"Good morning."

Boone woke up to the tickling of hair on his nose. As he opened his eyes, slowly at first, he realized the woman lying across from him was pretty, smelled like soap and roses, and was smiling at him. Her cheeks were pink and spotted with freckles, and she hung the end of her long blonde braid in his face as she always did to wake him up when she was particularly bored of lying there and watching him sleep.

She was alive. Living. Breathing. There.

God, he missed her.

And he moved towards her to kiss her. He couldn't help himself. Every time he saw her it was automatic, like he'd been made for it. The kiss came as easily as his name did the first time they'd met back on the Strip. And just like on the Strip, he felt like a lost little boy that was finally found when he was around her.

That had made him clingy, he knew, but Carla never seemed to mind. She liked keeping him around, liked keeping him close. She was the entire reason he'd given up fighting. She was his reason, period.

"Good morning," Boone responded, feeling a smile creep on his face. He couldn't help it. Every time he saw her it was like the world stopped. He spent eternities in her eyes, lifetimes in her lips.

"How'd you sleep?" she questioned, tracing her thumb from the skin right below his eyes down to his chin and settled it on his lips. Carla loved those idle touches, marveling at the simplicities of his face like the skin behind his ear or the tiny scar on his chin.

Boone couldn't help himself. He gave her his customary answer: "Like the dead."

His wife laughed. The sound was light, musical, like music to his ears. She had a dainty laugh. Something so gentle shouldn't have lasted twenty years in the wastes.

"Of course you did," she said. "God, you're so handsome. How'd I ever get so lucky?"

He wanted to say something articulate and poetic. Something about how he was the lucky one, about how grateful he was for her, how he wanted her back more than he wanted anything in the world.

But words had never been Boone's strong suit. He'd never had a silver tongue. His only redeeming quality was his ability to shoot things from a distance. So his feelings had always remained silent, a guess, things he could only demonstrate through his actions.

That was one of the things that haunted him the most.

"What are we doing today?" Carla asked. "We could gamble, or grab drinks, or…" She trailed off. Her trademark smirk crept onto her face

"Or?" Boone prompted.

Just listening to her pontificate was like a breath of fresh air. He missed the constancy of her chatter. She would talk to herself, he remembered. When she read, she would mutter the words to herself. As they walked, she would point out the signs to Boone, commenting on the names. "What's lucky about 38?" she'd ask. "The Tops of what?" When she cooked, she'd narrate it, pretending she was making a meal for an audience.

It was like she was from a different time. That was what he loved so much about her.

"Or order room service and occupy ourselves some other way," she said, her grin salacious and devious.

He remembered now where they were. It had been where they met, on The Strip, and they'd had this conversation so many times before. He never answered, mostly because he didn't care - he'd do whatever Carla wanted anyway - but also because she always had better ideas than him. He would go to the ends of the earth with her.

After all, they had the time back then. Time stopped with her.

But he knew he had to get her to stay. "Stay here," he said tersely. "Get room service. Spend all day in bed." Anything to keep her eyes on him.

"I love that idea," she said, moving forward to kiss him once again. "Let me go grab the menu. I also need to get the laundry so we have something to wear today."

Her warmth disappeared from Boone as she pulled away. She moved to get up from bed.

"Carla," Boone croaked. Desperate. Pathetic. Imploring.

"Mm?" Carla responded. Musical. Sweet. Unassuming.

"Don't get up yet."

His wife frowned at him. "Honey, I have to. I didn't finish the laundry last night. We got distracted, remember? Unless you'd like me to go without underwear?" She moved to roll out of bed, but Boone reached out and grabbed her wrist. By the grimace on her face, he was grabbing too hard.

But how could he not? He knew what happened next. It always happened.

Because when she got up, the back of her head would explode all over him, just like it had when Boone had fired the bullet into her head. And then he would wake up panting, and horrified, and unfortunately still living and breathing, and not six feet under the ground, or a rotting corpse on the side of the road, or burned in a Legion death pit, or eaten by mutants.

"Carla, I lo -"

He was interrupted by the cranial explosion once again and he woke up gasping for breath in his bed. He felt his heart racing, pulsing palpably in his neck.

"Figures," he whispered to himself, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Figures that he was still alive, his heart working overtime to keep him upright and moving. Figures that it was him and not her.

Figures that, even though the Courier promised to take him far away from the haunted town of Novac, they ended right back there after only a few days.

Begrudgingly, Boone and the Courier had spent the night in Novac. The Courier said something about saving some brahmin for a house nearby and restocking supplies, to which Boone declined to come with. He did not really feel like holding a conversation after the rocket launch. He'd instead eaten, refilled his canteen, and retreated to his old room, a little disappointed. Although he'd never shared the same vitriol for the town as Carla had, he did not want to return. Every time the little shit even mentioned Manny he felt a twinge of annoyance deep in his gut.

Somehow, time seemed to pass even slower in Novac. Without the distraction of an enemy to pump full of bullets or the constant threat of death or dehydration ever present in the wastes, Boone found himself bored, stuck between a rock and a hard place. He didn't want to stay in his room, but he didn't want to wander the town, unwilling to put on a polite face for anyone. What was worse, being unable to sleep and stuck staring at the ceiling in crippling boredom or asleep to be tormented by the dead?

He compromised with himself and took a walk, late at night when the only people up would not bother him.

He'd gone and looked at Jeannie May's corpse late at night when he struggled to get to sleep - he supposed the interior of his room reverted his brain to its previously nocturnal habits - and considered burying her. He'd killed her, after all, without even knowing if she was culpable. She might deserve a burial.

But then he imagined his wife headless and spat on her corpse before walking on.

His legs carried him to the scrap yard they'd visited for the rocket parts. He snuck inside, past the docile dogs lounging out front, and picked up as many empty glass bottles he could carry. He lined them up on the top of the fence, one by one, and then sprinted back so he could barely see them with his naked eye.

Unholster. Aim. Breathe. Squeeze. The first bottle exploded.

In the 1st Recon, during drills, they had to successfully shoot down ten bottles for every missed shot. If they missed one, they added ten more. If they missed enough to rack up 100 bottles, they were demoted down to the infantry, the additional pay replaced with the sickening shame of failure.

Aim. Breathe. Squeeze. The second bottle exploded just like the first.

Boone had only had to go through that exercise once or twice during his training. It was why he'd been selected for the unit in the first place. He had a talent, or so his superiors said. Boone thought it might be a curse to be able to shoot something from so far away with such ease with no need for the entire story, no need for cognition along with it.

Aim. Breathe. Squeeze. The third bottle exploded, too.

The sheer boredom in Novac yielded to guilt and worthlessness the more he ruminated on it. What kind of sniper was he if he missed easy shots? If he almost got people killed with his lack of skill, missing a shot that might as well have been point blank?

Aim. Breathe. Squeeze. Four bottles down. Effortless.

If Boone hadn't left on his own, he'd be discharged by now. His uselessness would bring down his unit, his pair, if he would have gone back.

Five. He reloaded his rifle smoothly, systematically, without thinking, the procedural memory kicking in from the thousands of times he'd done it before.

He would deserve it. He was nothing without his eye, his ability to kill easily. Hell, he deserved to be punished for it. He was being punished for it, he realized. Living life every day when time fucking froze was his punishment.

Six.

Couldn't even save his wife.

Seven.

His child.

Eight.

Better off dead.

Nine.

Fucking murderer.

Ten. All ten bottles shattered from hundreds of meters away, as skilled as the first day he'd done this when he first enlisted. Systematic and procedural, like he'd been trained for. Maybe the shot he missed was a fluke.

Fluke or not, he'd atoned for it, so he should feel better. Boone wondered why the nagging feeling in his chest, the voice in the back of his head, still called him useless as he walked back to Novac.

Boone got back right as the sun had emerged, fully visible in the sky. He slipped into his room and made a beeline for the bathroom so he could wash his face and body as well as he could. The dust had collected on him, and he hoped he wouldn't be back for a while, so he figured he would clean himself off as best as he could.

When he finished, he told himself that he should feel better. But the annoying voice in his head still spat at him like a rattlesnake, continuing to call him useless as he packed his things once again to venture out into the wastes.

He heard a sharp knock at his door. When he opened it, the blond he was traveling with stood, trailed by the spherical eyebot, waiting for him.

"You ready?"

The Courier had added some armor on top of his vault jumpsuit. He had also exchanged his knife for a larger, more intimidating looking one.

"The jumpsuit looks ridiculous," was the only thing Boone had said on the walk out to the camp. The kid had filled in the silence with more conversations, seemingly with himself, as they pursued the marker.

For once, Boone listened. The walking was boring, and the creatures on the road were few and far between. He could spy a radscorpion and dispatch it from hundreds of meters away, and mole rats, even if they got close, were no match for the team. ED-E was especially good at reducing unseen creatures to ash below it.

Surprisingly, the kid had a lot to say. He identified the technology on his wrist from the doctor back in Goodsprings, and told him about all the information it told him. He pointed out his heart rate, his hydration, his sleep, and if his limbs were crippled. Funnily enough, he said no matter how long he waited, or how many stimpaks he injected, the head only ever went up to 95% of its full health.

"It's the eye," the Courier said, pointing at his massively dilated pupil. "Or the brain. It's anyone's guess."

He had also requested that Boone let him shoot at some of the creatures in the distance. Predictably, the blond missed, his bullets consistently deviating to the right of the target, and either Boone or ED-E would finish off the now enraged being.

"I feel like that's going to be the death of me," the Courier had said on the fifth radscorpion he'd completely missed, ripping its poison gland out of its stinger. "You can't just let the enemy get close to you all the time. What if a deathclaw runs up on me?"

"You're fast," Boone said. It was true. The kid's wiry frame allowed him to sprint when he needed to, as Boone had seen when a radscorpion had gotten a little too close to them a few minutes before.

The Courier shook his head. "Not fast enough to outrun a damned deathclaw, that's for sure."

Boone wasn't sure about that. He'd never been pursued by a deathclaw. The NCR tried to steer clear of infested regions, and as the 1st Recon usually scoped out the regions they traveled through so they could avoid run-ins with abominations like that. It was a waste of ammo, his superiors had informed them upon graduation from training.

"Then we just see them first," Boone suggested.

His companion sighed, ripping up the radscorpion and stripping it of its meat. "I would just feel better knowing I could shoot. I feel kind of useless. You know?"

Boone said nothing as the group advanced onwards through the desert. He knew exactly how feeling useless felt in grossly intimate detail, but that conversation was not one he was willing to start, especially out in the wastes in hot pursuit of a Legion camp.

The region morphed from nondescript wasteland filled with sand and dirt and rocks to a very familiar landscape, one he remembered walking alone not too long ago. The road led to Cottonwood Cove if they kept pushing ahead. Soon enough the area would be littered with Legionaries, patrolling around with spears poised to skewer the necks of any unfortunate souls they saw.

"If we go any closer, I'm going to open fire on any red I see," Boone said. "Just a warning."

"That's fine," the Courier said, squinting out at the road spreading out before them. "I don't like 'em either." He said it so casually, like Boone had asked his opinion on gecko meat or Brahmin steak, not on an entire faction of people.

"Why?"

The Courier scoffed. "Boone, man, I thought we had an understanding. We're fighting together."

"Your enemies or mine?"

"Both of ours."

"You know why I hate the Legion. But why do you?"

The Courier paused. He frowned, his eyes dark and downcast.

"I ran into them in Nipton. They strung people up on crosses, ripped out people's guts. Busted a guy's legs and left him for dead. Took prisoners, too. And you know why they did that?"

Boone did not. He let his silence speak for him.

"A lottery. Just slaughtering an entire town for no goddamn reason. Seems… inhumane. Not the kind of people I want to fall in with." He paused, chewing his lip. "Maybe I'm too idealistic. I've definitely heard that before."

"They do worse," Boone said, unwilling to elaborate further. He'd seen the worse with his own eyes. Those who died were the lucky ones. "They're nasty people. The NCR isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But when your alternatives are literal slavers or anarchy…"

"You go with the NCR," the Courier confirmed. "Makes sense."

"The Legion's a slave army. They conquer anyone they see and anyone they don't rape and murder, they force to live like they do. There are no people under their rule. Just people they control." The boy nodded, deep in thought, hanging on Boone's every word. "I try not to think about it too much. They're…"

"The salt of the earth," the Courier suggested.

"They're what?"

"Salt of the earth," he repeated.

"That means they're good people," Boone countered.

"No," the Courier insisted, shaking his head. "It's like when you're in war, and the army pours salt on the earth behind them, so nothing can grow. It means they're bad."

"It definitely doesn't," Boone grumbled to himself, but the Courier didn't seem to hear as he forged ahead, straight towards Legion territory.

Boone made sure his gun was fully loaded, poised and ready in his hands. Just in case.