The sun was about to set in Sanctuary Hills, painting the sky with fiery reds and warm oranges. Nora Gibson had been forced to spend the last four days in bed recovering from a too-close-for-comfort mini-nuke blast. If it hadn't been for her friend Nick Valentine's quick synth abilities to respond to the situation, she'd be lying in a shallow grave someplace instead of her bed in her old house at the Hills.
Doctor Cade had come to check on her and after his examination he told her, "you've responded remarkably well to my treatment, Knight. At first I had to assume the worst, but I guess your partner did manage to get you out of the severe damage zone from the blast. I'm pleased to inform you, you're free to resume your duties starting from tomorrow."
Nora's face lit up. She reached out for the doctor's forearm and gave it a light squeeze as she said, "thank you, Knight-Captain."
She saw him divert his eyes away from hers as a rosy color crept up his cheeks.
Scratching the side of his head he told her in a professional tone that gave nothing away. "As a friendly word of advice, Miss Gibson, yes you're fit for duty but don't strain yourself. Take it at your own pace."
He stood up from his chair as if it was suddenly lit on fire and added, "but don't tell the brothers I've told you that. They want you back on your feet and ready for action as soon as possible. That's why they sent me to treat you, personally."
She sighed with a hint of resignation. "I know."
"I've left a new batch of radiation-free rations with your people. You're only..."
She finished the sentence for him, "... to eat from those, yes I know!"
He continued, "yes, until your body flushes the radiation out of your system completely."
He opened the door and turned around to face her before saying, "I'll be seeing you at the Prydwen, Knight." He gave her an informal salute. "Ad Victoriam!"
She only answered with a soft nod as she watched him leave. Her absent stare lingered on the tattered door, looking past it, immersed in her thoughts for a few moments.
"The Brotherhood has the cutest men but they're all such sticklers. Just my luck..."
The sound of the Vertibird engines starting in the distance brought her back to Earth. Her attention returned to the journal she'd left resting on her lap. She opened it up and finished writing her latest entry. Nora couldn't believe she was halfway through filling up her third journal, considering how precious little time she had for herself among the myriad of tasks she always had pending and new ones forever piling up as soon as she cleared the old ones.
The two completed journals sat at the foot of her bed, along with other reading material people had gathered for her to read during her convalescent time. She had intended to re-read them to remind herself that she wasn't always an invalid laying in bed all pathetic and helpless.
She shrugged to herself. "Meh, now is as good a time as any," she said the words aloud, which was a new habit she'd picked up since she'd woken up at the vault from her cryogenic sleep, believing she was the only human left on the planet after a global nuclear holocaust. Talking to herself soothed her. Filling the air with a human voice made her feel less lonely, even if that voice was only her own.
She laughed at the memory. "God, I was such a drama queen back then, wasn't I?" she said as she reached for her second journal. With all her out loud talking, she was trying to divert herself from the fact that she was picking that one, and not the first one, attempting to fool herself that the choice she was making was casually random.
She opened up the journal, quickly turning the pages. "Yeah, Gibson, you were the last living thing alive except for, well, all the people you soon came across. And the mutants. And the giant cockroaches. And the zombies. Ok, they call them 'feral ghouls' ...whatever!"
She'd never really liked her first name. Back in school, everybody had called her by her surname, and she couldn't say she'd complained. The tradition followed her all the way to law school and beyond - far beyond, like 200 years into the future.
Following the lines with a finger, she stopped at the entry entitled: Goodneighbor. Her attempt at fooling herself hadn't worked. She skipped most of the paragraphs until her eyes found what she was looking for: The Third Rail, which was a bar in a town populated mostly by outcasts, and run by a ruthless, yet charming, ghoul. It was the only bar she'd come across that had in-house live music. Her words in the journal read:
I heard loud voices coming from a back room. I'd like to tell myself that I thought someone was in danger and maybe I could lend a hand, but the truth is that I was probably just being nosey. When I reached the room I saw this kinda scrawny, rough-looking guy surrounded by two much bigger guys. He was holding his ground surprisingly well, considering that he was essentially cornered and all by himself. I felt like intervening, but he seemed to have the situation under control. The argument was about some sort of blackmail, or something along those lines.
The big guys soon fucked off leaving scrawny guy and me alone in the room. Long story short, he was a gun for hire and looking for a job. I ended up hiring him, and I guess, I'll soon find out if he's as good as he claims he is.
But only for-hire, though? I was hoping for something more permanent, because Cait... well, Cait has issues with addiction and as good a friend as she is, her wild mood swings are starting to grate my nerves. Lately, I'm spending more time rescuing her than having her as my back up, and Dogmeat is excellent at finding the baddies but awful at fighting them off. Then there's always Preston but he has his hands full protecting the home base. I just can't keep taking him away from his post at the Hills.
God! I really do need a sharp shooter covering my ass. I hope this guy - who isn't much to look at, to be perfectly honest - is 'it.' Not to mention; hiring him took all the caps I had. So, the bastard better be worth it!
She closed the journal, once again immersed in deep thought. She didn't need to carry on reading to remember all the troubles they'd gotten themselves into shortly after they'd met; the ones assigned to her by Preston, and the ones they'd just had the misfortune to stumble upon. From the first time they'd had to draw their weapons, MacCready had proved his worth to the very last cap she'd paid him - and then some.
She laughed sarcastically. "Ha! Yeah, but it would help if he wasn't so fucking smug about it all time," she said, tossing the journal angrily back to the foot of the bed. Imitating his voice, she mocked, "impressed yet? You're messing with the best! Chalk up another kill for me!"
"Ass!" she declared as she got up from the bed, realizing she was just working herself up about him, all over again. She got dressed, grabbed the last packet of rations from the nearby table, flung a spoon in her shirt breast pocket, and got out of the old house for the first time in three days - or was it four? She wasn't sure since she'd been completely out of it for the first two.
She headed out for the make-shift camp fire she and Preston had set up near the river. She favored that spot over the cooking station in the middle of the settlement on account of it always being so crowded. Preston noticed her preference and was courteous enough to keep it always lit for her to use whenever she needed it.
She placed her ration packet near the fire to warm it up, and while doing so, she heard foot steps closing in behind her. "Good to see you up and about, kiddo." Nick Valentine's friendly voice rang in her ears.
"I hope you're not still mad at Preston for sending us to that semi-suicide mission at the Outpost Zimonja," he said while joining her sitting on the ground by the fire. "Don't be. Look! He's still religiously keeping the fire lit for you."
Gibson left out a soft laugh. Valentine continued, "I've had a word with him, right after I tucked you in your bed when I brought you home unconscious. The man was a mess. He looked like his puppy had been eaten alive by a deathclaw right in front of him. He said he didn't know they were armed with mini-nukes - his intel was that they were just ordinary, run of the mill raiders. He told me a million times: I didn't know, Nick. I didn't know, Nick. As if the more times he said it, time would magically rewind to before you getting hurt. Later, I overheard that he got into a fist fight with his informant over the mishap and..."
She interjected. "Don't worry, Nick. I'm not mad at Preston. Well, I was. A little... I'm not anymore, but..."
The sentence was left hanging. She was finding it hard to arrange her thoughts in a coherent way in front of Nick.
"But you're really mad at someone else, aren't you lassy?" he said to her in a somewhat sly tone.
Gibson snapped her neck and looked at Nick with widened eyes, for a brief moment suspecting he'd been reading her journals behind her back. Some of her entries about MacCready were, well... 'colorful,' to put it elegantly.
He laughed at her reaction. "Yeah, alright! I couldn't call myself a detective if I wasn't any good at putting two and two together, could I?" he continued chuckling.
Gibson lowered her head in slight embarrassment.
"It's not like it is such an unravelable mystery. You exiled his butt to the Red Rocket, for pete's sakes!" He then added as chuckles took over him again, "all by himself."
She narrowed her eyes at Nick disapprovingly.
"Sorry, kid," he tried to regain some of his composure, "it's just that you youngsters are a hoot. So, tell me, would you like to talk about it? Or are you just going to let him sulk for another two weeks or so?"
Gibson looked up at the sky that had now acquired a dark deep purple hue. The twilight effect it caused on the ground made everything look magical, almost idyllic. She pondered on Nick's question. What was she going to do with him? And what was there to tell? She didn't know, so she asked exactly that, "what do you wanna know, Nick?"
"For starters, you could tell me what he did to get himself in the dog house. That one I couldn't figure out."
She thought about the question for a few moments, trying to put together an answer in words that didn't make her sound shallow. A minute or so passed by with Nick still waiting patiently in silent expectation. Her goal to sound 'reasonable' seemed unworkable, so she just blurted out the core of the matter. "He flirted with Cait."
She immediately put a hand to her face to hide her rather - all too real this time - embarrassment. When she gathered the strength to look up at Nick again, she found him observing her expectantly.
Feeling pressured by his inquisitive stare she added, "aah... aand he did it right after I helped him dispatch the two gunner heavies that were eager to stick his head on a pike. Ok, not immediately after that..." she took a deep breath and continued, "we got the gunners, right? And it wasn't exactly a piece of cake to take them out, let me tell you. As we were looking for loot and salvage, he... he opened up to me a little bit. He shared a couple of things about himself and his back story. He even returned the caps I've paid him when I hired him and told me how much he appreciated my help..."
Nick finished the sentence for her, "...and then he goes and shows his appreciation by flirting with your friend. Right! Got it, now I have all the pieces of the puzzle."
She rushed to add, "I know it sounds silly, but.."
Nick interjected, "... but nothing, kid. If it matters to you, then it can't be silly."
"Well, but it is! This new reality, this world, this life," she gestured around her as she continued, "whatever you wanna call it, is not a place for silliness. I guess... the truth is that this is not so much about him hitting on Cait..."
"It's that you like him," Nick said offering her a knowing look along with a wink.
"Well, duh! Sherlock!" Nick laughed at her come back. "It's not that either!" she told him. "It's... it's... I don't know what it is, but I do know it's something else! It's this feeling of unease. Discomfort?" she wondered, mostly to herself whilst trying to find the right word to convey her thoughts.
Defeated, she gave up on that concept and continued on a different vein, "this is the thing. He's like two different people in one. On the one hand, when we're out in the field, he's this tough guy who takes no shit from anybody, gives lip to anyone doesn't matter how butch they are, takes down super mutants ten times his size as if they were nothing. And all the while joking about it..." she added with an amused expression at the memory of his antics.
"The point is that is easy to forget this other side he has, a side with an almost childlike innocence quality to it ...and that's when I remember how young he is," she said, with a tinge of embarrassment creeping up her yet again.
Gibson then continued with an observation that reassured her a little. "Well, nearly everyone here seems to be so damn young. It's just that this hard life and the radiation, no doubt, make everyone look way older than they actually are. And all of this makes me feel like a relic. An over two hundred years old relic! Which I am. Literally!"
Nick laughed. "You're speaking to the right audience." He tapped his head with a finger as he said; "My memories are from this pre-war police officer, remember him? All I know, I know it through him, and his experiences from another time, another era. Your era," he pointed at her with his hand. "But I know I'm a synth, so my understanding of your situation and how you must be experiencing it only goes so far. So forgive me if I ask... I'm not really following you, kid."
Gibson realized she had been rambling kind of aimlessly, "yeah... some lawyer I am if I can't even present my own case properly, huh? Ok, here it goes..." She took a deep breath.
"Yes, I do like him, I like him a lot in fact, but having these..." she coughed a little, "...thoughts about him, even though I'm not planning to act on them, makes me feel like I'm taking advantage of him. I mean... if I did act on them. God! That's it. I give up! This is impossible to explain," she rolled her eyes in frustration.
"Look, Nick, I do lock those feelings in a box and put them deep, deep in the back of my mind, but I guess, seeing him flirting with Cait just busted the damn box open, didn't it? It made me realize, in no ambiguous way, that a girl of his age, and - as you put it - his era, is what he really needs." She then added in a sad tone, "and... or wants."
"And I'm just this crazy old relic with a crush on a guy that I better leave the hell well alone," she said hanging her head. "The defense rests, your honor."
Nick let out a short soft laugh at her last remark. "Ok, now I get it. And that's all well and good, but it still doesn't explain why you banished him to the Red Rocket," he said with a smirk on his face.
"Yeah, ok, well... that was me being stupid, small, small..." she said frustratedly, mostly at herself, "...small, stupid and petty. So, sue me! I was in no mood to be seeing his bastard face in Sanctuary all the time. Acting like everything was 'ok' and 'normal,'" she air-quoted the words while using a mocking tone of voice.
"And quit judging me, Valentine! It's not like I've sent him to Spain. The Red Rocket is just down the road from here."
"Relax, kid. I was just yanking your chain there. But listen, Nora, really. I suspect you might be making a storm in a teacup about this."
She sighed resigned. "Yeah, I guess I overreacted."
Nick answered, "no. That's not how I meant it. There's no way around this one and to know for sure if he reciprocates, you'll just have to talk to him, but, but..." He rushed to add, after noticing her horrified reaction at his suggestion, "but! I'm a detective, that's what I do. And one of the things us detectives are good at is to observe. We pick up on the little things that go unnoticed to most people..."
Gibson interrupted him. "Yeah, thanks for the for the job description, but can you please put me out of my misery already? As if I'm not mortified enough as it is by blabbing all of this to you."
Nicked laughed. "Your secret is safe with me, if that what's bothering you. My point is, that guy..." he said, pointing a thumb in the Red Rocket's direction, "..has it for you," he finished pointing at her. "And that ain't no secret, let me tell ya."
She looked at him with a mixture of surprise and skepticism. "Yanking my chain there again?" she asked him sarcastically with a raised eyebrow.
"You really haven't noticed?" Nick inquired, skeptically. "Every single time..." he made a point of elongating some of the syllables to emphasize his words, " ...you move from one place of the settlement to another, he follows you like a shadow. When you're working at the benches, he always gets close to observe and compliments your work. I bet you think he does that with everyone. Well, he doesn't. And even when he puts his feet up at down time, he has an eye out scanning for raiders, true, but his other eye is on you like white on rice. And I know you don't know that last one because he's careful to look away whenever you glance in his direction, but he doesn't care when others catch him looking at you..."
Gibson interrupted this recitation impatiently. "I think you're pushing the 'please, be my Valentine' theme a bit too far there, Nick. You're reading too much into it," she told him, dismissing his theory with a hand gesture and shaking her head.
"Or maybe... you're the one not reading him well enough," he retorted with a wink. "Like I said, you'll have to bite that bullet and ask him if you wanna know for sure. But here's what I think: life out here is no picnic, as I'm sure you've already figured out. People don't come together like they used to back in our time - well, your time. You know what I mean. Folks are too busy surviving, or not getting themselves killed by one Wasteland creature or another. There's no time for luxuries such as romance, candlelit dinners and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. I don't know how hard it was for you and your late husband Nate to find each other, but however difficult it may have been, out here, finding a life partner is nigh impossible. Go around and ask if you don't believe me."
Spellbound, Gibson listened to Nick - his warm, wise-sounding voice comforting her. It reminded her of when her granddad read her bedtime stories when she was little.
"Here, in this post-war hellhole, when two people find each other, they fall fast and they fall hard," Nick continued. "There's no time to waste, you see? This unforgiving environment doesn't allow room for hesitations, and it certainly doesn't grant second chances. I'm sure you don't wanna hear this..." his tone turned somber, "but people don't last very long. They die young. That's why everybody seems so young to you. The older ones are all gone. Getting past middle-age is the exception, not the rule."
Nick was right, she didn't want to hear that. It was something she knew to be true, but thinking too deeply about it terrified her.
"So, if you think you found someone special, you better make sure you let him know."
Nick turned around, reached for the ration packet sitting next to fire, and handed it to Gibson. He affectionately patted her on the shoulder and told her as he got up, "aside from a lot of thinking, you have to finish getting well. I know the doctor said you're fine now, but don't get out there too soon. Ok, kiddo?"
As Nick's footsteps faded away, she opened up her ration. Steam rose from it, carrying with it the aroma of vegetable stew. She hadn't realized how famished she was until the smell of warm food hit her. Lost in her thoughts, mesmerized by the flickering fire, she devoured the contents of the packet. Scraping the bottom, she remembered the last words she'd read off her journal: "So, the bastard better be worth it!" It had meant one thing at the time, but after a few months of fighting, bleeding and nearly dyeing together, now it took on a whole different meaning.
Giving up on the spoon, she tilted the packet directly into her mouth. Satisfied that she'd gotten every last drop, she rose from her seat and announced, "Hell, I'm doing this! So, the bastard better be worth it!"