A/N: I wrote this as a weird pseudo-one-shot about Fallout: New Vegas. Basically, in the game, there’s a companion the player can choose to travel with named Boone. His wife, Carla, was sold to the game’s ‘villains’ by a citizen of the town, Novac, they lived in. After travelling to the villains’ camp, Boone finds and mercy kills Carla before she can be put to slavery. I rejigged the story a little so he kills her much sooner, and here is the result. BTW, this was inspired by a TikTok which was probably itself inspired by a tweet or a discord chat or something, so I’ll try to find it.

The tin rooves of Novac bear a greasy lustre under the unforgiving Mojave sun. Glinting, glinting, glinting as unrelenting yet unavailing as the solar suckers of Helios One, they glint and glint and sparkle and shine and draw water from irises fifty miles away. Yet no one in Novac shields eyes today. 

At the head of the road, the temperature touches blunted canine, long since rotted with rust and incapable of such sparkling as the homes that rely upon its oral protection. A hundred degrees easy, and not unusual. Even so, even despite how accustomed they are to entrapment between sun and sand, a new sweat pours from the pores of the residents lining the motel’s tarmac, novac or space along the fence between ‘em. A new, uncomfortable sweat. A wet sweat, salty on the corners of lips, borne of fear and shame. 

Carla’s crimson cardigan has put up quite the fight, and her pink pinafore is in the process of packing an equal punch. The seams bite at the tongues licking collarbones until they are pulled from their gums with the plinking of high-strung piano keys. Away comes the fastenings and off fly the buttons until Carla and her pleases please please please are left trembling in petticoat and pussy-bow. 

Her scapulae begin cold but take seconds to burn, much like those fucking steaks, and the self-scalding and scalding make it all hurt worse. One of her shoes has been left behind and she screams until her throat is a mop-head of strings and chords and notes no longer there. 

“Say goodbye to your old friends, new brood mare,” coos the legionnaire, twisting a serpentine tongue into that pale pistachio shell. 

Manny watches, terracotta surface both rejecting and welcoming, expression fighting contentment. It is what it is, after all, what’s done is done and can’t be helped. At his shoulder, the barrel of his friend’s sniper bears a crystalline lustre and Carla’s eyes cannot help but water. Yet, strangely, no further tears escape her. There is a smile there, forty-feet below. A giggle no less. A whisper- 

“It’s okay, Craig.” 

He watches the twitching offering, ear canal exploding under sharp breaths. 

As his finger twitches against the curved plastic trigger the residents curl their fingers through the wire. In time, after he has disappeared with a delivery boy, they will call what he is about to do, what he is being forced to do, a tragedy. He has fired on innocents before. He has fired on innocents before. Hehasfiredoninnocentsbefore and he will do it again. 

“It’s okay.” 

All he must do is do it again. A light kick to a strong shoulder. A stolen second in a lifetime that was his and hers. A forever, thinks Carla, forever and a day. It’s okay. It’s okay. 

On the butt of the sniper clasp hands that only a night ago clasped her waist. The glinting barrel and behind it the beret, puffed up proud, slimline and creased. The taste of him, the feel of the grease in his hair and the grease in the pan and the smile on his face when lips close around ham, and the taste of him, the taste of the sweat that escapes him and the feel of the breezes through the fabric on skin on skin on skin and the taste of him. Lingering. 

Sometimes, as the sun set, his name had felt like clotted cream in her throat. She’d had to vomit to get it all up, and once her oesophagus had dilated it wouldn’t stop. He has told her it all at some point or another, between sheets, between covers, in kitchens, at ovens with hand-clasped waist.  Everything, he has told her. He has fired on innocents before. 

The bullet leaves the barrel at two thousand seven hundred feet per second, just enough not-seconds for Carla to close her eyes. And smile. There is a sweet taste at the apex of her palette. He is with her. This is for her. A beating heart served up nice on an abraxodyne platter. The glinting barrel, glinting, glinting, and in control of it, the man she loves, the soldier she hates. The last thing she never saw.