EDITED: 10/30/2017

I started this in 2012 and I always come back and visit and do little touch ups. Send help.

It's not completely edited and there are chapters that I haven't fixed yet that embarrass me, so if you are new to reading this story please mind me a little leeway with some parts where people seem out of character or the story seems a bit ridiculous. I started this story when I was 19 and was like a little machine. I was pumping chapters out nightly - which is something I can't do anymore because I'm too pedantic. Maybe one day I'll fall in love with it again and do it justice. I really do love this story.

Boone's shift was nearly over. The sun was peeking from behind him, curling up from the desert's stomach like a tired old man. He was tired too, he knew that, but that didn't stop him from keeping a keen eye on the distance. The roads were bare of travellers and merchants, no prospectors or mercs either. It was too late for the nocturnal animals to be out, and too early for the day dwellers. It was the quiet time – the pre-dawn lull. There was something about the sun rising for another day that settled an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach; like his body was rejecting the idea of another 24 hours of miserable life. That small hour at the end of his shift always wrapped up his head with deep nausea.

Three things sat uneasy in his mind. The first felt like it had always been there, sitting in the shadows that curled around his subconscious. It seemed to be sleeping—waiting—not daring to move unless prodded. The second, a dark and heaving memory which sat right behind the first, was more recent. It was raw and weeping, its fingers digging into the shoulders of the first. It was angry – it was so damn angry but it sat and watched, hopeless and feeding quietly off the nicotine that pushed through.

The third was new. A strange discomfort had settled in his gut, something which he usually would have chalked up to the mounting fatigue, but this time it felt different. There was a slight breeze whistling through the mouth of Dinky, catching on the cherry of his cigarette as the red tip burned brighter. He felt incredibly vulnerable for the first time in a while, the morning chill raising goosebumps along his forearms. He wasn't a spirit-in-the-sky kinda guy, but something felt different about the wind.

With one foot chocked between two wooden dino-teeth, Boone rested an elbow on his knee – stretching out the muscles that had begun to ache with tiredness. It had been a quiet night; nothing out of the ordinary. A few geckos here, a coyote there – and the same strange cactus that eerily mirrored the broad, masculine shoulders of his first commanding officer. He sucked in a breath of thick smoke, drifting off into thought.

The tension in his stomach tightened itself into a pathetic ball. Each day forward reaped nothing but the feeling of no progress. It had been months since she had… Nine months. No progress, no clue. He grew restless as that dark figure in his mind sat quite still, festering. Of course, it was his fault that it had happened. It was always going to be that way.

A pistol shot sounded in the distance, not too far from his range. The sound made him flinch, so on edge that stomach physically cringed at the noise. A second shot had been fired by the time he managed to grab his rifle and reach the scope to his eye, zeroing in on a figure that was jiggling so erratically it looked to be having a fit. Was it having a fit?

It fired three more shots by the time Boone figured out what was happening. The road down from the Repconn test site was suddenly occupied by a little black dot - a little black dot which was strapped with a bouncing backpack and followed by three ghouls.

Snatching the scope with his left eye, he struck his vision to catch sight of a woman belting down the road towards Novac. From what he could make of her face told him that she was in trouble, her old boots spitting chunks of rotted rubber behind her like a ripper to a cactus.

He took pity on her and took out the fleshy zombies without breaking a sweat. Every so often a ghoul or two would wander out into the wilderness and it was never a task to put them out of their misery. He watched the woman flail slightly, probably shaken from the loud cracks of the rifle against the unfavourable sound of ghoulish gurgles. When she realised that the danger had passed, she stopped to take a breath - leaning the butts of her palms against her skinny knees. Boone watched as she lost her face in a bundle of dark curls, brows rising in morbid curiosity as she straightened and took one look at her beat-up looking pistol before flinging it into the distance.

Boone was puzzled at the idea of a stranger coming out from the test site at that time of morning. The old building had been abandoned for months after being overrun by ghouls. She seemed to have time to waste however, toddling towards the small town at a snail's pace. She seemed to take in the world around her, breached by the idea of a desert that seemed all too familiar to her.

Reaching the outskirts of the motel, she threw her backpack off to scrabble around for the last of her caps. She had been running low since the start, but since she had to repair that shitty pistol that the doc had given her she was down to the bare bones of her savings. Perhaps pelting the gun into the distance wasn't the best idea, because even a shitty pistol garnered caps on a bad day - but where was the fun it that? It was useless, really. Perhaps the old doc had thought she had the ability to use a one? Technically, using a gun was common knowledge in the wasteland - but this woman knew nothing about anything and the idea frustrated her. Whose idea was it to turn her loose on life without a clue as to who she was? Was that even fair?

There was a little pride in knowing she had had the grace to wake up in a world where she was free to do whatever she wanted. At first, the thought of leaving the small bed at the doctor's house seemed terrifying, but the way her old boots molded perfectly around her feet reminded her that she had done it all before. Still, she couldn't shake the foggy cloud that sat at the back of her mind and prodded her curiosity. It was if all of her senses had been smothered and she had been left to start all over again - a clean slate in a very dirty Vegas.

"Annie." She scrawled an X on the signature line and pushed the caps forward on the scratched wooden counter. "I won't be here for long - I just thought I should treat myself with a real bed for a day." The dark haired woman grinned awfully down at the old, sour woman behind the desk, still wrapped in a robe that presumably covered a very sexy nightgown. The wanderer must have looked a sight - considering she had almost forgotten what she looked like herself. It had been a week or so since she had seen her reflection, and the whore's baths she had been taking with irradiated water were getting to the point of uselessness. "Is there someone living in that dinosaur of yours?"

She hadn't slept in a bed since she had left Goodsprings for the third time's charm, and most of the napping was spent tucked in a rock face looking down at the Repconn center. Turns out she could climb pretty well, which she found out after she had to scale a cliff face to escape a rogue gecko. It was too bad there were ghouls lurking around the old Repconn center because she had grown to enjoy her prime position there - having her head high off the ground had given her a small air of comfort as she napped above the rest of the world that scuttled below her.

It turns out that the highway was hard to reach, and Annie didn't know exactly what she was doing. She had tried Primm first on account of her old job - which seemed like a good lead until she was shot at repeatedly and heatedly by a bunch of filthy men in leather. Apparently prisoners of some sort had overrun the town, and Annie felt she just was not equipped to go up against a bunch of dirty old jailbirds.

So she had tried Sloan, and apparently the road ahead was crawling with Deathclaws. Although it seemed like an excellent idea, the girl decided against the risk and turned back to where she was buried. With nowhere to go, she cut across land for a third time, aiming for a small town named Novac. Now, the gentle residents of Goodsprings who had put her up for so long had aimed her towards the dinosaur in hopes she would find out who put the hole in her head.

All she could work with though was a couple of cigarette butts and the fact that the man was well-dressed but rude. The residents seemed more caught up with some more escaped convicts (who had apparently been terrorizing the wasteland for a while) to really give her any more information. And that was all she had to deal with - that, or she was faced with the option of talking to the creepy robot that had pulled her from her shallow hole. And that's all she had, other than that stupid gun that was now part of the scenery, a short jangle of caps and a note from the Mojave Express.

The hotel room was dank and smelt stale, but to her it was an absolute oasis. She literally could not remember the last time she had seen a toilet that flushed, even if you had to use an old Nuka Cola jug to refill the cistern afterwards. It really was a dream come true... The mattress didn't even have holes in it.

Scrubbing the dirt from her face with clouded tap water, Annie pressed her hair off of her cheeks and sucked them in. The face that stared back at her was probably hers for her entire life, but it didn't feel like it. She had no idea who that woman was - with her dry, bitten lips and sunken doe eyes. She looked like she had done a few hard years out in the sun, but she admired the way it made her look less naive. Attempting to judge herself by her looks, Annie couldn't place herself in a certain spectrum of attractive or 'pretty bad' - so she plonked herself right on the brink of semi-decent looking and kinda plain. It was better for her confidence that way. No one wanted to wake up one day knowing only one thing about themselves - and that one thing being that they were ugly.

Self-worth issues aside, Annie knew she had a sniper to thank.

By the time she had managed a sad bath, as the water was stinking and set off the pipboy that the doc had forcefully strapped to her, Annie's eyes felt like they were going to fall out of her head. Plans be damned, she was going for a nap. There was something mighty sweet about the old teddy propped up on the pillows of the double bed - and that teddy called to her at first with a whisper. It then became a holler, using it's stuffed magic to weigh her down and coax her towards the mattress. She had so much to do that day - speak to the townsfolk about her murderer, buy a sniper a drink for saving her from being ghoul chow, and perhaps even use the communal firepit to cook up the gecko steak she had cut from a carcass along the way. That teddy though... It knew what it was doing.

It was rather dark outside by the time Annie had snored herself awake. The air was cool but blew a soft breeze across the dry courtyard. The girl could see the small tornados sweeping and sewing dust across the flat plain, illuminated by the lighting plant that grumbled obnoxiously in the corner as the dancing sand sifted through the chain-link fence that surrounded Novac only to crumble a few feet into freedom. The dinosaur's back loomed over the small civilisation in the strangest way possible. Annie had barely known what a dinosaur was until the kind folks of Goodsprings had taken pity on her slow brain and explained it all. Why there was a dinosaur in the middle of the desert was a mystery to all, apparently.

The dark and empty gift shop greeted her unenthusiastically - but the woman was drawn in by the soft glow of the dim bulb at the top of the stairs. The lovely warm light that seeped down the steps drew her to its feet, up and up the stairs that lead her to a single door. Annie felt she wasn't as graceful as she could have been in her ascent to the door, barely able to keep quiet in her ugly old boots that were starting to fall apart. The heel had started to separate itself from the sole and it left the girl with an echoing clop every time she took a step.

She stopped herself short at the handle, suddenly worried by her initial ideas. Somehow it just didn't seem like the best idea to be walking in on someone who shot a big gun for a living. Just because whoever was in there had saved her life before didn't exactly mean they didn't have it in them to be startled and shoot an intruder.

Then again, she honestly had nothing better to do and the thought of a bit of action gave her a soft squirt of euphoria to fend off the headache that threatened her horizons. Maybe whoever was behind that door had something they knew about her - like a piece of the puzzle that was 'Annie'. Or maybe not.

The door easily opened at the twist of her wrist, revealing the back of a man who had his foot propped up between two teeth in the dinosaur's mouth. He definitely wasn't a little boy; his shoulders branching out wide and strong as his back arched in surprise at her intrusion. Boone had allowed himself to lose himself in whatever his brain was brewing in the basement - the man having no choice but to turn on auto-pilot and pick off big mama geckos in the distance like a robot with a trigger finger.

"God damn it, don't sneak up on me like that." The second she met his eyes, she registered that it definitely was a man. An attractive man. The kind of man that made her tongue swell a little. She took a quick moment to think. He wasn't exactly billboard material but there was something about his presencethat made her insides feel like jelly. Perhaps he was her type?

The way his forehead creased at the swipe of her tongue across her bottom lip just made her warmer inside. "What do you want?" He grunted at her

"Hello to you too." Annie grinned at the poor man, leaning back to brace herself against the rickety wooden door. "Jeanie-Mae said you were the one that saved my ass up near Repconn this morning." She rustled in the pockets of her charming merc outfit, pulling out twenty caps. "It ain't much, but it's a thanks." His eyes scanned the currency and he shook his head, turning back around as if the conversation had finished.

She balked. What a rude bastard, she thought. Obviously the good folks of Novac shut him away in a dinosaur mouth because he was definitely lacking people skills. "Were you expecting someone else?" She pressed lightly, keen to egg the man into more words. He was a sight for sore eyes, having to deal with squishy ghoul faces for the past couple of days had turned her insides to goo. There he was with solid flesh and a tight jaw, the epitome of masculinity and humanity - a hardworking man with a gun and not a snarling bucket of flesh that liked to scratch and bite... But it would have been okay if he wanted to too.

"Maybe I am." He mumbled. "But not like you."

"What's wrong with me?"

"Huh." Boone turned back around, taking in for the first time what he had first thought to be a girl, but obviously was a woman, who was staring right back at him. The moon had swelled up her brown eyes to the size of plates, and even though her thick, black hair hid most of them he knew they were just as curious as his. There was nothing other than blatant chemistry chugging through his brain, telling him that she was something else. In a moment of weakness, a slip of the mind, he let his brows rise and mumbled again "Maybe it should have been you I was expecting all along."

"Not even going to buy me dinner first?" She questioned with that same stupid grin, watching his eyes turn steel blue again. The beret on his head was branded NCR, but his clothes told her he was not really a part of anything. The faction alliance made her feel a little ill, whatever that meant, but it wasn't anything that set off alarm bells. The man seemed a little more difficult to read than she had figured. It was like talking to a brick wall, but she pushed further.

He thought for a moment, the wash of grief shifting through his torso and into his brain turned his thoughts to his late wife. The thought of another woman in such close proximity and showing him more attention than necessary was almost repulsive to him. But her eyes said otherwise, and even though his face didn't show it he had cracked.

"I think you should leave."

"Do you treat everyone like this, soldier?" Annie didn't like how he was talking to her, but she stood still in the doorframe with that cheeky look on her face. Boone's head was swimming with this overflow of forgotten feelings but his face stayed stony. Maybe if he literally picked her up and threw her out of the dinosaur... say that she was high on drugs and it was just self-defense... Or, his brain chugged on unhappily, he could just turn around and pretend she wasn't there.

When he spun to face the desert again, Annie's eyes rolled in their sockets before stretching up the doorframe like a vine. "I don't know what your problem is. No wonder you hide away in your dinosaur if this is all you have to offer a lady."

He remained silent, his hand clinging to his rifle with such grip it probably would have crushed the shell of a scorpion. When he didn't say anything, she turned to leave. "My room is the top level, closest to the lobby. Come see me if you change your mind."

She slipped out and shut the door, leaning against it momentarily to shake herself. The words had leaked out of her mouth like slippery saliva, pooling incessantly in the mouth of the dinosaur like a warm flame. Her voice was strong, confident and possibly sexy - like a lever had been pulled inside of her the moment she saw the opportunity of a handsome man. Did I always speak like this? she asked herself, starting down the stairs towards Cliff's counter. The feeling of accomplishment stirred in her stomach. Probably.

Leaning on the rickety railing of the balcony and sucking down a cigarette, Annie watched lazily along as the day sniper headed to his post. The night sniper, or otherwise known to Annie as 'the angry man in the beret', passed him without a word while heading towards his room. He noticed Annie before he could disappear into his murky nightmares, his blue eyes shooting up from beneath his sunglasses only to follow the falling cigarette butt to the ground. The courier smiled at him but he kept walking, making sure the day sniper was inside and out of sight.

He returned to the foot of the stairs to stare up at her expectantly. No one is awake, he reminded himself, and no one will be able to hear me. The residents of Novac did not have the sharpest senses, other than the ranger in the cabin but he was often sleeping heavily with pain medication. It would be safe to talk to the stranger because she obviously was not from around there and could quite possibly get the job done with no problems. Annie grinned at him, the small gap between her two front teeth reminding him that she wasn't as sweet as she looked - the girl hopping down the stairs with ease to stand on the first step in attempt to even their height difference.

"I need someone I can trust." Boone started, stopped by her amused stare.

"I'm flattered."

"… You're not from around here," he continued on, his voice low enough for only her to hear. "And that's a start."