Emil huffed, getting tired from walking over the demolished concrete. A lot of places had concrete that was merely cracked, but Emil found that the further you got from the city, the more the streets were destroyed into big, chunky rocks. It was annoying and sometimes dangerous to walk over.
He and Avery were heading north, making their way to the nearest bridge to get back to the Castle. They had just run a mission to help out their allies at Somerville Place, a settlement skirting the edge of the Glowing Sea. They were being harassed by some nearby raiders, and needed “assistance.” Avery and Emil had resolved the problem, and were on their way home.
It was getting darker and colder by the minute - it was late in the day, and the sun was already on the horizon. Emil stopped for a minute, looking to the sky and catching his breath, before calling out to Avery.
“Hey, I think we should set up for the night.”
Avery stopped and turned to look at him, and likewise look at the sky.
“You’re right. I wasn’t paying attention to the time. Let’s find somewhere to make camp.” They called back in agreement, turning their attention back to their surroundings and looking for somewhere decent to slee
The duo quickly found a suitable place to sleep nearby - it was at the bottom of the hill that the street was on top of, so they were suitably out-of-sight.
Emil was setting up the tent, lost in his own thoughts, when he heard Avery start making… some kind of noise. It wasn’t necessarily speaking, so he turned around, puzzled and concerned. Avery was over to the side, with their packs, starting to hunch over. Emil’s eyebrows furrowed as he approached them.
“Avery? Are you alright?” He asked, reaching out to grab their shoulder.
Avery jolted in response to his voice, whipping around to look at him with discolored eyes. Emil had never gotten to see a feral ghoul’s face up close before, so he didn’t realize what had happened to Avery. He looked at them, still confused, for a moment that felt like forever as he observed before the now-feral ghoul assaulted him.
“Hey! Hey - Avery!” He shouted, startled by the attack. Avery had been acting completely normal up to that point - he was completely unprepared for the attack. The arm that he had reached out to touch their shoulder was in front of him, desperately fending off Avery’s mauling. Emil was knocked back, onto the ground, before he put pieces together and realized what happened: Avery had gone feral, after so long, and he was the unfortunate witness - and now victim.
Emil scrambled back, begrudgingly kicking Avery, internally flinching. It dazed Avery long enough for Emil to grab his 10mm pistol that he kept at his waist. As Avery recovered from the kick and refocused on him, Emil rapidly fired shots at them. The first two missed, Emil unable to control the recoil - he could barely control his own thoughts - but he corrected his aim and began landing shots.
It destroyed him, tearing him apart from the inside out, to be doing this to Avery. Logically, he knew, that Avery as he knew them, was gone. Whatever part of the brain that made Avery, Avery, had likely withered and given way to the incoherent aggression of whatever controlled a feral ghoul’s mind. But they still had the same body, the same face, they were still wearing the same clothes. By the time he stopped firing, and Avery had stopped attacking, Emil realized there were tears on his face.
He sat there for an unknown amount of time, crying and hyperventilating, both from the panic of being attacked and the distress of killing his second-best friend. It took even longer for him to realize the pain that was coursing through him from the visceral wound on his arm.
Emil felt cold and all of time felt slow as he observed the wound on his arm, still bleeding, and then looked to Avery’s body. He managed to get himself up, off the ground, and went to the packs that Avery had been looking through before. He got out a stimpak, Med-X, and first aid to clean and cover his wounds, as well as deal with the pain.
After he dispensed his own treatment, Emil couldn’t really bring himself to do much else. It was late into the night at this point - the moon had been steadily climbing in the sky, and Emil sat awake blankly staring into the night. Part of him wished that he could think of anything, but there was just repetitive silence interjected with the sounds of the Wasteland night. Bloodbugs and bloatflies buzzing in the distance… wind shaking the dried, dead branches of the trees nearby… an intermittent gunshot or especially far-away explosion.
Eventually, Emil managed to fall into a restless sleep. The only reason he did manage to fall asleep was the pure, built-up exhaustion from traveling and fighting. He only managed to get a few hours, waking up at the crest of dawn, feeling unrested and still unreal.
When he opened the flaps to the tent, he once again could not help but stare at Avery’s body for a few moments. It was a painful reality, and one that he couldn’t grasp just yet. Every moment, it felt like Avery should just get up and start moving around and act like they were simply trying to mess with him, or something.
Even so, he took some short time to collapse the single tent he had set up - there had been no need to get Avery’s ready, after all.
Once everything was packed up, he knew it was all too much for him to carry at once, so he went through his own and Avery’s belongings to divide out what was the most crucial to bring back - being sure to factor in… Avery’s weight.
After Emil divided their belongings, he found a cluster of broken concrete that he wrestled to hide the rest under, for the Minutemen to return for later. As he strained to pull the decimated concrete, his wounds from the night before flared up, causing him to buckle and withdraw from the task. He had to figure out another way to accomplish this.
He spent some time observing the pile, trying to find what he could possibly shove back and forth without collapsing the whole thing. Eventually he found a slab that wasn’t holding up the entire pile, and shoved it aside just enough to cram the rest of their belongings behind it and then shoving it back.
Exhausted, Emil sat down back where he had set up camp. His bag was still there, but aside from his bag and Avery’s body, there was essentially no mark that they had been there.
Emil sat there for a while, silently at first, until an inexplicable urge bubbled up from inside of him.
“Avery…” he started, even knowing they wouldn’t respond.
“…I’m going to miss you. I think everyone is.” Emil continued, chest constricting, eyes welling up with tears.
“I’m so sorry. I wish none of this had happened. I wish I didn’t have to kill you. I wish you hadn’t gone feral.”
“…I only hope I can do justice for your memory. That’s all that we have left, Avery. It’s just the memory of you.”
“...”
“I’ll do the best that I can, for you. I don’t think I’m cut to be the new General, but whoever is, I’ll help them. I’ll stay by their side the same as I did for you.”
“And Mokushi… I know this is going to destroy her. I’m sorry that you couldn’t see her again before this happened.”
Emil started choking on his words, now taking small gasps between his sentences because he had started crying. He was trying to ignore the tears that he felt rolling down his face.
Emil huffed for a moment, trying to regain his composure. There was no need to - he was alone. Even so, he felt some kind of wrong for crying over this.
He wrapped his arms around his knees and put his head down. He took the time to cry it out before pulling himself back together, wiping his eyes roughly with the collar of his shirt. He needed to get back to the Castle, sooner rather than later.
Emil stretched out, popping his joints, before standing up and putting on his pack. His eyebrows furrowed with upset, he turned to Avery’s body, and moved them into position before hefting them over his shoulder, using the surface area on his bag to distribute their dead weight more tolerably.
It was going to be a long way back.