Boone has died

... and with those words I had a very weird experience.

Boone, I should explain, was a companion in the game Fallout III: New Vegas. He had been with me for about half of the game at that point. He was quiet and personal and conflicted: not only had he participated in slaughter as a military man, his wife had been sold to slavers and he killed her to save her. His was a sad story of regret, loss and the resulting demons.

My affection for him was heightened because he had helped me out of several tight spots in the game and I gave him all the scavenged stuff to carry, effectively doubling my carrying capacity.

But then I made a bad decision and we ended up in the middle of a pack of wild dogs. Close combat where Boone's sniper rifle skills amounted to very little help. And then he was dead. And I was actually a little moved. Not to tears; I wasn't really sad. But I certainly felt a sense of loss. I felt enough that I ceremoniously dropped a hat he had given me with his corpse and placed his sniper rifle in an unused locker in the shack I use as home base. Then I took a moment and moved on. He had just gotten finished telling me that he felt bad things were due him because of the bad things he had done. I guess he was correct.