Chapter Text
SEPTEMBER, 2281
The Novac dawn was dusty-pink, fingers of sunlight lacing through the gaps in the buildings and casting the whole town in a soft orange glow, with clouds wisped across the sky like soft pink silk.
Twin flashes of red berets made their way across the parking lot of the Dino Dee-Lite, where two veteran snipers swapped their shifts. Routine, day in, day out, they moved like clockwork. Sometimes one would get all the way up to the sniper nest before the other left, sometimes one would leave his room to find the other had already retreated to his own— but most of the time, they crossed paths somewhere on the parking lot.
On this particular morning, the one whose dogtags bore VARGAS, MANNY with BOONE, CRAIG lain underneath, decided to try his luck once more at greeting his once-sworn partner.
"Morning, Boone."
"Vargas."
As Manny internally remarked on the success— he'd gotten a response, after all, for the first time since that fateful morning— he realised as he walked past that the tags so usually proudly displayed, BOONE, CRAIG with VARGAS, MANNY below it, were absent from the morning's golden glint.
Manny knew better than to think he'd have taken them off, so he assumed Craig had just tucked them into his shirt— not unreasonable, given the glimmer of metal from the dinosaur's mouth was a dead giveaway of its inhabitant.
He paused for a moment, looking over his shoulder. Craig kept walking.
"Look, I'm sorry—"
"Save it, Vargas."
Even still as he was, Manny felt himself freeze.
It had been a similar morning a mere few weeks ago, when Manny had walked past Craig to swap shifts as normal, happily exchanging a brief report of the night— he had settled in his post up in the dino when he heard boots thumping up behind him a whole shift early.
"Manny, I can't find Carla."
His placid grin had been frozen to his face when he'd responded a dumbstruck "What?", but even then as Craig grew frantic explaining that she hadn't been seen anywhere, she'd just up and gone, he couldn't hide the horrid satisfaction at the concept of never seeing her again.
When the panicked sniper caught sight of Manny's small grin, he'd nearly killed him on the spot, a threat on Craig's breath and a solemn promise of innocence on Manny's.
He'd laughed on the delivery.
Whether it had been from sheer shock or sick satiety, there was nothing he wouldn't give now to have strangled that laugh before it reached his throat.
Craig had gone missing himself that night, and Cliff Briscoe stepped in as temporary nightman.
When he came back, he was a husk of the man he used to be. Callous. Cold. More so than before. He'd arrived back in town while Manny was on watch, and when he came to resume his post, Manny had only managed one word before he was cut off.
"Where's-?"
"Dead."
Craig hadn't spoken to him since, until now.
Manny took a deep breath and steadied himself, continuing his walk across to the dino. He moved on autopilot, rapping Cliff's door in the gift shop to wake him up as was custom.
The steps creaked under his boots, seemingly heavier with the weight of his guilt, and when he pushed the door open, he found himself dumbstruck once more.
A distinctive metallic glint sat on the floor of the sniper post. Manny didn't need to look to know it was his own tag. He barely breathed as he affixed it around his neck, only exhaling when he slipped Craig's– Boone's— free of the chain.
It clinked to the floorboard with all the force of a gunshot, and he sat carefully away from it as he assumed his post.
Quietly, deafening, his own words from lifetimes ago rang in his ears.
"If you don't like it, we can always swap back."