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The visual field of a sniper scope is less than one arc-minute.
All Cougar can see is a tiny slice of the world. Two men with guns, 710 yards from his position.
Breathe in, breathe out.
In his head, he holds a map of the rest of the world. The catwalk he's on, the maze of stairs leading down the warehouse floor. Stacks of boxes in geometrical precision. The doors, the roads they lead to, the van waiting for them two blocks to the south.
His teammates, a constellation of bright points of concern. One at the door, two in the maze of boxes, one standing two feet away from the two men with guns in Cougar's sight.
Breathe in, breathe out.
His teammate isn't in the tiny window Cougar looks through. He doesn't need to look at him. He needs to look at the two men with guns, so that's all that's in his sight. But his teammate is there, in the black around the bright circle of the scope, and Cougar has to watch him carefully with some sense beyond sight.
Breathe in, breathe out.
There's chatter over the radio in his ear. Soft voices, arguing. Cougar doesn't listen.
He can't lose focus. He'll hear it if they give the one command he's listening for.
He can see everything that matters, anyway.
~~~~~
"You Alvarez?" the colonel asked gruffly, looking him up and down.
Cougar nodded.
"Looks like a strong wind would knock him over," said the captain, unimpressed.
"We're not hiring a linebacker here, Roque. He's not here to take a punch, that's what we got you for."
Cougar didn't smile.
The colonel peered at him skeptically. "Too quiet."
"Lord knows we could use some of that around here." The sergeant gave Cougar a long-suffering look.
"I like him," the corporal said decisively. "Can we keep him?"
Cougar waited patiently through a silent debate of eye-rolling and theatrical gestures. He hadn't ever encountered a team like this, where the lowest ranks could argue with a colonel using obscene hand gestures, but something about the byplay felt nice. Warm.
Eventually the colonel sighed. "Just don't blow this one up."
"Ha ha, I win!" The corporal stuck out a hand to shake. "Jensen, Jacob R. Call me Jake or 'Your Majesty, Master of All Things Technological'. And whatever you have for a phone or computer, bring it to me because I bet it sucks and I'll get you one ten times better in no time, don't worry, you'll thank me I promise."
"Jensen. Shut up." The colonel clapped Cougar on the shoulder. "Welcome to the Losers."
Cougar wondered what exactly he had gotten himself into.
~~~~~
It goes wrong so quickly.
The two men in the scope look angry. Cougar watches their hands, follows each gesture and twitch.
He sees it before anyone else. A quick grab behind the back, a shifting weight, a step backwards to gain a better stance.
"Take the shot!" rings in his ear, but he doesn't need it.
In the space between heartbeats, the view in the scope expands to fill the entire world -- there is nothing but the two men and the gun and the trigger under Cougar's finger.
He pulls, calmly and effortlessly.
There's a white blur in the scope as the hammer clicks home.
There's blood, there's yelling, but the wrong man goes down.
~~~~~
Range drills didn't stop, even after he'd been assigned to a team. Hitting a target wasn't about pointing in the right direction, it was about the wind and the terrain and the distance and a hundred other things that you had to learn by feel.
So until they deployed, Cougar practiced the feel.
Two weeks before they shipped out for the first time, he came off the range to find Jensen waiting, his own gear in a bag at his feet while he played with a yo-yo. He'd obviously been watching, from the sidelong looks he was giving Cougar.
"Don't you ever miss?" Jensen asked without any preamble.
Cougar locked up his rifle. "You think I was born knowing how to shoot?"
"Hell yes. I think you were born holding a gun. And with the hat. Maybe the hair too." Jensen cocked his head and eyed him consideringly. "It's a pretty cute image, maybe I'll photoshop one."
As usual, Cougar let most of the words wash right past him and answered the real question underneath. "I miss. Everyone misses."
"Hmm, don't believe you. Gonna have to prove it. Friendly wager, you make every single one of the next 100 shots you take, or I'll buy you a case of beer. Deal?"
Cougar didn't gamble, but he did like drinking beer with Jensen. "Deal."
Jensen was grinning the way he did when he'd just done something amazing and impossible to a computer. Cougar had no idea why -- Jensen hadn't done anything to be so proud of in this particular situation (and Jensen's own marksmanship was best labelled as "broad side of a barn."). But then he saw the same grin later on the mission when Pooch pulled off some kind of insane driving stunt, when Roque punched a guy who was sneaking up behind them, and when Clay's ridiculous plan actually came off without a hitch.
Jensen was proud of them.
Cougar didn't really understand why, but he liked being something Jensen could be proud of.
~~~~
No one on the warehouse floor hears the shot.
There's just suddenly running and yelling. The scope is a blur, he can't find a target.
"Where'd that come from?" Clay is yelling in his ear. "Cougar, you've got company, get out of there."
Cougar looks up, the world snapping back into place around him. There are men running up the catwalk behind him. He picks up his rifle and runs.
But he still has the map in his head, so he dodges down a side path and rattles down the stairs to the warehouse floor, getting there just two steps after Pooch, who was guarding their exit. Pooch fires up at the men following Cougar; they drop.
"Get him, I'll keep our exit clear!" Pooch yells at him, like Cougar needs directions.
Maybe he does, since his feet don't seem to be listening to his brain.
Roque and Clay are clearing the warehouse floor, methodical and accurate and terrifying.
That leaves Cougar to run for the spot he'd been watching through his scope, now stained red.
Jensen is on the ground.
Cougar drops his rifle with a clatter and falls to his knees. Jensen's alive, he's breathing, but that's all Cougar can see right now through the blood spreading red across his white shirt.
"Jensen," he says. It sounds wrong, somehow, so he says it again louder. "Jensen."
"P..present." Jensen coughs. He shifts under Cougar's hands, stills and breathes out shakily. "Son of a bitch."
"Can you move?"
"Don't think so, buddy," Jensen manages a smile, weak and macabre with blood on his teeth. "Gonna need a lift."
Jensen outweighs Cougar by about 40 pounds, but he's carried heavier things for less important reasons. It takes a little maneuvering, Jensen snorting pained breaths through his nose as Cougar pulls him up and over his shoulder.
"Fireman carry? Prefer...princesss..." Jensen mutters, coughing wetly. Cougar ignores him, just steadies one hand on Jensen's leg and the other on his wrist, just at his pulse point.
He checks to make sure they have cover. Clay waves him forward without looking, he and Roque keeping all the arms dealers pinned down with short, accurate shots.
Cougar leaves his rifle behind.
~~~~
They played a game in sniper school. They'd show you a table full of objects, bullets and staplers and weird little knick knacks. You could look for a minute, maybe 30 seconds, and then they'd cover it. Later -- a few minutes later, a whole day later -- you'd have to tell them what was there. And not just the names, you'd have to describe what cityscape was in the snowglobe or what the numbers were on the calculator display.
Always be looking, always be remembering.
Watch a 1-meter square patch through a sniper scope for less then two seconds, come up with enough memories to last a lifetime.
~~~~~
They get him to the van.
Then it's Clay and Roque in the back trying to keep Jensen alive long enough for Pooch to get them to a hospital.
Cougar can't stop looking at Jensen. The bullet hit below his shoulder blade and went right through, but there's blood everywhere. He can't tell how bad it is, he can't tell what's been hit. All he can see is the blood.
"Hey, kid. You with me?" Clay asks Jensen, one hand on his cheek.
"Hoorah," Jensen answers, sounding vague and disconnected.
"Roque, slap him if he falls asleep."
"Hey..." Jensen protests, sounding a little more awake. "No sl-slapping. That's against regs."
"Help me get him on his side," Clay says to Cougar. They tilt him up, carefully, and Cougar finds himself holding Jensen's shoulder to keep him steady.
Cougar can't look at his face. He wants to, but he can't.
A finger taps his knee. He looks up, involuntarily.
"Cougs," Jensen whispers. "You look like shit."
"Don't," Cougar says harshly. He picks up Jensen's hand and moves it so Roque can get at the exit wound, but doesn't let it go. "Quiet, for once."
"Not easy for me, you know th-that," Jensen huffs. "'s it bad?"
"No. You will be fine," Cougar says firmly. He can feel Clay look at him, but he can't see it and if he can't see it it doesn't matter. "You will be causing trouble again in no time."
"Can't die yet anyway," Jensen says with that casual fatalism that drives Cougar up the wall. He closes his eyes. "You...owe me beer."
Cougar's heart clenches. He can't move, not as Clay shakes Jensen to try to wake him up, not even when Roque slaps him. He just holds Jensen's hand and makes sure his pulse is still there.
Jensen's still alive five minutes later, and that's all Cougar can ask for now.
~~~~~
Jensen made it seem like a game.
Hit a fencepost from the van while Pooch is driving. Hit it while Jensen is driving. Hit a Mountain Dew can off the top of Jensen's slowly-growing shrine to caffeine. Hit a can out of the middle without wrecking the pyramid. Put a hole in the Ace of Spades pinned to the wall. Put a hole in it while Jensen throws it in the air. Hit an apple off Roque's head (untested.)
Jensen was the one who brought it into the field. Bored waiting for a mark to show, Jensen had murmured into his mike, "Bet you can't hit that crow."
There was a weird Halloween-decoration stuffed crow sitting on the dashboard of a dusty abandoned pick-up truck about ten yards from Jensen. They should probably have been keeping a closer eye out, since there was no guarantee the men they were after were going to take this entrance, but there was no one there and no one coming. Cougar probably should have known better, but he was bored too.
A shot through the truck's open window and the crow exploded in a burst of feathers.
Jensen hooted in appreciation. Even Roque chuckled. It felt good.
They did it more and more. Jensen asked Cougar to shoot things while they waited. Then he asked him to shoot a can off a table to prove to the bad guy that he wasn't lying about his backup. Then it was asking him to shoot a hat off someone's head.
Eventually it reached a point where Jensen was pretending to be a cowboy gunslinger, pulling an imaginary gun from a low-slung holster and pointing his finger at a Serbian crime lord. Cougar put a bullet through him just as Jensen said, "Bang!"
For that one, the round took the corner off the collar of Jensen's jacket. He loved it and showed it off to everyone who would listen -- it became his favorite jacket.
"You boys are crazy. Doing trust falls with .50 cal rounds." Pooch said, shaking his head at their antics.
"You're just jealous of the sniper on my shoulder." Jensen patted Cougar's arm. "Better than a guardian angel any day."
Jensen believed that Cougar would never miss. After a while, Cougar started to believe it too.
~~~~
No one talks to Cougar.
He doesn't want to talk to them either. He wants to sit in the hard plastic chair and watch two seconds of high-resolution memories of a tiny slice of the world. A white blur flashing into the frame.
Eventually a nurse comes in. She says something to Clay, Clay says something to Pooch, Pooch comes over and sits next to Cougar.
"He's out of surgery. You want to see him?"
Cougar shakes his head mutely. He wants to see Jensen, more than anything, but he can't look at him right now.
And he's sure Jensen won't want to see him.
The others share a look, as if Cougar doesn't know what they're thinking anyway. Clay and Pooch leave, Roque stays behind. He sits down next to Cougar.
"I am not going to talk about your feelings," Roque says matter-of-factly. "But you look like shit and you're not punching people to get to Jensen. So what the fuck is up."
Cougar just stares at the floor.
"You're not the kid's guardian angel, whatever weird games you two play. You can't see everything."
Cougar shakes his head. His eyes feel hot.
He can feel Roque staring at the side of his head before he gives up and stands. "Fine. Be that way. But we're gonna tell Jensen you're out here sulking."
Roque leaves. Cougar just stares at the floor, counting the dots on the ugly tile pattern.
~~~~~~
The first time Cougar shot someone, it didn't feel real.
It was like the video games his little brothers played. There was a man shooting at a Humvee. Cougar found him in his rifle scope, lined up the mil dots to account for wind and gravity, pulled the trigger. The man jerked back and fell down; there wasn't even any visible blood. When he lowered the scope, he couldn't even see where the man had been. It was like he'd simply disappeared.
Cougar's hands shook afterward, but he wasn't sure why.
~~~~~~
Cougar is still waiting when Clay comes back.
He's alone. Roque and Pooch must be keeping Jensen company. Cougar can almost see them, ten floors above him, sitting squashed into uncomfortable chairs with their feet up on Jensen's bed. In his mind, Jensen is laughing and pushing their feet off the bed, but he knows that's not at all what's happening.
Clay stands in front of him, arms crossed, watching him. Then suddenly he says, "It was your bullet."
Cougar's whole body flinches.
Clay heaves a sigh that seems to come from the soles of his shoes. He sits down in the chair next to Cougar. "I should beat your ass for this. You and Jensen and those stupid goddamn games of yours, I should have known they'd go wrong sooner or later."
It's like being punched in the stomach, for Clay to say what Cougar's been thinking all this time. It's all his fault, all of it -- overconfidence, arrogance, that white blur of Jensen's shirt entering the frame between the moment he chose to pull the trigger and the moment his finger obeyed.
"Cougar. I should do that, but I won't." Clay sighs. "As stupid as the two of you are, this wasn't your fault. Everyone misses, Cougar."
"Not me," Cougar whispers.
He gets up and walks out of the hospital.
~~~~~~
He killed someone up close for the first time to save Jensen.
They were in Angola, helping the local military with an extremist insurgency. They were support and recon, mostly. Roque and Pooch were watching the perimeter, Clay was meeting with their Angolan liason, and Cougar and Jensen were watching the insurgent camp -- Jensen through bins, Cougar through his scope.
Someone got past the perimeter. There was a shudder in the bushes beside Jensen and a man leapt out, gun raised. Jensen scrambled back and fumbled for his gun, but he wouldn't get it up in time. Cougar couldn't swing his rifle around in the close quarters, so he pulled his knife and pushed Jensen out of the way.
There was blood that time. And when it was done, Jensen was panting from the adrenaline rush and staring up at him with something a little like awe. Cougar offered him a hand to stand up.
Jensen took it and heaved himself to his feet. "You are just too dangerous, man. Scary. I'm taking the tent next to you from now on."
'Scary' didn't sound like a good thing, but Jensen snoring nearby where Cougar could keep track of him certainly did.
~~~~~~~~~
He doesn't run far. He can't leave the Losers. But he can't stay either.
They'll all know what he did by now. How can any of them trust him again? He knows they won't blame him -- not even Jensen would blame him, Cougar knows that -- but he missed. He missed and he shot one of the Losers. How can any of them feel safe with his rifle at their back now?
It's painful to not be near them though. He hadn't realized how much he'd come to depend on them always being around, always being where he could see them and watch out for them. How can he let them go into a fight without him?
So he stays in the same motel they do, across the parking lot. He watches when Jensen is released from the hospital and they help him from Pooch's van into the room. Jensen looks around, but there's no way he can see Cougar behind the thin drapes. He looks pale and shaky on his feet, but alive.
They come and go for a week or so, then they pack the van and leave. Cougar checks the room after they've gone. No note.
But the Losers don't travel quietly. He knows people on the internet, people almost as good as Jensen. He knows where the Losers are going.
He buys a new rifle and he follows.
~~~~~~~~
"You ever think about what you'll do after we catch Max?" Jensen asked him once.
"Don't need to think about it."
Cougar would go where the Losers went. And if they went their separate ways, he'd go with Jensen. Not even a question worth asking.
~~~~~~~
After the third time Cougar intervenes from afar, taking down the police counter-sniper with a shot to the vest before he could take out Roque, he has a feeling they might have noticed him.
The feeling is confirmed when he gets back to his sad and empty motel room to find Jensen lying on his bed, idly flipping through channels. When Cougar comes in, Jensen flicks a glance at him and mutes the tv but keeps flipping.
"So I heard you pulled a Richard Kimball and became a Fugitive," Jensen says. It's light, but there's a sharp edge in his voice. "Or maybe Bruce Banner, hulking out and stomping away to keep his friends safe? Except it doesn't seem like you've done a particularly good job of the hiding out part."
Cougar doesn't want to look at him, but he can't help it. Jensen is still pale, with a five o'clock shadow that's becoming a legitimate beard and his arm in a sling, but he's alive.
Something clenches in Cougar's chest.
"I heard you didn't even visit me in the hospital. Harsh, man. That hurts. Right in here." Jensen pats his chest above his heart. Cougar stares at the spot. "And then you disappear without saying good-bye, only to take up this creepy stalker act. You know we always know you're there, right? You're not exactly hard to spot." Cougar is extremely hard to spot, but apparently the Losers have Cougar-seeking radar. He can't complain; he feels like he'd know where they were anywhere on the planet. "But now I am bored with this game and I want you to come back so we can yell at you properly." Jensen clicks off the tv and bounces up to a sitting position. "Deal?" "I can't," Cougar says quietly. "Why not? Don't you like us anymore?" "No." "Do we smell? Does Clay smell? Be honest, that's it, isn't it. Or maybe you found a senorita and want to settle down? Joined the junior league of superheroes? Discovered evidence of aliens and now you're even MORE on the run from the government and you can't be seen with us for your own protection?" Cougar shook his head. "Well, it can't be because of that stupid idea that you shot me." Cougar stared at him in disbelief. Jensen twisted around to sit cross-legged on the bed facing Cougar. "Cougs. Listen to me. As your best friend and brother in arms and partner in awesomely cool pranks, I need you to pay attention." He waited until Cougar was looking at him before he said, with clear and almost offensive enunciation, "It. Was. Not. Your. Fault. I moved. I moved. I saw the gun and I stepped into your line of sight. It was stupid, and it was MY FAULT." The white blur. The rest of the field stayed stationary, but the white blur entered the scope from the side. Cougar didn't miss. "I didn't miss?" Cougar says, hope dawning. Jensen laughed. "No, you arrogant jerk. Your perfect record is still perfect, you don't owe me any beer. All my fault." Cougar started to smile. "So, are you ready to get up out of your hole of self-pity and come back? Roque is starting to pout."
Jensen sighed.
"And, feelings time, I need you out there watching my back. I can't do the trust fall without you to catch me. Okay?"
Cougar hesitated. He nodded. "Okay."
"Great. You drive, I'm high as fuck on painkillers."
The other Losers were waiting when they got back. Clay raised an eyebrow when Cougar got out of the truck. Cougar nodded, and that was that.
"Here." Clay tossed a heavy case to him with both hands. "Give this one a try."
Cougar cracked it open. A new rifle, M-189. With a new scope. He lifted the scope by itself and sighted along it. A wider field of view with the same magnification -- instead of looking down a long tube through a tiny window, it was like a tiny spot expanding to fill his whole world.
He pointed it around the room, sighting a few different distances, before it came to rest on Jensen.
All Cougar could see was his smile.