A/N: Because I can't bring myself to settle on just one ending for this tale - this is how I originally intended. The final chapter will be the other ending that I simply cannot get out of my head. Just another way the butterfly flaps those wings and changes the winds of destiny. A totally different end than this one. I'll try to get the final end up just before the remake hits - I won't do much writing until I play it after all.

GLIMPSE:

A Resident Evil Short Story

Starring:

Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield

Guest Starring:

Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Rebecca Chambers, Sherry Birkin, Albert Wesker and the Ghost of Ada Wong

Part Ten:

Ending One:

It's a Wonderful Life

Santa Monica, CA - Present Day

He didn't leave his hotel room for eight days.

He didn't shave.

He didn't shower.

He didn't move.

He sat on his bed and ate bad take out when he wasn't busy starving himself. He watched Netflix. He binged watched Grey's Anatomy and felt sorry for himself. He ate carbs and fat and sugar and drank gallons of whiskey.

When the whiskey failed to numb the pain, he switched it up with vodka. He took a shower, left the beard, and hit the strip. A phone call to the incredible Jenna and three grand worth of blow later, he woke up on the floor of a suite in the Ritz Carlton naked and empty.

It didn't take long to realize Jenna and her perfect tits had robbed him while he was down and out. She took everything he had while he slept, but that didn't matter either the memory was hazy anyway. He remembered snorting coke off her ass and licking it off her teeth.

He remembered the second bottle of bourbon.

But there were four scattered around the hotel -so he hadn't stopped at two.

He wiped the blood from his face that was his septum revolting against 2 ounces of nose candy, and lit a cigarette in the empty hotel room.

Even booze and fucking and drugs couldn't give him peace.

He was a mess. How was this better? He'd started out almost numb. He was nearly dead anyway. And then a wrong turn and a ghost with a conscience poked him into a life that wasn't his and reminded him of all the things he'd never have.

He'd never have children. He'd never hear Ben laugh or listen to Gigi speak her first sentence. He'd never see the baby born. He'd never hold it or smell it or love it.

He'd never have Claire.

He'd never have a house in the suburbs or a goddamn dog that loved him.

Sherry wasn't a sweet teenager but was a biological weapon. Claire was so closed off emotionally that the last he'd heard she'd avoided any kind of dating since Neil. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd bothered to care about anything in his world.

He was one crack whore away from self destruction.

He lifted his hand to find his watch still on his wrist at least and the date told him he'd been back in his own world for three weeks now.

Three weeks and he was still trying to curl up in his own misery and die there. This passive aggressive courting of death was getting old. It was a sad world he lived in that he couldn't seem to die.

Apparently, he was unkillable.

He picked fights. He fought like a bitch. He got the shit beat out of him, but he didn't die. There was no one good enough to kill him. Sitting in alley, bleeding from a beating by two rednecks at a drinking hole who'd he'd whipped the asses of anyway, he was contemplating how bad it had to get before he just picked up a pistol and ended it.

And he wasn't alone anymore in the alley.

The Ghost of Ada Wong had come to join him.

She crouched in front of him, tilting her head like a dog. "...you look like shit, Mr. Kennedy."

He shrugged, leaning his head back against the filthy wall. His face felt like someone had used it for a punching bag. They had, it just hadn't been enough. He simply wasn't a guy who could lay there and let someone beat him to death.

After the fourth hit, he'd fought back. It was all he knew how to do. The two rednecks were currently face down in the alley ten feet away. All the rage in the world didn't make Leon anything less than the weapon he'd been trained to be. He didn't lose.

Until he lost everything.

"Get up, Leon. Wake up, and get on with your life."

"You took my life, you carnivorous cunt. Leave me alone to die."

Ghost of not, she could still hit him. She did, slapping his face. He winced, cursed, and spit blood, "...bitch." But even that didn't sound angry, just defeated.

Ada sighed, "Grow up, Leon. Seriously. Grow up. Whatever else is true, you still have a life here. You still have something to live for. I'm dead, you jackass. You're not. Keep this up, and you will be."

"What's the point, Ada? On one side we've got dealers selling bombs to terrorists to blow up babies. On the other people dropping bombs on weddings. What's the point? All my life, I've been fighting the same demons and I've gotten nowhere. Nowhere. It's worse than it was twenty years ago. Because I don't have the hope anymore. You offered me a glimpse of it, and snatched it away. So get lost. Leave me alone. I didn't ask you to save me. I don't need a fucking hero. I just want to be left alone."

Ada rose, shaking her head at him. "The hope is still there, Leon. You're just too busy feeling sorry for yourself to fight for it."

"Fuck off, Ada. I'm tired of fighting. Go find someone else to save."

He closed his eyes. She said nothing else. When he opened them, he was alone in the alley. Good, alone was the only way he wanted it. This is what happened when you let people in.

You ended up alone and dying.

He was done hurting. He just wanted to be numb again.

He wandered out and hailed a cab. It took him to the middle of nowhere and the cabby mused, "You sure, dude? Here?"

"Yep. Here. Thanks."

Getting out, Leon wandered into the empty field. In another life, he'd ended up here on that first day he'd spent in the world where he'd had it all. The destruction of Raccoon City was still less than three miles away. It was still quarantined, still uninhabitable. It was a necropolis that had been walled off and turned into a memorial.

But this field remained.

He stumbled into the dark until he found who he was looking for. Not Claire. Not Ada. Not God...the cow. The cow peered at him with her big brown eyes, lulling her moo as she chewed her cud.

Leon shrugged, staggering a little. "I thought you might know how I got here. Moooove over."

He flopped down on the ground beside her, patting her spotted flank. "You look like me actually, Bessie. I don't usually eat big meals either...I'm more of a grazer."

She eyed him, judging him silently for his bad humor.

He narrowed his gaze back at her. "Seriously, have I ever steered you wrong?"

Bessie gazed at him dully.

"...tough crowd. You get where I'm going with this right? Or am I totally butchering it?"

Bessie lifted her head from the grass and rolled her neck. She flapped her lips and spit grass and dirt all over his head. Leon laughed leaning his aching ear against her soft fur.

"Can't blame you. I'm off my game tonight. The steaks are too high." His cow puns were clearly making the cow love him. He had, after all, always been good with the ladies. Not following them, but charming them.

Bessie blew air at him started trying to eat his hair.

"Go ahead. It's all I have left that's worth a damn anyway. My excuses are a bunch of bull huh?"

She licked his ear and had him nodding. "Right. Who am I kidding? I'm pissed off. I had the opportunity of a lifetime and I didn't grab it by the horns you know?"

Bessie mooed and whacked him in the back with her tail. "Yeah. Exactly. You get it. But it's guys like Redfield that are the reason you know? That dude...even in that other life...he had it all. He has it all now. Sure, he never married, but he doesn't want that. He never really seemed to. He's complicated and a pain in the ass. I have some real beef with him, ya know?"

The cow jokes made Bessie moo again, munching the collar of his jacket now.

"Redfield doesn't sit here thinking about all the things he lost, I bet. It's nearly impossible to hurt his feelings...he has leather skin."

Bessie leaned up and gave him a bland expression, spitting more dirt and grass in his hair. "...ok. Too far? Maybe I deserved that."

Leon sighed, scooping his arms around his knees where they were tented against his chest. "What do I do, Bessie? I don't know if I can ever forget that I had it all, ya know? For a handful of days, I had it all. How do I let go of that?"

Bessie mooed..and took a huge shit that plopped on the ground behind them. Leon nodded, watching her face as she went back to grazing. "You're a fucking genius, Bess. No getting around that. Shit happens right? All you can do...is just let it go and deal with it."

Sometimes all the things you need to know in life, you could learn from a cow. Leon Kennedy's answers were in that field. And the one piece of advice he was sure to pass on to anyone he knew was this:

It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow. But one day, you'll find yourself in a conversation with the perfect opening for one of these bad puns. And, holy cow, when you do, let 'er rip.

Rest assured, it will be udderly satisfying.

Christmas Day was always a mad house.

Claire hurried around her office, filing all the paperwork that remained unfinished from her assistant who'd taken the week off. She did menial tasks, big ones, she sat meetings and staffed relief efforts. There was no rest for the weary when it came to world relief funds.

TerraSave never took a holiday.

She was just finishing up a company email when the knock on her door drew her focus.

Surprised, she smiled, "Leon! What the hell are you doing here?"

He set his guitar case inside her office on the floor. It was Leon - kinda. Minus his iconic hair that was cut down to a fashionable length and his leather jacket that was replaced by a hoodie in pale blue. She'd heard, through the grapevine, that he'd gone into rehab a few months before and hadn't been seen since.

"I got an early parole for good behavior apparently."

Claire rounded her desk and embraced him, gently. "You look good." And he did. Rested. Alert. He wasn't too skinny and didn't look like he'd woken up in a hotel bathroom with his kidneys stolen. He was missing that Kurt Cobain courting death look she'd come to expect from him in the last few years.

"Thanks." He shifted where he stood, "Working on Christmas, CR?"

"Bioterror never sleeps." She quipped as she gestured for him to have a seat. He declined, shaking his head.

"That sounds like the wrong Redfield talking."

Claire laughed, shrugging, "It's genetic, apparently. What brings you out here on the holiest of holidays?"

"I was hoping you might want to get a cup of coffee."

Surprised, Claire arched her brows. "Sure. Girl trouble?"

"In a way," He shifted again and took a deep breath, "I've been hung up on a girl for a long time. Just didn't have the guts to say anything."

"You?" Claire scoffed, perching her butt on the side of the desk, "Please."

He inhaled sharply again and just, threw it out there, "Why didn't you ask me to go with you that night?"

She blinked, twice. "When?"

"You know when," He tilted his head, "We both know what was between us. We both know what it could have been. But you ran. You could have asked me to go, Claire. Why didn't you?"

She lifted her head, rubbing her mouth, "Long time to wait to ask me that, Leon. A long time."

"I know. And I'm sorry. For alot of things. For not going with you. For not asking you to stay with me. For being a coward about how I felt about you all these years." He watched her face and smiled, gently, "I'm a coward at the core, kid. Don't you know?"

"No. Not that. Never that." She touched his face, an old gesture, "Chris came first. When it came to me or him? He came first. He always did. If I'd known...if I'd had any idea of what it would mean for you, for Sherry...I would never have left you. You have to know that."

He nodded, watching her eyes, "I spent so long blaming you for who I am."

Saddened, she dropped her hand, "Me too. Every time I looked at you, I saw that night. I saw what it did to the both of us. I saw what it formed us into. If Chris had just..." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter anymore, Leon. Why dwell on it?"

"Because I've been in love with you for twenty years, Claire. And we could have had a life together if we wouldn't have both been cowards that night."

She froze and her hand lowered to her chest and splayed there, "...don't say things like that, Leon. Please."

"Why? Because we spend most of our lives faking and lying and denying? Because someone decided we can't have each other and a life together and do what we do?" He shook his head, "I haven't had a drink in sixty two days, Claire. Sixty-two."

Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears, "...that's incredible."

"Right?" He laughed, "We can do whatever the hell we want. There are no fucking rules here, Claire. None. No one decides what we are, who we'll be...but us. We don't have to be miserable and alone."

Claire shook her head, "Leon...what are you saying here?"

He shrugged, laughing without mirth, "I'm saying we can rewrite the stars, Claire. To whatever we want. We've wasted alot of time blaming and bottoming out and denying...why? What fucking good has it done?"

He shifted toward her and she pressed a hand to his chest that trembled. "...don't, Leon. Don't."

"Why? You don't want me to?"

He was something with all his hair gone. The shorter style flattered his face. He looked healthy and determined and more like the boy she'd met in that dirty city than he'd been in a long time. Was he right?

Was it just a matter of rewriting the stars to tell their story the way they wanted?

Relenting, her hands cupped his face. "Leon...I've spent twenty years wishing I'd kissed you that night. But what are you asking me for here?"

He shrugged, studying her face. "A cup of coffee. The rest of it is up to you."

She drew him down and kissed him. It tasted like cinnamon and snow. He held her close and felt her trembled as she whispered, "...why do you smell like hay?"

He leaned back and pressed their foreheads together, "...right...how do you feel about farms?"

She tilted her head at him and he laughed, "I may have adopted a pet."

Surprised, Claire arched her brows. "Like a dog?"

"...not exactly." He looked a little sheepish as he queried, "...how do you feel about cows?"

Claire laughed, shaking her head, "Do I even want to know what the guitar is here for?"

He nodded, stepping away from her, and he picked up the case to remove his guitar. "Well...I thought I'd tell you a story about a boy and a girl...and the life they almost had."

She tilted her head at him and perched on the desk again. "...I can't think of anything I'd rather hear. Is the ending happy?"

He strummed the first few chords of the song he'd written to honor Ben and Gigi and Sherry and the life he'd left behind. "...well...I guess that's up to you."

And he gave Claire a glimpse into the world they could build...together.