[BlackBoxx]

Both options have ups and downs, but in my mind, leaving Lee is better for her in the long run.

A lot of people have stated pragmatism as their reason for taking the "leave him" option, which is perfectly valid. I have a bit to add to that. Mercy, while a good thing to give out in an apocalyptic setting, is a luxury. There is a time and place for mercy killing. That is, when there is no immediate danger. Clem didn't have that luxury. Thousands of walkers were just outside the door. One hears the gunshot, starts pounding on the door, other walkers hear that noise and join in. Eventually, the door breaks. I think Clem had enough time to pull the trigger and get the heck out of Dodge, but the risk isn't worth it. When mercy and survival odds are in competition, survival should always win.

Now, I hold this view because I wouldn't really have any fear of becoming a walker in that specific situation. The terror invoked by zombies lies more with the whole getting eaten alive thing for me. A small bite, like Lee's, would be much easier for me to handle. More to the point, Lee is in the middle of a large horde of walkers. He's handcuffed to a radiator in a jewelry store (a place with no practical survival items worth infiltrating said horde), and the front door is locked. No sane human survivor is going to go in there and zombie Lee isn't getting out, so there is no worry about hurting someone. An insane person might go in, but they would just die by some other walker's teeth.

That and the whole bit about suffering as a walker doesn't make any sense to me. You're dead. Your vital functions stop. As seen in the TV series (haven't read the comics, so if anyone knows of any contradictory information, please correct me), the only thing that restarts is the part of the brain that controls movement. There is no thought, no feeling. Your mind is not there to suffer.

If for some reason, zombie Lee would be a threat to Clem, then yes, I would have told her to shoot him for her own survival. But, we know that isn't what happened. Clem had an easy way out. At that point, she had to think about what would give her the best chances of surviving. +1 bullet count and silent movement is better than -1 pangs of guilt (sorry, hardcore RPG stat cruncher here). It's not like she wouldn't know what happened to Lee. Throughout the game, I made sure to point out that just knowing is closure enough. We were looking for her parents to find out what happened, not to kill their zombie corpses. But above all of that, we were looking for a boat in order to continue surviving.

Survival > Closure > Mercy. That was my final lesson to Clem, even if that wasn't actually a choice the game would understand. That is why I prefer to tell her to leave me.