''You can't fight what's inevitable.''
''No, but I can sure as hell try.''

The moon hung full and silvery between gnarled branches of dead trees; light spills in through a small, broken window. Russell tensed, hand hovering just above the holstered gun resting at his hip.

The tell-tale signs were there from the very start. Hancock had brushed it off, telling Russell to quit focusing on what wasn't important, but no amount of assurance could quell his panic. ''You worry too much.''
''Can you really blame me? Look at yourself.''

And Hancock had laughed, shaking his head with that same smile that suggested he thought Russell was being ridiculous.
''I'm fine, Russ. You're overthinkin' it.''
It was only a matter of days before he began to heave, coughing up fair amounts of half-congealed blood; he had tried to hide it, but Russell's eyes missed very little.

The Wastes were endless, but Russell's will was indomitable, even in the face of his own deluded desperation.
He had tried almost everything. Copious amounts of medicine did little other than relieve a small fraction of the pain, slowing the infection for a short while. It was never enough.

Yet he pressed on, searching to find light in a dark and desolate place.
And Hancock followed. Hancock followed, because every day his veins burned with greater intensity, because every day he was brought to his knees by fits of hacking coughs, because every day the radiation spread and he knew that there was nothing to be done for it.

It was only a matter of time.

''There's no point to this,'' he'd growled, shoving away the medical box held in Russell's trembling hands. They had been holled up in an abandoned settlement for days after Hancock had become too weak to stand up on his own and Russell insisted that they find somewhere to lay low while he regained his strength.

There was nothing to regain, however.

Fatigue continuously tugged his bones, and he was left gaunt and spindly, shoulders propped against the gritty off-colour wall, blood thick and slow with countless doses of RadAway, frustration hot and jittery in his stomach.

Crouched beside him, eyes pinched and heavy behind thick-rimmed glasses, Russell ran a shaky hand through peppering hair.

''Not with that attitude there isn't.''

Had the situation been different, Hancock may have laughed, but his expression failed to change.

''You know as well as I that all of this is a waste of time. It won't change anything, Russ. Nothing's gonna stop what's coming. You're fighting for a lost cause.''

''Maybe that's what you think, but I don't.

We're going to make it through this, we can-''

''No, we can't.''

Hancock scowled, reproachfully. ''Quit tryin' to be the goddamn hero for once. There's nothing you can do, but I can still-''

He was cut off abruptly as an onslaught of coughing racked his frail frame. Tears brimmed in the corners of his eyes from the exertion as he gasped out, ''Can't you just fucking end it now? Save yourself the hassle when I turn into one of them.''

''Hancock-'' his brows knit together in disbelief, the air almost knocked out of his lungs from the suddenness of the ghoul's outburst, and he shook his head, slowly- ''I'm not going to kill you, that's-''

''Asking too much?'' Hancock snapped, gravelly voice sharp. ''Yeah, God forbid I want to be put out of my misery.''

''That's the sickness talking.'' Russell pressed the back of his hand to Hancock's burning forehead and frowned. ''You're running a fever, hold on.''

Hancock closed his eyes and shook his head, pushing away the man's anxious hand.

''Why bother,'' he muttered, half-aware of Russell dipping a thin, ragged cloth into clouded water before reaching for a half-empty bottle of pills.

In the middle of the night, Russell lay awake, the star-speckled sky spilling moonlight through the cracks in the ramshackle roof; Hancock breathed raggedly beside him.

''When the time comes, I want you to kill me.'' Hancock was macabre and haggard, his cheekbones a sharp jut under his rotting flesh, eyes sunken and lips a static line. ''No hesitation, alright? I don't want you to end up dead because you were too slow to do anything useful.''

But he couldn't do it.

Where the fear of losing the one crutch Russell had so fortunately stumbled across in the neon-ragtag town where ghouls and outcasts and freaks banded together in something short of consolidation was impervious to any means of logic, Russell couldn't do it.

So he locked Hancock up.

He was exactly how Russell had left him: chained to the wall, a thick circle of metal lying heavy around his neck, two around his ankles. His hands were left free. It seemed cruel to do otherwise.

Russell's eyes raked over a hunched frame and inconsistently rotted flesh, over decaying features and twitching claws, over the still-oozing radiation burns that had ended Hancock's somewhat human existence. It was an empty, cold look.
It became difficult to ignore the ghoul's scrutiny, beady eyes pinned to his every movement as though Russell were something strange that demanded attention.

''Y'know, it's funny,'' he muttered, and Hancock narrows his eyes, growling with some low, guttural sound that sets Russell's hairs on end, ''I'm probably dodging a bullet here. I can almost… I can almost hear your voice, telling me to quit being so…'' He takes a breath, hands shaking. ''I wonder if you're… if any of you is still in…''
The words trail off, and he takes a moment to recollect himself.

Hancock only stared, unblinking.

Don't look at me like that, he pleaded silently, his grip around the gun tightening, sunken eyes hooded beneath a pronounced brow. He swallowed, hard. Don't make this harder than it already is.
Hancock growled, straining, moving his feet forward as much as he could, left and right, chains rattling. His fingers were wrapped around the metal collar on his neck.

Before he knew it, the chains had come loose from the wall, and Hancock was lunging forwards.

Russell stumbled backwards, crashing to the ground with a pained groan, Hancock pinning him in place. Despite the ghoul's wafer-thin body, the collision still managed to knock the air from Russell's lungs, causing him to splutter and cough.

Hancock was already gnashing and growling, face mere inches from Russell's, the thick stench of blood and rot causing his stomach to lurch, and he wretched.
He managed a strangulated, ''Fuck-'' before he was overwhelmed, and Hancock's teeth sunk into the curve of his shoulder.

The sudden warmth of his own blood flowing jolted him, and with as much strength as he could manage he shoved the ghoul backwards, sparks of pain seizing the muscles in his arm.
He cried out in agony as Hancock recovered and tore at his face, sinking claws into his cheek, narrowly missing his eye.

A gunshot rang out, deafeningly loud. Then, silence.

It was days before Russell could breathe deeply enough without wincing; days before he could peel himself from the stone-cold floor, from that stale and dusty room that he lost everything by his own hand; days before he could do anything other than breathe, much less begin to face the reality of what he had done.

But it was years before the ever-present stench of blood and decay faded; years before his hands ceased trembling; years before the suffocating ache in his chest subsided.

In those years, he learned the comfort of dreams, and in the dreams, Hancock would tell him to keep moving forward.

''John Hancock, huh? I'll be damned.''

The ghoul laughed. ''You and I, we're gonna get along just fine.''

Russell smiled.

Days later, as Russell attempted to hunker down in a shadowy, dusty shell of a school bus, he looked down at his hands, rough and calloused and stained with blood.
John Hancock was dead.

There was no sense of closure, however, but instead the anger was drowned out as a sense of loss and need in equal parts ripped their path through his mind - the breath almost knocked out of him at the suddenness of the intrusion.

I was supposed to save you.