It's been one of those days where you curl up in bed and feel terrible because Mother Nature is a mean old woman.

I wrote this to 'Little Talk' by Of Monsters and Men, which you probably have heard before because everyone has heard this song. If you have not heard this song, then I'm going to assume you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months.

And I would really love to hear from you guys in the comment section. I am averaging a generous number for each chapter, and yet I'm only hearing from two people. I am completely sure that I don't re-read my chapters to such an extent - all of you ghost readers should swing me a comment and tell me how I am going lately!

Annie returned from the Tops later than expected that night. Boone was asleep in their bed, pillows strewn from face to floor. It appeared he had fallen head first into the mattress, though his abandoned beret told the courier that it was premeditated.

The sounds of the Strip echoed up from the ground beneath them; screams of laughter blending perfectly with the chuck and splat vomiting that burst from the poor privates' throats. Annie had already had two propositions by the time she had reached the first gate – politely rejecting the drunken men with a cute smile and a 'maybe when you're my type, soldier'.

Slinking into bed beside him, Annie lay on her back. It had been a while since she had walked in high-heels, her feet flattened from days of combat boots and desert sand. Slipping off the t-bar shoes with the butt of her heels, she turned her head to the resting man. He looked pleasant, almost happy to be sleeping for once in his life.

The courier raised her legs to undo the garters, the elastic clips retreating back to her hips with a snap. Boone shifted beside her, his eyes slitting open slightly. He stirred, fingers twitching in his palms as he rolled onto his side to face her.

"Can't sleep?" He asked louder than his voice usually pushed, the room dark enough to hide his still-sleeping form from her wide eyes.

"No, just coming to bed now." She sighed at him, rolling the stockings up her legs to her ankles before slipping them off to the ground beside her. Annie sat up groggily, stretching her back and groaning slightly at the ache that stung up her spine like a night stalker bite. "Go back to sleep."

"You'll feel better after you go to sleep." His voice was dull and slurred but pure, sending a warm blossom back up from her loins to her brain. His hand swung up to grab hers, urging her softly back to the mattress to lie beside him. The gesture made her purse her lips, staring intently at the black ceiling with nothing to gain. Having made body contact for the first time in a while was very strange – especially in a personal place like bed.

The feeling of his warm palm was electric, her fingers tightening in the sheets to make sure her hands wouldn't start to shake. It felt wrong, knowing that he was sleeping and probably delirious in dreamland. If he was to wake and find her taking advantage of his unconscious form… the thought was shudder worthy.

"I'll be okay, just go back to sleep." She pried her arm from his soft grip, placing it back on the mattress between them. But she still lay there, breath heavy at the goosebumps blooming from the now cold skin where his fingers had been previously resting.

"Huh." He rolled back over onto his back, not registering a word they had spoken. "Is it the baby keeping you awake again?"

Annie sat back up.

"The what?" Her voice pitched a high note, her eyes snapping incredulously to his now suddenly awoken form. The silence between them buzzed resentfully, Annie's already dark mood turning a putrid muck of irritation as she boiled unhappily about the mistaken identity.

The last thing she really needed was Boone springing a mental leak – really if he had a screw loose it was far too dangerous to take him out into the wastes...

She was just making excuses, really only disappointed she felt let down that he had seen her as his wife. She had forgotten that the woman had existed for a while, harbouring some sort of naïve hope that he had somehow moved on and was ready to take a chance with her.

"I'm not your fucking wife, Boone." Annie snapped quietly, unzipping the dress haughtily throwing herself back beside him. She rolled to face her back to him to show him she was not happy, feeling a twinge of shame for not being as understanding as she could have. Still, her ego had been bruised.

She felt his weight shift away, a pair of feet hitting the carpeted floor. He simply padded out of the room, disappearing for the night to leave her alone in the bed that seemed far too big for her alone.

The morning after Annie found him in the dining room, sitting at the head of the table in the blind corner. She sat down across from him, wrapped up in a silk robe she had found in one of the cupboards. Her hands placed themselves in front of his, snaking around one of them in an attempt at comfort.

The whole night her stomach had panged with guilt about her snap, fervently daydreaming of a universe where she could inch beside him in the strange bed and apologise for being a brat.

"I'm sorry." She patted his hand softly, retreating to fold them in her lap as she leant back in the chair. "Can we go to the Wrangler today? I need to talk to Francine."

He stared at her, dead-eyed through his sunglasses with not a look of sympathy in his eyes. He was back to the original Boone that she had first met – tense shouldered and lock jawed. Annie felt a swoop of pain in her stomach, eyes flickering with hurt that he probably registered but didn't respond to.

"Please?" She had grown so used to his light nature; showing her how a simple man could pull himself back onto his feet for a while without the necessary burn for a bloody revenge. "Boone, please. I want to go home for a while." Now he was back to the smouldering mass that radiated a negative energy to whoever was in his proximity. "Ten minutes," she stood after a while of silence, greeted with a wash of slight annoyance watered down with a splash of self-reproach. "ten minutes and I want you in that elevator."

The door of their old bedroom shut quietly behind her hands, her fingers switching the lock into place before leaning back on the hard wood. Placing their backpack down at the foot of the bed, Annie stalked to her side of the bed and sat gingerly in wait.

She watched the man change his weight to one foot, eyes welding into hers with a fierce fire. Her look fought valiantly and won, steering him to the desk chair that had collected a fine layer of dust. He sat unhappily, curling his hands in his lap like an angered old man.

Her heart was beating at the words stuck on her tongue, not too sure where the conversation would lead to and afraid of the possible outcomes. If she made him uncomfortable in the slightest she knew he would pack up and leave. Carla was a touchy subject for him – which was completely understandable. Having your wife and unborn child sold to the Legion was bad enough without having your companion sneer about it in the middle of the night because she was in a bad mood.

"I think it's time you told me about your wife." The words spilled out of her mouth like a string of drool, sinking into the thick air like water to a sponge. The man stared at her for a moment, eyes flicking before suddenly sighing.

"I don't see how this helps." He told her, his voice gravelly and stern. "She's dead."

"Did you know that you know just as much about me than I do?" She pushed. "I… I understand that you don't want to tell me, but c'mon… You can't bury the poor woman without a tomb stone."

He visibly flinched at the thought, Annie biting her tongue at the bad analogy.

"What I'm saying is… Boone… You can't hold onto your secrets forever. The more we know about each other, the more effective we will be as a team. It's a very unrequited relationship, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't say that." His voice deepened in thought. His eyes skimmed up to meet hers, the coals still simmering in her brown eyes. She had won once again and he sighed. "Alright…

"She… I tracked her down. Southeast, near the river…-"

"Cottonwood?" Annie asked quietly. His neck skipped in a nod.

"They were selling her. Saw it through my scope." Annie watched him speak with her fingers in her mouth. "Whole place was swarming with Legion. Hundreds of them. Bidding for things no man has right to. I just had my rifle with me. Just me, against all of them, so…" He sighed, taking off his glasses to fold them in his palm, rubbing the bridge of his nose as a sign of internal defeat. "I took the shot."

It took Annie a while to realise what he had said. The thought ran process in her brain as he leant back and folded his arms, watching and waiting for the conversation to sink in.

"Oh." It clicked. "Oh…" Her stomach dropped at the thought, her brain churning out suggestions as to what to say next. It came out jumbled though, Annie apparently not having the capacity to sympathise comfortably. "Better you got to do-… other than those assholes- at least there's comfort in knowing-…" she trailed off, eyes bursting with pity. "Better her to die than to live a Legion slave."

"Yeah. What they do to women… That's worse than death. There was no choice in what I did." His hands gestured tiredly in his lap, elbows on his thighs in an attempt to support. "It was more like… being forced to watch something you can't stop."

"You did the right thing."

"All this was only ever going to play out one way. It still is. I don't have any say. All I can do is wait for it to be done with me."

"You make it sound like her death was inevitable." Annie tsk'd at him, leaning forward to catch his eye.

"It was gonna be something. If I hadn't met Carla, it would have been something else. I should've never gotten close to her."

"Whether you like it or not, Boone, you're allowed to be happy too." She rolled her eyes at him, mood lightened by his usual pessimism. He stayed stoic though, thumbing the arms of the glasses before clicking his teeth.

"I've got bad things coming to me." He caught her stare one last time, his gaze sweeping over her face with tired eyes. "You'd better keep your distance too."

She scoffed at him suddenly, the wind from her mouth taking him by a soft shock. Annie jumped up and popped over to him, bending at the waist to be his height for a moment.

"Like hell." She grinned, the gap between her two middle teeth bringing him back to his sudden reality of baby sitter. "You're stuck with me for a long while, sweetheart." She reached out to touch his face but stopped at the last moment – hand lingering in the air before she straightened out awkwardly. Patting her dress down, she returned to the bed to fetch a bottle of scotch from their pack. "I'm going to have a drink. Want one?"

"Sure."

"Francine would be so mad if she knew I bought in alcohol from the outside." She sniggered to herself, taking two glasses from the bedside table – wiping them clean with the hem of her dress. "And Boone, you need to understand that whatever you've done you don't deserve to live a life of suffering. Unless you somehow singlehandedly managed to massacre a whole tribe of undeserving bystanders, you should be fine."

His eyes darted to hers; her stare content and soft like it had been a lot lately. In that moment he knew he was destined to die alone – even if her body language told him she had just made a simple joke… she did not know the truth, and there was no way that he could tell her about it just yet.

"Or say if you tracked a courier across a desert and shot her in the head for a stupid fucking poker chip… OR maybe if you were a Legion, underneath all those clothes could be a leather skirt and feathers…" Annie grinned at him, offering him his glass. He watched her try and lighten the mood, her hand patting the bed beside her.

He stood and sat next to her, her hand resting on his knee comfortably when he sunk into the mattress.

"You've saved my life a million times and you think that your end will be long and painful… I think your karma is through the roof." She patted it gently, staring at the door from the bottom of her glass. "And in case you haven't noticed, you're really all I have." She said awkwardly but stained with truth, trying to avoid eye contact to the point of her body vibrating with fear of rejection.

She drained the scotch quickly only to pour herself another one right after.

"I think you're a decent man, Boone. It's not cool that you think otherwise." She looked at him directly, the air between them fizzing with electricity. The red string that had tied them together was the shortest it had ever been - left with a broken man and a forgotten girl in a cloud of sharp pasts and uncertain futures.

Annie was the first to look away, Boone almost reeling back from the rush of feelings swelling in his chest from her closeness. He hadn't felt such a buzz since Carla – which was sickeningly sardonic due to their previous topic of conversation. He hated the feeling, forcing it back down into the cellar of his mind where all his other problems went.

He had just told her to stay away, but with that motion he had lit the own match of his affection – and it burnt brighter than anything he had seen in a while - a lighting salvation in the distance.

"I heard some news last night." She started, changing the topic and shot her drink once again. "I had to come here to tell you because I know the old man has the place wired. But I went to Benny's suite last night, and I was right about it. They'd moved the body but nothing had been changed. My shawl was still wrapped around the back of the chair I was sitting in." She blinked off, thinking back to the fateful night before pulling a face.

Boone stayed quiet, soaking up her voice with faithful ears.

"I went to go to the bathroom to, you know, check things out and I found a… I found a robot in there. One of those securitron things, but it had this really creepy look on its face. Far too happy to be a robot, but you know how technology is…" She drabbled on, clinking the bottle to the lip of the glass nervously. The story didn't seem to sit well with her. "It told me that I could take Vegas for myself."

Boone took the bottle from between her fingers, watching as she rapped her nails fretfully against the glass.

"All I have to do is kill House, and it's mine." She turned her neck to stare up at him, eyes wide with exhilarating fear. "Ours. No more dirty work for us, we pick the jobs. We'll have the whole Mojave in our hands… Isn't that completely terrifying?"

Grasping the thought in his mind, Boone sipped his drink with no words, forcing out a short 'hmph' that could probably be considered a laugh.

"Did you know House has a whole robot army?" Annie whispered at him, hiding behind her drink and hands timidly "Not just what you see here at the Strip, but a whole factory of them under that Legion camp… Caesar doesn't know about them either… And if House is out of the way, we'd have this unstoppable army – that's why I took so long with the old man yesterday, because he was showing me the new software upgrade… they have rocket launchers now."

"You say 'we'-…" He stopped, turning his head to stare at her again. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for a continuation but receiving nothing.

"Because half is rightfully yours. You've been with me the whole time, done most of the work for less reception."

"I don't want it." He spoke, resting his glass on his knee.

"But I don't want to do it all by myself…" She moaned, pleading with him with a battle of the eyes. He looked away, feeling better about his situation. No matter how he looked at it, Annie always needed extra help with everything she did. There was no chance that she would back away and head his words – because he was stuck with her.

He stared into his glass, tracing the rim with a deserted finger while the girl beside him rested her hand on his knee once again. She downed her drink, full of liquid confidence for the first time in a while – maybe for the first time ever. It took her a while to get Boone comfortable, and the thought of that made her nervy. There was no way she was going to embarrass herself in front of the man who just poured his heart out (sort of) to her. The alcohol, specially packed for that occasion, took away the foreign feeling of nervousness and dimmed her heart into one of understanding and needs. As much as she wanted pat him on the back, there was still that burn in her body that needed to be soothed… but fortunately, her goal of staying level-headed won out over all the other feelings fighting in her chest.

Boone, however, felt wrong. On one hand he felt slightly better about talking about Carla. The woman had been locked up in his mind for so long he had forgotten to let her out for a break. And that woman was the reason that his mood hit the wall - it could go no further than the idea that he was a bad person. Carla was the victim in his implicit life, taking the fall for something he had done himself. And for that, he deserved to die.

And even though welcomed death every second of the day, there was a voice in the back of his head telling him that maybe he should prolong it just for a little while – just until Annie knew how to take care of herself better. Just because he had to die a slow, painful and well-deserved death didn't mean she had to either – and after all the things he had done it was the least he could do to even start to make amends.