v.1

Being alone. No one had ever known that the Junior Deputy's greatest fear was to be all alone. Why else did they make sure there was someone watching their back whenever he went out into the field, fighting to push the Project at Eden's Gate out of Hope County? They revelled in the company of all the eccentrics that populated Holland Valley, Henbane River and the Whitetail Mountains. They enjoyed their personalities, their drives to make Hope County a better place. They thought they had managed to save each and every one of them when Joseph Seed somehow managed to capture them all and dose them with his goddamned Bliss, and together they had brought that supposed false prophet down, ending with Whitehourse slapping the cuffs on him. And they were all gone now, leaving them and Joseph to ride out the apocalypse in Dutch's bunker, leaving them his prisoner – to twist their mind to whatever he wanted, in preparation for when the fires would pass to leave a ruined earth. Though handcuffed to the bed the Deputy wouldn't allow that.

Joseph hadn't taken account of all the Bliss and all those homeopathic concoctions still coursing through the Deputy's system, which might have explained the look of shock on his face when they broken out of their cuffs and went straight for the Father's neck. The Deputy didn't remember much of what happened, but when they came to, blood was all over their hands, their fingers broken and disjointed from punching something repeatedly ad infinitum, which would explain why Joseph's lifeless corpse looked unrecognizable and more like hamburger meat than anything else, much like the hundreds and hundreds of cultists they had killed. Shot them, stabbed them, burnt them, slaughtered them like they were animals – cultic, brainwashed sheep. All this time they just been thinning humanity out until the bombs dropped. In the end, it had been all for nothing. The Deputy forced their tired, near-broken body up and through Dutch's empty bunker; empty except for them, possibly the last human being on earth.

"…" there was nothing left to say.

Mary, Nick, Kim, Jerome, Jess, Boomer, Hurk, Burke, Wheaty, Eli, Tammy, Grace, Adelaide, Hudson, Sharky, Peaches, Cheeseburger, Tracey, Virgil, Pratt, Dutch and Whitehorse. The Deputy's thoughts drifted to each and every one of them as they pulled themselves up the stairs, thinking about all the times spent with each of them – the good and the bad – and what they wanted to keep doing with each of them once Hope County was finally freed from the cult. So many of those prepper stashes left to find, so many more eccentrics to meet. All gone now.

With what little strength he had left he wrapped his mangled hands around the handle of the door leading out of Dutch's bunker and into the fires of the Collapse. A tired smile was on the Deputy's face when they thought they saw their friends waiting for them amid the burning trees.

They stepped out of the bunker to join them….

A/N: I just finished Far Cry 5…

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