The barren street is quiet in a way that makes Kaelyn's fingers twitch. Afternoon sunlight burns white-gold around the ragged edges of cloud cover, offering inconsistent shadows for anything to lurk in. Collapsed town houses crouch along the cracked asphalt, their walls long since rotted and splintered, with the occasional red brick building to suggest a more built up area. A rough barricade of scavenged timber boards and tire stacks block the entrance to the only building on the street that still has most of its roof. If that isn't enough of a warning, three corpses dangle from the dark windows, rusty chains wrapped about their ankles.
No matter the limp bodies flopped over the barricade, or the dust settling around them, or the radiating heat from Kaelyn's laser musket, she doesn't trust that all the raiders are dead.
A garbled noise nearby that could be disgust. Kaelyn glances over and startles. Valentine has one hand pressed against his side—evidently some signs of injury are universal. He isn't at all distressed or pained, merely disgruntled.
"Are you alright?"
Valentine grimaces and pulls away his coat to examine the holes in his shirt. No blood. Leaking coolant fluids don't have the same eye-catching boldness as wet crimson, even if the smell is equally harsh. "Not gonna bleed out here. What say we find somewhere to hole up first?"
The end of the street tapers from suburbia to country, and not ten minutes later they are blazing a trail through the woods to reach higher ground. As it turns out, Valentine is more injured than he let on, with servos in his chest grinding in a facsimile of tight, harsh breaths. Kaelyn offers an arm, and Valentine lets her duck under his shoulder to support his weight as best she can with Dogmeat prowling around their feet. When they reach a thicket that shields them from the road's view, he sinks down onto a nearby boulder and inspects the holes in his torso with aplomb.
After giving Dogmeat a once-over and getting a lick on the cheek in return, Kaelyn asks, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Sunlight flashes on Valentine's steel hand as he gestures. "Grab your screwdriver and pull up a rock."
Whatever the damage done to his torso has also limited movement in his left arm. Kneeling beside him, Kaelyn helps slide his trench coat over his shoulders, and then his shirt follows once he's worked the buttons loose. His molded torso dips in gentle valleys and swells that intimate at muscle mass. While his chest is paler and smoother than his face from less exposure, there are still a litany of prior hurts on display: lacerations and punctures and other bullet wounds from sixty years in the Commonwealth—many of which would have been fatal in a flesh-and-blood man.
Valentine probes the three neat holes in his left side, where his rib cage would have been. "Can ya see through to the other side? Feels like something got jammed internally."
Kaelyn leans around to check his back. "Only one exit wound. Congratulations, you're packing lead."
"Christmas musta come early," Valentine says, his voice as dry as a rattling desert wind in winter.
Pushing her patrolman glasses up to rest on the top of her head, she shuffles into a more comfortable position. "Can you walk me through it?"
"Planning on it. I bet you don't have much experience with synth maintenance." Finding the catches that secure his skin in place on his frame, Valentine directs her to grab a hold of two panels and part them at the seam.
An animal part of her brain shies away at the wrongness of peeling back someone's skin. "Are you sure this doesn't hurt?"
"Positive."
Still, she moves slowly, gingerly. What lies underneath is a marvel of machinery: circuitry and mechanics packed down into plastic housings and arranged in a crude mimicry of human organs, whirring in intricate systems that keep Valentine alive. Kaelyn's breath catches, awed. His configuration is similar to that of a first gen synth, but with added complexity and more moving parts, all protected by synthetic skin. The problem is immediately visible: one casing that houses copper circuitry has been broken, scattering pieces of plastic through the inside of Valentine's body. Another bullet has sheared through a bundle of wires and is now lodged between a gear and its metal housing.
"Do I pull the red wire or the blue wire?"
Valentine snorts. "That always sets the bomb off, so how about you hold tight and let me take a look instead?"
Kaelyn follows his orders, and they work in tandem—sometimes she holds his synthetic skin out of the way, and other times she uses her smaller hands to reach places he can't. There isn't enough room or light to see properly into his chest cavity no matter how she cranes her head. Kaelyn unscrews the broken casing and lifts it free, taking care to avoid the whirring gears that would happily snap up any stray wires or fingers, and then they set to the unpleasant task of extracting all the broken pieces. Afraid that she might hurt him with a careless prod, Kaelyn adjusts her grip on her screwdriver so her fingertips are level with the blunt tip and lets touch guide her. Prying out the lodged bullets is nerve-wracking business, and she works with the utmost care, piece by piece, until every stray hunk of metal and plastic has plinked to the ground beside them.
In lieu of a first aid kit, Valentine carries a repair kit equipped with replacement parts. They spent the next ten minutes rewiring the broken cables and restoring full functionality to his arm until at last Kaelyn leans back and Valentine puts down his screwdriver with a nod.
Kaelyn fumbles for bandages, then realizes it's needless.
"Can plug the holes later," Valentine murmurs to himself, reaching for his shirt.
Indeed, now that she thinks to look, a number of the marks along his torso are smoothed over with some kind of putty or adhesive. Kaelyn retreats to give him some space, and notices the streaks of grease and coolant staining her brown skin. While scrubbing at her hands with a rag, she looks at him, still hunched on the boulder. "Are you alright?"
Valentine turns over the screwdriver in his hands. "Be real nice if folks out here would help make the Commonwealth better for everybody. Instead we've got louts like that who think thievery and murder is the better option."
She lowers herself to her knees beside him, slow, considered, buying time for a response that's more sophisticated than a platitude. Wherever they go, it's the same story: people turning to banditry out of greed or, worse, the thrill of preying on their fellow human. "It's easy to forget what decency looks like out here," she agrees softly.
Valentine makes an irritated noise low in his throat. "Only because those brutes and their ilk are free to run rampant."
"True." And there's only a slim prospect for justice, with only one cop in the entire Commonwealth.
She can see how the thought might haunt him.
Nudging him with her elbow, Kaelyn says, "If you're up to it, how about we find somewhere nicer to stay?"
What she needs is a deathclaw-free perch with a good view and maybe some whiskey.
The afternoon has receded into lavender-gray evening by the time they reach an abandoned camping site on the road that cuts through the side of the hill, where three rust-red cars have been pulled into a crude circle to protect the sooty corpse of a campfire. Wind and rain have blown away the ashes, squelched what remains into a soft mush for the sun to bake into a lumpy crust. Looking past the site, down the hill, it becomes clear why someone went to the effort of making a semi-protected spot: it presents an excellent view of the Commonwealth, overlooking silver-blue lake while the ruins of Boston sprawl on both sides of the river. The city's leaning skyscrapers barely challenge the mountains to the south and east. Along the rickety horizon, the sun burns its last, edging the looming clouds with scarlet.
Despite herself, Kaelyn takes a moment to marvel.
She cleans the fire pit out and scrounges for wood, but here the ground is puckered rock with little in the way of tinder, so she's forced to wander back down the hill to loot the gray remains of once-vibrant maples. When a cheery little blaze flickers in the fire pit, she wipes her hands on her trousers and lowers herself next to Valentine. He sits with his back against the tire of an orange Corvega, the brim of his hat tipped low, and in the dim evening light the shadows puckering his face give him a fatigued look. Dogmeat drapes himself across her lap, and Kaelyn runs her fingers through his thick fur.
After a cold dinner of beef jerky and beans, Kaelyn goes digging in her satchel. What she's after has sifted through layers of tinned rations, medicines, ammo and scavenged trinkets to the bottom of the bag. The box is little more than semi-flattened cardboard, but she offers it to Valentine regardless.
"Didn't think you smoked."
She quirks an eyebrow. "I don't." But she's walked into many an office hazed with smoke that stained the air with its unique scratchy tang. Occupational hazard, in her old profession.
Already the gears are turning behind Valentine's eyes—and there are most likely literal gears, if not in his cranium then surely whirring away in his chest, a too-smooth heartbeat keeping rhythm with greater surety than a fallible human organ. He leans forward in one smooth motion to pluck the proffered packet from her fingers. "Much obliged."
Valentine pats down his pockets for a lighter, but Kaelyn beats him to it, flipping her gold-plated lighter open with an elegant flick of her thumb. Drumming her fingers on her knee, she asks, "Given the nature of your work—cops came up with all sorts of coping mechanisms for the things they saw, right?"
"When it's getting under your skin, that usually means it's time to get some normalcy. Blow off some steam. The boys at the old station had a weekly poker night. Sometimes the sheriff wouldn't even hold it against ya if someone beat him. Now Ellie has this sixth sense that always has her kicking me outta the agency to check in on Takahashi or stop by the Dugout Inn. She's a real life saver, you know. Don't know what I'd do now with an office all to my lonesome."
"With luck, you won't have to find out." In the end, all it comes down to is chance.
Kaelyn takes another foray into her satchel, following the tell-tale clink of glass. A bottle of bourbon, fermented over two hundred years to pungent potency. No glasses, so there's no choice but to drink from the bottle after wiping away dust. She holds the bourbon out to her companion first, if only for courtesy's sake.
Valentine accepts, swirling the bottle as if it were a glass of fine wine. "Can't drink the stuff, but there's nothing quite like the aroma of a decent whiskey."
They pass the bottle back and forth while the night rustles around them on blue-black wings, and nearby trees dance in a bare-boned concert without the supporting harmony of crickets. Dogmeat wriggles across Kaelyn's lap so he can nose at Valentine's pocket for treats, only to get an apologetic head scratching.
After a third of the bottle the night is starting to look much friendlier and it doesn't hurt so much to reminisce, however they get onto the topic.
"You know what was the most frustrating thing, hands down?" Kaelyn asks, holding up one finger. "That one person who never filled up the coffee pot."
A grimace peels back Valentine's mouth in distaste. "That was a capital offense in the station. Nothing worse than needing a fix to clear their heads and make a breakthrough, only to find some joker drained the pot dry."
Funny, the similarities between the office antics of lawyers and police. As much as it hurts to know that it's gone—that the firm is gone, that her coworkers are gone, that her world is gone—it's also good to talk to someone who understands. And from the curious, almost startled look in Valentine's eyes, from the way he settles into the recollections, laughs more readily as the night wears on—whatever his thoughts on the old Nick, he too appreciates being able to share this with someone who knows.
Kaelyn passes the bottle, stretching her legs in front of her to cross them at the ankles. "One year, Stanley—tallest guy in the firm—got mistletoe caught in his hair and he didn't even notice. He had no idea why his clients kissed him goodbye. So the next year Mariana made him a circlet from mistletoe, but he never wore it."
She closes her eyes, pinches the bridge of her nose. Goes quiet. She plucks the bottle from Valentine's hand and takes a swig, all delicate manners forgotten, relishing the burn.
He's watching her, of course. She says, her voice a little too tight to be casual, "I'll bet you just love Christmas. Saint Nick, solving crimes between delivering children's presents."
He harrumphs, knocking ash off the end of his cigarette. "Valentine's Day was worse for the old Nick, believe me. Someone just had to pin a big ol' portrait of cupid on his locker. And the trash they tried to pass off as jokes. I'm lucky enough most folk out here don't much remember the occasion."
She mimes pulling an arrow from a shoulder quiver and draws an invisible bow. "Pa-ting! Saint Nick Valentine: solving crime, delivering presents and nurturing young love. You both really got the worst of both worlds, didn't you?"
He gives her a narrow-eyed look a few steps shy of a proper glare. "So glad you noticed, in between all the mocking."
Kaelyn nudges him with her elbow. "What are friends for?"
"What indeed?" Their easy humor slinks away into the night as a curious, somber tone in Valentine's rumbling baritone. "Funny how these things turn out sometimes."
She almost wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Instead, Kaelyn wraps her arms around herself. She sighs, and her chin brushes her collar. "I keep waiting to wake up. But that's never going to happen, is it?"
Valentine is quiet, contemplative. Just when she thinks he isn't going to answer at all, he says at last, "Dream or no, you're in good company."
She looks over, a smile lifting her mouth like leaves curling in autumn, so very frail but real nonetheless. "Yeah, I think I am."
They settle into a comfortable quiet, with only the swirl and clink of the bourbon bottle to disturb the night.
Valentine leans back, hooking his hands around the back of his neck, while a smile tugs at his lips. His expression turns pensive as he admires the view from their perch. "Strange how the Commonwealth changes so much at night, isn't it?"
If there's anything good about this future, it's that she can see the stars. In the city, she'd thought counting the stars in the sky on one hand was normal. When they'd moved to Sanctuary Hills, she'd marveled at seeing dozens of brave little stars shining against the streetlights, while Boston glowed a deep orange on the horizon, brightening the sky to a flat, distant gray.
And now from this vantage point, they have an excellent view. Boston lies limp along the river, dark and wounded. The broken stadium lights of Diamond City are halos of uneven white light piercing the skyline, visible even from this distance, and a few other brave pinpricks of light suggest shapes in the black. But it is an uncanny darkness which clings to the city, a pall that shivers along that quiet instinct in the back of her mind that says this is wrong.
But the sky now—pinpricks do not do the stars justice. They are clustered, so thick and so bright as to outnumber grains of sand on the beach. Milky ripples drift across the sky, like cosmic clouds sailing higher than the heavens themselves. It's a curious inverse: the lights of land have fallen upward, and where once the city dared to outshine the sky, making the night blacker, now the sky is bright with dancing things. Each star is a window, a street light, a car on the freeway in a strange phantom city.
Valentine takes a slow draw, and the tip of his cigarette flares yellow—a tiny spark daring to compete with the shining celestial curtain above. "Makes a man wonder. If something like this can still exist after the end of civilization as you and I know it, can the rest of the world recover, too?"
Kaelyn drags her hands through Dogmeat's fur. "I'd like to believe that. But does this—" she waves a hand above their heads "—exist because of us, or in spite of it?"
"Goes to show, I suppose, that the world can just keep spinning without us." His mouth slants into something rueful. "Maybe that's not a bad thing, all things considered."
She lets out her breath in one gusty blow. "It sure grants some perspective."
Valentine smiles, then, a tiny quirk kicking up one corner of his mouth. "A little humility goes a long way."
Kaelyn bumps his shoulder with her own. A comfortable quiet descends, broken only by Dogmeat snuffling in his sleep. His paws twitch against Kaelyn's thigh, quick and rhythmic, and she hopes his dreams are good.
Valentine leans over to give Dogmeat a light tickle behind one ear. "If you need some shut-eye, don't wait up on my account."
"Are you going to be alright?"
Valentine looks at her, then, with glowing golden eyes that pierce the night. Kaelyn realizes it's been weeks since she last flinched at the sight. It might just be a trick of the darkness, but it looks like some of the crinkles around his eyes have smoothed out. "Think so."
So she settles more firmly against his side, rests her head on his shoulder, and they wait together for morning.