And there were myriad points between, he was sure, among the late night conversations at the Lucky 38 when they were both too exhausted to sleep and too high strung to be fully awake. Those precious hours in the early mornings as the others rested fitfully and the two of them shot the shit over a bottle or three of well-aged wine, matching each other quip for quip, pitting their intellects against one another across the whole spectrum of medicine and science and philosophy. All the while he'd written her off because her soft curves fell far short of turning him on.
Her Latin was gleaned mostly from medical textbooks in her earlier years of training ("Sad to say, hefting mail across the wastes just paid better in the end."), and a lot spottier than his, but she picked up quickly and soon they were having entire conversations in a dead tongue over the din of Boone grinding his teeth and snarling just on principle.
Wait, there it was. That final moment when he'd found his path ending at a cliff's edge and walked right over it without noticing at the time. He could remember it now. After the horror of Nelson, after she'd cut loose the hostages and set them free from a town whose only crimson banner by then was the Legion blood flooding the streets. After watching Boone's hard features soften then harden then soften again as he found his words and told her, her ears always open for when her damaged friends found the courage to open up, of the atrocities he'd seen in the service. After she'd clapped the broken soldier on the shoulder and shared a moment of relieved silence with him, both of them enraptured by the afterglow of having done something right, and Arcade enraptured by the easy camaraderie she had with a man so difficult.
After they'd all, sore and more than a little bloody but energized in a strange and wonderful way, made their way straight toward Forlorn Hope to deliver the news and ask what help they could render when they were still so tired from doing so much.
After their path had taken them across the no-man's land between, and proved their relief at avoiding the grisly affair of mercy kills short-lived indeed in the faces of men who lay dying on the ground - not bound to crosses or surrounded by Legion and yet still completely beyond their reach. After she'd told the sniper whose weak but growing smile had been stolen all over again and replaced with that self-same hard and closed-off stare to sit and rest over the crest of a hill, out of sight, showing him the mercy of not making him be there to witness or assist with the rendering of mercy unto the doomed troopers. After she'd told Arcade as well to go take a load off for a minute, and after a moment spent deluding himself into thinking he was tough enough and brave enough to assist her with this, to not make her do it alone, only to nod numbly and follow Boone away, and sit silently and uncomfortably with him, sharing rations and straining despite themselves to hear the soft exhales of her silenced pistol ending lives that had already effectively ended in every way but the physical.
After she'd collected them, offering a smile that didn't quite reach green eyes glazed with tears she never let fall free, and they'd walked up to Forlorn hope betwixt the evidence of her grim work in a silence broken only by the morbid clatter of dogtags clutched in her white-knuckled fist.
The point of no return, he decided, had been several hours later, when he'd bathed and slept barely enough, then made his way to the infirmary to see what he could do to help while she was presumably out fighting another bloody battle. He'd found her there instead, bent over a leg with a grotesque compound fracture bloodily birthing a jagged mess of splintered bone into the hot desert air. She was still caked in the blood and dirt and panic of the night before but for her hands and arms, scrubbed shiny and pink to the elbows in preparation for the delicate work, and the circles under her eyes spoke of the dozens of cups of coffee she'd downed to stay alert while he was sleeping safely and soundly, oblivious.
An Exercise in Futility, 3/?
Her Latin was gleaned mostly from medical textbooks in her earlier years of training ("Sad to say, hefting mail across the wastes just paid better in the end."), and a lot spottier than his, but she picked up quickly and soon they were having entire conversations in a dead tongue over the din of Boone grinding his teeth and snarling just on principle.
Wait, there it was. That final moment when he'd found his path ending at a cliff's edge and walked right over it without noticing at the time. He could remember it now. After the horror of Nelson, after she'd cut loose the hostages and set them free from a town whose only crimson banner by then was the Legion blood flooding the streets. After watching Boone's hard features soften then harden then soften again as he found his words and told her, her ears always open for when her damaged friends found the courage to open up, of the atrocities he'd seen in the service. After she'd clapped the broken soldier on the shoulder and shared a moment of relieved silence with him, both of them enraptured by the afterglow of having done something right, and Arcade enraptured by the easy camaraderie she had with a man so difficult.
After they'd all, sore and more than a little bloody but energized in a strange and wonderful way, made their way straight toward Forlorn Hope to deliver the news and ask what help they could render when they were still so tired from doing so much.
After their path had taken them across the no-man's land between, and proved their relief at avoiding the grisly affair of mercy kills short-lived indeed in the faces of men who lay dying on the ground - not bound to crosses or surrounded by Legion and yet still completely beyond their reach. After she'd told the sniper whose weak but growing smile had been stolen all over again and replaced with that self-same hard and closed-off stare to sit and rest over the crest of a hill, out of sight, showing him the mercy of not making him be there to witness or assist with the rendering of mercy unto the doomed troopers. After she'd told Arcade as well to go take a load off for a minute, and after a moment spent deluding himself into thinking he was tough enough and brave enough to assist her with this, to not make her do it alone, only to nod numbly and follow Boone away, and sit silently and uncomfortably with him, sharing rations and straining despite themselves to hear the soft exhales of her silenced pistol ending lives that had already effectively ended in every way but the physical.
After she'd collected them, offering a smile that didn't quite reach green eyes glazed with tears she never let fall free, and they'd walked up to Forlorn hope betwixt the evidence of her grim work in a silence broken only by the morbid clatter of dogtags clutched in her white-knuckled fist.
The point of no return, he decided, had been several hours later, when he'd bathed and slept barely enough, then made his way to the infirmary to see what he could do to help while she was presumably out fighting another bloody battle. He'd found her there instead, bent over a leg with a grotesque compound fracture bloodily birthing a jagged mess of splintered bone into the hot desert air. She was still caked in the blood and dirt and panic of the night before but for her hands and arms, scrubbed shiny and pink to the elbows in preparation for the delicate work, and the circles under her eyes spoke of the dozens of cups of coffee she'd downed to stay alert while he was sleeping safely and soundly, oblivious.