I’m in my feels on this fine weekend and thinking about how Chris & Leon manifested their endings with their Readers.
Chris’ Reader does end up leaving and she is perfectly capable of being her own person. Chris did succeed in the end, because she goes on to live her life without him.
Meanwhile, Leon’s Reader was left absolutely devastated to the point she has lost her own identity. She does live on after the divorce, but she is still chained to her memories of him in addition to living on only for the sake of their sons (aka an extension of Leon). Leon succeeded, because he truly made it that she couldn’t and will never forget about him.
How Chris be stressing Miss Reader out in his storyline:
*To me, Chris stressing out those around him is canon. Look at poor Claire in RE2 & Veronica. And, Sheva in RE5. Then look at Piers in RE6. Also, we can’t forget about Ethan Whimpers in RE8.
Leon x Reader and Chris x Reader actually have the complete opposite problem.
Leon and his Reader fvcked too much, when they should have prioritized verbal communication. As soon as he wasn’t able to perform the martial act, she looses it and their relationship spirals because they literally had nothing else to bond over.
Chris and his Reader focused too much on the verbal communication and didn’t fvck enough. When they realize that they actually have different beliefs, their relationship crumbles because their seldom physical intimacy wasn’t enough to act as a safety net - which would’ve bought them some time to think things over before they hastily called it quits.
A friendly reminder that the Reader (Chris AU) actually met Glenn Arias just shortly after the Mexican mansion massacre incident. She didn’t know that the mysterious man with the unsettling aura - who broke into her apartment and had simply asked to “talk” - was Arias until after the events of Vendetta, when she saw his photo in the file during the report debriefing.
Knowing the demented cruelty that Arias was capable of, she should’ve been horrified that she had been so close in proximity to him. However, horror was not what was on her mind at that moment.
You know what was?
You know that kind of betrayal…the quietly devastating kind when you discover that the person you love most in the world - the one you would sacrifice everything, even humanity itself - would never do the same for you?
Not because they don’t love you, but because there will always be something to them that takes priority over you.
For Chris, it was his principles. His sense of justice. His moral compass.
If forced to choose between what was right in his heart and what was right in his conscience, Chris would always choose the latter.
And that realization truly shattered something inside our Reader.
What hurt wasn’t that Chris would choose justice over vengeance. It was the understanding that his heart had never belonged to her in the same way hers belonged to him.
Our Reader is morally grey (in both storylines), always following her heart above duty. She would - with no doubt - burn the world down for the people she loved. But, that was not Chris - because in every possible outcome and under any scenario, Chris always chooses to save the world.
To each their own, neither of them were wrong.
For the first time, she truly saw and understood just how intrinsically different they were. This realization came in the aftermath of Vendetta.
Yes, what Arias was doing was undeniably “bad”. He had to be stopped, because the otherwise would be catastrophic. What stuck with Reader afterwards was not Chris’ condemnation of Arias’ actions, but the Chris’ complete absence of sympathy for Arias’ loss.
Not once had she heard Chris speak about the Arias’ loss. Sure, it could be argued that Chris and Arias were two very different men - but, it could also be argued that they are very similar in the sense that they both had someone they loved romantically. Chris never empathized with Arias’ loss of his wife. He never commented on who Arias used to be before grief hollowed him and turned him into something destructive. Not going to ignore that Arias was an arms dealer before the wedding bombing, but selling weapons is also very different from having/carrying out an actual plan to destroy the world.
In Arias, Chris only saw a terrorist, but the Reader was able to also see a widower. Chris saw a monster, but the Reader saw a broken man who had allowed his grief to consume him.
While she would never excuse what Arias had done, she also could not ignore why he had done it. What Arias had done was cruel, but grief itself was also very cruel.
In the end, it wasn’t how differently both Chris and her saw Arias but rather how they loved and how they grieved. It was the kind of difference that would always find a way to manifest - no matter the circumstance - and act as a divide between them.
And it was in that divide, that we see how Vendetta was the beginning of the end of their relationship.
In the aftermath of Vendetta, Chris believed he won: he had stopped the villain and he saved so many lives. But he never ends up realizing (and something the Reader never tells him) that he had also suffered a loss…
…he lost her.
Because, the Reader realized something that was so quietly devastating. She finally came to terms with the undeniable truth that she was never a priority in Chris’ life: Chris would always choose the world over her.
