♦ Kendle's Last Hit ♦

TRIGGER WARNING - Discussion of road accidents and near-death experiences

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I usually post very little about book III events on public socials since a lot of it is... well, this. It's very depressing for one, and it's kind of a culmination of basically everything that's been happening since book I, and there has been a LOT of drama T.T

Book III starts right after Rick's road accident, which seemingly happens really out of the blue and completely wrecks the entire Kostrov family. After Jake saga ended, Rick was actually slowly beginning to make real efforts to step away from his crime life, he was actively seeking out help for his trauma issues, he was slowly trying to go sober in an effort to fix all the relationships he managed to shatter over the past few years, so this happening all of a sudden was just entirely unexpected. To everyone at the time, it seemed so random, so unfair, yet the plot would reveal that next to nothing in Rick's life was ever just an accidental tragedy.

Rick survived this ordeal, but barely was genuinely giving it a lot of praise. He was completely out of it for a long time and, for the very first time, he truly had no way of concealing just how poorly he was doing mentally. He spent years partially disabled due to his work injury from years ago, one that initially lead to him having to rely on his cane, but the road accident was the nail in the coffin where he was forced to truly accept his new body and new way of life. And for a long time after the fall of the Underground, he wasn't willing to face this issue whatsoever.

Since Rick is pretty much knocked out or hallucinating for a bunch of the first part of book III, FJ is the central figure we really focus on, and he was somehow doing even worse :,D

Fun fact for anyone that isn't yet used to Rick crying, but he's usually the one that's more emotionally honest. He lies a fuckton and tells a bunch of bullshit stories about his past and how he's doing so he'd keep people off his scent, but he's VERY emotional and very rarely hides it well. He's very levelheaded in times of need, but he also has big BIGGG feelings </3

FJ, on the other hand, isn't as emotionally open. He's more honest, he doesn't lie, and he's quite true to himself and much more hotheaded than Rick is at times, but he's quite reserved as well. He's scared and petrified of everything, but shuts down when faced with such issues before they are able to hurt him. It's something he sadly kept from his life before amnesia, and after Rick's accident happened, he entirely loses his direction.

He was doing a genuinely brilliant job taking care of him and getting him back on his feet, but when it comes to anything else, he was absolutely losing it. He did not know how to care for a family on his own, he didn't know how to tell everyone that everything is going to be okay when he hardly believed it himself, and he truly and utterly couldn't shake off his obsession with trying to figure out who the hell actually caused the accident, and why they fled the scene.

It was a very difficult time for everyone, but surprisingly, it ALMOST managed to fix Rick's and FJ's relationship. They've hit a rough patch during Jake saga, one that Rick managed to calm down when he started making actual efforts to get help, but the post-accident period allowed them both a BUNCH of time to just sit and talk about everything and anything. It was when they were together that, for a brief moment, they could forget about the horrors of it all and just focus on each other, like they did many years ago when they first met.

Sadly, as the truth about the accident began to unravel and as FJ got swept into Rick's criminal circles, they would both slowly realize there was much, much more that lead to the accident than either of them could have ever imagined.