The Stranger

I N T E R L U D E

I see you lookin’ ‘round the corner.
Come on inside and pull up a chair.

It was always like this. In the years prior, when most of their minds had been geared toward a large, noble cause, it was easier – they populated the same settlements and camps more often than not, and even in places as large and spread out as Sanctuary, they were pulled toward one another like magnets. Nick realized, perhaps before anyone else – or at least at the same time as Piper – that it was her. She was something bright and burning – a new and growing star, and they were all caught in orbit around her. It was warm there, and comfortable. Once you found yourself under the pull of Nora’s gravity, it was rare to want to leave it. She brought you in with open arms and a smart mouth. It was a deadly kind of combination.

Nick and Nora were the first on Hancock’s more-or-less penthouse floor, creeping down from the attic stairs while trying to make themselves as unnoticeable as possible. To no avail, of course. John was sprawled lazily across one of his couches, completely ignoring the purpose of the sling he’d been dressed with. He was riding out a fresh hit of Jet as the pair descended into the room, and he released a low wolf-whistle in greeting. He got a double dose of glares for this, though no verbal scolding – he’d been the one to have that set of mattresses moved up into the tower for them, effectively allowing them the most privacy Goodneighbor had to offer.

Nora paid him back in kind by shoving his legs unceremoniously off the cushions as she passed, garnering an outlandish pout in response. She took up the place where the mayor’s boots had been resting, and pulled Nick down beside her. Here, she sandwiched herself, tossing her legs over Hancock’s lap and looping Nick’s arm around her so she could rest her back comfortably against his side.

John took advantage of the moment to pucker his lips in order to smack a few kissy-sounds at the two, which earned him a nudge of Nora’s heel into his leg. Cait was chuckling from the doorway, and obediently entered fully when Nora beckoned. She flopped onto the opposite couch just as Piper entered from another doorway, face thick with sleep and mouth opened in a wide yawn. Cait was quick to pat the open seat next to her with an outlandishly seductive look, and Piper groaned even as she dropped into place and Cait threw an arm around her shoulders.

They hadn’t been breaking morning conversation long before a baggy-eyed MacCready came stomping up the stairs. Cait was quick to wrangle him in against her other side, and it wasn’t long before the group was trading laughs and cigarettes. Deacon appeared soon after, like he always did, as if by magic. It was always like this. They pulled together like magnets.

And when silence inevitably chased the tail of chatter, they listened to the radio.




No need to feel like a stranger,
‘cause we’re all a little strange in here.

Between shots fired, they listen to the radio. It’s jazzy and just distracting enough to fill the silence without pulling their attention too far away from task.

It’s the first time she’s handled a rifle, and its bulk surprises her. Everyone always made it look so easy to lug such a long gun around everywhere. MacCready can’t help but laugh a little when she nearly tips forward. She huffs, but she’s too determined – or too stubborn – to let it scare her off.

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to swing it so hard. It’s not a sword. A rifle’s all about distance, you know? Means you can afford to take your time. You’ve already got your pistol if you have to fight up close.”

“Knife, too.”

“No sh—really? You good with it?”

“I’m learning.”

“From who?”

“Are you teaching me to shoot or are we playing twenty questions?”

“Fine, fine.” He helps her lift the end of the rifle up to a more proper angle, shows her how to use the sights, presses the stock into her shoulder and shows her how to bend her arm to open up that cup of muscle to bear the brunt of the kick.

Even with this preparation, and Mac’s surprisingly effective way of explaining, she isn’t braced enough. At the end of street where they have set up the range, she takes aim at a target. She remembers “squeeze not pull” as her finger curls around the trigger. She lets out a breath to steady the bobbing barrel along the straight line of her vision. When the shot fires, she’s on her back before she can process the event. Somewhere behind them, Cait is cackling while Nick and Hancock are drawing forward with voices full of concern – though John’s also brings with it a hefty amount of amusement.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Nora insists, as she rolls to her feet, blinking dizzily and palming the shoulder against which the stock had jerked. She could feel the bruise already, frowning at the tenderness of the area. “I don’t know what I was expecting.”

Mac, after helping her up, can’t shake a little smile. “Hey, don’t worry about it. First time I fired a gun it hit me in the face and I didn’t come to for a couple of hours.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven,” he admits, and she groans.

“Great, so my skills are on-par with a post-apocalyptic adolescent.”

“First try’s always the hardest!” This is Hancock’s rasping voice, his hands bracing the backs of her shoulders with a fond little squeeze – which he immediately releases when she curls toward her bruised shoulder with a little hiss of pain.

“You all right there?” Nick is eyeing that shoulder with concern, and she offers him what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

“Gotta get used to it, is all.”

“Look on the bright side,” Mac announces, gently turning her to face the painted targets cobbled together out of broken furniture. “Your aim’s still good.”

“Now all I need is to make sure it’s always a headshot and I’ve got a soft place to land.”

Cait is with them now, and she’s grinning. “A soft place, eh? Got a few I can recommend.”

“Cait!” Nora is smiling under a rising blush, and giving a little shove to Cait’s nearest arm. She takes it well, and throws an arm roughly around Nora’s shoulders. “C’mon, Pres says dinner’s on.”

“Preston’s cooking?” Mac doesn’t even try to hide the disappointment in his voice – and it carries down the block to the pot over which Preston Garvey is keeping watch.

“You’re free to go without, Mac,” Preston calls across to them, and the group is laughing good-naturedly by the time they reach the circle in the street where they had all, without convening, apparently decided would be the standard place for meals.

They settle in approximately their usual places, Mac making a small show of cleaning both his and Nora’s new rifle before slinging them both over his back. She reaches down to give his shoulder a thankful little squeeze, and Nick is sure he’s not the only one to notice the secret little smile that lights up on the kid’s face.

He’s doubly sure when Deacon takes this convenient moment to appear at Nora’s side, ruffling her hair before plopping down on the ground beside her. “Howdy, partner.”

“Howdy,” she answers in kind, and doesn’t notice the glower instating itself on MacCready’s face at Deacon filling the gap between himself and Nora.

They hand out plates and bent silverware, exchange jokes and observations on Nora’s budding new skill. Curie fusses at the darkening bruise on the woman’s shoulder, and Codsworth busies himself by topping up drinks and offering second servings.

Nora reaches over after a while to fish into Nick’s nearest pocket, and from his place on a stool beside her, he rolls his eyes with a chuckle. “Anyone ever tell you you’d make a terrible pickpocket?”

“There go my dreams of an illustrious life of crime. Where are your cigarettes?”

“Maybe I’m keepin’ ‘em hidden ‘cause someone isn’t very good at keeping her hands to herself.”

Nora pouts, pulling her fingers out of his pocket and making grabby-hands gestures with just the one hand, given the plate she supports in the other. “Sharing is caring, Valentine.”

He shakes his head and reaches into the opposite side of his coat, pulling a pack from an interior pocket and shaking a cigarette loose for her. She takes it gratefully and pins it between her lips before leaning forward a little expectantly, coaxing another hopeless laugh out of him before he retrieves his lighter and provides her with a little spark of flame.

From the other side of the circle, Hancock watches this exchange with a faint smile tugging at the scars on his face. Piper is also observing at his side, and they catch each other’s eyes briefly. They aren’t exactly friends, but Nora has a way of uniting people in spite of their previously established tensions.

“Think they’ll ever officially get their shit together?” His voice is quiet, and he’s leaning over just slightly.

She tries to hide it, but Piper smiles. “Those two?” She ponders this briefly over a bite of food, and eventually sighs almost wistfully. “Who knows? That’s a lot of baggage to pick through.”

“You ain’t kiddin’.” Hancock chews on the end of his fork for a few moments, apparently drifting into thought. “You ever seen Valentine with a girl before?”

“Nick?” Piper chokes on a laugh, glancing between Nora and Nick with a crooked kind of grin. “Other than Ellie – I don’t think so.”

“He look at Ellie like that?”

And for the first time, Piper really observes. She considers that she might be too close to the both of them to have really considered or seen it before. Not to mention, her vision might be a little clouded when it comes to a certain secretary – not that she’d ever let that slip, especially around Hancock. But now, with the two of them laughing quietly with each other, she can see…something. Nora has always been as open as she can be – even in the immediate wake of her loss and heartache, Piper has watched her fight to keep that softness. Nick is not so different, though he has had more time to be boiled hard by the Commonwealth, and for as much as he cares about the nebulous Greater Good, Piper can’t remember him ever leaving himself open to another person so…easily. He’s honest to a fault, but he’s always guarded. With Nora, his smile is quicker, his laughter more frequent. And Piper thinks she can see it now.

“Thought so,” Hancock interrupts her thoughts, watching the realization really dawn on the reporter’s face. “Got it bad, huh?”

“Aw, jeeze.”

“You said it.”

“You’re good friends with Nora, huh?”

“I like to think we’re pretty close.”

“What do you think?”

“I think…” He fumbles in his pocket and she can hear the tapping of tablets in a tin before he sets a small, white disc on his tongue. “I think we’re in for a good, long show.”

Among the sounds of forks clinking against plates, little pockets of laughter erupting and spreading, Nora attempting to hold the entirety of Nick’s package of cigarette hostage, the group as a whole settles. When they lapse into the quiet of a meal being enjoyed, they listen to the radio.



Have you got a history that needs erasing?
Did you come in just for the beer and cigarettes?
A broken down dream you’re tired of chasing?
Oh, well I’m just the girl to make you forget.


Nick doesn’t have much of a soft spot for Goodneighbor as a whole, but he can’t say he dislikes the Third Rail. He’s here ostensibly to soak in the jazz and smoke in his single seat in the corner, but if anyone was to watch him too closely, they’d see his eyes drifting back to and lingering on the couple near the bar now and again.

Slightly short, brown woman in a gaudy sort of dress that clings in all the right places – and all the wrong places, depending on who was doing the looking. Nick tries not to let that line of thinking hold any sway in his mind. The man pressing into her side is medium in every sense of the work – height, build, demeanor. Everything about him is strategically average. But he is well decorated – so much so that the decoration is almost all anyone would be able to remember about him, if for some reason they were asked to describe him later. Dirty and worn greaser jacket, dark sunglasses, pompadour combed back with practice, holes in his jeans that would seem to indicate relatively recent roughhousing.

Their act is impeccable. If he didn’t already know, he might not have thought to look twice. As it stands, he watches them briefly and casually, leaning back in his chair and flicking the ash of his cigarette into an old ashtray on the small table periodically.

The woman who Nora is pretending to be lets out a wild laugh, presses painted lips sloppily against the cheek of the man whose identity Deacon has adopted. Nick very purposefully ignores the little surge this stirs in him and lets his gaze wander off to the left, where Magnolia practically purrs a tune into the microphone.

The rather nondescript man over which the incognito couple have been hovering eventually hobbles out of his barstool and drifts toward and ultimately up the stairs. The covert pair exchange a meaningful glance and, Nick chuckles as he realizes, play a discreet and fast game of roshambo which The-Man-Who-Is-Not-Deacon loses poorly. Before he makes his own exist, he pulls Not-Quite-Nora in by the waist and kisses the corner of her mouth with all the grace of the well and truly drunk and stupid. It’s a good act; Nick might have even been convinced if he wasn’t all too privy to the plan.

When Anonymous Boorish Drunk is up the stairs and out of sight, Equally Anonymous Loose Skirt is making her way toward Nick’s table, a little more wobbly on her feet than she realistically should be. He knows her way of being tipsy, knows there’s some acting there – but also knows it’s not the whole of it. She’s made a rookie mistake of imbibing a little too honestly in an attempt to convince others, and he wonders briefly if Deacon didn’t take the dive in their little game on purpose. Deacon was a pro at drinking without actually drinking if there ever was one.

“Say,” she drawls, and it’s not quite her voice, just like the blonde wig isn’t quite her hair and that tight, almost silly dress isn’t quite her style. “Ain’t you that Valentine fella?”

It’s a game. The look in her eyes is a little challenge. She’s having fun. She does this sometimes on their own cases, too, when discretion proves more useful than not. Never quite as deep into character, but just as eager to pull him into the pretend. He’s here more or less to act as backup if the need arrives, and he’s found that their prey is far less than a job for two agents. His information may not even be good enough for one.

And really, it’s Deacon’s problem now. And Nick can afford a little leisure, he supposes.

“Say that I am,” he answers, taking another drag of smoke, “what’s your interest?”

“I hear you’re quite the clockwork dick.”

He can’t hold back the scoff of a laugh. “Prefer synth detective, if it’s all the same to you. Might be that’s true. You after a detective?”

“I got a bit of a mystery needs solving. I hear you’re good at that.”

“You hear a lot, miss…”

“Spade,” she supplies easily, and a smile is abrupt on his face.

“’Course.”

“Lot gets said about you. A girl can’t help but hear.”

“No wonder my ears have been burning. You believe everything you hear?”

Miss-Spade-nee-Nora is grinning in a way that’s far too inviting. It’s a typical reaction when he goes along with her antics, and he can’t say he’s sorry to see it. Her smile has been harder to find of late – he can see the weight that playing double agent for the Institute puts on her. She usually doesn’t take so many Railroad jobs in a row. She’s keeping busy while keeping close to the source. It’s part of why he’s here – and part, he’s sure, of why she’s a little more drunk than she should be.

“I’m more an actions over words kinda gal. Words are fancy and fun but they don’t hold up when your back’s against the wall.”

“Sounds like sage advice. Who told you that?”

“A mechanical man told me, once.”

Nick’s grin is impossible to fight down, so he glances off to the stage again, nursing the glow of his cigarette into life. “So what’s this mystery you’ve got for me?”

She’s scooting around the small, round table until he can feel her hip on his shoulder and she’s blocking out the sight of Magnolia altogether. “See, I know a girl.”

“Always starts with a dame, don’t it?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she answers, reaching down to pluck that cigarette right out of his lips and seize it between her own. He’s only a little shocked by the forwardness of it – it’s not uncommon for them to share a cigarette, and not at all uncommon for her to steal one from him, but there’s a kind of…weight to this gesture, this time. He hasn’t really seen her act so purposefully…sultry before.

“No?” Is all he can think to say, and any hope of following this up with a more coherent sentiment is dashed when she slides around easily into his lap.

“See, she doesn’t really like herself anymore. Feels like she’s lost herself, maybe. Word is missing persons are your specialty. That sound like a case you can solve?”

The smile in his face fades even as hers does, and he braces an instinctively comforting palm against her back. “That sounds…like a tough one.”

“Don’t it just.”

“I’ve solved more with less.”

“That must be what makes you so highly recommended.” She tilts towards him slightly until her face is more or less in the cradle of his shoulder, and Nick feels something about her go cold – empty, maybe. He’s at a loss until she speaks again, and his arm curls a little tighter around her.

“Can you take me home, Mr. Valentine? I’m very tired.”

“Sure, doll.” And he’s lifting her to her feet gingerly, steering her towards the stairs and bearing the brunt of her weight.

They catch a caravan on the way out in the morning. She leans against him nearly the whole way, the color almost gone out of her. A woman turns a dial on a little box tied to the side of her Brahmin’s packs. While they make their way back to Diamond City in relative silence, they listen to the radio.




So we’re glad you dropped by,
come in and loosen up your tie.
Have a drink or maybe just one more.

“Boss.”

The gruff voice announced the ghoul’s presence in the room, but it was the recognition of it that caused Nora’s head to shoot up. Upon laying eyes on that familiar, scarred face – as always, tucked neatly under his short-billed cap – her face lit up with a grin.

“Deegan!”

She unfolded herself from her comfortable cradle between Nick and Hancock in order to rush over to the man, and he greeted her with open arms so that she might wrap her arms about him. He was a tall figure, even had an inch or two on Nick, and he was generally broad. He practically dwarfed Nora in their embrace, and his greeting chuckle rumbled through his whole body like the warning tremor of an earthquake.

“Hey, doll,” he rasped, pleased in that quiet way of his. “You went dark a while. Worried maybe you wouldn’t be back.”

“And walk out on you? No such luck, pal.”

Deegan chuckled again, though he looked over her head to Hancock, and Nora, realizing she had come between a mayor and some official business, turned to stand at Deegan’s side, following his gaze to his employer. John, for his part, was simply grinning, reveling in the little surprise of joy he could facilitate.

“Y’get the job done?” Before Deegan could answer, Hancock was already shaking his head. “’Course ya did, ain’t even gotta ask.”

“Got some stragglers from the city. Say they have a surprise for your lady.”

Your lady. Nick was having a hard time adjusting to this whole ‘jealousy’ concept. Not that he hadn’t felt it before, but it hadn’t felt so righteous previously. He groused and fished out a cigarette, and pointedly ignored the knowing grin Hancock was aiming at him.

“Well send ‘em in.”

Deegan took a step toward the stairway twisting through the floor and nodded down at someone unseen. A shuffle of quick feet preceded the woman’s presence in the room, her short hair mussed from the sudden rush. And then a grin was splitting her small face, and she was clinging to Nora with enough pressure in her delicate arms to merit a breathless cough from her prisoner.

“Mon dieu! It is true! We ‘ave been so very worried! ‘Ow irresponsible, disappearing like that. Are you injured?” Curie’s words came out in a cluttered rush, and Nora couldn’t help but laugh, trying to unpin her arms enough to return the desperate hug.

“It’s good to see you, Curie.”

Curie pulled back only enough to give Nora a good once-over, fussing as much as she ever had. But Nora’s attention was stolen by the figure trudging up the stairs behind her friend, adjusting his familiar hat and shouldering that laser musket.

“Preston!” She was in the man’s arm in an instant, and he pulled her against his side with his free hand. “How did you two—”

“Word got up to the Castle you’d been spotted heading into Diamond City. We headed down to check it out and ran into Deegan on his way out.” It shouldn’t have been such a surprise how gentle Preston was, how immediately forgiving. But it made her eyes swim with grateful tears just the same.

“I’m so sorry I—”

“We’re just glad you’re okay.” The minuteman smiled earnestly, and for the first time she noticed the rather fresh looking strip of a scar that ran down the center of his temple and ended at his chin.

“Oh, Pres.” Nora lifted a hand to let her fingertips just barely brush that healing wound, frown pinching her expression. “How did you get this?”

He laughed with a quiet good nature that was so singularly his, and reached up to gingerly take her hand into the padding of his free glove. “Raiders wanted to tangle with the Castle. We held up.”

“I should have been there,” Nora whispered, letting Preston carry her hand down to his chest, where he gave it a comforting little squeeze.

“We held up,” he repeated, “didn’t lose a man. Just scrapes and bruises. Anyway,” he added, finally releasing her hand and adopting a slightly brighter tone, “you’re retired. General had things handled. She sends her regards, by the way.”

“I’m betting Glory put it a lot more colorfully than that.”

Preston laughed almost shyly, taking a small step back to open himself to the room at large, and the company therein. “I might be paraphrasing.” He leaned to one side just enough to get a look at everyone behind Nora, friendly smile falling easily into place. “Got the whole gang together, I see.”

“Ain’t a party without you, Pres,” Cait practically cooed, and Mac crossed his arms a little childishly, still under the rough hold of her arm.

“Cait,” Preston greeted simply, with a tip of his hat.

“C’mooon,” Hancock chimed in again, beckoning the newly arrived group over with an outlandish beckoning arc of his arm, “have a seat, stay a while.”

“Monsieur ‘Ancock! Your arm!” Curie was at once at his side, fretting in her amiable, innocent kind of way.

“We do have one more surprise,” Preston announced, nodding in Nora’s direction.

“I don’t know how much more I can take,” she teased, winding her way back to her spot on the couch, though given that Hancock was trying his best to fight off his new nurse as gingerly as he possibly could, Nora simply tucked up comfortably under Nick’s arm, immediately snatching his cigarette out of his mouth. He simply sighed, letting his hand cup her opposite shoulder affectionately.

“I don’t think he’d forgive us if we left him behind.” If Preston noticed anything out of the ordinary between the pair on the sofa, he resolutely didn’t mention it. Instead, he tucked his lower lip under his upper teeth and let out a quick, shrill whistle.

A happy bark echoed up the stairs, followed very quickly by a galloping, panting block of muscle and fur. Nora had barely enough time to shout “Dogmeat!” before the animal was on her, climbing over hers and Nick’s laps in order to lick at her cheeks. She was helpless with laughter, scratching her fingers into familiar, pleasurable spots on either side of the dog’s neck. Hancock was laughing, too, reaching out to scratch behind an ear. Nick simply smiled, watching Dogmeat reunite with Nora with more fervor than perhaps any of them had.

Preston settled himself in a chair, Curie made it her duty to adjust Hancock’s sling, and while dog and master reacquainted themselves, they listened to the radio.




But if you’re searching for something
to bring you comfort,
oh, well, I’m the one you’re looking for.

“Non, non, zis is not ze proper use of a stimpack. ‘Ealing is best facilitated by injecting below a bleeding wound. See? Zis extended scarring would not be such an issue if a stimpack 'ad been applied properly.”

Nora issues a gruff laugh as the small woman hovers and frets over her, though Piper responds with a groaning kind of sigh. “Not a lotta time to care about scars when a bloodbug’s sucking out your insides, Curie.”

“Zat is not what bloodbugs do.”

“Figure of speech,” Piper rolls her eyes, “is she gonna be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Nora insists, and the blood pouring freely from the circular wound in her shoulder is slowing even as she speaks. The heat of the injection site to the far side of the slowly-knitting skin still pulses, and she tries to focus on that instead of the strange sensation of muscle and flesh pulling itself together far more quickly than nature intended.

“General!”

Preston is hustling down the hill, musket in hand, and Dogmeat is whining hot on his heels.

“Cavalry’s here,” Nora groans with a half-smile, sitting up a little more and pulling her sticky hand from her shoulder, blood already drying.

“General, are you all right?”

“Relax, all of you.” She struggles to her feet, and Piper’s hands are at her back to steady her. Curie huffs and fusses, dabbing at the nearly-sealed wound and frowning in an almost motherly disapproval. “It’s just a mosquito bite.” She laughs a little bitterly at this, and the gathering group fixes her with questioning looks.

“Mosquitos?” Nora supplies again, reaching down to comfort a whining Dogmeat with a gentle scratch to his head. “You know, what bloodbugs evolved from? They were really tiny back in the day.” To illustrate, she holds up her bloodied hand with thumb and forefinger nearly touching.

They look at the space between her fingers, and then each other. “You didn’t hit your head, Blue, didja?”

“I’m serious!” She gently brushes Curie away, wipes what blood she can from her hand onto her jeans, and finally holsters the pistol that had fallen to the ground moments before. Dogmeat noses into her leg with a whine, and she crouches down to reassure him with fingers massaging his neck and a brief kiss on his wet nose. “I’m fine boy, see?”

“I thought we’d cleared them out yesterday,” Preston notes, looking up the hill questioningly to a small group of minutemen who have gathered there to peer down at the scene.

“It’s my fault,” Nora answers, standing straight again and giving her injured shoulder a tentative roll. “Heard a buzz in the bushes, thought it was a bloatfly – went in cocky.” Her attempt at a comforting smile is met with mixed disapproval, and she sighs. She knows their concern comes from a good place – knows that she loves them for it, with all that she has. But ever since she had agreed to Dez’s double-agent plan, everyone has begun to treat her like something…fragile. She hasn’t even gone in yet, Tom is still hashing out Virgil’s plans.

But now they act like she can only be handled with kid gloves. Like she’s more a rare commodity than a friend. It comes from a good place, she knows – reminds herself of this often – but she hates the way it makes her feel. Frozen banana, she thinks, smirking at the recollection. Something that should be in a glass case on some high shelf.

“I’m going up to the farm,” she announces, already beginning her trek up the hill. “Aren’t I supposed to be learning about crop rotations or whatever?” It’s supposed to be true – she wants it to be true. Nora has been lending Preston a personal hand in the establishment of settlements so she can learn the land, the people, the way to survive – so she can absorb the way of life that takes you over out here. So she won’t be an outsider to the people who have begun to look up to her.

She puts off that thought before she gets nauseous again. She doesn’t really know how to feel about being some kind of…what? Idol? Celebrity?

Nora leaves the trio to argue quietly about her well-being among themselves, and she crests the top of the hill with Dogmeat barking happily at her side. This settlement is small, home as of yet to a few minutemen and a single family. She likes that about it, really. The Castle is as large and crowded as one can imagine, and most settlements allied with the minutemen were self-sufficient before they were taken under the General’s protection. She learns from them, too, but there’s rarely anything hands-on to be done. Not that she minds, per se. She gets the best stories from those settlements.

She rounds the back of the slightly drooping, two-story shack that houses the farm’s occupants, and the sight that greets her there brings a funny smile to her face. Good ol’ Nick. He comes with her almost everywhere now – she barely needs to ask. He’s bordering on Deacon-levels of silent understanding, and she can shoot him a look across a crowded room and he’ll already be packed, already ready to travel. It’s comforting. It feels…safe.

This, though. This is new. Nick has shucked his coat – it’s summer, and he still carries the damn thing; she can’t help but laugh – and is making a go of tilling the soil, rusty hoe in hand and sleeves rolled up. It’s a good look for him. He’s never one to shy away from work, Nora knows that, but they so rarely have to involve themselves in anything even resembling farming. But true to the kind of man he wants to be, he hacks at the earth, grumbling a little, but looking determined.

Leaning against a fence post that marks part of the border of the small patch of fertile ground, Nora indulges herself in the moment – in watching him work, in watching the metal slightly exposed in his arm and free to the air where a hand should be tighten and bend ever so slightly with the force of his task. She’s met good men before. Hell, she married one. But there’s a kind of goodness in Nick that seems…almost out of place. Otherworldly. Old-worldly, perhaps. It reminds her of home.

“I feel like I should get you a glass of lemonade and tell you the cows need milking.” Nora is grinning when he looks up at her, seeing her for the first time, and she takes a little more enjoyment than she probably should in watching his expression fight between general annoyance and that kind of put-upon amusement he wears whenever she gets wise.

“Wouldn’t say no,” is his answer as he stands straight, striking the hoe into the ground so it, too, can stand on its own. “But I’m not touching any sensitive parts of a Brahmin.”

She laughs, and crosses the distance to him until they’re close enough that Dogmeat can run happy little circles around them, occasionally stopping to demand petting from one or the other. “Not even if I ask nice?”

“For you,” Nick considers, using an arm to support some of his weight against the farm tool in a small lean, “depends on how nice.” He looks from her face to her shoulder and stiffens a little, and she heaves a sigh before he can even ask her about it.

“Please, not you too. I’m fine. It’s just messy-looking.”

“What makes you so sure I was gonna ask about you?” The thin lines of his brows rise in mild challenge, and all at once she’s grinning again.

“Not concerned, Valentine?”

“Wondering if we shouldn’t be informing that bug’s next of kin.”

“Aw, you do care.” But she’s laughing lightly, and he matches her with a chuckle of his own. She stretches her arms up gingerly, mindful of her still-sore shoulder, and Nick very much does not look at the little line of skin this gesture exposes at her belly. He doesn’t care about that sort of thing, he reminds himself. He doesn’t. And he refuses to wonder why, lately, he needs to keep reminding himself of it.

“I’m going down to the creek, get washed up a bit. You wanna play hooky with me?”

“You got any Rad-X?”

This makes her laugh, though she rolls her eyes as she starts past him, meandering easily in the direction of the small river a few yards down the opposite side of the hill. “I’m sure you do, old man.”

“Yeah, well,” he mutters, grabbing his coat off the fence with a rattle of pocketed pills, “you’re not wrong.”

Preston and Piper let their eyes follow the pair as they drift out of site. The minuteman looks almost…uncomfortable as he shifts around to face her, and Piper quirks a brow, leaning against the outer wall of the shack. “Something up, Pres?”

He reaches up to rub the back of his neck in a nervous sort of gesture, shouldering his musket with his other arm. “Are they…” He doesn’t quite know how to finish, and Piper’s not merciful enough to give it to him that easily. She lets him squirm a little.

“Are theyyyy…what? Escaping? A secret comedy duo? Organ donors?”

“Piper.” Preston tries for an admonishing tone, but the best he can get is somewhere around pleading. Finally, Piper laughs.

“Why? You jealous?”

“No,” he answers so steadily that she knows it’s true. His shyness on that front isn’t present. This would probably have been a better tactic to take with MacCready, she considers. “It’s just – if they are…”

“There some sort of problem if they are significant-pause?”

“Not from me. General deserves to be happy.” There’s a kind of sadness in his expression that gives Piper pause. “But – a lot is depending on her. If people knew the General had taken up with a synth – while she’s this close to the Institute already? I’m not sure it would do either of their reputations any good.”

She frowns at this, but she has to consider his point. Because it’s true. The general masses of the Commonwealth would love to band together behind a betrayal story as juicy as that, and a sudden pang for both of her friends hits her. They have already both endured so much, and the future only promises more.

“I think they know that,” Piper answers at last, with a sad little sigh. “I think it bothers both of them.” She lets out a hollow little laugh at that. “How’s that for a story? Two lost people find each other in all this –” she gestures with her arms to the world at large “—and they can’t even admit it, ‘cause they care too much to let the other suffer. Would be sickeningly romantic if they weren’t our friends.”

“Maybe…” Preston is visibly trying to see the bright side, and he struggles for a moment. “Maybe, eventually, it won’t matter? If the General can really take down the Institute from the inside, they’ll both be a little freer.”

She smiles at the attempt, pinching her shoulders in a shrug. “How long is too long to wait, you know? You feel that way about somebody, and waiting just gets…” Piper sighs with such honesty that it catches Preston’s attention, though he keeps himself quiet for the moment. “You end up trying to hate them, so it doesn’t feel so bad. But it still does, only now you both resent each other. That kind of thing – that can rot through a friendship.”

“You know,” Preston begins, the picture of innocence, “there’s nothing like that really stopping you and Elli—”

“Whoa-ho there cowboy,” Piper warns, throwing up her hands in a very clear stop-right-there gesture, “little more minding your own business, if you please.” She tries to smile, and he chuckles, bracing a hand briefly against her shoulder before beckoning her along with a jerk of his head. “Come on. We’ll have to move out soon. Better get the General.”

When they gather at the farm again and accept the family’s offer for dinner, everyone lapses into a kind of thoughtful silence. The wife of the household lets jazz drift out gently from the doorway to the circle of guests around the cooking pot. Chewing and thinking, they listen to the radio.

Now is your motor running close to empty?
Or are you runnin’ from yourself?

Sanctuary is relatively quiet in the early morning. Codsworth hovers around slowly, occasionally clipping a shrub or tidying an area of the broken street. Nick haunts the perimeter like a derelict ghost, stopping every now and then to take advantage of the free time to run a diagnostic. Neither Nora nor Hancock have ever been very good sleeps, and their handful of hours of rest have both run their course. They convene eventually in the street where Mac’s target range now boasts several dozen precise, centered shots. Hancock takes a moment to examine one particular bullseye with the tip of his finger, releasing a low whistle.

“I’m impressed, sister. Ya catch on quick.”

“That’s the idea,” she laughs, turning to walk backwards in front of him for a few steps, “that’s why we’re out here, right?”

He nods in a retired kind of agreement, a hand deftly and quietly retrieving his combat knife as though from thin air. “Yeah,” he answers, spinning the blade idly between his fingers. “Still think it’d be better t’show ya on a body.”

Nora makes a face. “The dummy works just fine.”

“It’s made’a blankets.”

“Less mess.” She’s smiling in challenge now, and he matches her with one of his own.

“You remember last time?” He’s already digging behind the barricade of painted targets to retrieve the approximately human-shaped bundle of blankets and dirty cloth.

“Throat, ribs, belly,” she recites like a well-trained pupil.

Hancock nods, propping the dummy on the leg of a stacked, upturned chair, so that it more or less ‘stands.’ “If ya wanna put ‘em on their ass?”

“Arteries.”

“Where?”

“Upper arms, thighs, knees if I can get ‘em.”

“That’s my girl,” John pronounces proudly, bracing her nearest shoulder with a squeeze of his hand. Then he adopts a slightly hunched stance at her sides, knees bent just so, knife hand drawn back near his hip and opposite arm held up in preparation for a block. Immediately, Nora mimics his position, positioning herself in front of the target dummy – who is already boasting a few rips and tears.

“Blunt weapon,” the ghoul instructs, “comin’ atcha with his right hand.”

Nora’s left arm is lifted in an instant, the knife in her fist arcing upward into the abdomen of the cloth-man.

“Bladed weapon, same hand,” Hancock barks, establishing a quick pace between drills, “atcher ribs.”

She ducks low, drags her little switchblade through a blanket-stuffed thigh, then drives her free hand straight up to connect with a place a nose would occupy on a person of flesh and blood. He smirks at that. Teach her all he might, she still adds her own little flair. She’s got good instincts; he can definitely give her that.

He calls another drill, she thrusts the knife again.

From his place leaning against the wall of a house at the end of the cul-de-sac, Nick watches. His face is mostly impassive in the orange glow of his morning cigarette. She’s getting good, he can see that. She can already hold her own well enough, and if she keeps training as hard as she has – she’ll be a force. He doesn’t really know how he feels about that.

Rationally, it’s good. She’s arming herself against a world that has it out for her. She’s learning how to survive. Personally…well, he supposes he doesn’t really have a right to have a personal opinion on it all. But that didn’t stop the worry. In a secret, inner pocket of his metaphorical heart, he fears that her evolution will dull the – the softness about her. That kindness that radiates off her even when she’s under the thumb of real suffering. It’s hard for anything shiny not to get scuffed up and worn down in the Commonwealth. There isn’t a lot of solid good left. But Nora? Nora is good. Plain, pure and simple. She has a sense of honor, and it makes it difficult for her to navigate the modern world. But it makes her so rare, so – important.

Nick doesn’t want to see that fade. Ultimately it’s not up to him, and he knows it, but he also knows right down to his core processor that he can’t not try and preserve it – preserve her. The whole of her. So he watches, not for the first time, as Hancock takes her through his fast-paced lessons, and he watches as she keeps up barely a breath behind. She is getting good. Much as that worries him, he lets it impress him, too.

It’s close to two hours later when the pair in the street call it quits – and it’s more at Hancock’s insistence than it is Nora’s choice. She insists she’s ready for more, but John notes the settlement will be waking up soon, and she’s gone red in the face with sweat and effort. She calls him something inappropriate and teasing, and the mayor dips in close to her side and does something unseen with his hand that makes her squeal and then giggle. He laughs, kicks the dummy back into its place at the back of the long-range targets, and heads off to chase the morning’s exertions with a quick high.

Nora has her switchblade back into the pocket of her jeans, and pulls her tank away from her chest a few times to get a little air against her skin. When she glances off to the side, she spots Nick and grins, and he raises a hand in greeting. She jogs over to him lazily, and in typical fashion, she has him by the wrist in an instant and tucks herself under his arm. Out of some kind of habit, he passes her his current cigarette, and she takes a grateful drag.

“You don’t half smell like a gym sock,” Nick notes, a little smile curling onto his lips.

“What, you don’t find a sweaty woman sexy?”

It’s such an easy, natural jab for her, and he does his best not to bodily react. Because no, no, no he doesn’t. He can’t.

“I find her aroma pungent.”

“Says the man who smells like the inside of a Mister Handy fuel tank.”

“Hey, don’t knock that stuff,” he chides, plucking the cigarette out of her fingers, “it’s good stuff if you can find a decent year.”

She makes a face and he chuckles, and they settle into silence. From the window of the house against which they lean, someone turns on a little jazz for their morning routine, and Nora hums along briefly.

“Nick?”

“Mm?”

“Do you think you have a soul?” And there it is. Her soft little voice like an ice-cold smack to a sleeping face.

“What kinda question is that to spring on a guy?”

“A…philosophic one?”

He can’t help another chuckle, and while he considers this, she steals his cigarette back and rests her head against him. He eyes her down his nose curiously, absently rubbing his thumb against the bulb of her opposite shoulder.

“I don’t know how much I go in for the afterlife gambit,” he admits at last.

“Well, I think you do,” Nora replies sternly, taking another pull of smoke and letting it drift out in a cloud. “Have a soul, I mean.”

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.” He shrugs.

“I find the idea of some kind of…after – comforting.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s why you’ve got to have a soul, see?”

“Why’s that?”

Gingerly, she pulls out from under the weight of his arm and drops the nearly-dead cigarette to the ground, where she snuffs out its last remnant of flame with a twist of her ankle and toes of her shoe firmly planted on the little cylinder. “Because,” she explains simply, “I like the idea of some kind of after, but I don’t think I’d like it if I couldn’t count on meeting you there.”

And then she is off and away, so easy and simple, and Nick Valentine is undone. In the general quiet of morning, jazz continues to play little tunes around the block. All waking and preparing for the day, they listen to the radio.




You’re thirsty for a brand new kind of pleasure?
Or are you hungry to be somebody else?

“So are you gonna tell me why we’ve got to tail him of all people?”

“Because you, my delicate young protégé, are getting cocky. And his senses are off the charts compared to any human.” Deacon grins. Currently, he’s Victor – a name she chose and he didn’t resist – and he’s sitting across from a gruff young caravan guard-for-hire who gives her name as Ilsa. She’s wearing more leather than she’s used to, but she adjusts fairly well, throwing her boots up on the rickety table outside the Dugout and leaning back in her chair.

“So you don’t think I can pull it off?” Definitely Not Nora is smirking with a distinct air of challenge, and Absolutely Not Deacon can’t help a little rustle of pride in his gut. She didn’t used to be so cocky. He likes to think he’s rubbing off on her.

“Correction, my delicious little peach, I know that you cannot. You can’t rely on charm and we all know that’s your bread and butter. This calls for stealth and finesse.”

“You don’t think I can charm him?”

“I have no doubt that you can. The end game here is to gather intel without being discovered. You can’t just up and ask him for it.”

She shifts in her seat a little, quirking a curious brow. “So what’s the target?”

“I’m getting to that, my delectable miniature quiche. See, our favorite tin man stays in his office all night, after his secretary goes home.”

“We reviewing the obvious or are you going to tell me what we’re actually doing here?”

“Patience is a virtue, my scrumptious little fruit pie.”

She lifts a foot from its perch on the edge of the table to give him a firm boot in the knee, though her smile is still in full spread. “What’s with you and all the food names today?”

“I didn’t have breakfast. Now, listen.” ‘Victor’ leans forward, pushing his partner’s boots off the table and leaning in to provide clandestine explanation. “Your goal is a simple one. Our mark keeps a little folder under his bed. That’s your target. You don’t even have to get it out of the office, you just have to tell me what’s inside. And good ol’ Nick has to be none the wiser.”

“And how do you know about this folder?”

“Young hoppy…bug…thing—”

“You mean grasshopper?”

“Shush, I’m imparting knowledge.”

“How do you know who Sun Tzu is but you don’t know ‘grasshopper’?”

“It was The Art of War, not Diagrams of the Insects of North America. Now start heeding my wisdom, already.”

She chuckles, shaking her head. “All right, all right.”

“Okay. I know because I’m me. But the point is, you need to clap eyes on it. And you’ve got untiiiiil…” He gingerly pulls her arm over so as to check the time on her pipboy. “Call it, two AM.”

“So why are we staking out here in the middle of the afternoon?”

“You forget already the value of observation?”

“But I know Nick. What intel is there to gather?”

“No bullshit,” he prefaces, and her easy air stills, her attention suddenly on him with a far more open mind. He was against this tacit ‘no bullshit’ rule at first – but he likes it when she drops her pride and listens. He likes that he can put aside the snark for a second when it’s important, and he likes that he doesn’t have to make a big deal out of it. He doesn’t adhere to the rule with anyone else, of course. But with Nora – well, it works. He tries not to think about it more than that.

“If you’ve got reason to tail someone you know, or you think you know, you gotta forget everything you got on ‘em. Going in with opinions already is a surefire way to get yourself killed. Your life depends on facts.”

“Finding and keeping them.”

He smiles. Good girl. “You got it.”

She considers him for a few moments, chewing on the inside of her cheek. He knows that look. He’s seeing it more and more often these days. She knows him, now, more than he had anticipated letting her know, and that look means she’s finding out something new. Sometimes she likes what she finds, and it’s all fine by him. They can go on smiling and bantering and living like they do. Sometimes, though, she finds something that makes her a little sad, and he can’t help but hate himself for a moment. He hates disappointing her. But – he doesn’t want to fail her, either. Sometimes, he reasons, doing right by her as a teacher means doing less than she deserves as a friend. He hopes, in the end, it all balances out.

“So – you picked a target close to home.” Her voice his gentle, but he can see it – she’s just a little hurt. His job is to know strengths and weaknesses, and it always hurts to see a partner exploit yours.

“Yeah.” Deacon’s not going to lie to her. Not this time, anyway. Besides, she has a way of seeing through him. She’d hate him more for a clean lie than for telling a dirty truth.

“Because,” she continues, brows knitting, “I’ve got to be able to lie to anyone. I have to – be able to trick anyone.” Nora lists these lessons off like the star student she is, but her tone is just that little bit…grey. He knows she needs this, knows this is her biggest weakness, knows if she’s going to do what the Railroad and the minutemen are preparing her to do, she’s got to be able to look herself in the face with a lie that even she believes. But he doesn’t like it.

“Ideally, he won’t see you.”

“But if he does,” Nora urges, and he grimaces just a little. She won’t let him out that easily. He knows he doesn’t deserve it, anyway, but – well. It’s still not the most comfortable of exchanges.

“If he does,” he confirms, with a little nod of his head. He wonders, with real fear for the first time, if this is where she breaks. If this is where he leaves her behind – if this is her line that she won’t cross. For a second, she looks like she’s thinking about the same thing. But then something in her relents, something caves, and even if he knows it’s for the greater good, it still sends a pang of pain through him.

“Okay,” she agrees, and they lapse into silence for a while as they keep their eyes surreptitiously on the mouth of the alley at her back. After a fair amount of time, he reaches forward quietly to brush his fingertips across her knuckles. She turns her hand over to wrap his fingers in her palm, and he knows they’re all right – as all right as they can be.


With the moon beginning its high arc, the pair sneak around the edge of tin roof just outside the Valentine Detective Agency’s upper door. He won’t go in with her, he’s already told her that, but this – he doesn’t want to miss. It’s his favorite part. She’s already pulling the pair of new bobby pins out of her hair, biting the rubber grip off one end of her chosen pick with practiced ease. He watches her bend a handle into her pick, the end of the pick in the lock, and the other bobby pin over itself for her lever. It’s a complicated little procedure that happens in seconds, and he can feel the goosebumps already forming.

And then she slips both bobby pins into the little opening, and his stomach clenches. This part – this part is pure magic, because she closes her eyes. Closes her eyes and lets out a soft breath and her fingers turn into an extension of her ears, her hands into the most careful, sensitive tools. She feels the tumblers, feels the click of a cylinder catching on the edge of the barrel. He can’t believe she used to be a lawyer. Cait had explained it to her all of one time – roughly and colorfully and without much encouragement – and she just melted into it. Spent hours in Sanctuary picking and re-locking and re-picking every lock she could get her hands on.

And now, she’s a magician. A minute passes, and the lock rattles as her little lever rotates the barrel. The door shifts quietly ajar. She’s in. “Got it,” she whispers, and there are tingles in his spine.

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

She fixes him with a smirk and a roll of her eyes before pressing a single extended finger to her lips, and he mimes zipping his mouth from one corner to the other. She handles the door as gently as a first-time lover, and then she’s inside, and the lock clicks quietly closed behind her.

Magic.

Inside, Nora takes a moment just to crouch in the dark. No light leaks up from below the stairs. He’s always been conservative about the power, and she’s walked in more than once on him sitting alone in the gloom, just his inhuman stillness and the glow of his eyes. She knows that sight like it’s her favorite painting.

It sends a full-body shiver through her, and she absolutely refuses to think about why.

Carefully, quietly, she slips her feet out of her boots. Her socks are old and travel-worn, but they’re more of a noise-reducing cushion than the heavy souls of her Tough Guard Ensemble. She tip-toes, low to the ground, to the lip of the stares, and tries to let her eyes adjust enough that she might be able to spot the yellow glow if he’s close. She doesn’t.

So Nora descends, slow as she can, easing around every possible creak of the wood with the utmost care. She reaches the main floor like a spider, crouched with bent limbs out to her sides, eyes too dark to see in the lightless space. The folder is there, just where Deacon reported, and she shifts the paper carefully towards her, tries to read the cramped scrawl in the dim. In the effort, she leans accidentally against the mattress, and the springs creaking sounds like a thunderclap in the utter silence.

Nick doesn’t speak, but she knows he’s moved. She hears his pistol leave its holster and settle in his metal hand. She burns what she can of the folder’s contents into her memory and stands. Even though she’s expecting it, she jumps when he rounds the corner of the partition wall, pistol trained expertly on her. She has her hands up and she tries for a sheepish kind of smile.

“The hell?” Nick’s voice is stern, but the relief in his eyes is clear. “Nora?”

“’Fraid not,” she answers, and his eyes narrow. He knows her voice. She knows he knows. And he knows that, too.

“Is it Miss Spade again today?” His gun lowers, and she brushes past him, looping around his side far too closely – perhaps fueled by the high of the hunt and the discovery, and the identity she’s wearing.

“Ilsa,” she answers, flipping on the lights as she enters the office proper. He pauses behind her, leaning a shoulder against the side of the wall, filling the doorway with the shadow of a suited silhouette. Nora glances over her shoulder with a cocked brow and a small smirk. “Not gonna offer a lady a drink?”

“You let me know if you see a lady,” Nick answers quickly.

She dons a face of offense, and then a pout, rounding his desk to take a seat on its edge and swipe the lit cigarette he’d left in his ash tray. “How harsh, Mr. Valentine.”

“Gettin’ broken into rarely does wonders for my mood.” He shrugs.

She’s playing the inviting spider at the center of the web, but he’s cautious. She hides in her cover identities more often now. When was the last time he really saw Nora? Not since he’d brought her back from Goodneighbor, and she’d been awfully quick to get back to the Railroad and put on somebody else’s face again.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m harmless.”

“Who says I’m worried?”

“Guess I did.”

“Awfully bold to make assumptions like that.”

She crosses one leg over the other with a creak of leather, leans her hands back on his desk with his cigarette in her mouth. Doesn’t adjust when her vest pulls her ripped flannel up over the skin of her stomach. He doesn’t look, he doesn’t look. Keeps his eyes very firmly on hers.

“I like to think I’m a very good judge of character.”

Nick pulls his shoulder off the wall and takes a single step forward, hands in his pockets. “That so?”

“It is.”

“So what’s your read on me?”

“I think you’re a guy who gets what he’s after.”

“They say it’s my job.” Another, slow step.

“Maybe I’ve got work for a man like that.”

“You don’t even know my rates.”

She turns on the desk slightly to face him, arching her spine in a very calculated way as one of her hands lifts to pull the cigarette away from her mouth. She blows a slow stream directly towards him. He waits.

“I’m sure we can work something out.” It’s that same kind of voice. The same purposeful trap of a voice she used for Miss Spade. It draws him another step forward, almost against his will.

“Say we can. This job got details?”

“Plenty. But the gist is – I know a girl,” she begins.

“Always a dame,” he half-smiles, and she matches him smirk for smirk.

“Always.”

“And this girl is missing?”

“Oh, no. I know right where she is.”

“Seems like maybe you don’t need a detective, then.” It isn’t until after he’s taken it that he realizes he’s another step closer.

“Looks can be deceiving, and all that.”

“She lose something, then?”

“Something like that. She wants something.” The emphasis in her voice is a brief touch of electricity to his binary soul, and he’s less than a foot away from her now.

“Something that maybe doesn’t belong to her?”

“Something that doesn’t really belong to anybody.”

Nick is practically touching her, now, hovering over her with fingertips brushing the edge of the desk on either side of her knees. She’s still and confident, head tilted back to meet him eye to eye. He raises the skeleton of a brow, and reaches for the cigarette. “What’s she want with it, then?”

Nora-gone-Ilsa smiles wanly, dodging the cigarette out of his grasp but then holding it with thumb and forefinger flush against his lips. He can taste dirt and sweat and her breath between her skin and the filter. He takes a drag.

“Just to have it,” is her reply, and he takes the dog-end of the cigarette out of his mouth to better react to gravity. He’s being pulled in, and she doesn’t flinch back. They’re almost nose-to-nose and if he needed to breathe, he might wonder if he’d stopped being able to. “For herself.”

“Why can’t she?” His mouth is dry – drier than usual, anyway.

“I’ve been asking that myself, lately. I’m running out of reasons.” Her eyes are almost closed and he can taste her words, the smoke still drifting lazily out of her mouth.

“So what’s the hold up?” He doesn’t know if he can hold out against her magnet, feels his hands flattening on the desk to her sides.

The annoyingly high-pitched beeping that her pipboy emits visibly shocks them both, and suddenly she’s not Ilsa anymore, and he’s not pressing his luck much, much further than he should be. He steps back a few inches and she slides to her feet, checking the screen on her wrist. “Two o’clock.” And it’s Nora’s voice, her real voice, and it’s tangibly sad. “I’ve gotta go.”

He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he should say anything, so she leaves him there, and Nick stands in the dim light of his office for a while and burns.


“You get it?” Deacon is catching up to her as she marches across the market square, and her fair clip of a pace is more than noticeable.

“The Stranger,” she answers in a voice that’s not really there, a mind that’s not really there. “Here, Capital Wasteland, out west.” He’s impressed, and he intones as much, but she doesn’t seem to register it.

“Where we headed?” He finally asks, even as they’re climbing the stairs out of the city.

“HQ,” Nora answers flatly, and there’s something like heartbreak there. “We should check in with Dez.”

Deacon feels a weight sink into his stomach. He feels…responsible. He shrinks into her shadow. “Yeah,” he says softly, “probably should.”

They move in relative silence, except for the music drifting out of her pipboy's speaker. In worlds of their own, they listen to the radio.

So sit down your pretty face,
you came to the right place -
oh, where every night it starts once more.

“OOOOOOHHHHH!”

Twin voices rise in echoes above the roofs of Sanctuary, and outliers roll their eyes on the edges of the settlement. MacCready and Hancock, however, have cracked open a pair of Nuka-Colas and are splitting a box of Fancy Lads. They’ve set up shop on a set of broken chairs which they’ve dragged out to the sidewalk, for the best view of The Fight.

Nora tries to tell them it’s not a fight – it’s sparring at best. Training. But she has to admit, having an audience is actually a little fun. Neither man seems to be rooting against either of them, so there’s little negative reinforcement, except--

Cait’s fist catches her square on the cheek and she goes down like a tree in a forest. The sound she makes is “augh.” The champion of the Combat Zone bounces back a few steps, arms still up. “Y’still want more, or y’need a break?” It isn’t malicious. What Cait is teaching her is valuable – it just also happens to be painful more often than not. They have at least laid out a few layers of blanket and cloth sacks to provide some cushion, and Nora finds herself very grateful for it. She’s going down rather a lot.

“I can take it,” she croaks, struggling to her feet and touching the tender, already-darkening bruise on the side of her face. When Cait’s expression briefly turns to concern, Nora smiles. “I’ve gotta be able to take it, right? You said it yourself; I’m no good at close range if I don’t have a weapon. I can’t really afford to be caught with my pants down.”

“Now unless I’m doin’ the catchin’,” Cat answers with a lecherous laugh, and Nora chuckles through her blush.

“Are we flirting or fighting?” She tries to steer them back on course.

“It can’t be both? Yer no fun.”

Nora does her best to ignore this and adopt a more battle-ready stance. Her fists are up and slightly loose, arms bent. Cait has been in a similar position, never one to drop her guard too quickly. It takes all of a minute for the two to dance around one another before Cait’s leg hooks expertly behind one of Nora’s, and she’s down on her back again with a groan.

“What’d I do?” Cait demands, even as she’s lowering a hand to drag Nora to her feet.

“Kicked my ass?” Nora suggests, using Cait’s muscle to haul herself up and rubbing her backside, which had been the first thing to hit the ground.

“I did, yeah. More specifically, though.” Cait is grinning. She loves the fight, Nora can tell, loves the rush and the power of it. But, in her way, she loves Nora too, and even though this is the most painful training she’s asked for, Nora can’t find it in herself to hold anything against the woman.

“My…center of balance,” she hazards, rolling a shoulder backward.

“Where was your weight?”

“My front foot.”

“So what happened?”

“I didn’t have any weight on my back foot to catch myself?”

“If y’know that,” Cait barks, throwing her fists up to the ready, immediately prompting Nora to do the same, “why couldn’t you stop me?”

“Becaaaause…you’re more of a badass than me?”

“Cute. Flattery’ll getcha into bed, but not outta the ring.”

And they’re at it again. When Nora manages a successful block, the pair in their very small crowd give a whistle and a cheer. When Cait lands an uppercut in her ribs, Hancock groans in sympathy and MacCready winces, though they both voice their appreciation of Cait’s prowess. When Nora lands a hit – right on Cait’s grinning jaw – they’re on their feet and hollering. But Cait doesn’t take anything lying down unless there aren’t any clothes involved (and, from what she says, rarely even then), and Nora’s world goes black.

Her vision comes back like a spray of confetti – tiny pieces in no particular order, until the blue sky above can hazily be seen behind the bent heads of Cait, Mac, and John.

“You hear me, Sunshine?”

“Mm.”

“Yer ears ringin’?” Cait’s concern is just as firm as her commands.

“Nn-mm.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” Mac clearly has no particular idea what he’s doing, but he recalls this is something that is supposed to be said in the worry of a concussion.

“Two.” And Nora rolls into a seated position, touching her rapidly blackening eye with careful fingertips.

“Gonna have a nice shiner for a while,” Cait confirms.

“Goodie for me.” The attempt is a little wobbly, even with Hancock’s hand at her back and Mac’s steadying grip on her elbow, but Nora manages to get to her feet, her attention back on Cait with one widely open and one forced-squint of an eye. “Round three?”

“No can do, love,” she lilts in reply, shrugging her freckled shoulders. “Yer lights go out, lesson’s over.”

“I guess that’s a reasonable rule.”

“It’ll keep ya alive, anyway.” Cait pats her shoulder a little roughly, though she smiles in almost proud way. “Get cleaned up, yeah? Cold beer and hot dinner’ll do just the trick.”

The two men make to escort her to her broken down house, but she waves them off. “I know the way,” she teases, and though they release her, it is with obvious reluctance. She pays little mind, however, and eventually disappears through the doorway.

She’s hovering over her sink and spitting out a little blood for all of two minutes before the smell of smoke announces his presence, and she turns to see Nick hovering in the doorway. She smiles with slightly bloodied teeth, and his look of concern weighs heavily on his face. Her only response is a shrug, and he nods in silent understanding – he’s getting good at that.

But he’s in the small bathroom with her, then, soaking a rag in the cool tin bucket of water that she keeps in her sink’s bowl. She doesn’t object, even as he guides her to sit on the cracked lid of the long-empty and rusted toilet. He crouches in front of her and presses the freshly squeezed rag gently against the outer curve of her eye socket. Nora hisses a little in a pained response, but then his metal hand is in hers, and she doesn’t know if it was something she did or if it was Nick, but it comforts her, and she quiets.

“Wish you wouldn’t be so reckless,” he grumbles eventually, but he can’t hide his worry even in his best attempt at ‘grumpy old man voice.’ She smiles, and this alerts her to a split at the side of her lip, and she tongues it to assess the damage.

“I don’t think it’s an unnecessary risk.”

He notices the fresh blood at her lip, now, too, and sighs. Nick gives the cut a cursory, gentle wipe with the rag before letting the cloth rest in her free hand and taking her chin in his palm so he can better examine the extent of her beating. “Yeah, I know you don’t,” he answers gruffly, letting the pad of his thumb rest against the swelling middle of her lower lip. It’s an absent-minded kind of gesture, and he doesn’t realize he’s done it until he feels her breath stop, and he looks up to find her eyes big and round, and very firmly locked on his face.

They pause this way, pinned by one another, for a long, silent moment.

“Things are gonna get bad, soon,” Nora states at last. Her eyes are steely as ever, and he knows before he even sees that familiar expression that there’s no use playing with kid gloves here.

“Seems like.”

“Dez and Tom are working on a way to sabotage their reactor.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I’ve gotta go blow it up.”

“Yeah…” His brows knit, and he forgets that he hasn’t moved his hand until her fingers are looped around his in-tact wrist. And then he can’t move.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“To the grave,” is Nick’s immediate response, though after a second of consideration he adds, “garbage compactor, maybe.”

“I’m scared.” Nora is smiling but her eyes are swimming, and his heart breaks. It’s the first time he really realizes he has one – in some intangible way – if only because the pain is so real.

“I know,” he answers, and he doesn’t know how to deliver any platitudes that won’t sound horribly false. So he leans forward and presses his lips gently against her forehead, and she releases a breath like she’d been holding it.

“If I make it back—”

“When,” he corrects firmly.

“—you’ll be here?”

“With bells on.” He doesn’t trust his smile, but he attempts it anyway. She answers it with one of her own, though it’s rather watery. “Tell you what,” he adds, finally moving his palm from her cheek to run his fingers through her hair in a gesture of comfort, “when you get back, we’ll take a vacation.”

She laughs, and her face tells him she knows it’s a lie. She knows it’s a one-way trip. It’s the sentiment that hangs above them all, no matter how they try to ignore it. He refuses. It is not going to end that way, not for Nora. Not for him.

“Where will we go?” She indulges him, indulges herself, and his hand curls affectionately around the back of her neck.

“How’s a day at the beach sound?”

“As long as there aren’t any ‘Lurks around.”

“Maybe we can get a patch cleaned up.”

“That sounds like a bit of a chore.”

“Well then maybe I’ll just do it before you get back. Give you a nice little homecoming present.”

She laughs again, and it’s more choked than before. Before either of them can think better of it, she’s in his arms and he’s pressing her tightly to his chest, stroking her hair and pressing his face into the cradle of her shoulder. He tries not to think about it being his last chance to embrace her, but he holds her like it’s the last time just the same.

“You’re my best friend, Nick,” she breathes against the rumpled collar of his shirt, and though he refuses to release her entirely, he lets her lean back so she can meet his eyes. “I just – want you to know that. You’re my favorite person, you know?”

It breaks him. He comes apart. He holds her for a long time. He holds her until night falls, and after carrying her to bed, he holds her while she sleeps. He listens to her breathe, drinks in the funny little way she snores. He thinks about the beach, about a little spot close to the bridge he’s pretty sure he can clear out enough to make an acceptable lounging spot. When she stirs with dreams, he quiets her, kisses the crown of her head, tells her she’s safe. And he knows now, and for the rest of his life – Nick Valentine is undone. While she rests, he can hear gentle music drifting in from a neighboring house. Holding her close, keeping her safe, they listen to the radio.




I’m telling you friend,
your search is at an end,
‘cause I’m the one you’re looking for.

The afternoon was spent reminiscing, catching up, and by the evening they were passing drinks around and trading general gossip. Nick and Nora had migrated to a soft-ish chair to allow Curie room to continuously fuss over Hancock’s injury – he took up the cushion and she had started perched on the arm, but by the time they were sharing a beer and their umpteenth cigarette, she was more or less in his lap, and thankfully their company had foregone mentioning it. Dogmeat curled up at their feet and dreamed in the twitchy way of all dogs, his head resting over Nick’s shoe so that a little puddle of drool could build up on the toe.

Deacon leaned his back against the arm of the chair Nora had previously occupied, one hand idly petting the sleeping Dogmeat’s head, the other occasionally affectionately patting the ankle which Nora had let fall to rest on his shoulder. Piper straddled a cheap dinner chair across the generally circle-shaped gathering, folding her arms over the back and resting her chin on her hands. She shot the two in front of her the occasional knowing smile, which strangely both Nick and Nora seemed very intently never to notice.

Preston had relaxed at Curie’s other side, Cait and MacCready lounging together across the entirety of the second couch. Deegan took up a post in a corner, and contributed occasionally to the laughter and conversation, though he mostly exchanged small, knowing looks with Fahrenheit, who guarded the opposite side of the room.

It wasn’t until the hours began to grow small that there came any interruption. There was a bustle of urgent, quiet conversation downstairs, and after a nod from Hancock, Deegan descended to investigate. The conversation didn’t halt until the ghoul returned, trailing another troop of people behind him.

“Visitors,” he announced simply, taking up a spot against the nearest while, “they say it’s urgent they speak to Nora.”

The woman in question sat up a little to look over the back of her chair, surprise immediately seizing her expression. “Dez?”

Deacon’s head shot up at that, brows raised over his sunglasses. “Tom?”

The third figure cleared his throat, to which Deacon and Nora responded in unison, voices flat, “Carrington.” Predictably, the man snorted in distaste, arms crossing.

“We need to talk,” Desdemona said simply, eyes firmly on her agents. “Immediately.”

“You never leave HQ,” Deacon noted, sounding uncharacteristically uncomfortable. Nora reached down to give his nearest shoulder a little squeeze.

“This is a privileged conversation,” Carrington groused.

With a gesture from John, Fahrenheit and Deegan descended the stairs. No one else moved.

“More privileged than that,” the doctor added in that same, clipped tone.

“Not a chance, buddy,” Hancock called, and there was a general mumble of confirmation from the rest of the group.

Dez glared right through Nora, in that uncanny way she had. “You trust these people, Bullseye?”

Nora glanced back around the room, and there was no other answer to give. “With my life.”

Dez sighed, but held up a hand when Carrington began to object. “Then we need to speak to your…friend.” Her gaze had shifted to Nick, who was craning his neck to peer at the new group over his shoulder.

“Me?” Nick was readably suspicious.

“You’re Nick Valentine.” It wasn’t a question. She’d met him before, when he tagged along with Nora on her Railroad duties.

“Yes.”

“I need you to tell us—”

“Mostly me,” Tinker Tom interjected brightly. Dez sighed again.

“I need you to tell us,” she began again, “everything you know about The Stranger.”