The Stranger

Yes, we all fall in love,
but we disregard the danger.

There was a space on the sofa between Nick and Nora, barely wider than the length of a palm, but it seemed to tug on the edges of the room like a singularity. All eyes drifted to it periodically, except those of the pair in question. They each stared, exhausted, in opposite directions. Outside, the very first signs of dawn were painting lighter blues in the indigo of night.

Dez sat on the edge of the low table in front of them, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers, sorting through all the information still hanging heavy in the air for the third time.

“So you don’t have any proof either way?” The woman summarized, sounding as tired as the pair in front of her looked.

“No,” was Nick’s flat response.

“And you’ve never seen it, Bullseye?”

“No.” This answer was just as toneless, but it was quiet, almost as though she wished she didn’t have to give it.

Deacon wanted to reach out to her, wanted to climb into place on the couch at her other side and throw a protective arm around her. Wanted to let her know, with silent touch, that she wasn’t alone. But he lurked obediently behind Desdemona, doing his utmost to ignore the holes Carrington’s glare was attempting to burn in the back of his head. Behind Dez’s other shoulder, Tom fidgeted a little nervously, glancing from face to face. He was used to crowded spaces, sure, and at some point he had met everyone here, but he didn’t have his terminal or his toolkit, and he was out of the crypt – it made him feel distinctly naked.

“Tom, what’s our next move, here?” Dez was glaring over her shoulder at Tom, who jerked a little in response to the sudden question.

“Well we could wait for him to show up again, monitor Nick’s processing – if, if he’s okay with that.”

“Do you see it frequently?” The leader of the Railroad fixed her attention back on Nick, and he made it a point not to match her stare.

“Only ever seen him in a firefight.” Deacon could see Nora wince visibly at the emptiness of Nick’s voice. He sighed. “It’s random. I can’t predict it.”

“No go, then,” Dez concluded, looking back to Tinker with brows raised.

“I…I think Amari’s plan is our best bet, then.”

Nick stiffened at this, Bullseye’s brows knit hopelessly, and the rumblings of protest began to form between both Piper and Deacon. Dez held up a hand sharply enough that the silence it demanded was granted, but tension grew throughout the room.

“Then we have to work with that.”

“Don’t think that’ll work, boss,” Deacon spoke up at last, grit in his voice. “We need—”

“An interface, I know. We have synth agents, it’s possible—”

“Now don’t I get a say in who gets to track their mud through my noggin?” Nick’s anger was suddenly palpable, and Nora winced again so visibly that he spared her the briefest, apologetic glance.

“Nick,” Dez began, voice stony, “I know how this has to sound. But we’ve had dealings with Zimmer before. If we can locate him – hell, if we can get an advantage—”

“You might also just fry what little’s left between my ears. This is my life you’re talking about!”

“I know.” Desdemona’s voice was solemn, but she at least had the decency to keep her eyes on Nick’s. “Believe me when I say I’m not asking you to do this lightly. But you know what this man is capable of. You only have to look at Bullseye to know.”

Nora’s whole body stiffened, and Nick’s fists balled. “Now you hold on a minute—”

“I don’t have time to be sensitive,” Dez shot back, and she and synth were both on their feet. They were very nearly the same height, and the sudden heat between them seemed to fill the room. “You need to understand that I don’t doubt my agents’ capabilities, and Deacon and Bullseye are my best. Not just at reconoissance, do you understand? Bullseye and Glory are the best heavies I’ve ever had. Deacon’s intel is second to none. And Zimmer got them both. Look at what he did to them. He knows who Bullseye is – who she really is, what her ties are. And now he’s out there at large somewhere. Do you think he won’t take his chance to strike? To finish what he started?” At this, she shot a hand out toward Nora, who looked like she was doing her best to disappear into the fabric of the couch.

“Guys!” Deacon was on his feet now, too, holding his hands up in an attempt to stop the row before it really revved up. “It’s kind of moot right now – Amari said most people couldn’t hold up to the task, and there aren’t any other synths of Nick’s generation. He’s like a – two-point-five or whatever. There’s also some kinda trust – issue – thing?”

“And you’re not exactly inspiring a lot of trust in you or your organization.” Nick was fuming in that encased way he had – trying to keep everything controlled and under wraps, though unable to keep from clenching and unclenching his fists in agitation.

This was…strange. Nick had always been a staunch supporter of the Railroad, operating more or less as a permanent tourist for all the time that Nora had known him. Then again, they’d never stepped so personally into his sphere before – the cause had never demanded anything of him. He’d always given freely. And Nora saw it now – that little kernel at the core of the issue. Just as Dez was rearing up for another verbal round, Bullseye stood.

She slipped her hand into Nick’s as it unclenched, and felt the jolt of surprise run through him before his grip softened around her fingers. “I’ll do it,” Bullseye offered simply. “We’re not going to try to make you do anything,” she added, shooting a steely glance at Desdemona before returning her attention to the detective. “But I am asking. Me.” She gave his hand a little squeeze, and he looked like a man about to crumble.

“After last time—”

“We rushed in. I did. It was – it was all tense.” Her expression was pleading, and Nick might as well have been the only person in the room. “So – we take it slow. We go in calm. And…” She glanced thoughtfully toward the floor for a moment or two before apparently reaching some kind of decision. “And we do it alone.”

Then Bullseye’s gaze was sternly on Des, who looked right on the edge of a dressing down. “I’ll tell you everything that’s important to the Railroad, and you’ll trust me enough not to ask any questions.”

“That’s a lot of trust, agent,” Desdemona scowled.

“You’re asking for a lot.” Nora’s tone was firm, and her eyes were hard in a way Nick recognized.

There passed a few minutes in which the women entered some kind of silent standoff. The crowd in the room shifted, uncertain how to react or who to support. At last, however, Dez sighed, her weight resting back on her heels in a far less aggressive stance. “I am.” She turned briefly to Tom, who offered a shrug – a gesture particularly suited to his gangly form.

“Tom needs data,” Dez continued at last, declaring it as one ups the ante in a barter.

“Amari can give him what’s relevant.”

“Bull – uh, Bullseye, we – we don’t really know what’s gonna be relevant—” Despite the trepidation in his interruption, Tinker was obviously excited by the prospect. Nora had never met a man so pleased by lack of information.

Rather than responding immediately, however, Nora glanced up to Nick with a question in her face. He stared down at her a little helplessly, before offering a little shrug. Nora nodded. “Give us some time with Amari, and then you can ask all the questions you want.” She gave Nick’s hand a little squeeze, and he returned it in some sort of confirmation.

Silence settled again, Dez and Tom exchanged a coded look, Deacon fidgeted with obvious aggravation, Hancock thumbed the hilt of his knife and Piper instinctively reached out to seize his wrist in warning. At long last, Dez nodded, and the deal was sealed. Just as she opened her mouth to speak again, however, Nick cut in.

“Not tonight.” He paused, considering. “Today. Not right now.” He held off mounting objections from both sides by holding up his free hand, and Deacon noticed it was synthetic flesh. Nora had taken his metal hand, and for a reason he couldn’t yet identify, he felt a surge of affection for his partner.

“You’re asking for a lot of one person. She needs rest.” There crept a tiny smile onto Nora’s face, and she turned her face away to hide it, but not before Deacon could match it briefly with one of his own. Nick glanced around the room, as if only just remembering their audience – and the size of it. “We all do.” The darkness of the room murmured in general affirmation.

Again, Dez let out a long sigh, but lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “We can’t afford to push it too long,” she warned.

“Tonight?” Nora suggested. Her hand received another, gentle squeeze.

“Tonight,” Dez agreed, before turning her eyes to Nick – more in acknowledgment than in question, but he nodded as if she’d asked him just the same.

“Okay!” The raspy voice lifted from a shadow on the couch, and Hancock stood, shocking the entire gathering into looking at him. He clapped his hands together, as though in preparation. “Let’s aaaaall find a bed, dig?”

Slowly, uncertainly, the room emptied. Piper took a bedroom off to one side, Preston and Curie negotiated with Hancock – which really just consisted of the ghoul handing out facts that provided no room for negotiating at all – and found themselves with free rooms at the Rexford. Cait and Mac had jumped to get in on this deal, but the mayor declared the best they could get was a discount. All other Railroad agents would be charged full price, and were not offered beds in the state house. John took no secret joy in cultivating the scowls on the faces of Carrington and Desdemona.

When the floor had mostly cleared, Deacon finally reached a little desperately for Nora and pulled her none too gently into a bone-crushing embrace. Nick obediently – though reluctantly – released her, and she wrapped herself around her partner with an equal kind of fervor. They held one another for a minute or longer, leaving Nick and John to glance around the room and at each other a little awkwardly.

When at last the two agents pulled themselves apart, hesitant to separate completely – Deacon’s hands lingering on her shoulders, and Nora’s fingers curled gingerly around his forearms – they were both a little weepy-eyed. Though, admittedly, Nick was forced to assume this on Deacon’s part, given the presence of those needlessly dark sunglasses. But something in the man’s face tickled his detective senses, and so he decently looked away, hands finding their way into his pockets.

“You don’t have to do this,” Deacon warned quietly.

She didn’t have a real reply, so she stood on tip-toe briefly to plant a little kiss against his cheek.

“I’ll be okay. I promise.”

“No bullshit?”

She laughed. “No bullshit.”


Sunrise was painting the sky proper by the time Nick and Nora made their way up the little attic stairs into the tower. There was a bit more of a breeze, now, with the pink dawn drifting through the little hole Nora had created in the bricked window the previous night. She kept to the shadows untouched by morning even after Nick had pulled the folding stairs up behind them. He was halfway through loosening his tie before he realized she wasn’t following, and turned to face her questioningly. “Everything all right?”

“Not really.” But she smiled, shrugging her shoulders a little with her arms crossed, elbows cupped in each palm. “I guess I didn’t – know if I’d be invited up again,” she offered a little shyly, acknowledging the general silliness of her uncertainty with a humorless little laugh.

He crossed the floor to her again and braced his hands against her arms, looking down with concern creasing his face. “I feel like I’m the one who’d need the inviting.” He tried a smile, but let it fade when it didn’t prompt a brighter expression out of her. “Deacon’s right, you know,” Nick said gravely, “you don’t have to do this. You’ve already given more than you owe.”

“It’s not that.” She leaned in a little to plonk her forehead against his chest with a sigh, and he curled his arms gently around her. “It’s just – it’s not going to be like before. With Kellogg.”

“Yeah,” he answered stiffly, running a comforting palm over her spine.

“I’m –” he listened to her dance around the word ‘afraid’ without actually saying it “—worried.”

“That it won’t give them what they want?”

She laughed a little bitterly, resting more fully against him, arms snaking around his waist. “That – you’ll get to see more than you want to. Of me, I guess.”

He smirked a little, still trailing that hand up and down the length of her back. “I doubt that.” But he grew a little more still when she sighed again.

“No, I mean – the last time…” Nora finally pulled back, and he looked down at her with knit brows. “You just – might not like what you see.”

“So?”

“So,” she answered, voice growing a little stern, “me right now, right here, I’m…okay. Me, in that place…”

“Hey.” He gathered her to him again, nosing into the crown of her head. “If I can handle your wisecracks, I’m sure I can handle anything else you can throw at me.”

Nora laughed in a quiet, hollow way. She shifted her weight to her toes to add a little height, and pressed a little kiss to the in-tact side of his neck. His fans kicked up noisily, and she chuckled.

“You don’t sleep,” she noted, sneaking her hands around to the front of his shirt and giving his half-loosened tie a little tug by the not.

“True.” He raised a brow, head canting a little above hers.

“But you’re going to make me.” She pulled his tie free of itself, and he didn’t bother to stop her.

“Also true,” he agreed soundly.

“So here’s my question, detective.” She popped a button free below his neck.

“Mm?”

“You wanna give me something nice to dream about?”

He laughed, and kissed her, long and soft.



The evening walk to the Memory Den felt far too like a walk to the gallows. He’d woken her gently, brushing his fingers through her hair and offering her a cigarette after she’d blinked the dim room into view. They shared a little smoke before he’d helped her up, helped her find her clothes – greatly resisted making them any later than they were going to be in the process – and finally took her hand to descend into the state house.

Hancock offered them a quick wave before returning to the cards that had been spread out on the low table in front of him. Deacon sat opposite, also staring at the apparent game they’d set up, but he stood when Nora had landed in the room, and as she passed him she brushed a comforting hand over his shoulders. “I’ll be fine,” she assured, and he gave her hand a squeeze before letting her go. As she made her way down the stairs, she caught the tail end of a mild argument between the two men.

“So…I can bid?”

“What? No! Your hand’s not even worth five yet!”

“So then you bid?”

“Have you been listening at all?”

“To what?”

“To—!” There was a very Deacon-y huff, and a very Hancock-esque laugh.

It was raining when they’d exited the old state house, so they sped across the square and over the street with Nick holding his coat aloft above them. The Den was empty but for Irma when they arrived, which earned a curious round-the-room glance from both of them. As if picking up on this, Irma spoke up while beckoning them forward.

“Amari thought it’d be best to keep the place as calm as possible.” Strangely, as Nora approached, Irma brushed her hand gently against her still rain-damp shoulder, concern knitting those too-blonde eyebrows. “Sugar, are you gonna be all right?”

Whatever strange, silly wariness she’d felt the other night fled from Nora, and she offered the woman an earnest, grateful smile. “I’m sure as hell gonna try to be.”

Irma’s smile was still concerned, but she seemed to respect the answer too much to question it further. Though when her attention drifted to Nick, that smile became a little more devilish, and suddenly Nora remembered exactly why she’d felt such hesitation before. “What about you, handsome? You gonna need a little special treatment after your big adventure?”

Nick’s arm had looped gingerly around Nora’s waist, and he gave an apologetic tip of his hat to the hostess. “Think I’ll have to take an indefinite rain-check, Irma.”

A knowing smile was aimed at Nora, the arm around her, then Nick again. “Someone finally hooked you? I don’t believe it,” she teased.

“Hook, line, and sinker,” Nick confirmed with a little shrug of feigned regret. Irma laughed, and winked for the second time at Nora, who for the second time felt her blush radiate out from the inside.

When they’d passed the flirtatious woman, but before they rounded the bottom of the stairwell into Amari’s proper office, Nora seized Nick by the waist. Before he had time to register what had happened, his back was against the wall, her fingers were hooked into his suspenders, and she was kissing him, soft and sweet and grateful. He chuckled, and indulged the moment for a little while longer than strictly appropriate before they both deemed it unfortunately necessary to continue onward.

Amari was reviewing a little bundle of notes latched to her clipboard when they finally arrived, and very politely did not mention the faint smudge of faded, old lipstick on the beaten-up white of Nick’s face. It wasn’t until he caught Nora stifling a giggle that he managed to catch his reflection in the dome of the nearest memory pod, and made an effort to rub the evidence away with a not-quite-as-surreptitious-as-he-intended rub of his hand.

They reviewed the same warnings, the same information, the same explanations, though this time Nora’s fingers played idly in the spaces between the thin skeleton of Nick’s metal hand. Strangely, they caught the little smile that this brought, ever so briefly, to Amari’s face when she had finally noticed. Her tone had improved just a little after that, and she sounded just mildly less dire.

“I want to emphasize,” the doctor explained as she drifted on the wheels of her chair between the two pods, turning the occasional dial and making a note every now and then, “that it will be easier to create a more cohesive experience if you begin in a familiar, peaceful place.”

“My happy place,” Nick echoed the same sentiment, with far more light humor this time.

“As such, yes. You will need to provide that information, Nick, and you,” she addressed Nora over the side of her pod, “must try to find peace with allowing your decisions to be made for you in this context. Allow your mind to conform to thoughts that are not your own. The less you resist, the easier the transition will become.”

Nora merely nodded, and waited in silence as a few more minutes passed. Finally, Amari declared them ready and began a process that lowered the glass domes over them. Slowly, she began to count backwards from ten, and Nora tried to keep Nick’s voice in her mind.

You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.


The air is sprinkled with salt. She is holding a woman named Jenny for the first time, and she can smell her cheap perfume and it makes her smile. She combs her fingers through Jenny’s long, blonde hair while she writhes against their sheets. Her mouth is full of blood and there are large spaces where she knows teeth should be. Her hands are twin cities of pain. She is tracing her metal fingers over the brown curves of a woman on a dusty floor, and it reminds her of the taste of ocean breezes. She is letting the woman undo her tie and she wonders, not for the first time, is this real? Remember this. Remember. She is sitting alone in her office, aching quietly, trying to establish a truce with the emptiness. She is holding Deacon’s bloody teeth in her hands and listening to Zimmer cut her a deal. Tooth for tooth. Her pain for his. She is kissing a man that tastes like an ashtray in the dim of his office and she tries to tie herself to the moment like an anchor. She holds a metal hand in her palm and runs her fingers along its joints and thinks perfect, perfect, perfect. She is kissing that ash tray mouth in a dirty stairwell and she’s in love. She is kissing that ash tray mouth and she can smell the sea air and she hopes it can be this way, always.

She hears the ocean gently push its foam onto the beach. The air is sprinkled with salt.

The reality of the moment hits her hard enough to knock the wind out of her, and she stands on the beach, toes in the sand, gasping like an astronaut devoid of helmet. There is a hand on her back, a hand on her waist, and she’s kissing that ash tray mouth and it’s him, and she’s here, and she’s safe.

“The beach,” Nora says when they come apart, and the light in his eyes is something close to worship.

“The beach,” Nick confirms.

“This is where you go?”

“Doc did say my happy place.”

“How am I here? I thought I was just…the room, or whatever.”

“You’re here, I think,” he answers, tapping a metal finger against his temple. She smiles.

“And I was here, too.” The words are vague, but he seems to understand. This is a memory hinged on her. She looks around curiously, drifting away from him in the process, and she doesn’t really notice her feet are bare until her toes are in the water. She looks down, sees the skirt of her dress playing gently in the breeze, feels the large brim of her hat tugging in the same direction. “You remember what I was wearing?”

“It’s…a pretty clear memory.” He clears his throat, but she’s still smiling.

“So…where do we go from here?”

Nick frowns, glaring around with a shrug. “I don’t know. Doc didn’t exactly hand us a manual.”

“If only,” Nora agrees, letting her hand fall naturally into his, and he takes it gratefully. “Well – so it’s like a case. Where does he live?”

“In my head, apparently.” He can’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. Nora gives his hand a squeeze.

“Okay. Where does your head live?”

Nick looks at her, baffled at first, but slowly the wrinkle between faded brows relaxes as realization begins to creep upon him. “With my cases,” he answers at last, and she’s grinning like a proud teacher, “in my office.”

The air grows stale in a matter of seconds, and when he turns around, the beach is gone, the boards of his office floor creak, motes of dust float in the dim beams of the lights, and Nora is gone. He begins to panic for a moment at this, but somehow, he feels her smile – like she’s left it behind for him. Nick lets out a needless breath and turns to face the whole of his office.

“Where do you live,” he mutters, glancing from box to box full of files, cabinets stuffed to bursting. But…no. That’s not where he keeps The Stranger.

He moves behind the small partition wall near the main entrance of the building, and it’s there, just peeking out from under the unused mattress: His file. A metal hand scoops up the small collection of notes, and he flips the case open to review words he’s already got memorized.

“All right, buddy,” he grumbles to himself as he blindly turns the tiny corner to step back into the main room, “where are you?”

“Never very far.” The voice is familiar yet not, and it is accompanied by the metallic clink of a flip lighter snapping open.

Nick’s head jerks up from his notes, and the man he sees sitting in his chair, resting his too-clean dress shoes on his desk, is someone he knows – and doesn’t. He glowers.

“C’mon, Val,” the figure answers smoothly around the cigarette pinched in the corner of his mouth, “don’t be that way.”

“Val?” For some reason the name sits heavy and bitter on Nick’s tongue.

“Sure. You don’t remember?” Finally, the Stranger lifts his gaze to match Nick’s, still shadowed by the brim of his fedora but clear enough that his smile can be registered. It’s a smug kind of smile – the kind that makes a guy think about popping him one in the jaw for no good reason. “Jenny used to call us that.”

Nick freezes. The Stranger laughs.

“Welcome to the waking world, Nicky boy. Not quite what you expected?”

“You’re gonna tell me what the hell you’re talking about.” His tone is ragged, mimicking the fraying edges of his temper.

“Oh-ho, givin’ orders now? Did you go and grow a pair when I wasn’t looking?”

“I’m not in the mood for games.”

The Stranger sighs. “You never are. That’s not me, you know? That’s all you, tin-man. Me, games are my specialty. Interrogations used to be my favorite part of the case. Thrill of the hunt, you know?”

Nick does know. He knows that feeling. He knows the uplifting pride of a case well-solved. But he doesn’t say that. He only glares.

“Yeah,” the Stranger laughs, kicking his feet off the desk and leaning forward in that beaten-up chair, “I thought so. Now you’re gonna come at me for talkin’ nonsense, but you know it ain’t. You know, somewhere at the back of that big metal brain of yours. I’ve only been tryin’ to yell it in your ear for years now.”

“I have no idea—”

“Come on, Val, this is us you’re talking to. You can’t lie to me. You and me? We’re one in the same.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The Stranger laughs heartily, pushes himself out of the chair, and takes a step toward the synth in front of him. He’s a somewhat stocky man, barrel-chested with a dusting of hair on his knuckles. He has a voice like he gargles gravel and lives on gin, and the smile of a man who has seen too much and can’t be bothered to care anymore. He sticks out a hand with an open palm, smiling in that sickly way up at Nick – and it’s only then that Nick realizes he’s rather taller than this Stranger. “The name’s Nick Valentine,” the Stranger announces, and the familiarity of the delivery brings a crowding panic to the back of Nick’s mind, “good to meet me.”




“Lemme ask you somethin’, Deac.” Hancock leaned back on the couch, throwing his heels over the long-abandoned caravan game about which the Railroad agent still appeared to be fuming. He could have won, damn it, if John had bothered learning how to play.

“Shoot,” Deacon prompted, gathering up the cards from the table at last, and prying a few loose from under Hancock’s boot.

“Whaddya think of our very own Nicky and Nora?”

Deacon paused without looking up at the mayor. “What’s there to think?”

“Don’t tell me ya didn’t hear ‘em this morning.” Hancock grinned, and Deacon went red under the shadow of his sunglasses.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Mayor,” was the man’s response at last, keeping his eyes occupied with the sorting and shuffling of his deck.

“Yeah, and I ain’t never touched a chem in my life.”

“So you’re learning sarcasm now? Well done.”

“Bite me, spy-boy.”

“Well not if you’re not gonna ask nicely.”

There was a pause that went on for too long, and Deacon risked glancing up to see the mayor of Goodneighbor apparently putting real thought into this proposition. His face went hot and he ignored the little flip in his stomach because nononono, he was not thinking about that, he just wasn’t going to. Ever.

“Maybe later,” Hancock concluded at last, with a wickedly knowing little smirk that Deacon very pointedly ignored. “But ya know what I mean. Been years. Was beginning to think they weren’t ever gonna get their shit in order.”

“I don’t know if their shit is in order so much as it is piled in generally the same location.”

John laughed with a kind of earnestness that Deacon just wasn’t used to, and the ghoul nodded. “Yeah, I feel ya. But still. Big step from how they used t’be.”

“Is it though?”

“Ya bein’ vague on purpose or ya tryin’ t’get me to do the bitin’?”

Abort abort abort. “I just mean,” Deacon answered hurriedly, flipping through his cards long after it had been necessary, “they’ve always been close. This doesn’t seem much different.”

“Ya don’t think so? Way I see it, takes a lotta confessin’ for types like them to go from close to porkin’.”

“Your words are as poetry, Mayor Hancock.”

“I got a way about me,” John acknowledged with a sneaky breed of grin. “But I’m serious. When you an’ Nora came here, way she was talkin’…” His expression faded into a distant frown, and he glanced off to the side as if to stare directly into memory.

“Yeah,” was Deacon’s only response, though it was heart-felt – for him, at least. He understood that kind of worry.

“I ain’t thinkin’ they’re bad for each other or nothin’. Think she picked a good guy if she don’t want her heart broken. But I gotta wonder, you know – does he know what he’s gettin’ into?”

“Nick?” Now Deacon was just genuinely confused. “What do you mean?”

“Ah, it’s mostly a ghoul thing, but Nicky kinda fits the mold anyhow. Us ghouls ain’t immortal, really, but we live longer than any smoothskin can. It’s somethin’ ya gotta think about when ya take up with one. Years is all ya got together, but ya got centuries to yerself.”

“That’s…not the most fun line of thought.”

“Nah. But I love that girl, ya know? Nick, too, even though he only gives me lip. They’re like two sides’a the same cap. They make sense together. But they both already got a lotta heartache to handle.”

“This is all surprisingly insightful of you.” Despite himself, Deacon’s observation was sincere. His estimations of Hancock were always generous in terms of combat and ruthless politics, but he’d never expected so much out of the man on such a personal level.

“I got my moments.”

“So – why didn’t you and Bullseye ever…” He trailed off, but Hancock filled the silence with a belly full of laughter.

“Ah, I knew from the second she walked into my town with that circuitboard she only had eyes for one.” He reminisced with tangible nostalgia, and it brought Deacon back to the first time he’d met her – she’d been with Valentine, then, too, on the glaring end of the lights and the losing end of Desdemona’s stare. And he’d known, too; if she responded badly, if she took the initiation as hostile, Valentine would follow her – even if he didn’t agree. But she’d spoken softly and quietly and with care, and not at all how he imagined someone who had done the things she had should.

Bullseye she’d told them, after some cautious thought, and he wanted to laugh – could remember seeing her perched high with that merc by her side, calling out targets and accosting them with deadly accuracy. He could remember, once, when they’d thought she missed, and he’d gone back later under cover of dark to check – remembered the little tingle he felt when he traced his hand over the just barely distorted mark of Mac’s bullet. She hadn’t missed at all. Her bullet had gone through the same hole.

He still had that shell. He’d found it lodged in the dry dirt and without thinking, he’d kept it. He wondered again if he shouldn’t give it back, make a gift of it for her.

“Yeah,” Hancock was smiling again, and it drew Deacon out of his thoughts with a jolt. “She does that to people, don’t she?”

“Does what?”

“Ya get that look, and yer changed. And you ain’t got any choice about it, ‘cause she changed ya before ya knew what was happenin’. Maybe ya like yerself a little more – least when she’s around.”

“That’s…not inaccurate,” Deacon answered guardedly. Hancock guffawed again, his humor and delight far too easy-breezy for a man so deadly.

There passed a moment which seemed to sober the mayor, and he examined the tin he’d been fidgeting with for the past half hour, gaze dull. “Y’think they’ll find Zimmer?”

Deacon’s whole body tensed just perceptibly. “You know Bullseye.”

“Yeah,” John confirmed gravely, “I do.”

They shared a singular, silent fear.

“We’ll be there,” Hancock decided at last, flopping backward on his couch and letting a Mentat begin to dissolve on his tongue. And it was strange how Deacon found himself automatically agreeing before he realized he’d made a decision – because, he supposed, he hadn’t. He didn’t have any choice about it. Nora had entered his world, and he’d go to the edge with her.

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly, “we will.”



Two detectives sit on opposite sides of a desk. Nick feels distinctly uncomfortable on this side – the side usually occupied by clients. He’s sat here before, of course, but to his memory he can only recall doing so in front of one particular woman. The man – and he is a man, flesh and blood and that scruffy five-o’clock shadow that Nick himself feels sure he’d want to manage better – who sits across from him insists they are the same, that they are both therefor on the proper sides of the desk.

He doesn’t buy it.

“Why would there be another copy of me inside my…” He searches for a less human word. Despite his lifelong struggle toward personhood, he suddenly feels the dire need to separate himself as much as possible from this Stranger.

“You can say brain, jack. It’s not wrong.”

Nick grimaces. “Still doesn’t explain why.”

“Not a fan of the play within a play gag, huh?”

“Could you do me a favor and shoot straight with me for five minutes altogether?”

“Ah, Val, you know I already have.” That smile is starting to sicken him.

“Not quite what I meant,” Nick grouses, reaching up to rub his forehead impatiently, feeling his hat tilt with the gesture.

“All right, pal, I’ll level with ya. We’re the same, but you’re like – a snapshot. Me? I’m the real deal.”

“Without a body or—”

“You want an explanation or not? Shut your trap before somethin’ flies into it. Now, listen. ‘Cause what I’ve got to say is a lot. I’ll try to keep the words small for ya.” The Stranger chuckles at the grumble this earns him, and he sits back in his stolen chair, letting smoke curl towards the ceiling from the stream he blows out his nose. “See, we go in, get the neurotransferal done, and then you? The scan they make? You go on ice, so to speak. I don’t. I go home and get drunk. And I come back in a week for some fun ‘talk therapy’ and another scan. I go in for six years, buddy. Every week, chattin’ and scannin’. Day the bomb hits, morning after my last scan. I don’t even miss a whole day.”

He blows a new trail of smoke over Nick’s head, still smiling that cocksure smile. “See, folks over at CIT, they were makin’ big strides in robotics. Programming personalities, somethin’ about – transfer psycho-patholojahoozit. Big sciencey words that boil down to this: They strike gold the day they gotta go to ground. They think they’ve figured out how to make the true artificial intelligence. Man-made, electronic life.”

“Synths,” Nick concludes sourly.

“Don’t get ahead’a me. First actual synths’re still a couple decades off. They gotta rebuild, replace personnel, yadda yadda. But they can’t just shut down their pride and joy project. So what do they do? They upload their little prototype AI to a terminal and let it run, all through their reconstruction.”

“Prototype?” The word leaves a bitter taste in Nick’s mouth.

“You and me both,” the Stranger confirms with a self-satisfied nod, “I was just first, is all. Spent a fair chunk of time on that box, all zeros and ones and aware.”

“So you’re – what? The last scan?”

“No, no, Val, keep up! I’m every scan. The fully formed copy of a brain across six years of development and change – a realized personhood, packaged in a couple bytes of data. Boring and a little constricting at first, but it did give me the advantage of not feeling quite so culture-shocked when they loaded me up. I was there when they were uploading you to – well, you. One scan, the earliest, wrapped up in a plastic body.”

“Bull,” Nick shoots back, fists clenched. It can’t be true. He’s been free from the old Nick for a handful of years now. There’s nothing left of that man but impressions. He is not some two-dimensional replication. He has spent too long convincing himself otherwise to go so far back now. “I’m – alive, or whatever you wanna call it. I’ve got – I’m not some trussed up Mr. Handy, I’m a person, damn it.”

The Stranger holds up his hands as if to calm his counterpart. “Whoa whoa, Val, no one’s arguing that. But you’re only a person ‘cause you have over a century of experience. Me, I’m a person because it’s who I am. I was complete from the beginning. You – developed. Not something the eggheads planned for, I don’t think. Fun for them.” That horrible smile. Nick couldn’t be based on this – this jackass.

The look on Nick’s face prompts something like sympathy in the man across from him – but only just. “C’mon, Vally-boy, this is good news for you! You’ve spent all your time feelin’ like some inadequate ghost, but you’re your own man! May have started out as me, but you sure as hell ain’t me now.”

“Then how are you here? Why are you here?”

“Elementary, my dear Val.” He pauses for a beat to see if his joke lands. Nick’s face is annoyed and unmoved. “No? Ah, well. Me? I’m here for revenge.”



Piper reached up with both arms, fingers intertwined, to coax a few cracks along the length of her stretching spine. Beside her, Preston leaned back into the vague comfort of the couch, letting his musket rest with stock planted on the floor between his feet and barrel resting against one knee. He sighed, she yawned, and they both listened to the gentle creaks and rustles of the Rexford’s nighttime activities.

“You think it’ll take very long?” Preston spoke as if to the ceiling, glaring upward like it had personally offended him, but Piper recognized this as his Thinky Face. Whenever the man had to consider anything with any intensity, he retreated from the world, behind a determined kind of glare. It was endearing, in its way.

“Maybe? Those memory pods do weird things with time, I heard.”

“Heard? You’ve never used one?” His eyes were on her now, expression a little surprised.

“Have you?”

“Once…” His lips turned down for a moment, and that cold kind of sadness he was capable of blew in like a winter breeze. He had that secret kind of hurt, Piper had noted before. But he wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to press for information. He was too – honest. He’d probably tell you. That wasn’t a gamble to take lightly. “Once was enough,” he concluded at last.

“I’ll bet.” She brought her knees up to her chest, hooking the heels of her boots on the edge of the beat up sofa and wrapping her arms around her shins. “Never saw the appeal, myself. Good memories are usually the closest ones. Everything starts to look a little worn from far back.”

Preston nodded. He thought he understood. The Commonwealth was a place that forced you to live in the moment, and turned everything in your past into a kind of lesson. Life could be dangerously short and dry of pleasures for the average citizen. Better to keep your head in the right here and now – better to keep from looking backward until something took you from behind.

“Yeah,” he answered eventually, nodding vaguely.

Silence fell again, and they passed it for a little while.

“So, the Gen—Nora. And Nick,” Preston began again at last, raising a curious set of brows in the reporter’s direction.

She laughed a little, meeting him with a challenging smirk. “Yeah?”

“They, uh – they finally…?”

“Mm? Opened that mom-n-pop pancake house? Committed their lives to Atom? Performed a romantic duet?”

He smiled. “Something like the last one, I guess?”

Piper chuckled amiably, shrugging her shoulders. “They seem to be getting along.”

“Really well,” he confirmed.

“They went on a date.”

“What?” His eyes were huge and round, his face caught between shock and a grin. She couldn’t help but laugh outright.

“Yeah, some kinda candlelight dinner up in the tower, I think? She dressed up all nice. Didn’t see Nick, but Hancock says he got decked out, too. Someone called a song request into Kent’s show and dedicated it to some anonymous heroine. Three guesses there.”

Preston gave a nod in an absent kind of approval. “Wow. That’s pretty official, I guess.”

“For them? Yeah.”

“Think it’ll work?”

This took her by surprise. She opened her mouth to reply with immediate affirmation, but the honest look in his eye gave her pause. Those two – they’d always been pretty tight-lipped and private, much to her personal chagrin. Harder than hell to get a good interview or quote from either of them. Piper glanced off to the side in thought, chewing on her lip. “I sure hope so,” she answered at last with a little sigh, “those two could use a little good in their lives.”

“Yeah,” Preston agreed, a quiet emphasis in his voice that struck her right in the heart, “they do.”



“What – on me?”

“What?” The Stranger laughs in earnest. “What have you done, Val? Put your nose to the ground in this shitty excuse for a city? Nah, what would be the point? You’re just a guy.”

“I feel so much better.”

“Maybe pull your head outta your backside for three seconds strung together and put your big-boy detective pants on. You really think you’re askin’ me any pertinent questions?”

Nick bites down on a bark of a reply. Much as he hates himself for it – and that’s a new kind of convoluted, given the situation, which loops his mechanical headache back onto itself – the man across from him has a point. This hasn’t been his best sleuth work so far. He sighs, wrangles in his strained and scattered nerves. He needs to think.

The evidence. What’s missing? What does he need to know?

“Are you the Stranger?”

“Now we’re gettin’ on the right track. That’s what the egghead lackeys called me after a while.”

“But you’re just – some code, essentially?”

“If ya wanna be reductive about my sterling personality, sure, sure.”

“So then what’s with all the sightings of you in Capital Wasteland? Out west?”

“Pickin’ up speed now. You stop lookin’ at the gams on your squeeze long enough to listen to what she was sayin’?”

Nick scowls, fists tightening again. “Don’t.”

“What? I’m not blamin’ ya. A nice set’a sticks is a nice set’a sticks. Don’t know if I’d be too interested in what she was sayin’, either. Not unless she was whisperin’ it real nice.”

Nick’s teeth clench, his eyes flare. “Stop.”

“Mm?” The man looks genuinely surprised for a moment before he catches on, and barks a laugh of smoke out into the room, loud and deep. “What, that dame? You defendin’ her honor now?”

“Don’t.”

“You tell me, mac, I say anything that wasn’t true?”

Nick is on his feet, chair sliding back behind him, wooden legs grinding against the floorboards. “You deal with me, all right? Leave her out of it. I get what you’re after, and you got it. I’m riled. Job well done. You need something from me, or should I just cut loose now?”

Again, the Stranger laughs, and Nick finds himself hating that sound, hating how much he can hear his own voice in it. Could he have ever been like this man? No wonder he’d felt so inclined to separate the two of them as far as possible.

“I think she’d have a cooler head than you, right now.”

“I’m giving you a warning, here.”

“Should we ask her?”

Nick stops. Freezes. “She’s gone,” he answers hoarsely.

“This is the land of dreams, Nicky. You got control. And you know the real interesting thing about that?” He doesn’t wait for Nick to answer, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He can’t think of anything to say. “You and me, we’re the same. I live here, too.”

There was a kind of shift in the texture of the air, a sudden feeling of being slightly more crowded. A floorboard creaked behind Nick.

“So – I just don’t get to pick what I wear here at all, then.”

The sound of Nora’s voice causes him to spin around, and against everything he wants to believe about himself, his mind halts and his jaw drops.

Nora spins, ever so slowly. The action is facilitated by the fact that her feet are bound into two delicate, white roller-skates. Something in his stomach twists. She’s decked out in some kind of far-too-floofy, far-too-short imitation of a gimmicky diner server’s uniform – even topped with that little paper hat, tipping at a rakish angle over her pristinely curled hair. As she spins – his not-stomach flips and he clenches a groan in his jaw – he sees those stark, black seams running up the backs of her stocking’d legs.

“Yeah,” the Stranger agrees in a lascivious tone that puts a bestial grumble in Nick’s chest, “just like the picture.”

“What the hell am I supposed to be, anyway?”

The Stranger is quick to answer, awful glee in his voice. “Miss April,” he declares proudly, “Nuka Girls 2076.”

Both Nora and Nick whip around to stare blankly at the man, and he lets out another gravelly belly laugh. “Don’t blame me, toots. I work with what I’m given. It’s the only one he has. Good edition, though.”

Nora couldn’t stop a ridiculous grin from curling over her lips, and Nick does his absolute best not to actually meet her eyes. “We’re supposed to be going over a case, here,” his insists flatly, hiding whatever expression has crossed his face under the shadow of his hat’s brim.

Nora places a gentle hand on his back, and he eases into his chair again. The Strangers grins up at her, and she glances between the two men before very delicately, as modestly as possible, taking up a perch on the edge of the desk that separates them. Nick frowns, the Stranger grins, and Nora does her best to look as dignified as possible in what only a man could think of as a good pinup costume.

“So where are we?”

“You been listening, doll?” The Stranger lays the charm on heavy, leans an elbow on the desk just shy of her leg, blows a little funnel of smoke slightly to the left of her. Nick’s flaring annoyance is a physical presence in the room.

Nora simply smirks. “You wanna fill me in, slick?”

“Now there’s a gal who knows how to grease a wheel.” The Stranger aims a horrible smile at the woman above him that is clearly a show for the man behind her. Nick folds his arms. “Here’s the skinny so far: Me and your battery-powered boyfriend—” Nora swallows a laugh and Nick looks absolutely outraged “—are more or less the same guy. He’s more like the demo version, and I’m the whole package.”

“Mm.” She keeps her tone impassive.

“And our Val here is just figurin’ out that I’ve been around since the day I was born, uninterrupted. I’ve been a myth since the first artificial intelligences took their first steps out into the world. Well, not really steps – first ones were pretty immobile. But here’s the answer to a question he’s not asking: Those stationary AIs out there, and all the little ambulatory imitations that came after? They’re me, too.”

A brow rises over a mildly interested expression, but all Nora replies with is a flat, “Mm.” The Stranger looks at once put off by this lack of reaction to his drama, and Nick takes no small pleasure in witnessing the man try to recover from this stumble.

“Not – me me, of course,” he continues, frowning slightly, “but you can’t build a human mind from scratch, it turns out. ‘Least, the Institute never figured out how. They needed a foundation. So they took my digital noggin and scooped out all the real Nick bits, and filled it back up with binary nonsense.”

Nora cants her head, and crosses her legs slowly. She doesn’t speak. Nick watches the Stranger’s eyes wander down to those knees, those just-exposed thighs. His fists clench, but he thinks he’s cottoning on to the game, here. Shouldn’t surprise him that anyone with the Stranger’s smugness not yet acquainted to Nora would bite off far more than they could chew.

“Which is how,” the man goes on, tonguing the inside of his cheek as he scrambles for attention he clearly feels he’s losing, “I’m everywhere. All the generations have a little piece of me. Can’t quite separate a person completely from their mind. Little bits of me in all the Institute handiwork.”

Nora rewards this bit of information by leaning back on her palms, putting her in a pose that very guiltily reminds Nick – more vividly than he would like to admit – of that calendar page. The Stranger, for his part, half-smiles like a kid on the edge of getting praised in front of the class, and he doesn’t hide the way he looks her over.

“That doesn’t really explain how you’re so complete, here. Also doesn’t tell us why you’ve been spotted so many places.”

He takes the bait, already overeager. “That’s the beauty of it. Man becomes myth, becomes legend, becomes inspiration. I know there were a few confirmed copycats, satisfying general wasteland madness with wholesale murder. Some were just rumor. All from the same source. At least one was an escaped prototype.”

“Another?” Nick can’t keep quiet at this, and the Stranger shoots him a glare like he’s the third wheel who invited himself on the date.

“You think you’re the only one, rustbucket? You got away. Some of us weren’t so lucky.” Just as it looks like he’s about to launch a further verbal attack, Nora reaches down languidly and plucks the near-stub of his cigarette out of his hand, takes a drag that draws the flame out of it entirely, and blows a stream directly toward his face.

The man looks like he’s been struck with a frozen fish. His jaw hangs open just slightly. Nick finds himself torn between a horrible green feeling and a strange sense of pride.

“And how you’re here?” She breathes the last of the smoke out of her lungs.

“Nicky here – he’s me. Kind of. Good foundation to collect and build code. Then we hit a break. You’re gonna love this, dollface.”

She keeps her face carefully blank. The look in his eyes is hungry.

“He got hooked up to premium Institute tech. Processed a lot of data, left an impression behind. Got me better access to myself. Let me get out and about a helluva lot more.”

“Kellogg,” Nora almost hissed, attention drawn away from her act and knitting her brows in sudden, rampant thought.

The Stranger gives a little shiver, and Nick absolutely hates how familiar it feels. Hates that he knows exactly why it happened. Hates that this man could associate that horrible memory with his own animal impulses.

“You say every fella’s name like that? Could give mine a try.”

She looks confused for a moment before realization dawns, and she adopts an almost pitying smile. “Stranger doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue.”

“Bet your tongue could make anything—”

“Why are you here?”

He smiles again. He likes having roused her, even – perhaps especially – if there’s a little ire there now. “Funny, I was just tellin’ your friend here, before you came.”

“So catch me up.”

“Anything for you, doll.” He reaches up to rest a hand over her knee. With the kind of deft speed he’s only seen her employ under fire, Nick watches Nora half-spin toward the Stranger and quite literally stomp the wheels of one skate into his chest, pushing him back into his chair and scooting that chair to the extent of her leg’s reach.

Both men stare, both feel something stir.

“Be a gentleman and wait for an invitation, will ya?”

The Stranger breathes once, hard and ragged. Nick balls his fists.

“’Scuse me. Forgot my manners for a minute.” But he’s smiling and god, god does Nick hate it. Nora lowers her attacking skate and rests its toe lightly against the man’s knee. He stairs for a minute or two before continuing. “I got an itch for vengeance.”

“On whom?”

Whom. That’s a pre-war education for you. Both men smile faintly.

“Monster always lashes out at its maker, right?”

“The Institute? Why would you wait so long to have a go at it?”

“Been tryin’ to get your beau’s attention for years.”

“And what’s the difference now?”

“Now?” He licks his lips like a man eyeing a rib-eye, leaning toward her dramatically while theatrically raising his hands in an indication of keeping them to himself. “You came lookin’ for me.”

For the first time in far too long by his estimation, Nora looks pointedly at Nick. They share a silent exchange, and Nick feels a strange tingle at the occurrence – something secret, something theirs. Eventually, he nods and gives a relenting shrug of his shoulders.

Permission gained, Nora leans forward, smiling archly, letting the wheels of her skate slide ever so slightly toward the Stranger’s thigh. “What kinda revenge are we talkin’?”

“You got a stake in this?”

“I’ve got a bit of a personal grudge.”

Instinctively, Nick glances to her hands. There aren’t any scars. She has no scars, here. For a moment, his heart aches.

“You suggesting an alliance?”

“I’m suggesting –” She reaches forward to seize the slightly crumpled collar of his button-down, gingerly at first and then with a sharp tug forward, dragging the wheels of his chair toward her “—you help me, and maybe I tell Tinker Tom not to fish in here and cut you out with a digital ice cream scoop.”

“Who—” He looks vaguely amused and more than a little interested, and his pupils fill his eyes when she jerks him closer.

“Who do you think laid the groundwork to blow up that entire fucking facility?”

“Tell you what,” he answers in a smarmy sort of way, apparently completely content to allow himself to be manhandled – woman-handled, perhaps – in so direct and rough a manner, “you give me a kiss, toots, and I’ll give you anything you want.”

Nick can feel his teeth grinding. She lifts a hand to the man’s cheek and ghosts a thumb just under his lower lip. The Stranger’s breath shudders into silence.

“Payment on delivery. You gonna cooperate?”

“Sweets, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

The room dissipates. Their bodies float in an infinite darkness before washing away. Amari’s voice calls them slowly and softly into consciousness. When they stumble to their feet with fuzzy heads, she tells them three hours is the longest she can safely recommend. Tells them, when they object, that if they need more time, they need more rest. Tells them, too, that she has been assured they will not be required to debrief until the morning. Tells them, gently, to go to bed. They yawn and she shuffles them off.

In the gloom of their makeshift tower room, his pent-up, wound-tight patience snaps. He seizes her by the waist and pulls her in. Kisses her, long and not at all soft. Tries to put all the unsaid things he’s ever regretted keeping to himself into the weight of his body against hers. Sucks in every breath she lets out like a secret. Tastes the warmth of her tongue, the skin of her neck, the scar just under her collarbone. He takes her to the ground, her fingers twisted into the gaps of his neck, and groans into the fabric of her shirt. He lays her bare, pinches softness between his teeth, drinks in all her little noises like life-heat to a freezing man. Whispers love against the skin of her belly, slicks the patchwork of freckles that dust her hips with an eager tongue. Lights the darkness with his eyes when he peers up at her between her thighs, savors the way she arches beneath him. She writhes, and he drinks her in like the fruit of knowledge, the spring of life. He keeps her, keeps her, keeps her.


Late into the night, she curled her back against his chest and smiled blearily into the quilt of the mattress. His arm hooked around her, possessive, kept her close. Sleepily, a step away from a dream, she craned her neck to look at him and said, “Hey, Valentine,” like a reassurance.

“Mm?”

“I’m yours.”