Hello! (Finally doing an author's comments). So...yes. This fan fiction series is Memoirs of Africa, a sort of AU of Sniper Elite III (thus it will have a few "re-told") scenes as well as scenes that do not occur in the source material. The main reason I wrote this is because, frankly, the storyboard writers for SE-III dropped the ball. So this gets made to flesh out some characters and the story. There will be several OCs, as seen here, but only Drew and Sean (as well as two others I cannot reveal yet because spoilers) will be important. As a learning writer, comments, critiques and reviews are much appreciated by me! I need your feedback to improve my work!

Brauer's eyes were drilling holes into the back of Karl's head.
"You've been standing there for fifteen minutes."
"You've spent the last fifteen minutes cleaning all thirty-eight of your guns."
"I only have six."
"And you're re-cleaning the Lee-Enfield."
Karl paused, looking over the removed bolt. "I think I missed a spot."
"Knowing you, I doubt it. And you barely use that rifle."
"All the more reason to check for sand and rust." Annoyance crept up Karl's spine like a muscle cramp. Couldn't Brauer leave him in peace? He really didn't need distractions while dissembling a gun.
"I think you have this many guns just to clean them all. You've already cleaned my Sten when I wasn't looking."
"You're complaining?"
"No. But why do you compulsively clean rifles if you know they're clean?"
"It's something for my hands to do."
"There are far more fun ways to occupy your hands than cleaning a Lee-Enfield."
Karl turned away from the fold-up table and the carefully picked-apart gun on it to glare at Brauer. "Did you come here for the specific purpose of annoying me?"
Brauer grinned cheekily and shrugged from where he stood at the entrance of their shared tent. "You're not that much fun to annoy. It takes a lot of effort to get a rise out of you."
"Then why do you insist?" Karl scowled.
"I needed to get your attention. What was the question I asked you when I walked in?"
That got Karl's silence. Truth be told, he didn't remember what Brauer had asked him when he entered the tent. Karl had been disassembling his Garand and was focusing intently on the parts he was taking out even though he knew every piece and how it fit together by heart and could've done it in his sleep; some of the gun's parts were under pressure, and he didn't want one of them to get launched at his face because he was careless. He'd barely registered Brauer coming in.
Karl turned back to the rifle and started checking its inner workings to make sure nothing had cracked, rusted, or shifted into the wrong place.
Brauer sighed. "I asked if you wanted to come outside and join me and the lads out by the fire."
"Why?" Karl wiped down the inside of the gun with a cleaning rag, but when he turned the cloth over it came up clean.
"To drink. To trade cigarettes. To talk about home. To complain about the heat and food. Honestly, do you think of anything other than work? You'll go grey by the time you're thirty."
"There's a war to win." Karl replied, finding himself once more exasperated about Brauer's habit of taking nothing seriously.
"And how will we muster up the morale to fight it if we don't gather to remind ourselves why we're fighting? We all need to stop and breathe once in a while, or we'll burn out."
Karl considered Brauer's words, flipping the bolt between his fingers.
"I'm not tired, and my reminder of what I'm fighting for is never far from my mind. You go on and have a drink, I'll be here." Karl's hand went to his scarf subconsciously, adjusting it so it wasn't so loose.
Brauer sighed melodramatically. "Very well. Coop yourself up in here like a hermit. I'm only trying to keep you from losing your voice; I fear you've forgotten how to talk sometimes with how little you do it."
Karl ignored him and soaked a cleaning patch in a solvent. He was about to attach it to the cleaning rod before Brauer's hand landed on his shoulder.
"Karl," The joke was all out of Brauer's voice, and earnest concern replaced it. "It's rude to ignore all of them. They're your teammates. We all have each other's backs in this, right? Can you at least learn everybody's full name?"
Karl paused, eyes still on the small white patch in his fingers.
Tom Clarke always said hello when Karl was on the firing range; Drew Kelly was always friendly and had visited Karl in the medical tent, even offering to bring him booze or cigarettes if he wanted them; Sean Markson was, if anything, even crankier than Karl, but even he never missed one of the almost ritual gatherings around the fire once the sun went down. But those were the only names Karl could put to faces. Maybe Brauer had a point, maybe he ought to at least make an appearance, but it struck him as uncomfortably odd and stilted to show up to the gatherings after being absent for so long.
"The last time I interacted with all of them, it ended with me standing in an oasis without pants." He finally replied, satisfied with that explanation.
Brauer was not. "They did that to me too. It was a joke Fairburne, a soldier's way of welcoming. Don't tell me you're holding a grudge over it."
"I'm not."
"The go say hello at least. I can talk enough for the both of us. You just sit, drink booze and listen. You don't have to give a speech."
Karl turned to Brauer, looking for a familiar smirk but the other man's brown eyes were completely sincere and pouting fiercely. Looking down, Karl realized that he'd rubbed the patch in his hand until it was so thin that he could almost feel the texture of his thumb through it.
Realizing that he couldn't successfully ignore Brauer, he sighed. "Alright. You win."
Brauer's chipper demeanor returned and he clapped Karl on the back with an encouraging smile. "Cheer up mate. I didn't invite you to an execution."
As Karl put the rifle back together, Brauer grabbed his favorite deck of cards from his beside table.
The tarot cards were hand-painted (by an occasionally sloppy hand) and Brauer absolutely adored them, but Karl didn't ask why anymore than Brauer asked why Karl wore the same scarf all the time, even when sleeping. Brauer counted the cards as Karl put the Lee-Enfield with the other guns by his cot. He admired the card at the end of his count with a smile, and glanced at Karl from the corner of his eye. "Shall we go?"
Karl left the tent first, pushing the flaps aside without a response. "Yes then?"
Brauer frowned at him. "It's considered rude to just walk off. You didn't answer me."
"Did I have to? I thought my answer was implied." Karl deadpanned.
"You've got a strange way of looking at things." Brauer's smile returned. "But it is considered rude to just walk off, regardless of answer."
Karl just scuffed his boot along the ground, looking at the rock formation above their heads the men had dubbed "the Big Cat" because of its dark tabby stripes created by the play of shadow and light in the stone's grooves and its shape resembled that of a stretching cat.
Brauer started off towards the campfire off to the camp's side, and when Karl didn't immediately follow, he said, "Let's go Fairburne." louder than necessary.
The camp was a tiny gathering of clustered tan the same color as the sand and big enough for two people. Once they hit an Italian supply depot tomorrow, they would pack everything into the trucks and head back to the eighth army headquarters. But for today the trucks were still, in a ring about the camp which sat in the long shadow of the Big Cat, whose "stripes" got darker as the shadows in the scars of the stone grew longer. The campfire was at the edge of the tents, immediately under the mass of stone, and the fire peeked out from between the trucks and tents, orange and cheerful.
This fire was a ritual for the British patrol, a ritual for every patrol, Drew once said. As soon as the sun started going down and everyone's tasks were completed, all the grunts gathered around a fire to relax, talk, and for a few hours at least, make light of, or ignore, the war. Sure enough, all fourteen of the regulars were already gathered around the fire, sitting in folding chairs brought out from their tents or sitting cross-legged in the stiff sand. Karl could hear laughter and faint conversation, and recognize Drew from where he sat, furthest away from the fire (an odd thing for a man so social, but everyone knew the story of the scars on the vehicular engineer's forearms.).
Drew also saw them first and waved, the light from the fire reflecting angrily on the red burn scars on his arm. "There you are! Have a seat." He pointed to two empty fold-up chairs by the fire.
Drew had a boyish face that made him look younger than he was; his soft features and scattered freckles belied his twenty-four years. He had dark blond hair that nearly reached into his quiet blue eyes, and a constant, crooked but sincere smile as if about to chuckle at a wry could fix any gun or vehicle they had with the right parts, and jury-rig something if he didn't. His still, a strange beast of flasks and tubing, currently hidden back where the Eighth Army was stationed, stood testament to this particular talent.
Brauer pulled Karl into a chair next to him, and Karl felt a little relief seeing that the men's eyes were all on Brauer and not him.
"Brauer!" A soldier with hazel eyes and short brown hair that whirled and stood up like a small windstorm had blown through it. "Nice to see you finally joined us!" He joked in the breathy accent of northern Wales.
"I couldn't stay away. Oi, have you started the poker game without me?" Two soldiers similar looking enough to be family grinned at Brauer from where they sat at a fold-up table that was across the fire from them.
"You were late. We weren't sure if you were coming." The Welsh soldier replied with a smirk. "Maybe if you let us play with your card deck, we could squeeze you in."
"Hah! I would let you borrow it, but you're often drunk and near a fire, Banes."
Banes sputtered a laugh around his cup of moonshine.
Drew started filling small tin cups of his moonshine and passing them around. Banes told a wry joke to a dark-haired soldier with a Norfolk accent next to him, prompting the other to smirk. The two cousins playing poker started arguing over the value of their hands, hardly noticing the two cups that shook precariously near the edge of their table.
When he and Brauer were passed cups of moonshine, Karl looked at the stuff with mild suspicion. It was clear and had a powerfully alcoholic odor, burning his nose when he sniffed at it. He'd tried it earlier when Drew brought him some in the med tent and Karl had nearly gotten them both caught with his coughing and sputtering. It was easily the strongest drink Karl had ever touched, and it had tasted like kerosene. Drew claimed nobody had died or gone blind after drinking it, but Karl wasn't really assured. On the other hand, he sincerely doubted that the captain would turn a blind eye to Drew's brewing if somebody was put in the med tent because of it.
Brauer downed his cup in one fast swig, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as he did so. "Shit, Drew. What's in this?"
"Torpedo fuel. It's mostly grain alcohol based, so I just have to remove the additives."
Everyone looked up at Drew. The blond grinned. "I'm joking."
"You better be." Somebody grumbled noncommittally, as everyone went back to their cups except Karl, who set his down on the hard-packed sand.
"I heard that the Italians have wine with their rations." A red-headed man with a dark tan, a long nose and a Scottish burr spoke up. "Good red wine and spirits. Where the hell are they getting it from?"
"Same generous hands givin' them their officers' hats?" Sean Markson grumbled.
Sean was twenty-seven and more cynical than most men were on their deathbeds. He was "old blood" who'd been fighting on the front-lines since the war first started, three years ago, and rumor had it that he witnessed the rest of his original unit perish in France. His intensely green eyes were sharp and cutting, at odds with the rest of his face. With raven-black hair that fell in soft waves over his forehead, ivory skin, slender fingers, finely-etched features and sharp cheekbones on a smooth face, the Yorkshire native almost looked too delicate to be in war; yet before Karl had taken up residence with the patrol, Sean had been one of the deadliest snipers in the entire LRDG, and his record spoke for itself.
"We ought to look tomorrow. I bet the damned regulars have been drinking all the booze they find." A soldier with a Liverpool accent laughed.
"We look!" The Scottish soldier slammed his fist on his leg, making the moonshine in the cup resting on his opposite knee swish and spill. "Next time we comb the area for booze before we leave."
"The captain wants this next one done quickly so we can rejoin the Eighth by tomorrow morning." Banes pointed out.
Karl glanced at Brauer. A smile was spreading under his mustache as he listened to the debate. He was thinking something up, Karl could see it by the twinkle in his eyes.
"If we're going to find where they're keeping the wine, we'll need the advance scouts to get an idea of where we should look." Brauer said slowly. He turned to Karl. "Fairburne, do you think you could look for us?"
The others turned to Karl, their expressions waiting and expecting. Karl felt like an insect being pinned to a card.
"And if I don't find anything?" He answered stiffly.
"Then it was never there." Brauer smiled a bit more easily, and leaned back in his chair.
"If anyone could find it..." Drew started.
Karl narrowed his eyes at Brauer, who raised his eyebrows in response. The sorry bastard had planned this. Backing out now would be seen as cowardice, and Karl didn't have to go far out of his way to help on the fool's errand.
Fine; he could play this game.
"Sure. I'll keep my ears open."