Hello everyone~

I hope everything is going well for you guys - especially those in parts of the world where things ain't going so great - and I wish you all safety and luck and everything under the sun to make it better.

This update isn't as big as the earlier ones, but it's a crucial part of our story. Hope it doesn't wind you down too much ahaha. heh. ah. I thought I may be doing this too early but I've shuffled the plot around a bit and I like it better this way so here we go, dudettes. Anyway, I spent a week or so listening to Fleetwood Mac so if that says anything about how great this is going to be, well, then make a shit tonne of assumptions.

No Questions Asked - Fleetwood Mac

The storm calmed down early morning, rousing Boone with the softest light through the sand-caked windows. He shifted uneasily, nearly asleep from his graveyard shift and unfortunately numb from the stable position, breaking free from Annie's iron grip that had soldered her head to his arm. Rex was sleeping happily on the sniper's feet, which felt uncomfortable in semi-wet socks and tight boots. His whole body seemed to ache – his back for a soft bed and his brain for a cigarette.

When he forced himself into a stand, he lit himself a smoke and flicked the packet at Annie. It bounced from her chest – the courier sputtering awake with a soft gag and a loud groan.

"Fuck me, is it morning already?" She groped around lazily for the packet, throwing her head back into the rotting walls. The smoke was soon curling from the end of the stick, burning tobacco spewing coils into the thick morning air. "You think Cliff has a pot of coffee on the boil down in Novac?"

"No doubt." The man answered, stretching his arms behind his back as Rex patted around his feet dopily, bouncing from side to side in excitement to be out of the cramped gas station. "It seems clear outside."

"Let me get up and we'll get moving then, I guess." Annie let out a big yawn, soaking smoke through the gaps in her teeth. The girl groaned again, stacking her legs beneath her to spring up to full height, body creaking uncomfortably as she clicked forward. They stiffly packed their things together, the courier sleepily pulling on armour as the sick feeling in her stomach attempted to have her throw up in an old freezer.

The world they stumbled out to seemed like something different – a purplish sky that sat over red sand while the rain dried off the lumps of cactus that pooled around them. The bodies they destroyed the night before were half buried by wet sand, glassy-eyed in their last hours of darkness before the flesh-eaters came out in daylight. The sun was sitting pretty in the distance, clouded yellow that sent a beautiful glow out to envelop the entire desert.

In the corner of his eye he could see the sniffling courier light up in the sunrise, reenergised by the sizzling light that she'd so desperately needed. She turned on the radio without a beat, flicking to Radio New Vegas to back up what seemed like a picture perfect morning.

There was a new wind in Annie, a skip in her step as they plodded back towards Boone's old home. It was like she had a new zest for life – purpose for whatever miserable plan she had… and every so often he would catch her running her eyes over him like a prize.

The road to Novac was quick and wet, sloping down slightly for them to curl around the still shut trash yard. Old Lady Gibson was still probably in bed, which gave them time to walk further down and set their stuff in their rooms and possibly chain-smoke until the old bitch opened up.

There were three dogs sniffing around the front gate as they passed, Rex bounding up to them to sniff back. Annie stopped to watch them as Boone kept an eye on the distance – checking around for another chance of a Legion ambush. The sniper urged the woman further with a wave of his hand, claiming Rex with a low whistle. The courier caught up slowly, slinking away from the dogs with a straight face that read of thought.

"Which one do you think Rex liked the most?"

"What?" He asked as they came up on Novac a few minutes later, attention caught by Manny Vargas hanging half out the mouth of the dinosaur with what seemed to be a tool kit. Cliff Briscoe had somehow managed to scale the creature, hanging from a rusty ladder on the side. Ranger Andy was below them, limping around to survey the damage of the rusted out foundation.

"Which one do you think Rex liked the most? Because that's the brain we'll get."

"You want to kill the dog he likes the most." The sniper said flatly, heading towards the fence to stare morbidly up at Dinky's snapped arm. The wind and rain must have finally taken its toll on the old pre-war structure, toppling the age-old thermometer sideways and into Cliff's bungalow.

"He won't remember it at all, though—will you, you ridiculous hybrid? Oh, no you wont." Annie was toddling up with the robo-dog, patting it gingerly between the ears as her eyes trailed up Boone's line of sight. The three men outside plus the straggling bystanders had caught sight of the weary travellers, eyes blaring down at them in the morning sun.

The people of Novac were still wary of Boone and Annie's partnership; spurring from the death of Jeannie-Mae a far few months back before any of the current fiasco had ever started. The two wanderers were the only real candidates for the murder (disappearing only moments later into the distance) of the desk clerk, but only after Manny snapped and searched his old partner's room did he find the bill of sale left folded neatly on the kitchen counter… He didn't blame his friend (termed loosely), but still couldn't grasp the idea of the unification of Boone and burnt-out Annie.

"Had a bit of a rough night?" The courier yelled up to Cliff Briscoe, the skinny man twisting in his position to get a better look at the two below. He adjusted his cap and laughed tiredly from his post, shaking his head. The sniper shifted in his place, glancing up to catch Manny's stare that stung a little.

"You could say that." The old man answered, lowering himself down a few rungs to jump down.

Boone and Annie trailed around through the chain link fence to stand in the main yard, coming to a rest in front of the innkeeper – the man cleaning dirt from his hands with an old rag. "You kids stayin' for a few days?"

"Just stopped in for a rest after that storm. Spent the night up in El Dorado." Annie drawled on happily, looking up at Boone with a wide grin.

"Did you clear those thugs outta there?" The old man squinted into the distance, the bright globe beaming brightly over the horizon and now mid-distance. "Been hassling travellers between the Strip and here."

"More than dead." Annie assured, peeking around the man to watch Ranger Andy tsk over broken pieces of metal. "Need a hand with Dinky?" She asked slowly, feeling a little bad for the town's only closest thing to a tourist attraction. They were always so proud of it too… "He looks like he's in bad shape."

"Oh, Dinky'll be fine." The man waved them off. "We just need some scrap metal to fix him back up. We're in a bit of a tight spot at the moment… we usually scavenge from the old Repconn Centre but those damn ghouls, see…"

Annie's eyes evened. "Oh… Those things." She looked up at her partner for a moment, who was staring back over at the hotel rooms – probably deciding which room he was going to stay in over Annie's trip away. After the night before he was really gagging for some alone time – wanting to lock himself away in his old home while he thought over whatever he had just agreed to the previous night. He couldn't register the feeling that had clamped down over his chest… it felt like fear but that was obviously an overreaction on his behalf. He put it down to plain guilt. "If you're really needing that scrap, Cliff, we can go and get rid of that ghoul problem for you. Shouldn't be too much of a problem with Boone there."

At the sound of his name Boone clicked back into conversation, accidentally burning his eyes into the older man's with a very stoic but icy blink. Briscoe sighed, rubbing the back of his head with the filthy rag before turning back around to take one last quick glance at Dinky.

"If you could, it would really help the effort."

The sniper clicked back down to his companion, greeted with a handshake of thanks off Cliff before the innkeeper flitted off back up his ladder. Annie was already off towards the steps towards her room, lugging her bag off her back to dig out the key. "What did you agree to?" Boone asked as he followed her up the stairs, catching the flicks of sand from her boots.

"We're gonna clear out that Repconn centre before we go."

"Ghouls."

"Ghouls." Annie confirmed, leaning on the wooden door as she turned the knob behind her back. "Just like our first date."

He shot her a very sour look as she backed in to the hotel room, suddenly smothered by month-old stale air and the smell of bloodied bandages that hadn't been cleaned from the bins. Ditching her pack on the bed, the courier got to work cleaning their earlier mess – left that way by a more-than-inebriated Boone and an over-boiled Annie.

The smell of stale blood was a little off-putting to the sniper, thoroughly relieved when Annie toddled down to the trash cans on the edge of town. He was left with the aching reminder of his last trip to Novac and then suddenly the stabbing reminder of his entire time in Novac. He hated the feeling the town gave him, but Annie was so intent on keeping the peace in her little independent campaign. He had doubts she would succeed but because all else had literally failed he had nothing to do but follow her.

Besides, the view wasn't too bad from where he was standing at the current moment. Still tangled in a web of young, pretty women with smart mouths and luring smiles (stronger, more intoxicating each time around), Boone suddenly found himself content with the idea of telling Annie about everything there was to him. If he had fallen asleep after their talk, he probably would have dreamed about how big her eyes were, and how filled they were with some goopy, awkward liquid that told him she was head-over-heels and too far-gone.

Perhaps he was also too far-gone. His brain attempted to flicker over the idea of Annie being rather unimpressed with his past—but he had seen how much she wanted him with his own eyes! Although, it was probably stupid to assume that Annie would still want him after she found out the intensity of what he had done. He never had even thought to tell Carla, never even touched the idea of it… Oh, what the hell was he doing? What in the god damn hell was he doing?

Annie returned to find the sniper staring at the empty picture frame on the wall behind her head, returning with two cracked cups of coffee from the hotel lobby. She slipped down beside him, setting the cup into his hands as she jostled the other onto the bedside – digging out a packet of smokes from her armour pocket.

"Mm?" She waved the box at him, catching his gaze and smiling brightly from the rim of the hot cup. He snatched them, lighting one quickly before passing it right back. "Thanks." She clasped it with her forefinger and middle, cocking her wrist out as she took another sip of the black liquid. "So, the plan is that we go and get that brain from that woman and then we store it in the fridge here while we go and clear out those ghouls… and then we help Cliff and the others put Dinky back together. Is that alright?"

"I thought we were leaving as soon as possible." He said flatly and she beamed brighter.

"Don't be like that – it's the least we can do. You are aware of what we did to Jeannie." The girl slanted lazily, attempting a small joke but ending up digging her heel into a festering wound. His face formed a frown and he took a stiff draw of his cigarette, the girl pulling a face from her cup. "It was warranted." She grunted from the rim. He grunted right back. "Sorry. Out of line."

"Yeah."

She sat forward a second, frowning into cigarette smoke.

"Hey, listen, because of that, I'm gonna let you have a nap while I go visit Old Lady Gibson." Annie squinted awkwardly at the man, who folded his right arm to wrap his smoke fingers around his bicep. He sipped his coffee quietly, in thought and not exactly mad just irked. "I'm gonna take a quick bath before I go out though – impress the old broad- you know- hah ah. Ah. Boone- alright, bath time."

She slinked away with her tail between her legs, leaving the man to contemplate in peace.

Slightly on edge from a price war with the old bitch up the road, Annie was heading back through the gates of Novac to go thrust a dog brain in her partner's face. She had claimed the brain of the dog that Rex had sniffed the most, pleased with her detective work on the case. Rex would be the best friend he could ever have.

With her little package wrapped in a rotting old cloth, the courier found herself crossing the same path as Manny Vargas. The man was worn down and slightly twitchy, skinnier than she remembered but still built like a brahmin. Rex was slinking around her legs as the woman greeted the ex-Khan with a swoop of her hand on his back.

"Vargas, how are you going?" She asked happily, brightened by the idea of a conversation that didn't really have the means to turn sour. Boone had been dreamier than usual that day, spurring from the lack of sleep and strange promise he had made her only hours before. Her heart jumped at the thought, beaming full of joy at the Hispanic man.

"Things are the same as always, Anna." The man answered tiredly, his natural voice still sounding constantly irritated. "Heard you were going to head up and clean out the Repconn facility today."

"Yeah, just gotta grab Boone and we'll head off." She smiled at him, adjusting the jar in her arms. The ex-Khan let his brow rise naturally, catching the courier's attention. "What?" She smiled up at him curiously, throwing him off-balance with that sweet smile had never really seen before.

"I just-" he let out a quick sigh that still sounded exasperated but exhausted and uncomfortable. There was a pause in the muggy Mojave air, the sniper shifting uneasily as he grew hot under the collar. The whole thought made him uneasy and Annie's unnatural stare that used to be silent but now lived and breathed in a sick and sad way gave him cold sweats "between me and Bitter-Root, we were the only two that it didn't really fuck up… you were always so close to the gang and to be—uh" he cut himself off roughly. "Not that Boone's a bad guy." He saved himself in a flap, although ignored by the already pondering courier. "I feel real bad, Anna. I really do."

Bitter-Root flashed an angry feeling inside of her stomach, remembering the boy to be shy and withdrawn and unnaturally good-natured for a full-blooded Khan. The Hispanic man in front of her began to shift foot-to-foot, counting his blessings and hoping to withdraw silently and go and collect the purified water like he had originally intended. There was something about the Vargas gene that loved to say directly what was on their mind and it got the whole family in trouble. Including Malcolm.

"What are you on about, Vargas?" Annie skittered out quickly, trying to pick up the conversation without seeming flustered. The thought of Bitter-Root put a rotten taste in her mouth and she didn't want Manny to know about it. Apparently they still kept in touch if they were talking about not being bothered by… what? There was a hot flash in her head and her temperature rose violently, sending a heat wave down her body.

The sniper watched her with a keen eye and thought over her words, watching on with a morbid curiosity as her focus began to dart all over his face in search for answers. He had seen that look before and it struck terror into his entire being as he remembered the last time he had been caught in an Annie bomb. He'd appeared to strike a sore nerve with his stupid mouth, bracing for a sickening beating in reflex from his teenage years. He could kill a man with no hesitation and his teenage nightmares still spooked the hell out of him… His mouth hung open with no words.

The courier took a few steps back, stumbling over a clump of weeds and almost losing her glass jar. The sniper watched her; still full of a bounty of secrets that Annie couldn't handle hearing – brown eyes jumping with her feet as she shot up the stairs and into the hotel room. The door slammed with a bang that shook the top floor.

Boone was greeted by the frame of a shuddering girl in a lovely purple dress that matched her face, hunched stiffly like a doll that plodded in on two unstable legs that seemed to be refusing to co-operate. She almost shone with sweat, radiating a fierce energy that swirled the room with an uncomfortable confusion.

She walked like she was melting, slopping over to the fridge to store the dog's brain as the newest owner curled up at the end of the bed – almost tripped over by the second sniper who had had a heart attack at the courier's arrival. Annie was suddenly pacing around the room, weighed down by the world visibly as she seemed to slump further to the ground with each step she took. Her knees began to wobble and fail and finally she gave up and splayed herself on the floor like a dead girl.

Boone was by her side in an instant, more worried for her health than he felt he should have. Her face was pale and her eyes were wider than plates as they skittered all over his face in sleepy horror.

"I'm numb all over." She said plainly as her eyes quickly bore into the faded carpet. They seemed to throb and dilate every time a hot flush came over her. "I think I'm just…" The man attempted to sit her up, investing in a lump of hot skin that was absolutely blistering with bewilderment. She rubbed the hole in her head with the flat, warm skin of her sweaty palm. "I'm mad."

"Mad?" He asked quietly.

"As in angry. I'm furious." She started to vibrate with an enthusiastic intensity, teeth beginning to chatter loudly as the shudders rolled across her back. "I was just talking to Manny and he started talking about a guy we used to know and the thought of the man just makes me so mad like I've-" She thought about it for a while, frozen in time as the man attempted to start his heart again. She was jumping so close to the topic he had contemplated the entire morning in his half-sleep.

Her eyes rolled over him and she pulled away, shakily tugging herself up on the fridge before staggering towards the bottle of liquor on the table. He followed her with his gaze, watching her path closely and cautiously like a scolded child watching his mother stalk the room. He was worried beyond belief, guilty beyond anything he had ever felt before and feeling more and more dead inside as the moment dragged on.

The courier seemed to be on the edge of the mystery, the ugly feeling finding it hard to find itself a name in the mottled brain that she had been carrying around for a couple of years. It was on the tip of her tongue – that horrible clench that was absolutely tearing at her stomach lining and was sucking all the blood from her legs and into her heart that was pounding like the tribal drums of a Saturday night-

Everything was on the tip of her tongue as her hands shook steadily to pour the liquid into the tumbler. Boone had pulled himself up behind her, greeted with the smell of her hair. All his senses were screaming and the only thing he could think of was how he would feel if she left and he never had the opportunity to smell her hair again. Far too deep, his mind shrieked over the warping sirens, far too fucking deep!

Things were peaking fast and the courier was beginning to piece together the disgusting muck in her stomach. The anger belonged to the NCR, throttled with a flash of red ferocity in her vision as her eyes drew over Boone's beret. Bitter-Root... Bitter… The skull on the patch was haunting in her mind, bouncing an idea of the origin of her hatred towards the new republic.

She sculled the drink and the burn of the juice tinged her throat – torched with a memory of whatever she had pushed away – forgotten so easily with the bullet to her brain. Everything was talking at once and she felt sick, bending softly at the stomach in attempt to ease the pain. Her partner didn't know what to do.

Through the glasses she could catch a small glint in Boone's eye, the one she had only ever seen a few times in their stint together… the first night in the dinosaur – the way he looked at her with such distaste and unimportance, still secretly and embarrassingly taken with the strange girl that peaked his fancy (and even then worried about the tug in his gut that wanted each and every bit of her)…

Or at the turn off to Bitter Springs after their days in the boatshed… how he was so ready to let her go and discover Bitter Springs. Like he had given up. Had he subconsciously decided to tell her that day after he had nearly died under her, watching the sweat drip down her bare back and onto his thighs… He had offered Bitter Springs as a thank you – a go ahead in a moment of weakness and appreciation.

He was so tortured all the time – a straight-laced sniper with a price to pay for the misdoings of his past. There was always something he would never tell her about Bitter Springs… he was there for something big. Something big at Bitter Springs… The NCR hated the Khans so much… Boone's note… Boone's note.

It clicked. The suddenness of it all clicked.

The world was sucked into a shiny blank void – screaming with white noise as all of Annie's senses peaked at once. The floodgates of her mind had torn open and were pouring information into her skull – barely keeping up with the rush of crying faces and piles of dead being placed into holes by her own shuddering hands. She had got there as soon as she heard.

The sniper watched the realisation hit her eyes, glassed over suddenly with the horrifying remembrance of the overwhelming guilt and pain that had been forgotten for far too long. She placed the cup down gently at first, absolutely numb with the rush of feelings that were throwing themselves around her shell like a rollercoaster that was wheeling out of control—ringing up goose bumps on each of her arms in sync with the swim.

Then she tugged her arm back and slugged him so hard in the chest that he had to take a few steps back to recuperate, attempting to recover all of his bearings that appeared to be leaking from the pulsating soul-crack that was invisibly dripping all over Annie's carpet. She ripped the beret from his head, caught by his hand quickly before she could pitch it on the ground and spit on it.

His breath choked from his chest as he spluttered, stretching up to keep the struggling Annie from her sudden militia against him. Although everything should have been serious and sharp, he felt the situation was more of a tussle of colours that seemed far too bright to be part of his life that was crumbling for the third time in the last ten years.

Annie was not giving up, fuelled by months of pent up anger directed towards the closest NCR figure she could get her hands on. She leant forward and dropped her weight, throwing the man off balance towards the bed. Although he would never hit the girl, Boone found it hard not to use force on the strong woman he had never figured for such a little beast. Annie was raging beneath him, joints screaming with pressure and pain as she attempted to throw him over.

He ended up tossing Annie onto the bed, bouncing the girl into a sort of stupor as she attempted to find her feet. Her neck creaked as she turned to face him again, like a wired doll aiming for her prey – and like a fighty bird she was back on her feet instantly, staggering back around to circle him angrily.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me, you asshole." She muttered unhappily at him. "It all makes sense now. You make sense now." Her finger prodded his chest sharply, his hands not even bothering to dart to catch them. "You think it was a good idea to keep this from me? I lose my god damn memory and you have the fucking balls to look me in the eye every day and not tell me!?"

Her chest sunk a little and she gasped for a breath as her eyes welled up with something that seemed like tears. They were crushed instantly, rolled under the sleeve of her dress that she had bunched around her thighs in a clenched fist. The other had snaked up to her mouth, teeth gnawing at the knuckles as she stared up at the man with a shrieking fire.

"You're worse than dirt, Boone." She bit at him in a throaty tone he hadn't heard in a while. It had been too long since he had heard that sultry voice that seduced him into throwing his drab Novac life away.

"Appropriate response." He forced out plainly and the courier's fingers opened and closed sharply over her face, nails digging into her cheeks and leaving little red marks. He could see the shuddering hatred roll from her shoulders to her hips, sending thrills down her legs to her foot that had been cocked back, bouncing it gently as the furious tapping kept a steady rhythm to their moment.

Her mouth opened again, attempting to scold and belittle him in a harsh way but failing at the tip of her throat. She was stuck by the rush of memories that left her feeling naked and numb – remembering the string of graves that rolled up towards the main camp. Those graves were her peers, her family, her childhood and her old life all shoved into dirt holes with sticks for stories... Children that she had actually met and taught… and the elderly who had taught her…

There was an intense rage circulating through Annie as she took a few steps back, palm slapping her thighs for her knife. The garter popped loose as she pulled it free, holding it close to her chest but still pointing it directly at him.

He could see down the invisible line, guiding him to the throbbing chest that almost twitched with each beat of her heart. There it was – the one part of Annie he never wanted to see. She looked strung-out, hands vibrating furiously as her fingers flexed around the knife – the blade shining a small, flickering ball of light onto the ceiling.

They caught each other's eye again, Annie jumping slightly at the foreign, hated feeling of Boone's gaze. She didn't want him to look at her; she didn't want him anywhere near her. The monster! She had trusted her life with him for all those months, when what she should have been doing was throwing that fucker out of Dinky.

In fact, she would do that. She would literally throw him out of the mouth of that god forsaken dinosaur and watch his head compact into a bloody stump right next to the old stain of Jeannie-Mae's. Then she would rinse her hands clean of him and go home. Yes. Yes. She'd burn all of her sheets and scrub herself raw of every place he had ever touched her.

Boone watched the woman press the flat side of her knife to her forehead, staring intently at a stain on the carpet with flashing brown eyes. She tapped it gently, bouncing the sharp point onto the little red welt in the corner of her head. She was thinking, still heaving with an ugly fury, but still thinking rather intently. Boone assumed it was her plan of action – the plan she usually made for her day. It probably went something like 'kill Boone – burn Boone's body – never come back'. He knew her, probably far too well, and that had killed him already.

The girl he had grown so dependant on was planning his death in her pretty little head. He had hated it for so long but it had become an obsession, charmed and tugged by the lewd voice that turned into soft sweetness so suddenly and soon everything felt just like it used to.

That sick feeling that never used to go away had returned again, after months of being MIA in Annie's bed. He could feel the twitch in his jaw that used to flare up when she made him mad, but this time he wasn't irritated in the least. He couldn't bring himself to hate her, even after the swipe at his beret. She had every right to treat him like dirt and he had to just take it – watch his life fall apart again, and the like last time he could only watch and stop nothing. It was too far-gone. It was over.

The woman let out a frustrated sigh as she pulled away from her embrace, cocking her wrist to shake the knife in thought before she snapped, pitching it straight at the bathroom wall. It bounced off the plaster and hit the carpet, rolling under the bed to remain forgotten forever.

"You're not sleeping in here tonight." She cleared her throat to catch his attention, his blue eyes snapping to her browns that were suddenly reigned in to only smouldering coals. "You're not sleeping with me again. And don't think you're leaving this fucking hotel any time soon." She pointed at him stiffly with a shaking finger. "We clear out Repconn and we leave. We owe this town that much." Her jaw was set, spitting orders like an angry dictator. The man could only take them, almost concerned about her dimmed mood. "And until then, I really don't want to look at you."

And then she climbed onto the middle of her bed and curled up into a ball, leaving the sniper to snatch his pack up and pace back to his bedroom. He passed Manny on the way, greeted with a cold and awkward shoulder as they crossed paths. Boone had a bad feeling that the whole thing had started with Manny, although he felt far too numb to confront the man about it. He was too stricken with what felt like a ten tonne anvil of guilt on his back.

The key wouldn't fit in the door at first, the sniper turning it over to force it stiffly into the lock. Boone was welcomed with the musky hug of his old room, still boarded up and boxy – blood stains on the floor that never came out and his bed still unmade and crumpled. He didn't know where to sit – the bed was too much and the couch was still covered in Carla's old clothes, smelling just like she used to bar the thin layer of dust coating all of them.

The radio was flicked on to kill the silence, crooning a sad tune that Annie hummed in her spare time. Regardless that the thought of her made him visibly cringe, he kept the old box on just to hear something familiar. He carried it with him, searching for a place to collapse.

Boone ended up choosing the bathroom, taking up shop at the foot of the door so he could box himself into the small room and smoke up the place, counting the rust spots on the dusty mirror above the sink. He sat like that for an hour or so – completely hollowed out and dead. There was a void in his body again, unplugged and gaping with complete and empty blackness. He'd lost Carla to it when he hadn't been looking, and Annie he felt just fell to her death due to her own thinking and conclusions.

He wondered if it would have been different if he had told her in the first place. He was so ashamed and angered by his actions that he never thought he would ever get there… but he wanted to open up – he had decided that a few minutes before she had burst in the door. The next time she was going to ask about Bitter Springs he was going to let her know. The information would have been hard to get out of him but he would have done it. He would have.

Boone had to assure himself that or he would have gone insane. How was he going to keep her safe and his mind on the job when all he could think and feel was guilt? He promised he would look after her- but then again that was probably revoked by now. He just wanted to keep the thoughts away… the ones that plagued him every time he thought of ever moving on. He had done a horrible and disgusting thing and all for only a lifetime of repression and shame.

The door to his room swung open quietly, shutting softly behind the feet of the shaky courier. Boone braced himself in his position, ready for her to come and end it. It was inevitable – and he deserved it. His pitiful life didn't justify a cruelty-free death at all.

She found him with his hand over his face, smoking a cigarette that desperately needed to be ashed. Her heart, still beating out of control, tugged towards him – aching and squeezing as the empty feeling in her stomach slushed around miserably. He was frozen with tension, boots pressed flat on the floor with his elbows on his knees, his strong face pressed into his palm as he shook his head softly.

The man at her feet was still the man she had grown so fond of. It was not his fault that even in immediate woe he still looked like a fallen deity. Annie wanted to hate all of him, tear him to shreds and then burn the parts like they were useless junk but she couldn't bring herself to. She should have dug that damn knife into his throat but she could only fling it at the wall. What had happened to her? She had sworn the ultimate revenge for the death of the innocents but it was she was a shitty fridge magnet up against the industrial version – sucked straight to him with her tunnel vision.

Because he was Boone… and Boone wasn't a monster. The shady man with the rough voice would never have done it all on purpose. Even though he didn't look it often, the sniper was a caring man who often put her safety above his own – regardless of her status and nature. He knew she was an old Khan, but he still stuck around – still defending her and taking care of her and even offering her his heart when he was done with it… the thought made a cool sting run down her spine.

She nudged him with her boot, catching his attention momentarily before he looked away, pressing his palms to the floor to lift himself up. "C'mon." she sniffed, arching her back out of the bathroom on track to the front door. "Let's get this over with."