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Kerry felt despondent by the time he finally made it back to his apartment. Opening, shutting, and locking his door felt like a mountain of a task to climb, and he was barely making it with the dead, heavy weight of his limbs. There were a million different thoughts and feelings swirling in an angry storm within his head, and he couldn’t make sense of the clamor. The only thing his brain could really focus on as he dragged himself to his bed was the image of Johnny, the view of his back to Kerry as he walked away from him for the last time burned into his memory. He could still feel where Johnny’s hand had cupped his face, giving him a rare look of sincere affection when he told Kerry to leave the band behind. To do his own thing. The question was, did Kerry have it in him?
Samurai had been so much to him for so long. Johnny had been so much to him for so long. And that was the problem wasn't it? Kerry's whole world revolved around him. All the laughs and the fights. Nights spent writing and hashing out new songs, all the shows in run down dive bars, parties where you could get all the drugs and alcohol you could want. Drunken rants and stupid desicions that threatened to nuke their relationship at any given second. It consumed him, and in the center was Johnny.
Always Johnny.
He had been Kerry’s best and closest friend, and his worst enemy all rolled into one. Johnny had made his life harder than it needed to be. He was arrogant, selfish, rude, and only kept people around when he had a use for them. Yet, despite it all, Kerry loved him. With everything he had. He saw parts of Silverhand that nobody else ever had. Underneath that hard, cold exterior was a man who truly and desperately hoped that there was a brighter future out there for everyone. A man who saw the world for what it could be, while not having any delusions of what it was. Johnny was scarred by the things he saw in the military. Him and every man and woman that had defected when they got sick of fighting a rich man’s war had their names dragged through the mud and torn to shreds, automatically discrediting anything they had to say to the general public. He never stopped fighting though. He reached for that goal, that happy ever after. With every song, with every act of civil disobedience. He wanted to encourage and empower the downtrodden. Make them feel like they had a chance. That they could fight too.
He made Kerry feel like he could fight.
To him, Johnny had been a shining beacon. A light that broke through even the darkest parts of Night City. One that would burn you if you stood close. Kerry knew that, but he never learned. No matter how many times he tried to walk away, Johnny found a way to draw him back. Kerry knew more of his deepest, darkest thoughts and secrets than anybody. Even Rogue or Alt. Yet he could never be to Johnny what they were. Kerry wanted to resent them for having what he never could, but he knew it was no different for them than it was for him. Johnny chewed them up and spit them back out, and still had them coming back for more. He was self destructive and rash, and not afraid to pull everyone down along with him. It was even easier when the victims were willing.
Kerry rolled onto his back, staring at the dull glow the street lamps beyond his window were casting across the ceiling. He wondered then, how much longer it would be. Johnny’s last stand against Arasaka. A day of reckoning for Saburo, and a warning to his corpo ilk. They would learn you couldn’t tug and pull on people’s lives like toys with no consequence. There was a selfish aspect to it in that it was an act of revenge for Alt, but Kerry knew it was more than that. Even when everyone else had their doubts. He thought about how the scream sheets would spin it tomorrow. Arasaka was likely to run a smear campaign against him, besmirching Johnny’s actions and writing them off as the misguided anger of a madman.
Kerry swore that for the next half hour he didn’t blink as he continued his staring contest with the plaster. He could hear the faint sound of his neighbors TV through the walls, and the soft hum of cars on the street, but otherwise silence filled his space and enshrouded him. It was cold and bleak and felt like it was trying to suffocate him. It was agony, pure and unfiltered.
When the moment finally came he could feel the reverberations even from halfway across the city. The explosion was muffled by the walls, but it was still loud enough to cut through the silence like a knife. It shook Kerry down to his bones, and in that moment his heart felt still. He held that last moment with Johnny in his mind's eye, seeing him surrounded by the radiant aura that had Kerry held in a vice grip. It slowly flickered before snuffing out completely. Part of him died with it. Everything they had, everything they’d done, it was all gone now. Even if by some miracle Johnny survived the blast, there was no doubt that Arasaka would hunt him down to finish the job. Johnny had told him there was no coming back, but he had still foolishly prayed that he was wrong. Of course, he had been right. Kerry wouldn’t have been able to stop the tears even if he had wanted to. The dam his hopes had built busted, letting the reservoirs flow forward with no restraint.
This was just another way Johnny had hurt him. Ripped a wound into his heart and left Kerry there to bleed out. Never staying to face the problems he had caused. Kerry hated him as much as he loved him. He hated himself just as much for it. Johnny wasn’t his, never could have been, but he felt like he’d just lost the love of his life. It wasn’t wholly untrue, but it had been a love that didn’t love him back. Not really. Each tear was a product of love and pain, rage and reverence, and every lost chance of finding their places in this cruel world together. He cried and he cried until he no longer could. Then he just laid there until his body forced him to sleep, knowing there would be more waiting for him when he woke to survey the carnage Johnny left behind.