped together in anger. They didn't want to hear her? Fine! But this was the last time she was playing nice.

"I finished that stupid remake of yours yesterday."

The boy in the business suit blinked at her incredulously.

"What? Uhm, but…" The kid gasped a little. "Miss Redfield, the remake has been out for over four months now. And I'm sure you got a copy of it even before Christmas."

She shrugged.

"I couldn't start it till last week because my brother stole my copy," she lied. "But he didn't like it either."

The man chuckled.

"Yeah, I can figure why…"

Enough! What was he laughing at now? Claire hit the surface of the table they were seated at so hard her palm seemed to merge into the wood. She kept her hard demeanor, though.

"I want you to change the ending!" She yelled, receiving a surprised gasp in reply. The kid shook his head.

"What? But? Miss Redfield… uhm… Claire. That can't be."

"Why not?" The anger made her voice sound unfamiliarly shrill. Of course they could. They just didn't want to!

"Well, because it's been out for over four months now." The boy crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the chair. "What's the matter with the ending anyway?"

Claire pouted.

"It makes me look like a desperate little girl."

"But…"

"Just for you to know…" Claire jumped onto her feet and began to shout at the man from above. "Claire Redfield would NEVER flirt with anyone in the middle of an outbreak! So you better go out there and say that the fence scene was a consequence of your drug addiction and that it's not canon!" She kept shouting. "Oh, and why in the world would I say Oh, that's great when I find out that my brother lied to me and went to Europe WEEKS AGO?"

A spark of fear appeared in the kid's eyes as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Well, you were happy he was… alive..?"

"That's bullshit!" Claire hissed.

"I… I thought we were talking about the ending."

Claire ran her tongue over her lips. Right, the ending. She dropped back into the chair.

"What's that shit about a parrot and a puppy and Leon and me adopting Sherry? What's that stupid line you gave me? One hell of a first date? I thought your ability to write dialogues would have improved a bit since 1996."

The man seemed to relax a bit, letting out another annoyed sigh before he held his hands up in a defensive gesture.

"The fans wanted some Cleon romance. What's so bad about it?"

Claire pinched the bridge of her nose. Didn't he see it himself?

"That Cleon romance makes no fucking sense in 1998! Actually, it never made sense."

"There was Cleon in the Perry novels…"

"Which you never accepted as canon." Claire sighed and lowered her head. "Look, I am actually here to help you. You guys don't seem to remember that I leave Leon and Sherry alone and go after my brother, which leads to the happenings of Code Veronica." She forced a smile. "You can't just do whatever you want, as the pieces might not fit into the complete puzzle in the end."

The boy put his hands onto the table and smirked at her.

"Well, the creators are rewriting things," he said, shrugging. "There can be many changes in the canonical story."

Claire laughed out loudly. That conversation was getting ridiculous.

"Oh, really? Then why don't you just take the Perry novels as new script for your stupid games?" She exclaimed. "Or read fanfiction! There are hundreds of great fanfics out there that are a million times better than your shit!"

"Claire…"

"The Lady Frost, Corpasite, Sofistinha, Xaori..." she started reciting.

"Xaori's works are awful," the man replied, showing off his wide knowledge about the subject. Claire grimaced.

"Maybe, but it's still better than your bad choices. Personally, I like irithyll's Ten of Swords . You should read it! Leon is a crybaby there. Very in character."

The man suddenly grabbed her hand violently and the shock over it made her shut. Sparks of hatred and fury seemed to swoosh through the air as they held gazes.

"Claire." The boy eventually mouthed her name. "Do you have any problem with Leon?"

Claire sucked in some air. A problem with Leon? No, not at all. Just with his hair, his looks, his behavior, and the fact that he was so fucking popular.

"Not really," she said. "But if you want to send him to Antarctica and kill him instead of Burnside, I won't complain." She rolled her eyes. "I heard that was your original plan anyway."

A smirk popped onto the young man's face.

"That would mean he confesses his love for you right before he dies. Is that what you want?"

Claire's lip shook. Was it? Before the silence would turn against her, she eagerly shook her head.

"I just want to get rid of him," she exclaimed. "A strong woman like me doesn't need a man by her side to prove how worthy she is!"

"Of course not…" The man pulled out a paper and a pen and slid it over the table towards her. "Here. If you have any wishes for a possible Code Veronica remake, fill out this form and sign it. We will take it into account."

Claire glanced at the form. So, that was the right way to make a complaint here, huh? They could have really told her earlier that her visits were useless if she didn't use them to hand in a stupid form. She sighed and took up the pen.

Claire Redfield. Playable Main Character 004, Resident Evil franchise. Okay, that was easy. I want you to kill Leon Scott Kennedy in a possible remake of Code Veronica. Signed: Claire Redfield. Tokyo. June 2019.

She thought a little. Wasn't she being a bit too mean to poor Kennedy?

"No," she replied to her own thoughts and turned back to the young man in front of her. "It was so unfair that you made them all get kinda involved with their partners in the game."

The boy in the oversized suit began to frown.

"What? There's never been a real romance in…"

But Claire didn't listen to him.

"Rebecca and Billy. Chris and Jill, Sherry and Jake…" she told him in a sing-song voice, trying to remember more couples they had brought together.

Now, it was the boy's turn to shake his head eagerly, lifting his hands to make her stop.

"Claire, listen, there is nothing going on between your brother and Jill Valentine."

Claire huffed out a laugh at the boy's innocence.

"No, of course not." A wink underlined her words. "And what about me? You let me run into Kennedy, who obviously falls for that mercenary slut…"

"Ada."

"Right, Ada." She nodded. "Then you give me a wiener as a partner for Code Veronica. You let him fall in love with me—which is creepier than it is nice—and you kill him off." She grinned mischievously. "Years… many years later, you let me have some weird shit with my boss at Terra Save. I'm still not sure what went on between Neil and me, but it was enough to-" She got up and slammed her hands onto the table again. "To make me cry because he betrayed us! How the fuck did you do that to me? Claire Redfield should never cry over an asshole who trades his comrades for a sample of Uroboros!" Her yells became so loud that the tiny red-lipped secretary from before showed up in the room and asked if everything was alright. The boy in the oversized suit gave her a sign.

"Everything okay, thank you," he said and turned his attention back to Claire, who had calmed down in the meantime and was now hanging in the chair again, giving her interlocutor a bored look. "Claire, listen. I understand that you're not entirely happy with your story, but you're not the only one who has suffered. Jill spent three years with Wesker. Chris went through depressions, amnesia, drinking problems. And he lost his entire team like three times."

"And you made him ugly in RE7," she added in a dark undertone, causing the man to sigh.

"Yeah, I had to face Chris himself because of that." The man got up and went to the wall behind Claire, grabbing the picture of a zombie face that hung on the wall and removing it. A huge hole came to show. "This is your brother's work."

Claire watched the hole in the wall and gasped. She hadn't known Chris and his bad temper had visited their creators, too. The man put the picture where it belonged and walked back to the table.

"Albert threatened us to spread the T-Virus in Japan if we didn't bring the Wesker bloodline back into the franchise," he explained sighing. "That was when we hired his sister to kidnap you and Burton."

Claire looked at him incredulously.

"I always thought that was a brilliant move. Everybody had expected Alex to be a guy." She made a face of admiration as the man smirked.

"And she was supposed to be a guy until Albert said Let Alex have boobs ."

The redhead smirked at the comment. Albert had a weird sense of humor sometimes. A thought crossed her mind and curiosity took over her.

"Does Leon ever complain?"

The man sighed and tilted his head to the side.

"Dearheart, Kennedy comes twice a week," he said and laughed. "Actually, the fence scene in the remake was his idea."

Claire suddenly felt a knot in her throat that seemed to reach down to the stomach, sling around it three times and crawl up into her mouth again, where it tied itself to her tongue. What had that guy just said?

"Hi- his idea?"

The man nodded and turned to a stack of paper to his right.

"Yes, he even filled out an official application form. Let me see." He flicked through the papers. "This is it." He pulled out a paper and cleared his throat. "Leon Scott Kennedy, playable main character O-O-three of the RE franchise, blablablah… oh, here! Fourth. I want to have a kissing scene with Claire Redfield in the remake of Resident Evil 2." He put the paper away and smiled at Claire. "You might imagine that we couldn't fulfill that wish of his. The kiss in RE2 belonged to Ada ever since she walked into this office in 1998." He shrugged. "But we could give him some Cleon moments."

Claire didn't know what to say. That had all been Leon's stupid idea? She couldn't stop her lips from turning into a shy smirk.

"So, there are some of his wishes you still deny, huh?"

The boy in the business suit laughed.

"Well, hadn't we gotten another application from Sherry Birkin asking for more Cleon romance in the franchise, we would have kept ignoring him, probably. This wasn't the first time he asked us for a scene with you."

Claire blinked incredulously.

"What? Since when has he been asking?"

The man shrugged and ran his fingers through the papers again.

"The first one dates 1998." He laughed. "Long before I started this job."

'Long before you were even born, you baby. I'm sure you don't even know what we looked like back then' , she thought to herself and gasped a little. Leon had been asking them to give him a scene with her since their first year together. She felt the blood rush into her cheeks as her teeth dug into her lower lip.

"I... I don't know what to say."

The man kept reading.

"I see that he nearly got what he wanted in Degeneration. But he must have pissed someone off back then, and they sent Angela in."

"And they gave him a wax face."

"Oh, and the Ducati in Vendetta? He only wanted it so he could impress a certain CR." He began to laugh. "We believed it was a dick-size comparison with your brother, but maybe…"

Claire slowly got up, grabbing the form she'd just filled out.

"I'm sorry I bothered you," she whispered and wrinkled the form into a paper ball before she pointed at the door. "I'll get going. Don't worry about the Remake, nor about Code Veronica. You can let Steve die there. Let him watch my heart-shaped ass and enjoy Jordan's face. She's pretty. He'll like it. Anyway, I'll think about it and come up with a better idea for a plot. Maybe I ask one of the fanfiction writers to write a new idea for me… I... Thanks a lot."

The PR boy in the extra-large suit waved Claire goodbye as she stormed out of the office.

Leon leaned over the bike, analyzing where exactly he had to use all the nameless tools that lay in the bright sunlight. Damn. Changing a tire was harder than he had imagined and it was a bad idea to try if it would impress the girl next door, who was currently reading some novel in her garden. Sure, he'd fixed a broken bus in RE6, but all he had done back then was push a button repeatedly.

He scratched over his forehead as suddenly a car came to stop next to him. He turned his head to the cab that released a certain redhead he hadn't seen since the previous E3 convention.

"Claire! How nice to see you." He gave her a wide smirk as she approached. And damn, how hot she looked. "We've been missing you these past months. What have you been up to?"

Claire walked towards him and smirked amusedly.

"Oh, well, you know. Just surviving," she repeated one of the lines she'd been so mad about before. Now, it actually sounded good. "How about you? Trouble with your bike?"

He laughed, shrugged, and the girl next door was long forgotten.

"Well, you know. You ask them for a nice ride for one stupid film and they send you a new one every time you wreck it." He looked at her. "I actually never wanted it. I just thought…"

And he stopped thinking all of a sudden. Claire grabbed Leon by his dark leather jacket and pulled him into her, pressing her lips onto his in a soft but demanding kiss. Caught by surprise, he gasped a little, but as soon as he understood what was happening, he let his hand run up her body and cup her jaw softly. His heart was beating heavily in his chest as the redhead of his dreams pulled him closer into her.

It had taken all her courage to visit him, but it had taken all of her effort to stop denying what she felt. They stood there, kissing all the doubt from the previous years away. Air seemed to be missing way too fast, and the two eventually let go of each other. Leon panted.

"Wow," he whispered. "That was… Wow."

And she gave him a weak smile.

"Here is the kissing scene you asked for, Mister Kennedy," she said and curled her fingers into his jacket. "So, how about a real first date now?"

He laughed.

"Holy shit, yes!"

She smirked.

"Want me to have a look at your bike first?"

And neither Leon nor Claire ever complained again.