Aftermath

“Come on, we can’t just sit here all day.” Emmett gave me a hand, which I reluctantly took. He probably struggled not to drop me, as his knees were shaking. It took a few seconds, but I managed to get up without pulling him down. The two of us were an in extremely rough shape.

We had already been completely exhausted from Selphine’s zombies, but we then went over our limits trying to heal Louise’s shoulder which had been bleeding incessantly, to the point we’d gotten worried that all this blood loss might end up proving to be fatal.. We weren’t able to completely heal the wound, but luckily we patched it up to the point where it wasn’t life threatening, but it would still take her some time to fully recover. However, that was good enough for us, and for the resources currently available at our disposal, which were very limited, to say the least.

Louise herself was still unconscious, me and Emmett looked at each other.

“Do you wanna tell her everything Selphine said?” Emmett asked.

“It might be a bit too tough for her right away when she wakes up.” I answered. “We might have to slowly ease her into it at first, but eventually she’s gotta know. She’s part of the team, after all. Besides, she saved my life, so I owe her at least that, if not a lot more.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Emmett nodded a couple of times, probably out of pure nervousness.

Emmett stayed silent a bit, before eventually asking me the question that was clearly hanging above both of us.

“…Do you think she was telling the truth?”

“Yeah, she was.” I didn’t hesitate. “Those three days all but confirm it. It took only three days for Arthur to figure out what was really going on, but he shared the truth with no one, not even his closest confidant, Louise. He knew his memories would get erased, but would end up following her anyway due to his influence. But he didn’t let them know that. The second ritual was then to allow him to take his body back and sacrifice me to break the seal.”

“I see….”He said, before looking back at Louise who laid on the floor. “So, uh, which one of us is gonna carry her?”

After a lot of struggling and switching, we managed to carry her all the way back to the meeting place, although with a few difficulties, such as being mistaken as kidnappers by a peacekeeper officer, and getting taken to a station, until we managed to shake her awake and get her to confirm that we were her friends before we made her go back to sleep, which then forced them to let us go while eying us suspiciously. After that, we had more physical problems, as both of us ended up being too exhausted to carry her and had to take an extended rest period to gain our energy, where we just sat there on the ground doing nothing. And finally, after a couple of hours, we reached the meeting place, entered the room underneath and laid her on the bed before exiting the room to allow her to rest.

Me and Emmett both sat on the cold floor in the empty space in silence while pondering.

“A lot’s been happening these past few days, huh?” He started to reminisce. “Ever since that night you got ambushed by Louise and her brother, it’s been nonstop crazy things happening to the three of us.”

“I guess…”

“What do you mean, you guess?” He continued rambling. “I’ve barely had a moment to myself! I need to process all of this shit, man. Especially what Selphine told us today. I mean, what are we gonna do next?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to talk about it.” I immediately shut him down. “We’ll only start discussing it once Louise is healed and we explain it to her. We can’t leaver her out of the loop, after all.”

“True, true.”

Silence then returned as we continued to sit there on the floor and rest our backs on the wall.

“Hey, you think her parents are worried?” Emmett then suddenly brought Louise up out of the blue.

“I don’t know, she never mentions them.”

“They must be devastated, losing their eldest son and now their daughter goes to who knows where and stays an entire night out.”

“Yeah, that must suck.”

“…What about your parents?”

Damn, I was hoping he wouldn’t ask about that.

“Like seriously, why are you beefing with them? Earlier today, you literally slammed the door in your old man’s face and immediately walked away.”

“If I remember correctly, he was the one that slammed the door in my face…”I corrected Emmett.

“Whatever, man, you know what I mean.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Alright, that’s cool. If you ever need someone to vent to, I’m here for you, okay?”

“Thank you, Emmett, you’re a good friend, man.”

“It’s nothing, really.”

A while later, we heard sounds coming from underneath us.

“I think she’s awake, I’m gonna go check on her.” Emmett stood up. “I’ll try to ease her into it, and maybe you can come in a bit later.”

“Sounds good.”

I waited alone as he went down. I heard voices, but couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. A short while later, Emmett emerged and motioned for me to go down.

“She’s uh, she’s asking for you, dude.” He said, awkwardly stretching his head.

“Did you tell her?” I asked.

“Yeah, all of it. Every last detail.”

“How did she take it?”

“Better than I thought, to be honest. She’s not freaking out, or anything like that.”

“I see.”

“Anyways, I’ll be waiting right here, on the other side of the room, if either of you guys needs anything, alright?”

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem, man.”

I then went down and entered the room that Louise waited for me in.