You're Blade on My Skin

Chapter 1: Brittle Memories

The world opened up to him with a start. One second he was standing in the halls of the Raccoon City Police Department next to Claire and the next he was laying in a bed. Startled awake by yet another ceaseless nightmare of that dreaded night. A night that his brain refused to let him forget despite being so far away from the desolate city. Sometimes if he thinks about it too much he can still feel the heat of the explosion on his skin from the impact. Can still hear the loud boom in the distance that hurt his ears despite them being so far away. If they had been any closer, if they hadn't decided to keep walking, they too could have been swallowed up whole with the city and its undead. And that thought left Leon with goosebumps. Thinking that they could have gone through all of that just to die anyway. It would have been too cruel of a fate. 

Leon's skin was clammy and his breathing irregular as he sat up in his bed, blanket pooling around him. The nightmares were a ceaseless thing that plagued his every waking moment and the reasoning for them seemed to pile onto one another. Like Leon wanted to collect more issues.

There had been a moment in time where he had someone that would carry him through nights like this, but now he was just a memory too. 

Leon still had the calendar up. The one he wrote the funeral date on. He couldn't seem to take it down and he didn't know why.

Krauser, at one point, had been a friend after Claire went off on her own to search for her brother. Leon had only had Sherry to a point before the government pulled them apart and even then she wasn't a friend, she was a responsibility, and he cared for her.

The whole reason he was doing all this was for her guaranteed safety. But even then he couldn't truly know if they were keeping their word. They wouldn't even let Leon see her. And due to his contracts he wasn't allowed to converse with any of his high school buddies. Not like he would want to talk to them about all this shit though, they'd probably think he was a mad man. Because after all, they covered up the truth on what happened in Racoon. A fact that pissed Leon off to no end.

Without Claire, and his bidding contract, he didn't exactly have anyone to lean onto. That was until Krauser.

Though of course it wasn't an instantaneous thing.

Krauser had been assigned to him as a mentor, to teach him how to fight better than he did, at least that's what Leon supposed. 

Slowly, they built a wobbly friendship together, but Krauser only knew the bare slate of Leon. Like how Leon grew up wanting to be a Police Officer. He knew bits of Leon's past with his parents. He knew the bare minimum of their crimes, and Leon spoke a bit about the orphanage he grew up in. But he mainly knew of the Police Officer that had saved him as a child, and Krauser heard the endless ramblings of Leon as he spoke about the Police Academy. Krauser listened to him speak about how much he wanted to be just like that Officer that saved him all those years ago.
But just like he was left in the dark about Leon's parents, he was left in the dark on why Leon became an agent instead of an Officer like he wanted so badly.
Meanwhile Leon knew quite a lot about Krauser. Though he still had quite a bit to learn. He knew the man enjoyed fishing, whether it be ice fishing or the regular way.

One of the many things Leon had teased him about.

He knew Krauser didn't like sweets, despised the taste of anything like it, but he also knew the exact food that the man preferred. Because Krauser's favorite food changed multiple times a week, so Leon started calling them his preferred foods. He had a list and everything. Said list somewhere on the clutter of his dining table.
Krauser hadn't been the type to endlessly talk about his interests or hobbies but the times that he did Leon stuck to them like glue.
And he was happy that Krauser never expected him to add onto his own stories.
They respected each other.