He couldn't believe that she left him.
He thought they had something going on. He thought that they were on a mission together. That they were on the same mission. That they both wanted to end the Legion, end the cycle and do the right thing.
But here he fucking was, back in the same dusty ass hotel room, alone with a pistol and a bottle of whiskey.
And of course it was the fucking .22 that she gave him.
Fuck. She talked him down. More than once, she took him to Cottonwood, she dragged him along, didn't realize where they were and he ended up convincing her to take out the Legion garrisoned there.
It was better than taking Nelson back.
They had lain out in his old sniper's perch and picked off centurions until they got wise and started hiding inside. Then they moved down to into the valley and she took the rest down with her shotgun and he covered her with his SMG.
The dog ran back to him with its muzzle covered in blood.
They freed the slaves, cut down the bodies from the crosses, and then stripped and washed the blood from their own bodies in the lake.
He had never seen her without armor on before.
They lay in the sand and in the sun. And as the sun sank below the bowl of the canyon walls, she finally asked him about his wife.
Naked and clean and warm and victorious for slaying his enemies, he felt the shock of those memories hit him like a physical force. And he cried. He had laid back in the sand and covered his face with his hands and cried.
The dog had come to lick at his face, still soggy and covered in sand. She had quietly pushed the dog away and sat next to him. Slowly, the pressure of her had on the top of his head brought him back. And that's when it started.
He took all of the guilt and the rage and the pain of the last three years and laid it on the woman he'd known for three weeks. He started talking, and the memories spewed out of him like thick refuse. She had listened and quietly pushed him further away from his guilt than he'd ever been.
Then she took him to Bittersprings. She'd taken him to where it started, to the place where he damned himself, and she told him to face his reality. Pressed the .22 into his hands so late at night that it was almost morning. She gave him a gun as they bunked down together after dragging yet more legion corpses out of the camp. She took her armor off again and slept with her warm back pressed against him.
He had fallen asleep later that night watching the difference in the way the firelight flickered over her skin and the scratched matte black of their pistol.
After that night they fought for the NCR. He thought he was happy. They recovered supplies for Forlorn Hope. They did recon for the ranger stations and assassinated the leader of the Great Khans, placed someone in the NCR's favor in power.
He smiled.
He laughed.
He caught her smiling at him as he threw a stick for the dog.
Then he spent a solid ten minutes trying to figure out what the hell it was about that smile that made his brain stop working, walking behind her with the damn stick in his hand as the dog whined at his side begging him to throw it again.
Every night that they bunked down in a safe place, she took her armor off and slept glued to his side, buried her face in his arm, or pushed her back against his.
He got used to the rise and fall of her breathing in the dark. Stopped feeling uncomfortable sleeping with another woman.
It was just how they slept.
She didn't seem bothered about the mornings they awoke with arms and legs entangled. He wasn't worried about the way the smell of her neck lingered in his nose, made his head fuzzy with loss as she stretched and pulled her armor back on.
Then somehow they had ended up in the Mojave Outpost and she and that caravan woman hit it off and spent their time in the bar giggling and drinking and cutting their eyes at him.
That night she told him that she had to leave him behind; that they shouldn't travel together anymore. She told him that it was for the best, she had something she had to take care of. Wouldn't say what.
He watched the two women walk down the hill from the Outpost, looked at the fucking .22 in his hand, and didn't know what the fuck to do with himself.
He sat back down at the bar. Got himself another drink. Put the .22in the waistband of his pants.
He walked back to Novac.
It took him a solid ten minutes to decide not to the open the door to his old room.
Him and Carla's room.
The first night he couldn't. He couldn't do it. He made his escape to her room upstairs. He spent two nights there, looking at the gun and thinking about the way she had pushed him to face his guilt and face his fear, and finally walked back to his room. He nodded at Ranger Andy.
He opened the door.
The memories of Carla slapped him in the face. He shut the door behind him and sunk to the floor. For the second time in three years, the second time in a month, he covered his face with his hands and cried.
He didn't drink for the next three days.
He went out and shot geckos.
He went down to Old Lady Gibson's and got parts to repair all of his guns and reload all of his ammo cases.
He didn't talk to Manny.
When the knock on his door came, he had almost gotten comfortable with the memories of Carla that circled around his head. They were mostly the kind ones anyway, the real ones.
He opened the door to Ranger Andy. The old man had a woman slung against his side.
"Manny tracked her halfway down the road. Damn lucky too, Boone, she passed out about fifty feet from the fence."
Shit. It was her. She was still unconscious, but he could smell the booze coming off her. He opened the door the rest of the way up, Ranger Andy made to bring her in, but the old man tripped, stumbled with the weight of the her arm hung across his shoulders. Boone caught both of them.
"I've got her. Thanks, Andy." The old man gave a salute, and backed away a few steps before turning and limping away.
As Boone shut the door, he noticed that the smell of booze wasn't the only smell that clung to her and her armor. She smelled like fire.
He slumped her against the sofa and took a closer look.
Her armor was scorched and scored with laser blast marks. One plate of armor on her left thigh was nearly eaten away by the green shimmer of plasma. Her face was bloodied and two fingers on her right hand were purpled and swollen.
Her eyes fluttered, but she didn't wake. He stripped her armor and applied stimpaks to her hand and the more obvious burn wounds, cleaned her skin with a rag, dabbed alcohol on the bloodied cuts and gashes along her forearms.
Her skin was clammy and cold, so he wrapped her in a blanket.
He left her on the couch and sat on the end of his bed. This didn't fit in at all with the plans that he was starting to formulate.
The whiskey he had used on her cuts was still in his hand.
He stared long and hard at it, telling himself that it wouldn't change anything.