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One of the most inconvenient Mojave hazards was the wind. Tanked visibility enough that travelling was a pain, but made it hard to set up camp and hunker down, too. Blasted sand and dust around so thoroughly, you'd find it in every layer of your clothes, in your mouth, in your ears. Depending on where it was blowing from, it could pump you full of rads, too. That wasn't even mentioning the chill it always carried. Boone hated the cold.
The campfire crackled steadily, flickering as the wind blew past. Even in cover against the cliffs, they were still getting a solid amount of air flowing past their camp, shifting direction every so often to reach them. The firewood, built into a small lean-to, guarded the flames from most of the breeze breaking through, but he still watched carefully. If it died, it would be a goddamn ordeal to get started again. With how strong the gusts were, and how much sand and dust was being kicked up, he didn't feel particularly great about leaving cover and stumbling around to try and find more kindling. Or, more likely, waiting and trying to play sentry while Corey went out looking- given that she was usually far better at scrounging off the wasteland. That left him having to be ready to shoot through the dust against an annoyingly high windage. Probably high enough that he couldn't just rely on his DOPE cards and cheat sheet.
Math. One of the worst parts of being a sniper.
“Think it's more than 30 klicks out there?”
The courier looked up from where she was securing their bivvy. She turned towards the open terrain, lips thinning thoughtfully. Loose locks of her hair fluttered in the breeze, and she huffed out a breath as one stuck to her face. “Yeah. Might be closer to forty, been hearing some whistling.”
“Damn.” He grumbled. “I've only got the numbers up to 30.”
“Visibility's shit enough, I doubt having them will help. Might be like the marksmanship equivalent of polishing a turd.” She remarked. “I can write them out in advance for you if you really want, though.”
He glanced at her pip-boy. Much as he felt weird relying on computers, her ability to tap out the calculations and access the numbers on the fly was damn useful. He'd never had a spotter who could give him such detailed corrections before. Manny had hated the math almost as much as him, so they'd both used the simplest formulas and every shortcut in the book. But Corey… he was pretty sure she enjoyed it. She was proud of her lists of ammo and rifle data, her wind vectors, even temperature and mirage adjustments. She liked using decimals.
“Maybe later.” He shrugged. “Doubt we're going to be engaging much of anyone, right now.”
“Mm, true enough. Not a lot of people are willing to brave winds like this.”
Something in the courier's tone told him that she wasn't including herself in the observation. That she believed she could handle it, if she had to. It was the confidence he'd often heard in the voices of soldiers gunning for a promotion to Ranger. ‘Not a lot of people are willing to suffer through the training, you know’. He wondered idly whether her confidence was as unfounded. What exactly in her damaged brain made her so certain she could manage travelling in 40 kilometer an hour winds with sand blasting her the whole time.
She rummaged in her pack a moment, humming to herself. “Okay. For rations, we've got… Yum-yums, cram, or pork'n'beans.”
“Beans.”
His answer was pretty much instant, but Corey was already tossing the can to him by the time he was speaking. He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“You're predictable.” she told him lightly, shrugging. Then she pulled a can of cram out for herself, just like she always did, and plopped down next to one of the open sides of the fire.
“So are you.” He noted. “Never met anyone who eats as much of that crap as you.”
Her smile flickered slightly. “Yeah, well. I think it feels familiar. Keep hoping it'll jog my memory one of these days.”
Familiar. He ate beans because they weren't the familiar option. Carla had always liked cooking eggs, and the deviled kind had been her favourite. One of the few things she'd known how to make well, always proud of them. Even the shitty yum-yum version reminded him of her far too much. They were good protein, functionally one of the better ration options out there- but to him, the familiarity felt like poison.
The more he thought about it, the more his chest began to ache. It brought back the guilt worming through his gut. The tightness in his throat welling up as he remembered the last time he'd seen her. His crosshairs hovering over the back of her head.
“Plus, I mean, nobody else ever wants cram. I apparently have terrible taste.” Corey continued, though the humour in her voice was forced. Wrong, against the tone of everything else. “May as well take advantage. I'm like a trash disposal.”
He felt his fingernails digging into his palms. Focused in on the pain, dragging him out of his spiralling thoughts. Jealousy rose to take its place as he imagined wanting to remember. “Sometimes I envy you.”
“What, for my taste for cram? If you want to get into it, I can cook you up some-”
“For forgetting.”
Her expression dropped like a stone. “You're kidding me, right?”
He shook his head mutely, looking down at the can of beans in his hands. He heard her force out a slow breath, then the crunch of metal as she cracked open her cram with more force than necessary. He didn't need to look back up to know she was pissed.
“You don't envy me. You don't. I don't even fucking know my own last name, Boone.”
“You still have it easier.” He told her, shaking his head. “Things I've seen, things I've done… I wish I could forget.”
“It doesn't fucking erase them.” She shot back. “It all still happened. You just have no idea what you need to make up for. Nothing but your dreams to guess at. What's a nightmare and what's memory.”
“Sometimes remembering is worse than wondering. My dreams are all memory.”
“So you'd rather just forget your entire life? Everything in it? All the good? Your wife?”
He whipped his head up to glare at her. “For the chance to stop seeing her down my scope when I sleep? To stop remembering pulling the trigger any goddamn time something reminds me of her?” He snapped. “Yeah, I would.”
The good. As if it could ever outweigh the rest. The guilt he carried. For all she tried to understand, she didn't even know the half of it. Didn't realize how much worse it was than just Carla. How much fault he really carried. So fucking naive, he thought, to assume there was nothing worse than forgetting.
“You know, I could have had somebody, too, Boone.” She cut into his train of thought, voice hard. “Someone waiting for me to come back, wondering if I'm dead. Someone who was relying on me, that I'm letting down. Or maybe somebody who was taken from me that I'll never avenge, now. I wouldn't fucking know!”
The campfire reflected in the mirror of her shades made it feel like her gaze was burning into him, even if he couldn't see it. She was gripping her cram can so hard, the sides were beginning to buckle. One of her feet dug in the sand, a little like she was bracing to sprint away- or maybe lunge in and punch him. He almost hoped it was the latter.
“What I do know, is that I hate the fucking Legion with everything in my heart.” She continued. “It's an instinct as deep-seated as any I've fucking got, right up there with ‘plan exits when you enter a room’ and ‘don't drink from random puddles’. So I probably have a good fuckin’ reason. I only get to guess at what it is, but I've got plenty of nightmares with vivid suggestions. Family being enslaved, home being burned, comrades being tortured. Me being tortured. People I'm trying to save getting their fucking bomb collars detonated. Blood on my hands. All of it real enough to make me think it could be true.”
Oh. Shit.
“Hadn't thought about it like that.” he mumbled lamely. As usual, he was a fucking asshole. “Sorry.”
Her shoulders dropped, the anger dissolving from her expression so fast it was unsettling. If he hadn't already known about how fast her mood could change, it would have felt almost fake. But the exhaustion it left behind was very, very real. She sucked in a shaking breath, then let it out slow. “Me too. I shouldn't have lost my temper. Sensitive subject for me, but bringing Carla up like that was a fucking low-blow. I'm sorry.”
“Yeah.” He said. Didn't want to tell her it was okay, because it wasn't, none of it was- but he appreciated the apology. He hoped she did, too.
She dug in her bag again, pulling out a bottle of scotch and holding it out to him like a peace offering. He accepted, cracking the seal and taking a swig. Appreciating the burn as he swallowed, like it was killing all the words and emotions that had been stuck there moments ago. He took a second mouthful to nurse before handing it back. She hesitated, staring down at the bottle for a long moment, but then raised it to her lips. He watched her throat bob once, twice, three times- a far deeper drink than he expected her to take. Then she shoved it into the sand between them.
It occurred to him then, seeing how hard she hit the bottle, that she was a lot more fucked up than he tended to give her credit for. With how easily she laughed, how much she smiled, how many jokes she made… it was easy to forget that she was haunted, too. Easy to forget how personally she took every clash they had with the Legion. How hard she pushed herself to save people. How often he saw her wake from nightmares breathing hard, barely suppressing her panic.
She let out a long sigh. “I know you've been through hell, even if I don't know the extent of it. I guess in some ways, I do have it easier. But honestly… sometimes I envy you, too.”
He laughed hollowly. “Your standards suck.”
“Hey, we established that with the cram.” She joked weakly. “I don't know, I just… think sometimes about how at least you get to have happy memories with someone you love. Even though right now they all just remind you of the hurt. I think my happiest memory is fuckin’… killing Benny.”
He thought back to that day. Standing guard outside the man's suite door and hearing her furious yelling, and his cries for mercy. The bruised knuckles and bloodstains she'd sported when she emerged again. The way she'd sounded hollow when she'd relayed that he'd known nothing about her identity she hadn't put together already. Not something he'd call a happy time.
“Guess that is kind of bleak.”
She barked out a laugh- one that seemed to take her by surprise. But she nodded, a dry and weary grin on her face. “A little bit. I dunno. Guess the old boss is always a dick ‘til you meet the new one.”
Boone sighed, pulling the tab on his can of beans and slowly peeling it open. Dug out his mess kit and pulled out his spoon. He felt like he needed to say something, explain where the sentiment had come from. That he hadn't started this argument for nothing. “Carla used to love making devilled eggs. Kind of sucked at cooking anything else, but her eggs were always good. Boxed kind, familiarity… just makes me think of her. Of the last time I saw her.”
“Ah.” She nodded slowly, eyebrows furrowing thoughtfully. “I'll stop packing them.”
“You don't have to do that. I just need to get over myself.”
“That's stupid.” She told him firmly, though not unkindly. “You don't just ‘get over’ grief or trauma.”
“I shouldn't make it your problem. Compromises operational efficiency.”
“By that logic, my bad eye means you should take me out back and shoot me. Not exactly operationally efficient.”
“That's different. You can't control that.”
“Neither can you.”
He shot her a skeptical glance. She shrugged unapologetically, as if to say ‘it's the truth’. Pulled a sheet of tinfoil out of her pack and plopped her cram out of its can directly into the middle of it. Then she wrapped the entire slab up in a couple practised motions.
“Trauma takes time to heal, whether it's physical or mental. Right now, you're injured. Think of it like I'm suggesting… avoiding heavy lifting to prevent busting your stitches.” She told him. “You don't do that, let me carry some of your gear; your wound reopens, gets infected, goes gangrenous, and then it's a whole thing. Tissue sloughing off, terrible odours, sepsis- next thing you know, I'm doin’ a debridement, and even jacked full of med-x you're screamin' for me to just take the whole limb off.”
Boone grimaced. He didn't know what a debridement was, but it sounded nasty. “Think you lost me with that metaphor, doc’.”
“Sorry. Too technical again, huh?” She said sheepishly, tossing her foil-covered cram into the fire. “Thought that one made sense.”
He watched as the coals flared around it, the mirage of the heat wavering and warping the image. She poked the wrapped bundle with a stick, pushing it further beneath the wood lean-to, where the flames were concentrated. Sparks flew as she brushed one of the logs and everything shifted just slightly. After a moment, she seemed satisfied, and took a deep breath- bracing herself.
“My point is, we're partners. Partners support each other. Cover each other's weak spots. Help each other recover. Whether that's from a shot off target, an injury, or a trauma.” She paused, shifting slightly. When he glanced over, he could see traces of discomfort and uncertainty on her face, like she didn't know what to do with how genuine she'd been. Then she forced a smile. “Or from a joke that falls flat.”
Attempting to break the tension with humour. For the first time, he realized how often she did that. How frequently she fell back on it when she was uncomfortable or emotionally vulnerable. A lot of her jokes- a loose use of the term- had been nothing more than an oddity of her brain damage, a minor annoyance at most, until now. But maybe he was starting to understand her. Like a partner was supposed to.
So he gave her the out she was looking for. “Plenty of those from you.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault nobody has a good sense of humour.” she protested, feigning an offended frown. But he saw her relax, and she quickly fell back into a grin- much smaller, but much more genuine. “I'm just sayin', wordplay is seriously underrated as a form of comedy.”
“Maybe. If it's good.” He shrugged. “Might be where you're going wrong.”
“Oh, screw you.” She laughed. Took another swig of scotch, pausing a moment to suck a breath through her teeth. Then she began fishing her cram out of the fire with her stick. “I'm the pinnacle of comedy.”
Boone found himself grinning in amusement- though it faded as soon as he recognized it. He forced himself to look away from her, grabbed for the bottle. Took a drink and focused on the sting.
He'd warned her not to get close once before, but she clearly wasn't planning on taking him seriously. Worse, he was starting to forget himself- to let himself feel fond of her. Guilt and self-loathing boiled in his gut once again as he glanced back- at the edges of the scars peeking out from under her shades, the remnants of her near-death. How long would it be until he spoiled her second chance? Until she, too, was dragged into his punishment?
…Maybe if she knew the truth about him, she would be disgusted enough to walk away.
For a moment, he felt like he wanted to tell her. Finally convince her to keep her distance. But then he remembered what it would take, the recounting, the explanation. He thought of the dream he'd had, the first night they'd met- all the signs since that she was his ending. Who was he to spit in the face of destiny, to defy his penance?
No. He was a coward, who wouldn't challenge fate. Selfishly keeping her around, despite his certainty it would be her downfall alongside his. Dragging out the time he could have without her seeing him for the monster he was. Taking advantage of her kindness and loyalty.
“You know, I think a lot of people would like cram a lot more if they knew how to cook it.” Corey's voice pulled him out of his thoughts once again. She was chewing thoughtfully on a slice of cram, now, wiggling it back and forth on the end of her fork. “Good coal bake is the way to go. Crisp up the edges, but trap in the moisture. Frying, ‘least the way most people do it over a fire, just makes it dry out before you get the right crisp. And eating it cold is just… sad.”
He glanced down at his can of unwarmed beans, half-eaten. “It's efficient.”
“Sure. And if it's pork'n'beans, it's almost not a crime against your taste buds. But cram…” she gestured to the unwrapped foil in her lap. “Gains better texture and better flavour when you cook it right. Essential for a good cram-eating experience.”
“Those words don't go together.”
“You need to open your mind to the possibilities.”
“Had it boiled, once. In basic. That was enough.”
“Okay, that's-” her expression switched from disgust to delight in an instant. Then she laughed, hard. “It's… i-it's cram-inal.”
He shook his head as she descended into giggles. Pinnacle of comedy. Maybe she wasn't that, but she was a damn good partner. Despite everything, all the ways they were both fucked up and ill-fated, they'd been doing good things for the Mojave together. Maybe that would be enough for him to live with it. At least for now.