It took a while for the old Synth prototype, Nick Valentine, to trust her. He wanted to, but something about her screamed "brash and impulsive." Jill, whose true birthname she couldn't remember thanks to amnesia, possibly a rare but unusual side effect of being cryogenically frozen, was something of a wild card. Her only memory of her life before being frozen was the day the bombs fell on Saturday, October 23rd, 2077. Her first memory after that was of her husband being murdered by Kellog; a ruthless and downright psychotic gun-for-hire turned Institute lapdog. She watched as her husband was slaughtered, and her infant son, Shaun, was kidnapped by the same man.
Jill's biggest faults were also miraculously her saving graces. Her dedication to finding her son made her more dangerous than a suicidal Supermutant. She was highly eccentric; a peculiar woman who had a disturbing appreciation for the darker and more horrifying aspects of the universe. It was both fascinating and concerning simultaneously to the detective. He could only wonder what strange and fantastic dreams she may have had while frozen. Sometimes her insane ramblings of a nature far beyond Nick's comprehension would leave her disappointed when the old Synth couldn't follow. Indeed, she fascinated him in a way he couldn't understand. On top of this, Jill had a tendency to get angry and fidgety when she thought time was being wasted. Nick understood, though. Shaun was at the front of her mind day and night – at least for the first month the two knew each other.
After a month, Detective Valentine noticed a subtle change in her behavior. She would slow her consistently hurried walking pace to trot along at his side. About a week later, she began regularly engaging him in conversation as they trekked across the Commonwealth. After a little over a month of staying strangers to one another, Jill broke the ice between them – something Nick had been hesitant to do himself. She began by asking him harmless questions; why he became a detective, and how he got into Diamond City. He described the day he stumbled upon the daughter of Diamond City's mayor. A crying girl with four toughs who didn't know much of anything about Synths. The hardest part of the whole situation was him trying not to laugh when he told the brutish men he was a bomb, and started saying "beep, beep, beep." That got a hushed laugh from the Vault dweller.
Nick compared that quiet bell of a sound to her usual short huff, which he sometimes mistook as laughter when it was in fact some other reaction entirely. She was an enigma to him, just as much as he was to her. Her questions continued to grow in complexity; she queried about his state of being, what made him tick, what happened before he went to Diamond City, and how he was created. These were not delivered to the Synth in a mocking manner, but rather one of curiosity. Her motives behind her questions were unclear to him.
She was beginning to prod at the Synth's sensitive spots, and she didn't even know it. But he knew she didn't know.
What could it hurt? Nick thought, shrugging to himself. He pulled the woman aside, and she was happy to speak with him.
"What's on your mind, Nick?" For the first time, she genuinely smiled at him. The detective was slightly taken aback by this, as she hadn't given him anything more than a half-grin before. Something about this stumped Nick, and caused a physical jittering in the circuitry of his brain. This compelled him to explain more than he had intended. He began with the subject of his choice of clothing – equating it to what seems appropriate for a detective from the era of the real Nick Valentine. It helped the people of the Commonwealth know that he was serious about his line of work. "Clothes make the man" and all that. Next was the Institute – how his life was a test chamber, and how he woke up in a trash heap with the memories of a Pre-War cop. Jill gasped to this revelation, staring him down in shock.
"You look upset. Was it something I said?" The Synth raised an eyebrow in both confusion and concern. Jill had a strange habit of analyzing language to search for deeper meaning in someone's words. It is true that it was a technique that Nick deployed for his detective work, but he couldn't understand how or why she did it so consistently in conversation.
"They threw you in the trash, and you're wondering if I'm upset?" She lifted her own brow in response to his. Angry Jill had come forth, and Nick was clueless as to why.
"Well, yeah. I mean, why would they care? Synths these days can blend in among humans so well, my kind is obsolete. I'm old tech, Jill." He shrugged, fighting the urge to ask her why she cared. The last thing he wanted to do was piss her off further. Nick swore that her screams could frighten a Deathclaw.
To this, Jill made no immediate response. Her shoulders dropped, and her head tilted ever so slightly to the right. "Nick, please..." Her voice and expression softened. "I need you to tell me if something's wrong." Her hands were then placed gently over his shoulders. "I care about my friends' mental health."
"I, uh...well, thanks." Nick sputtered out bashfully. For a moment, he had to avert his gaze from hers. He damned his shyness internally and cleared his throat. "I wouldn't normally bother ya with this sort of thing, but...well, I know I can trust you at this point." He began explaining how he would get broken flashes of memory – memory of places he had never been, and things he had never seen. Ultimately, he realized that these were just memories of the real Nick Valentine. "They're not bad, they're just..."
He paused, letting the reality sink in. This happened almost nightly for the old Synth. As he would lie awake in the office with no one to speak to but himself, he drew the same conclusions over and over again, and he was convinced that no one could change his mind on it. The moment of realization was over in almost an instant, and he spoke again. "They're just an inescapable reminder. That I'm not the person I think I am. That I'm not a person at all. I'm just a machine, pretending to be human." He continued, sharing how his juggling of his own memories with the real Nick's baggage makes life tough for him at times. Despite being grateful to the real Nick, and thankful the Institute hadn't loaded him up with some despicable villain, he realized that it was only thanks to the real Nick that he passed for human. "I know I got it good, but...my entire life I owe to Nick. Everything that makes me who I am – my judgment, my speech, hell, even my name – they're his."
"And I can't do a damn thing about it because without them..." Another pause fell over the Synth. Even after having this realization long ago, it never failed to haunt him. "Without them I'm nothing. A shell."
"You're wrong." Jill shot back quietly, her voice pointed and trembling. "You're wrong, Nick." She shook her head, her gaze cast toward the floor. Her hands had never left his shoulders. They now gripped him tighter, pressing into him with a force that was both angry, and something else the detective couldn't identify.
"What are you-? Mm!" Nick was cut off suddenly by the unexpected pair of lips molding together with his. That jittering in his brain started up again. But this time, it pulsed down through his artificial nervous system, giving him a full body shudder. A second wave of heat vibrated through his chest this time, from where a heart would be found in both a human, and his Gen. 3 "siblings" from the Institute.
The intensity of the kiss – which had lasted approximately 4.7 seconds – had caused Nick's head to spin. Never before had he experienced such a feeling on his own. Due to his implanted memories, he knew the feeling second-handed from their previous owner, who was deeply in love with his fiancée, Jennifer Lands. The real Nick's impression of such strong emotions on his memory allowed the Synth to recognize what they were.
But, before long, the spell was broken, and the detective regained some of his senses. "What the hell was that?!" Although unknown to Jill, this exclamation was at both her actions, and his brush with genuine emotion.
"Nick, how can you be so dense?!" Jill sniffed, taking a step back. "You're a person. You think, you feel, you have needs and desires, you're self-aware, you're sentient...the list goes on." Taking a bold step forward, she held his face gingerly with both hands. "Look at you! You're a marvel of science, and you don't even know it!"
"I get what you're trying to say, Jill, and I appreciate it. But just think about it for a moment. How can I be a person if all that I am is some dead Pre-War cop?" Gently, he took her wrists in his hands and removed hers from his face.
"You're not following me, Nick." She sighed, urging him on. "Try to follow me."
"Okay, I'm listening." Releasing her wrists, he allowed her to take a step back.
"I don't know what it is, I don't understand it, but I know that you are as much of a person as I am." Staying where she was, she reached forward and took Nick's hands. "Your body may have been made in a laboratory, but the creation of you, who you are, your soul...that was an unforeseen consequence of the Institute trying to play God." She paused, giving him a moment to ask questions. When she realized he had none, she continued. "The Nick Valentine I'm speaking to right now is completely and utterly separate from the Nick Valentine that offered to volunteer in the experiment. That man died 200 years ago. His memories aren't all that you are – they were a template for you to follow."
"You're starting to lose me, Jill." At this point, Nick couldn't help but smile, realizing that he would be blushing had it been physically possible for him. He began to understand what she was getting at, but he wasn't sure how to feel about it. Had the Institute truly engineered new souls by creating Synths? If it was true that they had achieved making robots and computer code sentient, then it may not have been such a farfetched idea. If that was the case, then the Institute may someday be credited with their confirmation and discovery of the soul. Such a thought gave Nick an unfamiliar sense of hope.
"Well, either way...I know you're a person, and you'll never convince me otherwise." Her cheeks were flushed a light pink – a rare and charming sight to behold for the old Synth.
"Thanks, Jill. You really don't know how much that means to me." He couldn't stop himself before he spoke next. A cocky grin and half-lidded eyes replaced his bashful smile. His voice lowered an octave, becoming grizzlier and quieter. "You're rather passionate, now, aren't ya?"
"Perhaps I am, Nick. You'll just have to get to know me better." Her voice sent shivers down his spine. It reminded him of the real Nick's memory of honey, and how he used to associate that with his fiancée's voice.
"Should I consider that an invitation to try?" In truth, he wasn't looking for any sort of serious answer. He was more or less gauging her interest in him.
"Only if you want to." So, this was entirely up to him. Another thing he noticed about Jill, and found rather admirable of her, was her insistence that free will is essential.
"How about we take it slow? I'm not saying I'm not interested, but...well, I hope you understand that I want to get to know you first, before jumping into anything. Don't want you assuming I just want to use ya, or anything like that, you know?"
"No worries, Nick. I understand." She patted his shoulder firmly, beaming at the Synth. "I'm just glad you feel the same way." She laughed, her expression turning nervous. "Sorry I...you know...I just, uh..."
"Water under the bridge!" Nick tactfully helped her save face with that one. He didn't want or need an explanation about the kiss. Not yet, anyway. Not any that he could fathom, anyway. Everything was settled, and the two were off on their travels again.
As day eventually came to a close, he laid across from his companion in a bed on the opposite wall of some old warehouse they'd holed up in for the night. They had just narrowly escaped the approaching storm, which flashed green lightning that made their Geiger counters do cartwheels. The rain pelted the roof above, dripping in various places across the room.
As he tossed and turned in the darkness, his mind was replaying the events of earlier on in the day. Over and over, he relived Jill's speech about a soul, and how she believed he was a person. It didn't make sense, and yet, at the same time, he believed in the possibility. These thoughts, and the memory of the sudden pang of genuine emotion he had felt, tormented him through the small hours of the morning. When Jill awoke, he didn't have the heart to tell her about his inner turmoil. Not yet. For the time being, he decided not to think about it. It was the best thing he could do for his sanity, after all. But until they spoke again, Nick struggled more than ever before about his internal conflict. It would eventually lead him to erupt, and he knew it. But still, stubborn as ever, he held it in just a while longer.